Sweet Dreams Boxed Set (179 page)

Inmate Z143973 had been charged with murder two, a sentence of fifteen to life. However, when he’d come up for parole, the agitation surrounding the murder had prevented his paroling. It was beginning to look like he would do the full time.

He frowned uncomfortably. What was the lawyer’s name? Ah, John Wright, who worked for the county as a public defender. No
pro bono,
high-profile, hot shot attorney from Sacramento. Just some low-paid county worker.

Not that Wright hadn’t done the best job he could. It was just that fifteen years ago, Wright was so new to law you could rub the shiny off him with a rag.

Because Wright was the attorney of record, the two men were allowed the privilege of a secure room, no recordings, no video tapes. At least in theory. After what’d happened to him, inmate Z143973 – Roger Franklin Milano – didn’t trust police or guards or anyone anymore.

Apparently Wright had decided to meet with Roger in regular visitation with the other inmates. No confidentiality. Was that good or bad? It must be important.

Surprise or shock or something must’ve registered on his face because Wright’s first words were, “Walt sent me.”

A jolt of terror raced through his blood like wildfire because he knew immediately what that meant.

“It’s Frankie. She’s in trouble,” Wright continued, his sad basset-hound face drooping almost comically.

“What?” Roger whispered, his voice as rusty as an old engine. He realized he rarely used his vocal chords anymore. “Who? Why?”

“I’m trying to get a private room,” Wright assured him. “I don’t want to say more here.” He glanced around. “Publicly.”

Roger looked at the door where a guard waited for visitation to end, and behind Wright where the reception officers watched through tinted windows. Every word said during inmate visits could be recorded and listened to later – no expectation of privacy inside a prison facility.

“Walt said to give you the message about Frankie, and see what you can learn about ... ” The attorney looked down meaningfully at Roger’s hands splayed on the counter. The letters L-O-D were tattooed into the first three fingers of his right hand, below the knuckle joint.

Roger Franklin Milano – inmate Z143973 – was a member of the
Lords of Death.

“I’ll see you tomorrow under privilege,” Wright continued, “and tell you everything I know about – about what’s happened.” He cleared his throat. “Try not to worry. We’re taking care of it.”

Wright stood abruptly and exited the room before time was up, leaving Roger staring after him. He sat on his round stool, gazed fixed on his folded hands, thinking desperately of the only thing in the world that mattered to him anymore.

What had happened to his only daughter – Frankie Jones she called herself now – and what could he do about it stuck inside his concrete cage?

Chapter 29

Maybelle’s
was a breakfast-lunch restaurant that had been an established attraction in Placer Hills for three decades. Worn and a little seedy, it served the best food in town and was still operated by the original owners.

Cruz had just settled with a menu and a glass of water when Dr. Jones entered the diner and spotted him in the corner. She was as stunning as he’d remembered, and wore a casual look again today, her hair up in a loose ponytail.

Slow down the hormones, he warned himself, as he rose from his chair.

Instantly recognizing him, she sat down quickly while the wait server placed a menu and glass of water before her.

“What’s good?” she asked, scanning the list.

“They serve breakfast all day.” Cruz wondered why she seemed so jittery. Her fresh face and wide-eyed expression contrasted with her ill-at-ease body.

“I like the biscuits and gravy with a side of sliced tomatoes, so I can pretend I’m eating healthy.”

She tried a lopsided smile that didn’t quite work and ordered the same. They settled into an uncomfortable silence until the server, whose name tag said “Sally,” placed their breakfasts and the check on the table.

“Let me know if you need anything,” Sally said. “We’ve got great bread pudding if you’re hankering for dessert.”

They ate a few minutes without talking while the other customers gradually left and only they remained. He was starved. Being so occupied with his cases, he hadn’t taken time to eat all day.

“Tell me about Cole Hansen,” she said at last, laying her fork down.

Again, a command, not a request.

“We talked about confidentiality, Dr. Jones,” he answered, testing the waters.

“Frankie, please.” She removed her sweater and hung it on the back of her chair. She wore a tank top that hugged her slender figure without being too revealing.

“All right – Frankie,” he conceded, trying to keep his mind on her words. “I can’t give you parolee information without cause.”

She sighed, patted her mouth, and placed her napkin beside the empty plate, signaling for the server. “I’ll have a Pepsi, please, lots of ice, and try that bread pudding you mentioned.”

“Same for me.”

After Sally left, Frankie continued, “There – there are – odd things happening at the prison where I’m head doctor. I can’t elaborate, but I think Cole Hansen is in serious jeopardy.”

She leaned over the table and lowered her voice when Sally left to fill their dessert orders. The neckline of her tank revealed smooth, white flesh. “I saw him in my clinic right before he paroled. He dropped out – you know what that means?”

Cruz nodded. “Debriefing. Snitching.”

“Yes, and he had six months’ time left on his sentence, but after he dropped out, he was paroled that same day.”

Cruz shrugged. “Lucky guy. So what’s the problem?”

She lifted one dark eyebrow and leaned back in her chair. “Really. You don’t know that debriefing effectively puts a target on his back?”

“Maybe, but it depends on what he gave up. If he just named small-time gang members, gave insignificant information about their activities, he wouldn’t be bothered on the inside or the outside.”

“It’s the
Lords of Death,”
Frankie said flatly.

“Ah.”

“Yes, ah.”

“Still, I don’t see what this has to do with you.” Cruz dug into the bread pudding Sally set before them. “You’re a doctor at Pelican Bay. Hansen is a parolee. I don’t see how you fit into any of this.”

“They’re going to kill him,” she insisted ferociously.

“What makes you so sure?”

“Like I said, I saw Cole in the clinic the day before his release. A murder had just gone down in the prison yard. An inmate stabbed in the jugular. Hispanic –
Norteño,
I think.” She shook her head. “Or maybe not even ganged up yet. I’m not sure. They got him to the clinic, but it was too late. He bled out.”

Cruz lifted both shoulders and concentrated on his dessert. “So?”

She frowned, a look both angry and disappointed shadowing her face. “So, Cole admitted to stabbing the man – no provocation at all – and landed in the SHU. He confessed, but I’m positive he didn’t kill that man.”

Frankie willed the parole officer not to dismiss her. He scraped a hand across his jaw which was starting an early five-o’clock shadow. Her eyes followed his hand, brown and strong-looking. She’d always had a thing for well-shaped hands in a man.

“And you think he took the fall because the
Lords of Death
shot-caller ordered it,” Cruz said

Frankie nodded, forcing herself back to the topic. “Cole’s just not smart enough – or vicious enough – to do something like that.”

Cruz tried to recall the details of Hansen’s rap sheet and parole record. If he remembered right, it was petty stuff, possession, dealing, theft – but no violent crimes. A lowly criminal like him didn’t usually escalate to murder, but you never knew.

Prison had a way of changing men.

Cruz spoke the words aloud.

“You don’t understand.” Desperation weighted her voice like stones in a stream. “Cole has information I need to find out.” She pushed aside her plate, took a deep drink of soda, and eyed him levelly across the table.

“Cole may not be the only one in trouble.” A tiny line of perspiration dotted her upper lip. She dabbed at it with a napkin.

“What do you mean?”

“I think someone’s trying to kill me, too.”

“Why would someone try to kill a prison doctor?”

“Because I – I think I know something, maybe something I don’t
know
I know.”

Chapter 30

Even through the convoluted words, Cruz knew what she meant. Frankie Jones had uncovered information she wasn’t supposed to have – information that put her in danger.

Her hand rested on the table, palm downward. Without thinking he covered it briefly with his own. He’d only meant a gesture of comfort, but an unexpected tingle ran through him. For a single moment their eyes met, and he knew she’d felt it, too.

“Tell me everything,” he said, signaling for another round of sodas.

Frankie Jones recounted each detail – from the murder in the prison yard to the note Cole Hansen had slipped her. From Anson Stark’s menacing visit to – finally and reluctantly – the attack in the prison parking lot. Cruz sat stunned for long moments.

“It sounds like a made-up story, I know,” she said at last, but the look in her stormy gray eyes told him she was desperate for him to believe her. “I’m not crazy.”

“And this friend of yours – this Walt Steiner? – what about him?”

“I – I don’t know. I called him and he – he told me a place to go.”

“Can you trust him?”

Her face hardened. “No, and I thought I could trust a lot of people. Now – now I’m not sure.”

She clasped her hands together on the table top. He noticed the slim fingers and the clean nails, cut short and bluntly. Capable hands. She seemed like an efficient woman, a steady woman not prone to fanciful imaginings.

“You’re safe enough here, don’t you think? So far from Crescent City?”

She bit her bottom lip. “Maybe. I don’t know. I was followed by a low rider car last night. I didn’t dare go back to my motel room.”

“Gang bangers?”

She spread her hands helplessly. “They were white, not Mexican, but they looked like gang members.”

“Go to the cops,” Cruz advised. “What can I do for you?”

“No cops,” she insisted. “If CO’s at the prison are involved in this, why not local police? You can help me find Cole.” Her face was a stubborn wall of determination.

Why would someone who worked for Corrections and Rehabilitation not trust the authorities?

Frankie pulled a paper from her handbag and shoved it across the table. It was the coded message, wrinkled and torn, she claimed Cole had given her when she was examining him in the prison clinic. “Can you tell what it means?”

Cruz was impressed by her composure. The attack and threats must’ve been terrifying, but she managed to maintain a cool outward façade.

He reached across the table, took the note, looking around to check if anyone had noticed. “It looks like gobbledygook,” he complained after a glance.

“Maybe, but Cole Hansen risked his life getting it to me in prison. He couldn’t know his release date would come so quickly.”

Cruz lifted one eyebrow. “Don’t make Cole Hansen into some kind of hero, Dr. Jones. He’s an ex-felon. He’ll say or do anything to make his life easier.”

“Maybe.” Frankie shifted in her chair. “But I don’t think he’s a killer. I think he’s a guy who got caught up in something he doesn’t know how to get out of.”

“In every one of his prison terms he’s been ganged up,” he reminded her.

“You know how it is in prison,” Frankie returned hotly, pink flushing her high cheekbones. “It’s all about survival.”

Cruz sighed and rubbed his right temple. Damn, the woman gave him a headache. What kind of prison doctor was also a liberal, left-wing supporter of prisoners’ rights?

But she did look appealing when she blushed.

“You may be right,” he returned, “but unless we can find Cole, get him to help us figure this out, it’s just a useless piece of paper.”

“A piece of paper intended for the president of the
Lords of Death,”
she countered.

Cruz nodded. “There’s that.”

“We have to find Cole before someone else does.”

“You need to worry about your own safety first. If you’re correct, and someone’s trying to get to you, you’re in trouble. If you won’t go to the police, do you have somewhere that’s secure?”

Frankie had already found her safe house, but only nodded.

“Okay, go to this – this place you have – and make sure no one follows you,” Cruz ordered, pushing back from the table, throwing a few bills down.

He reached for her phone lying on the table and programmed his number into it. “Wait for me to call. We’ll talk about that – ” He nodded at the note “ – later.”

“Wh – what are you going to do?”

“I’m going to locate Cole Hansen.”

Cole needed help, but didn’t know where to turn.

As his last few dollars ran out, he scrounged around for empty soda cans and got enough change for a cup of coffee and a dollar sandwich at McDonald’s. Another manager, another young kid, gave him warning looks as he huddled quietly in the corner, so he left.

By now he was real grubby. He hadn’t washed since he’d left prison and was sure the frowns and stares he got from people in Old Town was from the stink coming off him. He’d never lived on the street before. In between jail and prison stints, he always found someone who’d give him a place to stay, a few weeks here, a few there, even if it meant sleeping on the floor or in the garage.

Desperation was a ball of sodden bread clogging his throat.

He sat on the steps of the Washington Street Church. Looked around the corner to see the small sign of the
Jesus Saves
building. Cruz had said the woman there, Angie Hunt, was good people. Cole didn’t know if he could trust his parole officer or not, but what choice did he have?

He was that desperate.