Sean Black - Deadlock

Jalicia turned and walked out of the holding area. In the corridor, she leaned against the wall, closed her eyes and counted to ten, slowly. She was going to get through this, she told herself. This case was going to make her career.

The voice of the Aryan Brotherhood’s lead defense attorney snapped her back into the present.

‘Are you praying, counsel?’

Judging from his broad grin, he seemed to have recovered his composure after the bombing at the courthouse in San Francisco.

‘What do you want, Gross?’

‘I was going to offer you a final opportunity to save your blushes.’ He moved in closer. ‘My clients are prepared to name the individuals who killed Agent Prager and his family.’

It was Jalicia’s turn to smile. ‘They could have done that right at the start and saved us a lot of grief. Not to mention dead bodies.’

Gross shrugged. ‘It’s how the game gets played. You wait for the clock to run right down.’

‘What are they looking for in return?’

‘You drop the death penalty,’ Gross stated.

‘Let me get this straight. First, your clients order the murder of a federal agent and his family. Then they bomb a Federal Courthouse to stop their trial. And, finally, when they’re out of chances to take out the main defense witness, all of a sudden they want me to show mercy. So they get to go back to what they were doing anyway, and all of this was for nothing?’ She took a step forward herself so that she was inches from Gross’s smug features. ‘No deal.’

‘You’re letting your emotions cloud your judgement,’ said Gross.

He had a point, but Jalicia wasn’t willing to concede that to his face. Deals like this were the currency that kept the conveyor-belt of what passed for justice in America oiled and operational. Of course, Gross had a reputation for using last-minute carrots like this to put prosecutors off balance, but she was minutes away from testimony that had the potential to bring the Aryan Brotherhood to its knees. No, this was too big a win for her. There would be time later to hunt down the people who pulled the trigger on Prager and his family.

If Gross sensed her initial doubts, he was careful enough not to press too hard. ‘Think about it, counsel,’ he said. ‘You wouldn’t want to pass up an opportunity you might regret later.’

Inside the courtroom, Lock, a protective hand on the small of Carrie’s back, found a couple of seats near the front. After the massive adrenalin rush from combat at the airfield, he was on the inevitable comedown. His concern about Reaper’s true motive and a grilling by the FBI hadn’t helped his mood much either. The only ray of light was that he seemed to have gone some way towards patching things up with Carrie.

As they took their seats, she touched his hand with hers. The tenderness of the gesture gave him reassurance that he hadn’t blown it entirely.

‘You think he’ll testify?’ she whispered to him.

‘Oh, he’ll take the stand. The guy’s got an ego to make Simon Cowell blush. It’s what he’ll say that worries me.’

‘You know, since the bombing in San Francisco I’ve been doing some checking into these white supremacist prison gangs. Nazi Low Riders. Aryan Brotherhood. Texas Circle.’

Lock had a sudden flashback to the prison yard at Pelican Bay and Ty lying in the middle of it, face down, in the dirt.

‘And?’ he asked her.

‘It’s not quite as cut-and-dried as everyone would like to believe. Even within each gang there always seem to be two opposing forces pulling against each other.’

‘Which are?’

‘Well, on the one hand you have the criminal enterprise part. Stick together for protection, then extend that to other inmates, and start bringing trade into the equation — drugs, for instance. I’d call those guys the pragmatists.’

‘Pragmatists? Now there’s a five-dollar word.’

‘You know what I mean, Ryan. These are the guys who tattoo on a swastika when it might as well be a dollar bill.’

Lock nodded, remembering Phileas, whose predatory business instincts and nose for a deal would, under different circumstances, have made him a fortune on Wall Street.

‘But then there’s usually another side.’

‘You got a five-dollar word for them as well?’

‘More of a ten-dollar phrase. I’d call these guys the true believers.’

‘So where does that leave Reaper?’

‘I’d say he’s a believer, and part of that is a whole code-of-honor thing.’

Lock did a bad job of hiding his cynicism, the smirk crawling across his face.

Carrie held up her hand. ‘Hear me out.’

‘I’m a-hearing,’ said Lock in his worst pastiche of a Southern accent.

‘You said that guys like Reaper were into all those Louis L’Amour westerns.’

‘Ate ’em up.’

‘That’s where the Aryan Brotherhood take one of their other nicknames from, right? The Brand. They got that from a Louis L’Amour story.’

‘Far as I know.’

‘Well, the Brand, the original Brand, in those stories they lived by a code of honor which included no harming of women or children.’

Lock swiveled round so that he was facing Carrie. ‘Can I talk to reporter Carrie rather than love-of-my-life Carrie?’

Carrie eye-lifted her consent.

‘I know what you’re saying, but where does that leave Ken Prager and his family? The Aryan Brotherhood didn’t seem to have a code when it came to them.’

‘That’s what I’m saying. The Aryan Brotherhood breached the code.’

On cue, the door at the back opened and Reaper shuffled in, his appearance transformed by the suit and tie. He nodded a series of polite hellos, first to the judge, then to Jalicia and the prosecution, and finally to his former comrades, who glared at him from the dock.

‘So what is he then, Ryan?’ Carrie asked.

Lock studied Reaper as he settled himself into the dock, his eyes startlingly dark and unblinking, his head held high. ‘He’s a chess player,’ he said. ‘And as far as he’s concerned, you, me, Jalicia, Coburn, his former buddies sitting in that dock, we’re all just pieces on his board.’

By the time Reaper was finally sworn in, it was gone three in the afternoon. Jalicia’s heels left a puncture trail in the thick brown carpet as she walked towards him. Compared to the courtroom in San Francisco, the one in Medford, with its brown-on-brown colour scheme, felt claustrophobic and oppressive.

‘For the record,’ she began, ‘could you state your full name and place of residence?’

Reaper showed his teeth, like a talent contestant who’d spent too much time practicing in front of the mirror for his TV debut. ‘Frank Hays. But most folks call me Reaper. I live a little outside Crescent City, California.’ He turned to the jury and gave them the same smile. ‘More specifically, the Secure Housing Unit at Pelican Bay State Prison.’

‘Thank you, Mr Hays. Can you tell me, do you know any of the defendants? And, if so, how do you know them?’

Reaper glanced at the defendants, his former comrades, his expression not changing, although there seemed to be an extra twinkle in his eyes. ‘I know all of them from doing time alongside them in prison.’

‘Which prisons, Mr Hays?’

‘San Quentin back in the day, Corcoran, Chino, bunch of other places,’ Reaper replied, reeling off some of the grimmest prisons in California and beyond. He turned to the jury again. ‘If it’s got bars and a gun tower, I’ve probably seen it.’

Jalicia walked back to the prosecution table and shuffled through some papers, ready to signal a switch of gear — time to get down to business.

‘Many inmates who’ve been accused of being a member of the Aryan Brotherhood have claimed that there is no such organisation. In your experience, is that the case?’