The Devil's Right Hand - J. D. Rhoades [82]
“Easy, Angela,” McCaskill said. “Don’t let your imagination run away with you. Too many people know he’s there for them to try any monkey business. This is that prick Stacy’s way of trying to show us who’s boss. He wouldn’t be trying this sort of chickenshit mind game if he wasn’t worried about his case.”
“What about you?” she said. “Are you worried?”
McCaskill paused just a second too long. “You are worried,” Angela said.
He sighed. “Yes, I am, a little. We’ve got a dead man killed by a weapon that Jack is known to favor. They can put him at the scene because of the blood on his clothes. He claims self-defense, but no one found a gun near the body. And, of course, there aren’t any witnesses to back him up.”
“You’re saying they won’t believe him.”
“I’m saying that if we put him on the stand, a good prosecutor will be able to bring up what he does for a living much more effectively. They’ll be able to paint him as a violent and unstable individual. In that situation--who knows.” His voice softened. “There’s nothing we can do about it tonight, Angela,” he said. “Get some sleep. I’ll be at the arraignment tomorrow.”
“So will I,” she said.
“Of course. See you there.” There was a click and the line went dead.
She heard a knock at the front door.
She tensed. Her hand went automatically into the desk drawer where she kept a Glock 9. She stood up, gun in hand. She walked to the office door and looked across the reception area towards the front of the office. Through the glass door, she saw a figure silhouetted against the light from the street. “We’re closed,” she called out. “Try Speedy Bail Bonds. It’s down the street.”
“Are you Senora Hager?” a voice said.
She approached the door, the hand holding the pistol held behind her back. “Yes,” she said. “Who are you?”
“I have some information about Mr. Keller. Something that might help him.”
Angela’s heart pounded. She ran the rest of the way to the door. She hesitated with her hand on the knob. “What information?” she said through the door. “What can you tell me?”
“I was there when those men were killed,” the voice said. “My name is Oscar Sanchez.”
The next morning, a different guard came for them, an older deputy with gray hair. He took them out of the cell one at a time, DeWayne first. Each man’s hands were cuffed behind him, then fastened by cuffs to a heavy chain that went around their waists. The guard took them though a maze of halls and metal doors until they reached the garage. It was a large echoing chamber that looked far too big for the single patrol car parked just inside the closed door.
“Shit,” the older deputy said, “Where’s the van?”
“Already run,” the driver, a dark-haired man with a sour, lined face replied. “Full up.”
“Well I can’t put ‘em in a regular car like this,” he said, gesturing at Keller’s hands cuffed in back. “Can’t belt ‘em in right. All I need is for one of ‘em to hit his head and file a lawsuit.” He continued grumbling as he uncuffed Keller’s hands and fastened them in front. He did the same with DeWayne’s. He guided each of them into the car with a hand on their head, then belted them in securely. He then slammed the door before climbing into the front seat with the driver. He motioned to a young deputy standing by the doorway. The garage door of the prisoner bay rattled upwards in its tracks and the car pulled out.
The driver wheeled the car out using one hand to steer as he plucked the radio mike off the dashboard. “Unit forty-five is ten-seventeen to the courthouse,” he said. “Two ten-eighty-two's”.
“That might be them,” Raymond said as the car emerged from behind the metal fence that surrounded the jail. He and Geronimo were sitting in the cab of the stolen black truck. They were parked across the wide four-lane street from the jail. They were in a parking lot beside a long, narrow building that looked as if it had been abandoned and boarded up for years. Down the street, the other two gunmen waited in a stolen white Lexus obtained early that morning in another