The clock behind the counter outside the bars said ten after eight. Lester could smell coffee brewing and could hear a couple of the bailiffs laughing beyond the door that opened onto a hallway that led to the courtroom. He put his back against the wall and slid down to sit on the floor.
“I hear you’re planning to make a deal,” a voice said. Lester looked towards the baby killers. The young one, Levi, was staring at the zombie, who still had his face in his hands. Levi’s voice was calm, his empty eyes locked onto the zombie’s head.
“You shouldn’t believe everything you hear,” the zombie said without moving.
Levi leaned towards him and hissed, “You gonna snitch on me?”
“I’m not snitching on anybody.”
“You’re a liar. And a coward.”
“Fuck you, man,” the zombie said, and he stood up and started to move towards the window. Before he could get out of range, Lester saw Levi rock back and lift his knees to his chest. His shackled feet flew forward and the zombie’s knees buckled. Lester slid into the corner and pulled his ankles beneath him as Levi leaped onto the zombie’s back and drove him face-first into the concrete floor.
A sickening crack as the zombie’s teeth shattered. Levi straddling him, grabbing two handfuls of hair, pulling his head backwards and smashing it into the concrete over and over. Blood flying, the zombie groaning.
Lester in the corner, frozen with fear as droplets of blood landed on his face and arms. Levi grunting and mumbling, the awful thud of the zombie’s head hitting the floor again and again and again and again. Lester watching Levi drive his knees into the zombie’s shoulder blades, wrapping the chain between his bloodied handcuffs around the zombie’s neck. The veins in Levi’s forearms bulging. The veins in his temple bulging. Levi squeezing. The zombie dying. Lester closing his eyes.
Voices, loud and excited, coming from the other side of the bars. The sound of metal against metal as someone scrambled to unlock the cell door. Cursing. More grunting. The sound of boots scraping. Lester opening his eyes. Levi being dragged from the zombie’s prone body. A pool of dark blood spreading out, coming nearer. A deputy kneeling over the zombie’s body.
Lester screaming.
A bailiff came into the office at eight twenty and said there was a problem in the holding area. I asked Alisha to stay where she was and hurried down the steps with Fraley right behind me. Another bailiff buzzed me through the barred steel door. Levi Barnett was sitting on a metal chair to my right with his head hanging and a bailiff looming over him. I noticed blood on his hands as I passed by. A short, baldheaded inmate was being led out the door. I wasn’t sure, but it sounded like he was crying. When I got to the holding cell, I froze. Lying facedown in a huge pool of dark blood was Sam Boyer. He wasn’t moving, didn’t seem to be breathing.
A bailiff was standing next to Barnett. Everyone else had disappeared, like rats scurrying from a sinking ship.
“Is he dead?” I said to the bailiff.
“ ’Fraid so.”
“You put them in the same cell?”
“We ain’t got but one holding cell,” the bailiff said. “But it wasn’t me that done it. The transport officers was the ones what brought them in and put them in the cell.”
“This is unbelievable,” I said. “Wasn’t anyone in here watching them? Aren’t you supposed to keep an eye on them?”
“They was alone for just a few minutes.”
I walked over and stood in front of Barnett. Anger pulsed through me like a radio signal. I wanted to strangle him. My chances of getting enough evidence to convict Natasha were dead, along with Boyer.
“You sick son of a bitch,” I said. “Doesn’t matter what happens in the other cases now; you’re going to prison for the rest of your miserable life.”
Barnett lifted his head and looked at me with dull, colorless eyes.
“I ain’t going to no prison,” he said. “I’m going to hell with you.”
Judge Glass sent word that the hearing would be postponed for two weeks, so I gave Alisha a ride back to Johnson City. The brilliant light in her blue eye seemed to have dulled. She remained quiet for the first ten minutes of the trip.
“Does this mean you won’t be able to arrest Natasha?” she said as we rounded a curve near the old Burlington Industries plant.
“I’m afraid so,” I said. “I think Boyer was willing to testify against her. Without him, all we have is circumstantial evidence. It isn’t enough to arrest her, let alone convict her.”
“You need to be careful,” she said. “You know what she’s capable of.”
Images of Natasha plunging an ice pick into Mrs. Brockwell’s back and into Alisha’s eye ran through my mind.
“Alisha, would you have any idea where the ice pick might be?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know where it is.”
I gave her my home and cell phone numbers when I dropped her off at the convenience store and told her to call me anytime, day or night.
“Stay safe,” I said as she stepped out of the truck.
She turned and gave me a mournful look.
“What’s wrong? Do you want me to see if I can arrange police protection for you?”
“No. It’s not me I’m worried about. You’re a good man, Mr. Dillard. I just hope I see you again.”
Monday, November 10
Levi Barnett pondered his bloody hands as he rode silently in the back of the transport van towards the juvenile detention center. He was looking at the blood of a traitor, the blood of a coward. Sam Boyer wouldn’t be making the trip to the other side. He’d sold himself out to the laws of man, and Levi had made him pay the price.
The pathetic cops had forced him to sit there for almost three hours while they took their photographs and their blood samples. The big cop who’d arrested Levi at the motel and then tried to interrogate him had shown up and scraped some of the blood off of Levi’s hands. He’d tried again to interrogate Levi, but Levi told him to go fuck himself.
Levi spit on the floor as he thought of the scrawny little baldheaded dude sitting in the corner of the cell. Didn’t offer to help Sam, didn’t say a word, didn’t make a move. All he did was watch and scream like a little girl.
He knew Natasha would be pleased. She’d come to visit him at the juvenile detention center three days earlier. The guards there were so fucking stupid. All Levi had to do was put her on his visitors list. When she arrived, they led Levi to a visiting room and left the two of them alone for an hour. Levi knew the guards were watching on video, but they couldn’t hear a thing. Natasha had laid out her plan, and Levi had executed the first step to perfection. All that was left was for him to complete the second step, and Natasha would take care of the third.
Levi lifted his hands over his head and stretched. Even though he’d just committed a murder, the transport deputy hadn’t cuffed him in back or put a waist chain on him. The policy at the juvenile detention center was that all prisoners going to court were to be cuffed in front. Another deputy was along for the ride as extra security, but as long as Levi’s hands were in front of him, he could do what he needed to do.
The van pulled up in front of the detention center, and Levi looked out at the dull-yellow concrete-block building. It was a single story, with four-inch openings for windows and an exercise area that was surrounded by chain link and concertina wire and just a little bigger than his cell. What little food Levi had eaten tasted like plastic, and the guards, like the other inmates, were all morons. None of them were armed, and Levi mused briefly about what it would be like to walk in with a weapon and slaughter every last one of them.
But old man Finney was armed, as was the extra deputy. Both carried stainless-steel. 357 Magnum revolvers in holsters on their hips. Old man Finney was the transport deputy the sheriff’s department assigned to the juvenile detention center. Every time someone from the detention center needed a ride to court or got hauled off to a juvie home downstate, Finney came and picked them up. Levi couldn’t stand the old hypocrite. He wore bifocal glasses with black rims and always had his stupid sheriff’s hat on. He called people by their first name and tried to make them think he was their friend. Some fucking friend. Take you to court, where you have to sit and listen to some blueblood judge run his mouth, and then take you straight back to jail.