“What do you know about Rucker?”
“Decent guy. In for dealing heroin and robbing a five and dime. Beat the owner pretty bad.”
“Trust him?”
“Much as anybody here in this place can be trusted. Really. I mean, we’re all fucking criminals, right?” He laughed. “But even if they break the laws out there, knock off or kill a straight john, in here it’s a different deal. You don’t want no trouble? Don’t rat out other cons. It’ll get you in the ass. Really-it will. That’s a good one.” He laughed again, this time louder. “Rucker’s never been a problem for me. Haven’t heard no bad shit ’bout him, neither.”
MacNally looked around, his eyes darting across the compound. He needed to end this and get away from Anglin before they attracted attention. Despite what Anglin had just said, there were rats in Leavenworth. Just like Voorhees offered him the chance to tip him off to stuff, other officers had presented the same deal to other cons.
He’d heard some prisoners talking in A-Cellhouse about guys they suspected of being informants. They decided to set up one of them, planting bogus information to see if the guards acted on it. They did-and there was no longer any doubt who their source was. The snitch was shanked in the right kidney the next morning during breakfast. No one saw anything-and by the time the medical staff tended to the inmate, he had bled out.
MacNally was not integrated well enough into the population to know who could be trusted and who was working with the officers. That meant he had to take on some risk. Rucker was lean and looked to be in pretty decent condition, so he could fill the role as well as anyone else he could choose.
“How well do you know him?”
“Good enough.” Anglin grabbed the front of his denim shirt and pulled it away from his damp skin, then flapped it a few times to generate a breeze. “Goin’ back to Florida. Both did time in the joint there. He won’t hurt ya.”
MacNally pursed his lips, then nodded. “Catch you later.”
He walked back to his cell and found Rucker reading a book. He sat down on the edge of the bed and, in a low voice that required Rucker to lean close to hear, he said, “I’m interested in gettin’ out of here. J.W. says you can be trusted. Interested?”
Rucker indicated he was-and MacNally outlined his plan.
After listening carefully to what MacNally laid out, Rucker cocked his head to the side. “Not bad.”
“The towers on the west wall are pretty far apart, right?”
“But there’s a guard in them,” Rucker said. “An armed guard. And no matter what they say, they’ve got orders to shoot to kill.”
MacNally nodded thoughtfully. “That’s why we’re not gonna let them see us. Now-along that wall, looks to me like the lighting’s gotta be kind of shitty. And because we’re so close to A-Cellhouse, the laundry, and the segregation building, I think this has gotta be the best place for us to get out-”
“Between the two towers? You crazy?”
“Think about it. We go at night, it’s pretty dark. The buildings are close to each other-and close to the wall. Tower five-you know which one I mean?”
Rucker nodded.
“It sits on the northwest corner of the wall and tower six sits on the southwest perimeter of the prison. And it's not attached to the wall. You see what I’m saying?”
Rucker’s eyes moved back and forth a few times, then he said, “Makes it easier for us to get out without being seen.”
“Exactly.”
The two men discussed it a while longer, at which point Rucker gave his approval-and appeared to be energized by the prospect of breaking out.
MacNally was now committed.
The plan had merit on paper, and John Anglin had vouched for Rucker. The only remaining questions required careful consideration: when they should do it-and whether or not they could pull it off.
47
Vail wearily sat down at the long table where their case files were arranged. She had spent the afternoon pouring through them, looking for commonalities, hoping she could find linkage in one or more of them. Although there were some promising possibilities, it wasn’t anything definitive.
Complicating the task was that she was not working with full homicide case files-it was a mishmash of a journalist’s musings, unofficial and substandard crime scene photos, and excerpts from interpretive writings. It was so far from the objective summaries, analyses, and formal reports she was accustomed to reviewing on cases that she concluded the exercise carried only limited validity.
An hour ago, one of the inspectors had come by to report that he had obtained and executed a search warrant for Stephen Scheer’s cell phone logs, and that the anonymous texts in question originated from two different throwaway phones.
At that point, Vail made a point of noting that she was tired-tired of getting nowhere in identifying the Bay Killer.
“Agent Vail.”
She looked up with bleary eyes. Clay Allman was standing there, hand in a pocket, leaning against the doorjamb.
“You look beat,” he said. “Wanna join me for some coffee downstairs in the café? A little caffeine could do your brain some good.”
Vail made no effort to stifle a wide yawn. “Yeah, fine.”
“Burden or Detective Dixon want to join us?”
Vail glanced back at the room. “They’re with the CSI. You just get me.”
They took the elevator down in silence, Vail too tired to object and too tired to climb the stairs. They grabbed two coffees-which Allman insisted on paying for-and started toward a table.
“Let’s walk. You okay with that? It’ll help get my blood moving.”
“So what’s it like?” Allman asked as they headed toward the stairwell. “Being a profiler.”
“Is this on the record?” Vail asked as she adjusted the corrugated jacket surrounding her hot cup.
“Nothing’s on the record here. In fact, there is no record. We’re just two people talking. Actually-to be honest, I came up because I wanted to apologize. I didn’t realize mentioning you in the article would upset you.”
“It’s not that it upset me,” Vail said as she pushed against the fire door. “There are certain ways you handle a serial offender. And certain ways you don’t, depending on the type of killer you’re dealing with. Mentioning my name and my position was not the best way to deal with this guy.”
Allman kept his gaze ahead as they climbed the steps. “And what is?”
Vail hesitated. Off the record or not, she did not feel that chatting idly with a reporter was good form. Despite Burden’s vouching for him, nothing good could come from it, and more likely than not, bad would result. “Clay, no offense, but I’m not accustomed to talking about active cases with anyone, friend of the department or not.”