"That ain't what happened, dude."
"How do you know that?"
Theo leaned back in his chair, thinking. Jack could see from the expression on his face that it was a possibility he hadn't considered – one he couldn't readily dismiss. "I guess I don't know. Isaac and me never talked about it."
"And if the cops find out about Isaac's phone messages, they won't believe you never talked to him. They'll say you went there to meet him, he told you the truth, and you blew him away."
Theo rose and began to pace. "Bad enough somebody's trying to kill me. Now if I don't find the bastard, I could be tagged with Isaac's murder."
Jack let him pace a little more, blow off some steam. "That isn't going to happen;' he said.
"Says who?"
"We'll find this guy."
"How can you be so sure?"
"There's some good news," said Jack. He told him about Flo's grandson – the gang symbol he'd spotted on the shooter's car and sketched out for Jack.
"Cops been able to locate the car yet?"
"They're looking for it. We don't have a tag number, so they can't just run it through DMV and haul in the owner. Andie tells me it may take some time."
"True," said Theo. "These gangs are smart. They do a drive-by, they might garage the car for weeks, until the heat cools down."
Jack just listened, adding it to the long list of things that he really didn't want to know how Theo knew.
"Can I see the boy's drawing?" said Theo.
"Absolutely." Jack opened his briefcase and removed his notepad. He laid the rough sketch of the bloody knife on the table, facing Theo. "It's a KA-BAR," he explained. "A military fighting knife for a local gang called-" Jack stopped himself. Theo looked as if he'd gone cold. "You okay big guy?"
Theo didn't answer. He kept staring at the drawing, unable to tear his eyes away from it.
"Talk to me," said Jack. "Do you know this symbol?"
He lifted his gaze and looked Jack in the eye. "Last night," said Theo. "I'm positive I seen it last night."
"Where?"
"In the shower."
"What, like graffiti on the wall?"
"No," he said in a voice so low that it rumbled. "A tattoo. On some dude's back."
Chapter 28
A buzzer pulsated throughout TGK as the guards took Theo back to his cell. It was a sound that Theo hadn't heard since death row, but he knew what it meant even before the voice came over the PA system: "Lockdown. All prisoners to their cells immediately."
A chorus of groans filled the cell block, followed by the shuffling of inmates' feet, like a rag-tag army in defeat, and finally the slamming of cell doors.
Charger climbed up to the top bunk. Theo went to the lower one.
In ten minutes, the place was secure. The PA system keyed for another announcement: "All prisoners to the bars. All clothing removed."
That triggered further grumbling, punctuated by sporadic shouts of profanity and some clanging on the iron bars in protest. But it was short-lived, quieted in part by a team of guards that swept through the cell block, nightsticks drawn in a show of force.
Theo rolled out of his bunk and began to remove his clothes. Charger jumped down and did the same. There was a protocol to undressing in the presence of your cell mate. It had to do with the eyes: you made damn sure they didn't roam.
"What are they looking for now?" said Charger.
"Hell if I know," said Theo.
But he did know. Theo was looking for the same thing: the CD-Town Posse tattoo.
Theo was certain that he'd seen it on somebody's back in the shower, but he remembered nothing more about it. The showers were a steamy crowded mass of naked male flesh. Looking around too much and making eye contact with the wrong dude was a good way to end up a "catcher" – a daily ticket to taking it up the ass. All Theo had been able to tell Jack was that he'd seen the tattoo, and it was on a black guy's back. Jack immediately passed the information along to Andie Henning, and before Theo returned to his cell the place was in lockdown. They were on a mission to find the guy with the tattoo.
Charger got naked first and walked to the bars. Theo was mindful of the eyes-front protocol, but his curiosity got the better of him. He stole a quick glance at his cell mate's back, checking for the tattoo.
"Like what you see?" said Charger.
For a moment it seemed that the dude had 360-degree vision. "I don't see nothin'."
"It's okay," said Charger, "you can check out my ass if you want to."
"Just shut your mouth."
For more than forty-five minutes they stood at the bars, unclothed and in silence, as a team of guards moved from one cell to the next. Time was something the inmates had plenty of, and the guards wasted it freely. It was a bizarre sight from Theo's perspective, staring out across the block at cell after cell of stark-naked men waiting at the bars. Black, white, and Hispanic. Young and old, fat and slim, many of them cut like bodybuilders, and nearly all of them bearing some kind of tattoo.
Charger spoke softly, his voice barely above a whisper. "Is it true you're in here for helping Isaac escape?"
Theo shook his head, as if losing patience. "You think I'm gonna tell you anything? What are you, an informant?"
"I'm pretty sure you know what I am," he said, his voice still low.
Theo tried to ignore it, but one question had been burning in his mind ever since he'd found the cream under the mattress. "How well did Isaac know what you are?"
Charger scoffed. "That homophobic jerk. He'd beat the living hell out of me just for thinking about him."
Deep down, Theo had figured as much: The bottom bunk and the cream had belonged to Charger, and his boyfriend was from another cell – not Isaac.
"But you seem nice," said Charger.
"Shut it, fool."
"Arms out," the guard told Theo.
Officer MacDonald was suddenly standing on the other side of the bars, and he treated Theo the same as any other inmate. At the same time, a second guard did a visual search of Charger. The beam of a high-powered flashlight swept the prisoners' front side first. The guards ordered them to turn left, right, and then all the way around, inspecting the entire body. Apparently the prison officials did not want the inmates to know that the search pertained only to the back. Or maybe they'd opted for a whole-body scan to account for the possibility that Theo was mistaken, and that he'd actually seen the tattoo on someone's arm or chest.
"Towels on," the guard said. "Showers in ten minutes."
The search team moved to the next cell. Theo wrapped himself in a white bath towel and waited at the locked cell door. Again, he looked across the cell block at the other inmates – scores of caged sex offenders who had spent the last hour staring straight at his fully exposed equipment.
Shower time, he thought. Oh joy of joys.
FLORIDA STATE TROOPER Mel Stratton was twenty minutes from the end of his shift, and he was way below his normal pace for writing speeding tickets. He couldn't figure it out. This was his favorite spot, just east of orange grove country hiding beneath the Minute Maid Road overpass on Interstate 95. It was a clear night, no rain or fog to slow down traffic. Still, he'd issued far too few citations for a decent day's work.
It was downright embarrassing.
Suddenly a car was racing toward him in the northbound passing lane. His radar gun chirped like a parakeet in orgasm. Ninety-five – no, ninety-seven – miles per hour. Didn't slow down one bit as it whizzed past him. Either the Jeff Gordon wannabe hadn't noticed the patrol car in the darkness, or he didn't care. Either way, he'd just made Trooper Stratton's night.