28
MARIA SOLIS-MARTINEZ SAT at a pitted gray metal desk in the jail’s infirmary. For security purposes, it was an enclosed place surrounded by glass windows and entrances without doors that could be closed or locked.
The surroundings did little to calm Maria’s nerves as she awaited the arrival of Luther Jones. She might have been hard-pressed to identify any single immediate cause of her concern, since there were so many possibilities: She was meeting a dangerous and threatening inmate; she was here under false pretenses, pretending to be a nurse-practitioner at the jail and attending to the routine minor complaints of the various inmates; she couldn’t allow herself to fail; she was unarmed—as an investigator, she was used to carrying her weapon—and yet she intended to have the guard leave Luther Jones alone with her, unrestrained by handcuffs or foot shackles.
So her mouth was dry and her palms damp when Jones—mean and scary in person, in his jailhouse orange garb—appeared at the entry, a confused look crossing his face as he saw her. She realized she would have to act quickly and decisively if she didn’t want to have the moment get away from her, so she pushed back from the desk and stood.
“Mr. Jones,” she said as she came around and advanced on him. “I’m Maria Solis-Martinez, and I’m here to replace Ms. Bartlett. I know you’re here for a routine diabetes monitoring, but there’s something I need to talk to you about.”
Matter-of-factly, as though she did this every day, she maneuvered him to the bed farthest from the entry where the burly redheaded guard stood. She showed nothing but was relieved when the guard strolled a few feet from the door and began an animated conversation with another guard, leaving her effectively alone with Mr. Jones. She stuck out her right hand and said, “You can call me Maria if I can call you Luther.”
He just looked at her hand, then half-turned to the door as though planning to call the guard back. Instead, he whirled on her and said, “I don’t know you. Whatchu want?”
Instinctively, she retreated a step. Just as instinctively, she regained that lost ground and moved forward into Jones’s personal space, forcing herself to look directly up—and it was a good way up—into his eyes. Before she’d become a DA’s investigator, she’d been a patrol officer and then a vice inspector with the regular police in L.A., so she’d had her share of experience interacting with criminals. Still, this was as up close and personal as she’d gotten with one in years.
But she had not lost the skill set. “Don’t f*ck with me, Luther,” she snapped. “I’m here to help you out, and if you f*ck with me even a little, I’ll call the guard in that hallway and he’ll have you back in your cell before you know what hit you. Are you hearing me? Answer up, now. Do you hear what I’m saying?”
Jones, all six-four and two hundred fifty pounds of him, broke eye contact and looked quickly to either side of her. “I hear you,” he said, if not exactly meek, then at least with a veneer of respect.
“Good,” she said. “Now, let’s go sit down over by that bed, how’s that sound?”
Her heart pounding, she marched back around the bed, then turned and sat. Luther had followed her, and he took the other chair. She gave him a reasonable facsimile of a smile and said, “I wasn’t kidding, what I said just now.”
Maria and Farrell, Frank Dobbins, and Tom Scerbo had gone around and around on this. Trying to talk to a represented defendant outside the presence of his lawyer created serious problems. If this didn’t work, and Luther’s lawyer found out about it later, there would be all sorts of hell to pay: He would claim interference with the right to counsel, maybe ask for a dismissal of the charges against Luther or even complain to the state bar. But all four of them had decided no guts, no glory. “I’m here to see if I can help you,” she said.
“Why you want to do that?”
“That’s for me to know, Luther. What’s important for you is to know that I have the authority to get you out of here without a trial and to dismiss the charges pending against you. You’re looking at carjacking with use of a firearm and a strike, which is twenty or thirty years in prison, minimum. That’s about right, isn’t it?”
“You tell me.”
“I’m telling you. And your lawyer already told you. You’re looking at long, hard time. You want to do that?”
“Against dyin’, that’s what I choose.”
“Who said anything about dying?”
Jones sat back in his chair and crossed his enormous arms. “You’re here about that Tussaint thing, ain’t you? What are you, really? Fed? DEA? I snitch out around that Tussaint thing, I’m dead. I got the message already. Loud and clear. I ain’t seen nothin’.”
“Luther. Do you remember talking about the death of Alanos Tussaint to San Francisco Homicide inspectors?”
“Okay, I did that.”
“You were very clear that you saw one of the jail guards, Adam Foster, pull Mr. Tussaint out of his bunk and slam his head against the wall.”
“No. I never said that.”
“Luther. It’s on tape. We got your voice on tape saying that.”
“I don’t know nothing about no tape.”
“Look, Luther. Everybody knows what happened. You tried to do the right thing, and they got to you. Now you’ve changed your mind. I get that.”
“I don’t know nothing about no guard or no tape.”
“It’s not too late, Luther. I work with the DA. I can get you out of here. It’s not too late for you to make a deal. Everybody knew you were talking last time. That was our bad. But nobody knows I’m here now. Nobody but me and the DA. We get you out of here, you say what you got to say. You’re gone.”
Luther shrugged elaborately.
“Who talked to you after you talked to those inspectors, Luther? Was it Foster? Was it another guard?”
“It don’t matter. They all the same. No, Foster’s the worst. Then they all the same after him. Either way, it don’t matter.”
“It might matter, Luther. This time nobody’s going to know if you say anything about Foster or Tussaint until you’re long gone. As soon as we get your testimony again, we’re going to get you out of here and into Witness Protection, the charges against you get dropped, and you get another chance to put your life together. Maybe this time you’ll do it right.”
Maria knew that Wes Farrell had said no such thing; she was making promises she had no authority to make and no power to keep. She could also sense that if she was going to get anything at all from this guy ever, she had to go for broke right now. “What do you say to that?” she concluded.
“I’m saying you could be tryin’ to trick me, see if I’m gonna snitch. Is one thing I’m sayin’.”
“That’s not it.”
Luther’s gaze was dead flat. “I’ll think on it,” he said. “And then how do I talk to you? I ask for the DA from down here, the word gets out, I in some shit.”
Maria had her phony business card with her real cell number ready for him, and she passed the card across the table. “You got phone privileges. Use ’em. You call, I’ll come running.”