33
ON HIS BUNK, Luther Jones sneaked another look at the false business card that Maria Solis-Martinez had given him. The card said she was Maria Castro with the Yerba Buena Medical Group. It said she was an LVN, whatever that was. He felt that just having that card was a risk, but he couldn’t make himself throw it away.
That phone number might be his way out of here.
Ever since his meeting a few days before with Maria, Luther had been perplexed and on edge. Every bone in his body warned him that he was being set up and that as soon as he rolled over on Adam Foster as the man who killed Alanos Tussaint, he himself would meet with an unfortunate jailhouse accident.
But he’d been over it and over it, and it still didn’t make sense.
What he couldn’t figure out was why Adam Foster would go to the trouble. Did he mean to test Luther? Make sure that even in the face of temptation, he wasn’t going to talk? Why would Foster want to do that? Did he doubt that Luther would keep quiet? Luther didn’t want him thinking that even for a minute.
Luther was worried enough that Adam Foster knew his name, knew his cell number, made it a point to come by every single day on his rounds and give him a cold nod with a colder smile, as though saying, “I’m watching every move you make.” Luther knew that Foster was indeed aware of everything he did, either on his own or through the deputies.
Which probably meant, since Foster had spies everywhere and knew everything, that he also knew the truth about Maria. He definitely knew that she’d come to see Luther. The question was what Foster believed about her.
It seemed that Foster could believe one of three choices: Maria Castro was a nurse of some kind who was helping out at the infirmary. If Foster believed that, there was no danger to Luther.
Second choice, Maria was with the DA’s office. In that case, Luther thought, he would already be dead.
The third choice was that Maria was—somehow—a snitch for Foster. This last one didn’t make any sense to Luther. Why would he bring in an outside party to double-check his own work? There was no need. Foster had delivered his message, his death threat to Luther if he talked, with absolute clarity. Luther could think of no reason on earth for Foster to want to test him. If he thought Luther needed testing, he would kill him. Simple as that.
So choices two or three resulted in Luther being dead.
And then it followed—didn’t it?—that since Luther wasn’t dead, the first choice must be the right one. Hard though it might be for Luther to imagine, Foster seemed to believe in Maria’s phony cover as a nurse. If that were true, and Maria was what she said she was, a DA with a real offer that would get him out from under the watchful, never-blinking eye of Adam Foster, why wasn’t Luther taking her up on it?
He wished he could ask his defense attorney, Kaz Eames. The problem there was that Luther didn’t trust Kaz, and with reason. He had a strong hunch about how things had gone wrong the first time he’d gone for the DA’s deal, and he didn’t want a replay of those events.
When he’d first told his defense attorney, Kaz, that he had seen Adam Foster beat Alanos, Kaz had arranged an interview with Homicide. At that meeting, the cops had taped his statement and he’d shown them some of his cards. The next step should have been a formal offer of immunity from the assistant DA, Tom Scerbo, in exchange for Luther’s statement, and he was waiting in his cell for that offer when instead, Adam Foster had shown up with a couple of his goons. That team had been most persuasive—talking to Luther with his head in his cell’s toilet—in outlining all the reasons why he did not want to testify about what he’d seen.
They’d convinced him.
The last time somebody had a big mouth, it hadn’t been him, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t Scerbo. That left Kaz. So Luther was through confiding in the f*cking guy who could have gotten him killed.
Still, he knew he had valuable information. As an eyewitness to a jailhouse murder committed by the chief deputy himself, he could definitely trade his testimony for some kind of deal. Of course, the word of a jailhouse snitch, particularly one who’d already recanted once, wasn’t worth much. But Luther knew more than he’d told anyone: He knew why Foster had killed Tussaint—that the whole thing was related to corruption in the jail. The dope, the selling of privileges, the gambling and enforcement of gambling debts, the whole rotten enterprise. If he told the cops what he knew—names, dates, connections, payoffs—and they dug around, they should be able to find proof.
All this was potentially lethal stuff, and there was no way he was telling Kaz any of it. Kaz, though, was the only lawyer he had. His only chance.
Unless he wanted to risk playing the hand himself, call Maria on the number listed on her phony business card, and hope she could put things together fast enough to get him out.
It was the only play he had.
If he just had the balls to make the call.