“You did?” She sounded dubious.
“Yeah, sorry about that. Things got real busy at the office.” Cruz thought again of the two dead street persons. “One of my parolees died.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.” A long, pregnant pause as if she were deciding whether to ask for his help after all.
I need your help, she’d said.
“Can we meet?” In spite of the concern in her voice, the words had the effect of a decisive command.
“I’m in Placer Hills now. How about a late lunch? There’s a diner on the corner of Highway 49 and Grant Street. Maybelle’s? You know it?”
“Yes,” she answered, “I grew up around here.”
“Great. See you there at three o’clock.”
His mind whirled with ideas. Why had he mentioned Dickey Hinchey’s death? How much should he tell Dr. Jones about Cole Hansen? Trying to track down Hansen was part of his job, so he might be able to help her.
Though definitely no longer his purview, finding out who’d murdered Dickey was more important to him. As far as RPD was concerned, he’d be sticking his nose in their business if he continued looking into the case.
Cruz checked his watch. He barely had time to wash up, put on the extra clean shirt he kept in the office, and make his lunch date. He didn’t question his need to look less rumpled when he saw the edgy Dr. Jones.
The woman had been stressed when he’d first seen her. Now she sounded almost frantic. He wondered what the direct, but worried, Dr. Jones wanted now.
Chapter 28
At Folsom Prison, California state prison inmate number Z143973 received notice that he had a visitor thirty minutes before visiting hours began. He washed up at the stainless steel sink, combed his dark hair – heavily threaded with gray, grown long now, and tied back in a queue – and changed his shirt.
A visitation for inmate Z143973 was a rare thing and he went through the preparation with a mild sense of shock.
It had to be her. She was the only person who’d ever visited him during the fifteen years of his prison sentence for second-degree murder. She hadn’t come at first, or rather, wasn’t allowed to, but gradually she’d pushed the family rules or sneaked around, or whatever – he didn’t want to know – in order to visit him occasionally.
He hadn’t seen her in nearly a year.
In many ways doing time had been hard for him, learning the rules, who to trust, who not to turn your back on, but in other ways it’d been easy – no independent decisions. Everyone told you what to do and when to do it. Eat, sleep, take a crap – all normal activities were granted or withheld by correctional officers.
Inmates took on halting, indecisive behaviors, anticipation of direction. Without it they were like statues waiting to be animated, waiting for orders.
Doing time was tedious, but for an introverted, reflective person like inmate Z143973, prison was a relief from the harried pace of everyday life in the outside world. He realized by the end of his second year of incarceration that no one would rescue him, that he’d serve out his sentence with basic needs provided for, and that he really wasn’t a man made for the uncertainty of life outside prison walls – for the profound betrayals that occurred there without warning.
Even in his years in the army, he’d done solitary work – ordnance at Ft. Lee, Virginia. Not much more of a job than a military secretary. And very isolated. Which he’d preferred.
He wasn’t a man who inherently knew how to interact with other people. Not any longer.
The guards released the cell doors and accompanied him and the other inmates in a straight line into the visitors section. Their guests waited on round stools on the other side of an elongated plexiglass wall that separated them from the prisoners.
Phones to the right were for communication. He entered his coded number and nodded to his guest to pick up the receiver on the other side of the window. He peered at the visitor through the glass barrier.
It wasn’t her after all. Unexpected disappointed squeezed his heart.
His court-appointed attorney sat on the other side. No contact with the man in at least five years and he barely remembered his name. He’d done a creditable, if unremarkable, job of defense, but – whoops, no cigar.
Inmate Z143973 had been charged with murder two, a sentence of fifteen to life. However, when he’d come up for parole, the agitation surrounding the murder had prevented his paroling. It was beginning to look like he would do the full time.
He frowned uncomfortably. What was the lawyer’s name? Ah, John Wright, who worked for the county as a public defender. No pro bono, high-profile, hot shot attorney from Sacramento. Just some low-paid county worker.