Cruz nodded. “Debriefing. Snitching.”
“Yes, and he had six months’ time left on his sentence, but after he dropped out, he was paroled that same day.”
Cruz shrugged. “Lucky guy. So what’s the problem?”
She lifted one dark eyebrow and leaned back in her chair. “Really. You don’t know that debriefing effectively puts a target on his back?”
“Maybe, but it depends on what he gave up. If he just named small-time gang members, gave insignificant information about their activities, he wouldn’t be bothered on the inside or the outside.”
“It’s the Lords of Death,” Frankie said flatly.
“Ah.”
“Yes, ah.”
“Still, I don’t see what this has to do with you.” Cruz dug into the bread pudding Sally set before them. “You’re a doctor at Pelican Bay. Hansen is a parolee. I don’t see how you fit into any of this.”
“They’re going to kill him,” she insisted ferociously.
“What makes you so sure?”
“Like I said, I saw Cole in the clinic the day before his release. A murder had just gone down in the prison yard. An inmate stabbed in the jugular. Hispanic – Norte?o, I think.” She shook her head. “Or maybe not even ganged up yet. I’m not sure. They got him to the clinic, but it was too late. He bled out.”
Cruz lifted both shoulders and concentrated on his dessert. “So?”
She frowned, a look both angry and disappointed shadowing her face. “So, Cole admitted to stabbing the man – no provocation at all – and landed in the SHU. He confessed, but I’m positive he didn’t kill that man.”
Frankie willed the parole officer not to dismiss her. He scraped a hand across his jaw which was starting an early five-o’clock shadow. Her eyes followed his hand, brown and strong-looking. She’d always had a thing for well-shaped hands in a man.
“And you think he took the fall because the Lords of Death shot-caller ordered it,” Cruz said
Frankie nodded, forcing herself back to the topic. “Cole’s just not smart enough – or vicious enough – to do something like that.”
Cruz tried to recall the details of Hansen’s rap sheet and parole record. If he remembered right, it was petty stuff, possession, dealing, theft – but no violent crimes. A lowly criminal like him didn’t usually escalate to murder, but you never knew.
Prison had a way of changing men.
Cruz spoke the words aloud.
“You don’t understand.” Desperation weighted her voice like stones in a stream. “Cole has information I need to find out.” She pushed aside her plate, took a deep drink of soda, and eyed him levelly across the table.
“Cole may not be the only one in trouble.” A tiny line of perspiration dotted her upper lip. She dabbed at it with a napkin.
“What do you mean?”
“I think someone’s trying to kill me, too.”
“Why would someone try to kill a prison doctor?”
“Because I – I think I know something, maybe something I don’t know I know.”
Chapter 30
Even through the convoluted words, Cruz knew what she meant. Frankie Jones had uncovered information she wasn’t supposed to have – information that put her in danger.
Her hand rested on the table, palm downward. Without thinking he covered it briefly with his own. He’d only meant a gesture of comfort, but an unexpected tingle ran through him. For a single moment their eyes met, and he knew she’d felt it, too.
“Tell me everything,” he said, signaling for another round of sodas.
Frankie Jones recounted each detail – from the murder in the prison yard to the note Cole Hansen had slipped her. From Anson Stark’s menacing visit to – finally and reluctantly – the attack in the prison parking lot. Cruz sat stunned for long moments.
“It sounds like a made-up story, I know,” she said at last, but the look in her stormy gray eyes told him she was desperate for him to believe her. “I’m not crazy.”
“And this friend of yours – this Walt Steiner? – what about him?”
“I – I don’t know. I called him and he – he told me a place to go.”
“Can you trust him?”
Her face hardened. “No, and I thought I could trust a lot of people. Now – now I’m not sure.”
She clasped her hands together on the table top. He noticed the slim fingers and the clean nails, cut short and bluntly. Capable hands. She seemed like an efficient woman, a steady woman not prone to fanciful imaginings.
“You’re safe enough here, don’t you think? So far from Crescent City?”
She bit her bottom lip. “Maybe. I don’t know. I was followed by a low rider car last night. I didn’t dare go back to my motel room.”
“Gang bangers?”
She spread her hands helplessly. “They were white, not Mexican, but they looked like gang members.”
“Go to the cops,” Cruz advised. “What can I do for you?”