“What does she look like?” Morales continued to walk. Lucas suddenly wanted to grab him to make him stop, wanted to shake him by the shoulders and yell Do you know what this means? It was the mother lode of possible leads.
“Dirty blond, I think, but it’s hard to tell. She wears these scarf things on her head, and the one time I saw her up close, I was on break. She was sitting in the waiting area when I was leaving for lunch. She was wearing these big glasses. You know, like the ones the chicks in Hollywood wear? Lenses so big they swallow half your face.”
The third door. The buzz. The security desk. Morales sidled up to the counter and gave Lumpy Annie a smile. “Hey, anything up here for Mr. Graham from inmate”—he glanced to Lucas’s visitor release form—“881978?”
She rose from the counter without a word and wandered into the back, presumably to check on Morales’s request.
Morales gave Lucas a patient nod. “Like I said, I don’t know if that was the woman for sure. Marty would know better. I’ll ask him. Just have a seat.” He motioned toward the plastic chairs. “It may be a few minutes.”
“How can I reach you?” Lucas asked. “Do I just call the facility and leave a message?”
“Yeah, that’ll work. I’m the only Morales here. First name is Josh.”
Lucas extended a hand to shake in official greeting. “Thanks for your help, Josh.”
“Yeah, man. It was an honor. Sorry about the letdown with Halcomb. But it was nice meeting a real-life author, anyway. Your stuff really is top-notch, Mr. Graham.”
“Call me Lucas.”
“Okay, Lucas then. Give me a shout when you need me.”
“Will do,” Lucas said, and finally took a seat.
16
* * *
IT TOOK LUMPY Annie fifteen minutes to locate whatever it was that Halcomb had sent to the front. It wouldn’t have mattered if it had taken her fifteen days, Lucas wouldn’t have moved from his seat. She finally called him up to the counter and slid a note-card-sized manila envelope across the cracked and peeling laminate. Lucas didn’t bother walking out of the waiting area before tearing into the package; Lumpy Annie looking on.
It was a cross about the size of his palm. Delicate hand-painted flowers coiled across each tarnished silver arm. A small metal loop at the top suggested that someone had once worn it around their neck despite its large size. He peered at it, turning it this way and that, as though flipping it over would answer the obvious question—why did Halcomb gift this thing to him? Why had he bothered giving Lucas anything after refusing to see him?
His gaze flicked up to the woman behind the counter. “What’s this?” he asked, as though Lumpy Annie was privy to some important nugget of information.
“Looks like a cross,” she said, not interested in Lucas pulling her into his confusion.
“Obviously,” he murmured to himself, peering at the artifact in his hand. “But why would he send it up here? What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Send it up here?” Lumpy Annie arched an eyebrow. “No, that wasn’t sent up here.” Lucas shook his head at her, not understanding. “An inmate can’t send something like that up,” she said. “You think we’d let any of our charges have something like that in their cells?” Lucas blinked down at the cross once more. Its edges seemed sharp, its innocuous design far more weapon-like now than it had seemed seconds before. “Someone left that, but it wasn’t the inmate,” she said matter-of-factly. “Don’t ask me by who because I don’t know . . . but I’ve seen it done before.”
“Is there a way to—”
“No.” She cut him off.
“But someone keeps a record, right?” Lucas stared at her, determined. “Someone knows who left this, yeah? What if it was a piece of evidence? What if it was a murder weapon?”
“Sir . . .” Lumpy Annie’s expression went sour. Cool it. Lucas took a breath as she gave him a measured look. “You have a nice day.”
He turned away from the front desk, readjusted his bag against his hip, then veered around to face her again. “I want to schedule another visitation,” he said. “I want to know why I was stood up.”
Lumpy Annie only stared at him.
“I have a right to schedule another visitation,” he told her, his words hard-edged. She wasn’t impressed by his stick-to-itiveness. Clearing her throat, she reached for the phone. Was she calling security on him?
“You know what, forget it. I’ll call later.” Lucas turned away. “I’m leaving.”
He stalked across the parking lot to Selma’s car. When he looked back toward the facility, he spotted an officer standing just outside the main doors. The cop was staring right at Lucas, waiting for him to roll out of the parking lot without incident. She had called security. He barked out a clipped laugh at the ridiculousness of it. Had he really come off as that loose of a cannon?
Sitting in the car with the sun beating down on him through the windshield, Lucas narrowed his eyes. He scowled at the silver Toyota emblem affixed to the center of the steering wheel. The overpowering fruity smell of Selma’s air freshener was sickening. It was the kind of scent that gives birth to eyesight-impairing migraines. Glaring at those twin cherries hanging from the rearview mirror, he rolled down the windows and eased the car onto the road, but he didn’t get far. Frustration had him pulling onto the soft shoulder of the highway a few miles out of Lambert. He put the Camry in park, shoved the driver-side door open, and ducked into the trees that lined the quiet wooded road.
“Stupid lying son of a bitch.” He seethed, kicking at the trunk of the nearest pine. What the hell had he done? What kind of an idiot trusts a criminal, a murderer? What kind of a father moves his kid to the scene of a crime?
Halcomb had played him, one hundred percent. The success of his project—his career, his marriage—hung in the balance. And all Lucas had to show for his trouble was an ugly goddamn cross.
THE WOLF AND HIS SHEEP
By Dani Dervalis, The Seattle Times staff reporter