Criminal (Will Trent 6)

“He’s in court all day testifying on a case.” Deena seemed to lose some of her wariness. “May I help you with something?”

Amanda closed her eyes. This would be so much easier with Pete. “I had a question about the piece of skin found under the victim’s fingernail.” Amanda looked down at the scratch on her palm. “I was wondering—” She couldn’t do this. Maybe she would wait for Pete. He would probably be back in the office tomorrow. Jane Delray wouldn’t be any more dead by then.

Deena said, “Come on, girl. Don’t waste my time. Spit it out.”

“Pete found something under the girl’s fingernail on Saturday.”

“Right. Skin tissue. She must’ve scratched her assailant.”

“Did you analyze it yet?”

“Not yet. Why?”

Amanda shook her head, wishing she could just melt into the chair. It was probably best to just blurt it out. “If the attacker was Negro, wouldn’t the skin under the girl’s fingernail be black?”

“Hm.” Deena was quiet for a few seconds. “Well, you know, Pete’s got this special light. You shine it on the skin sample and it glows this kind of orange if it’s from a Negro.”

“Really?” Amanda had never heard of such a thing. “Did he test the skin yet? Because I think—”

At first, she thought Deena was crying. Then Amanda realized the woman was laughing so hard that she had started gulping for air.

“Oh, very funny,” Amanda said. “I’m hanging up now.”

“No, wait—” Deena was still laughing, though she was obviously trying to get it under control. “Wait. Don’t hang up.” She kept laughing. Amanda looked down at Keller’s desk. Cigarette butts spilled out of the ashtray. His coffee cup was rimmed in an orange nicotine stain. “Okay,” Deena said. “All right.” And then she started laughing again.

“I’m really hanging up now.”

“No, wait.” She coughed a few times. “I’m good now. I’m good.”

“I was asking a sincere question.”

“I know you were, honey. I know.” She coughed again. “Listen, you know that Pure and Simple lotion ad, shows the different layers of skin?”

Amanda couldn’t tell whether or not she was setting up another joke.

“I’m serious, girl. Listen to me.”

“Okay, I know the ad.”

“The skin basically has three layers. All right?”

“All right.”

“Usually, when you scratch someone, you get the upper dermis, which is white no matter who you are. In order to get the pigmented layer of skin, the black part, you’d have to scratch to the subcutis, which means the fingernail would have to go deep enough to cause some serious bleeding. And it wouldn’t be a sliver of skin you’d have to scrape out from under the fingernail. It’d be a chunk.”

Amanda detected Pete’s patient teaching tone in the woman’s words. “So, there’s no way to tell if the girl from Friday scratched a black assailant or a white one?”

Deena was quiet again, though this time, she wasn’t laughing. “You’re talking about that pimp they arrested for killing that white girl, aren’t you?”

Amanda saw a guard standing by Holly’s desk. He was gangly, with an untrimmed mustache and dark hair. Holly waved Amanda over. Juice was ready.

“Amanda?” Deena asked. “I’m not playing now. You best think about what you’re doing.”

“I assumed you’d be eager to help one of your own kind.”

“That murdering bastard ain’t got nothing to do with me.” She lowered her voice. “I’m eager to keep my head attached to my shoulders, is what I am.”

“Well, thank you for answering my question.”

“Wait.”

Holly’s waving took on an urgency. She was probably afraid Keller would return. Amanda held up her finger, indicating she needed a minute. “What is it?”

“Be careful. The same people protecting you right now are gonna be the same ones coming after you when they find out what you’re doing.”

There was a long silence after that. Both of them reflected on the words.

“Thank you.” Amanda tried not to read anything into Deena’s gruff goodbye. She hung up the phone. Her heart was thumping in her chest. The woman was right. Duke would be furious if he knew what Amanda was doing. So would Keller. So would Butch and Landry and possibly Hodge. Add the whole department to that if they found out she was trying to help a black man get out of jail. A black man who’d already confessed to murder.

Holly came to the doorway. “Hurry up, Mandy. Phillip’s going to take you down and stay with you.” She lowered her voice. “He’s not so bad.”

Amanda felt the urge to flee. Her bravado was going up and down like a piston engine. “I’m ready.”

She stood from the desk. She forced a smile onto her face as Phillip came into the office. He was wearing the dark blue uniform of the prison guards, a set of keys hanging from one side of his belt and a nightstick dangling from the other.

He was younger than Amanda, but he talked to her as if she was a child. “You sure you wanna be doing this, gal?”

Amanda swallowed past the lump in her throat. She wished that Evelyn were there to give her strength. Then she felt guilty, because Evelyn had been taking the brunt of the anger lately—not just from Rick Landry, but from Butch and whoever had transferred her into Model City.

Maybe Evelyn was right. Maybe people were careful with Amanda because they were afraid of Duke. Instead of being afraid of him herself, Amanda should be taking advantage of it. At least for as long as she could.

“I’m not sure we’ve met.” Amanda walked toward the man, hand extended. “I’m Amanda Wagner. Duke’s daughter.”

His eyes shifted to Holly, then to Amanda as he shook her hand. “Yeah, I know Duke.”

“He’s friends with Bubba.” Amanda never called Keller by his first name, but the guard needn’t know that. She took her purse out of the chair and dug around for the new pen and spiral-bound notebook she’d brought from home. She handed her bag to Holly. “Mind holding on to this for me?”

Holly stared wide-eyed as Amanda walked out of the office. She forced herself to keep a steady pace as she passed through the typing pool. The constant spinning and pecking of the Selectric balls seemed to match the erratic beats of her heart, but Amanda forced herself to keep walking. Going into the men’s jail was likely the same as going into a swimming pool. You either jumped in and experienced that quick shock of cold or you dragged it out, walking in slowly, your skin prickling with goose bumps, your teeth chattering.

Amanda jumped right in.

She held on to the railing as she walked down the stairs. She didn’t wait for Phillip to open the door. She pushed it with the palm of her hand. The cells. Holly was right. The men’s side was far worse than the women’s. Large cracks split the walls. Pigeons cooed from the rafters; their droppings littered the concrete floor. She stepped over a passed-out wino leaning against the wall. She ignored the catcalls and the stares. She kept her posture straight, her eyes ahead, until Phillip spoke.