Warpath

“He rarely said anything.”

“How about Cooper?”

The recorded voice sounded informing them they had only three minutes left, so Jane proposed question of her own. “What’s his real name?” she asked. “Cooper must have been an alias.”

“Didier Boucher,” he said.

“Tell me about him.”

“His father passed down the trade to both he and his brother. They ran successful boiler rooms up in Canada, cold calling people in the United States and claiming they’ve won a sweepstakes. But in order for the sucker to claim the prize they needed to first send a fee to, supposedly, cover government taxes. It’s an age-old scam. Nobody wins the grand prize. Everybody gets third place. When it arrives in the mail it’s nothing but an inflatable raft.”

“A raft?”

“Worth maybe twenty bucks at Walmart. Technically a boat, but nobody reads the fine print.”

r />

“Cooper did that?”

“He and his family, among other scams, targeting the elderly mostly. At one time they were flying high, but no longer. His brother gambled most of the fortune away. Cigarettes took their toll on the father, and now he’s in a Quebec City nursing home.”

“Cooper, I mean Didier, was French?”

“French Canadian. But you must have known that.”

“He said he was from Chicago, went to school in Boston or something,” she recalled. Jane reeled at the thought. She knew nothing about this man she had fallen in love with. Everything was a lie. She said, “Since you know Veronica is behind all of this, get me the hell out of here.”

“I can help you, but it’s not like in the movies where police and FBI work hand-in-hand. Bureaucracy is incredibly inefficient. They took me off Veronica’s case, but I still work it when I get the chance. It’s sort of...my baby.”

Gorgeous Veronica—she figured he was drawn by her beauty. “If Cooper was French Canadian,” she asked. “Why didn’t he have an accent?”

“He’s a pro.”

Jane explained how he could sit in front of the television for hours watching hockey, cursing, kicking furniture, and he always checked his iPhone for scores.

“That’s good. Those are the details I’m looking for,” he said. “Think back. What about Veronica? Anything stick out?”

Jane was at a loss, asked, “Do you think she killed Cooper?”

“I’m certain.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s done it before.”

She’s done it before.

The phone cut them off, meeting over. He nodded and mouthed “thank you” through the glass, then departed without looking back.

She worried that she’d said too much.

Chapter 3

The bus of female prisoners weaved through downtown Los Angeles and pulled into the basement of the 60’s era courthouse. This was the day of Jane’s preliminary hearing.

Jane realized it was only temporary, but swapping out her prison orange for the plain skirt and blouse her mother purchased at Ross Dress for Less made her feel human again. There was no access to scissors, so she had to bite the plastic tags off with her teeth. This endeavor cut her lip. She dabbed it with toilet paper, but it was still bleeding, salty to taste.

They escorted her and a few others into an elevator. They walked the long hallway, fluorescent lights illuminating cinder-block walls. They placed her in a holding area and removed the handcuffs. From a water cooler Jane took a drink and had to refill the tiny paper Dixie Cup a few times in order to quench her thirst. She remembered this space from her arraignment. For some reason it seemed different now.