Susan seemed to be more optimistic when they left Daniel Reynolds’s office. Diane noticed that the lines between her sister’s eyes were smoothed out and she didn’t look so tired. His easygoing, competent nature most likely won her over. Diane guessed that he was probably very good with juries.
They stepped from the office building onto the sidewalk. It had just started to rain. Susan had parked out on the street, so they didn’t have far to walk. They hurried to the car, and Diane slid into the passenger side and buckled her belt.
“Your car smells new.”
“It is. Gerald bought it for my birthday. Dad will probably be home by now.”
They were both quiet as Susan drove. Diane relaxed in the soft leather seat. So few road noises penetrated the passenger compartment it would be easy to lean her head back and drift off to sleep-she felt so tired. Diane closed her eyes.
“What did you mean that Mother is like me?”
Diane jerked awake. There was a tone in Susan’s voice that sounded like suspicion, like she wanted to make sure Diane didn’t have a joke with Reynolds at her expense.
“I meant that Mother isn’t the kind of person who should be in prison. He could see that you clearly aren’t the criminal type. I was trying to tell him that Mother isn’t either.”
Diane wasn’t entirely truthful. What she had wanted to convey to him was that her mother was naive, like her sister, and it was imperative that they get her out of Tombsberg Prison as quickly as possible.
“Oh.” Susan paused for a moment, intently watching the traffic. “I’m glad you’re here. Dad and I have been beside ourselves, and. . well, frankly, I felt Alan was taking too long to get anything done about getting this mess resolved.”
Ah, the first crack in Alan’s armor. Maybe Susan would stop believing that Diane’s ex-husband had hung the moon. Diane decided to be nice, sensing that disagreement would make Susan turn around and defend him.
“Alan’s very good with finances. It’s just a different world from the criminal justice system,” Diane said. Fortunately her cell rang then, saving her from having to heap any more praise on her ex. She looked at the name on the display and smiled broadly. It was as if the sky cleared and the day was going to be sunny after all.
“Hi,” she said to Frank.
“Hey, babe, how are you doing?”
“We just saw Daniel Reynolds. I feel better about the whole thing.”
“He’s good. I’ve seen him in action-up close.” Frank chuckled; then his voice became serious. “I have some news. I looked up your mother’s arrest warrant in the federal system. It was there with her name, address and Social Security number.”
“How did you know her Social Security number?”
“I’m a detective.”
Diane could almost see him smiling on his end of the phone. “That’s right, how could I forget?” she said.
“Okay, it says she robbed the Bessemer Branch of the First Southern Bank of Birmingham on June fifteenth, 2004. She was captured just over a month later, on July sixteenth. Plea-bargained and escaped on the way to prison.”
Diane looked over at Susan. “That just didn’t happen. I’m sure Mother will know what she was doing on those dates. She keeps a diary.” Susan nodded in agreement at the mention of the diary as she stopped at a red light. “Did you find anything else?” asked Diane.
“Yes. There are several interesting things about the warrant. The dates cluster-both months start with J, all the dates are numbered in the teens. When people make things up, they tend to unconsciously stick to patterns. It’s something about the way the brain works. It won’t convince authorities there, but it’s a tell for me when I’m looking at documents. The thing that should convince the authorities, though, is that I haven’t been able to find an incident report of the robbery, a bail report, or any of a host of other paperwork that should be on file and isn’t.”
“Frank, that’s good. That’s really good, isn’t it?”
“It is. I sent the fingerprints and mug shots via e-mail to your crime lab for them to check the fingerprints-that’ll be faster than if I try to do it here-more discreet, too. David should be calling you soon with the results. I’m expecting that the fingerprint images were lifted from some felon’s file and won’t be your mother’s. I’m also betting that if they look for the actual physical paper file, there won’t be one-her record will turn out to exist only on computer.”
“This should make it easy to get her out, shouldn’t it?”
“I think Reynolds will be able to take care of it without much of a problem, provided nobody gets pigheaded, which sometimes happens when bureaucrats are told they’ve screwed up big-time.”
“Do you think they can discover who created the bogus records?”
“I don’t know. They naturally will not want me looking inside their computer system, so it will be up to their experts. The easiest way for the perp to have done this is to have someone on the inside. I’m sure they’ll be looking into that possibility.”
“I’m really grateful, Frank.”
“It was easy. No one tried to do a really slick job of this. It was just enough to get your mother picked up and sent away. She wouldn’t have even been sent to prison if they’d done the proper checks.”
“I owe you one.” She smiled into the phone as she said good-bye and hung up.
“That sounded like good news,” Susan said.
“It was. I’ll explain in a minute, but first I need to call Reynolds back.”
Just as she started to dial, her phone rang again. This time it was her crime lab.
“David?”
“Hey, Diane, how’s it going? Your arm still attached? How about your mental health? Personally, I think relatives ought to be against the law.”
“Everything’s working fine, so far,” she said.
“Frank sent me some prints. I ran them through AFIS. They belong to a Jerome Washington, who’s doing time for armed robbery of a convenience store.”
“That’s music to my ears.”
Diane looked at Susan and gave her a thumbs-up. Susan pulled off the road and parked the car.
“I need you to send the information to a lawyer here in Birmingham. I’ll get his fax number and then call you right back,” Diane said. “Did you get a chance to look at the mug shots?”
“Yup,” David said. “They’re clearly fake. The head has been glued over the background and the number has been pasted over that. Easy to see when you get down to the pixel level.”
Diane let out a sigh of relief and smiled at her sister. “What’s going on at your end?” she asked David. “How is Neva?”
“She’s really pissed. I don’t blame her. She told me she’s staying at Frank’s tonight. That’s a good idea. Someone has it in for her.”
“You and Jin keep on the lookout, too.”
“Always. As you know, I’m paranoid, and I’m training the others well.”
Diane laughed. “Thanks, David. I’ll call you back in just a minute.”
She grabbed a pen and paper from her purse, called Reynolds’s office and relayed everything that Frank and David had given her.
“What’s your fax number? My crime lab is going to fax the fingerprints and an analysis of the altered mug shots to you.”
“You work fast, don’t you, girl?” Reynolds laughed as he read her his fax number.
“It helps to know the right people,” she said.
“I hear you there. I believe we can get your mother out by tomorrow. In the meantime I’ll try to get her moved to a private cell. My assistant has gone to the bank to find out if it was actually robbed. Since apparently it wasn’t, she’ll get an affidavit from the manager. You and your sister go home and relax. I’ll call you in the morning.”
“Thanks for getting on this quickly.”
“The only thing that gets under my skin worse than injustice is stupidity, and we seem to have both here.”
When Diane finished talking to Reynolds she called David with the fax number. Susan started the car again and pulled out into the traffic. “All that sounds like good news,” she said.
“Reynolds thinks he can get Mother out tomorrow,” Diane said.
“Are you serious? Alan said that his contacts told him it could take months.”
“Alan probably approached those people by saying something like, ‘What are the chances of getting someone out of a federal facility who’s been picked up as a material witness in connection with terrorists?’ I’m sure Alan didn’t doubt his own initial analysis of the situation and framed all his questions based on that.”
Susan sighed. “That is a little like him. Gerald isn’t fond of Alan.”
Diane was completely surprised by Susan’s admission.
“Gerald has always struck me as a no-nonsense kind of guy. I imagine you have to be, in his business,” she said, trying to both agree with Susan and to not strike a chord that would set her sister off into defensive mode. It was a game she had learned to play when they were children. The way it usually played out, however, was that Diane would get tired of it and lose her temper, and all her careful phrasing was for nothing.
“Gerald is very levelheaded. I don’t know what Dad and I would have done without him these last few weeks.”
“I’m sure he and Dad are going to be relieved at the news we’re bringing home. Reynolds is going to have Mother moved to a single cell tonight.”
“What does that mean? Isn’t she in a cell now?”
“I haven’t been completely frank with you, Susan.” Diane decided to go ahead and tell Susan about the prison their mother was in. She didn’t want it to be a complete shock to Susan when her mother told them about her experience in the prison. “Tombsberg is one of the worst facilities in the country. It’s severely overcrowded and riddled with disease. Most of the inmates are housed in a dormitory-young and old together. She probably has a bunk in with several hundred others. She’ll need to disinfect herself when she gets out, and she’ll have to see a doctor. The place is rife with Staph infection, HIV, and sexually transmitted diseases.”
Susan sat driving in silence, her eyes never leaving the road. Diane noticed tears rolling down her cheeks.
“I’m sorry,” said Diane. “I didn’t want to worry you.”
“What if this has changed her?”
“It will have. Let’s just hope she can get her old self back. It’ll help if she sees a therapist. Would she be willing to do that?”
“I don’t know. Let’s not tell Dad about that. Not right now. Let’s just tell him that we think she’ll be coming home.”
“Okay. I’ll follow your lead on that,” Diane said, acknowledging that her sister understood their parents much better than she did.
They turned and drove up the winding drive of their parents’ home. A Lincoln not unlike Susan’s was parked in the garage. Next to it was a silver-blue Jaguar.
“That’s Dad’s car,” Susan said as she pulled in behind the Lincoln. “The Jag belongs to Alan.” She pulled down the visor, looked in the mirror and carefully dried her eyes. She took out a compact and lipstick from her purse, smoothed her makeup with a little powder and applied color to her lips. “We have a good life here. Why would anyone do this to us? We haven’t hurt anybody.”
“I don’t know. There’s a lot of mean people in the world. Just as I was leaving to come here, someone broke into the home of one of my employees and trashed everything she owned. I have no idea why.”
“How do people get like that? I just don’t understand.”
“I’m not sure there is any understanding it, Susan.”
Diane hadn’t visited her parents in a couple of years. Not since she had returned from South America. Not since they had shown no sympathy whatsoever when Diane’s daughter died, simply because Ariel was not born to Diane, simply because she was a native South American Indian. That memory cut through Diane like a sharp knife.
They got out of the car and she followed Susan into the house.