"We're missing something," Frank said.
He had gone to bed the night before craving a drink and had woken that morning craving a drink. He drank coffee instead. A lot of coffee.
"What?"
"I don't know. But it's like the photo on the phone—it's right there in front of us, in plain sight. We're just not seeing it."
Billie Jean had driven Frank back to Rockport and stayed over. They spent the day going over their trial strategy.
"We can explain her phone number and photo to the jury—"
"If the jurors aren't old-timers," Billie Jean said.
"So in jury selection, we go for the youngest in the pool."
"I've never picked a jury."
"I have. You look in their eyes. If they look back, you take them. If they look away, you don't."
"Why?"
"Because they've already made up their minds. They think he's guilty."
"What about the surveillance tape? He got in late enough to have killed her."
"Hundreds of men were on Sixth Street that night. Any of them could have seen Dee Dee in her cheerleader outfit."
"But none of their blood was on her body."
"How the hell did you let this happen, Dwayne?"
Dwayne Gentry, former top homicide cop on the Houston Police Department and renowned interrogator of bad guys, stood in the small wooden shack that served as the operations headquarters for the mini-storage facility and suffered interrogation at the hands of Bob, the proprietor. They were studying the surveillance camera tape the day the three punks broke into a unit. On the screen, the camera caught the punks climbing over the perimeter fence, crowbarring storage unit number 124, and stuffing their backpacks with stolen contraband.
"Those little pricks were brazen, to try that in the middle of the day."
"Try? They did it." Bob shook his head. "You left for lunch, didn't you? They had you under surveillance, saw you leave, and then made their move. Isn't that what happened, Dwayne?"
"No, it ain't what happened. I was here the whole morning."
Bob pointed at the screen. "They breached the perimeter fence at twelve-thirty-five P.M., made entry into the subject unit at twelve-forty-five P.M., and escaped back over the fence at one P.M. The video don't lie, Dwayne."
"Yeah, it does. When they took off with the contraband, it was straight-up noon. I checked my watch."
Bob frowned. "But the tape says one."
"The tape's wrong. It was an hour earlier."
"An hour earlier?" Bob snorted like a feral hog. "Aw, shit, I know what happened. Robbie didn't turn the clock back on the camera when we came off daylight savings time. Spring forward, fall back. The little dope."
Robbie was Bob's son. He was a little dope.
"Okay, they breached at eleven-thirty-five. You were still on site. Not your fault, Dwayne. What I need to do, see, is electrify the fence, maybe two-twenty volts. Those little fuckers try to breach my fence again, they'll be in for a little shock."
Bob thought that was funny.
Chico Duran laughed. "I shit you not, man, she took a picture of her privates and texted it to her boyfriend. He probably put it on his Facebook page, now half the world's seen her pussy."
Keith, the nineteen-year-old delivery boy with tattoos and piercings all over his body, shrugged. "I do that all the time."
"Post photos of girls' privates on your Facebook page?"
"Get photos of girls' privates."
"They sext you?"
"Yep."
"Who?"
"Every girl I know."
"Why?"
"It's social media, man. You take self-photos and share yourself with the world."
"Why?"
"Why not?"
Chico shook his head. "By the time I was your age, I was already conning people out of their credit card numbers. Kids today, you're spoiled, got no ambition, bunch of narcissistic little bastards spending your time taking photos of yourself, as if anyone gives a shit."
Chuck Miller blew his whistle.
"Offsides on black. Five yards."
"Shithead!" a parent screamed.
Chuck picked up the ball and stepped off five yards. He was about to blow the whistle to restart the game when one of the players said, "He's bleeding again."
"Who?"
"Georgie."
"Shit, he might be one of them bleeders."
"You're not supposed to say 'shit' at peewee games. We're little kids."
"Your fucking parents do."
"Just our fucking dads."
Chuck called a bodily fluids timeout and sent Georgie to the sideline. He took a good long swallow of his Gatorade-and-vodka sports drink. That same thought—blood—tried to take form in his brain again, but he still could not put the thought into a complete sentence, or even a recognizable phrase.
There was something about the blood.
"Harold went ethical on you, Scotty. It happens."
"Not very often."
"Nope. But Harold's always had an ethical streak in him."
Dick Dorkin downed his drink. He and Scotty Raines were having drinks at the Capitol Club, the favorite watering hole for state politicos and judges and the lawyers who financed their careers.
"So is the boy taking the plea bargain or not?"
"He'll take it. Frank came in yesterday and got him all fired up to fight the charges, but I brought him back down to earth with my 'come to Jesus' speech. He'll plead."
"Come to Jesus?"
"If he doesn't plead, he's gonna come to Jesus."
Dick laughed. "Still, I'm not sure I wouldn't be happier if he didn't plead. I wanted that death sentence so bad I could smell his flesh burning."
"A few drinks and you wax nostalgic, Dick. What do you want more—revenge on Frank Tucker or the Governor's Mansion?"
"It's a closer call than you might think."
"Jesus, Dick, this isn't personal. This is business."
"Maybe to you. But me, I'd like to stare at Frank Tucker while they empty that syringe into his boy's arm."
William Tucker's six-foot-five-inch, two-hundred-thirty-five-pound body lay curled up on the cold concrete floor of his cell. He wanted to die. He wanted to close his eyes and die. The tears poured out of his eyes and the snot out of his nose. His massive body shook uncontrollably. He was big, strong, and fast, but he never felt so small, so weak, and so slow in his life. He always knew where life was taking him; now he felt lost.
"Help me, God."
"Ain't no God in here," the gangbanger next door said in his soft whisper. "You in hell now, William Tucker."
If he went to trial and lost, he'd get the death penalty. If he pleaded out, he would always be a convicted killer.
"Please, God. Save me."
The gangbanger sighed. "Man, you got it bad, William. Think God gonna come down here and pluck your white ass outta this jail, 'cause you His special child, like your mama told you since the day you popped out between her legs. Think He gonna come down here and save you. Shit, man, God ain't got no time for that."
William cried harder.
"Mm, mm, mm. Big boy crying now. Wishing this ain't his destiny. Wishing God had gave him a better life, hadn't put him on this path from birth. I said them same prayers, I wished the same thing. All my life, I wish I had a better life. Some folks, they born into heaven. Us, we was born into hell."
William swiped snot from his face and said, "I estranged myself from my father."
"Uh-huh, my daddy a stranger to me, too. I always wonder, what if my mama had of married my daddy, made us a regular family like that Bill Cosby show on TV. Wonder if I would be in this cell today, if that happened? Maybe me and my daddy, we'd of throwed a football in the backyard and talked about being a man 'stead of a criminal. Maybe we'd of had a real home, sit around a table and eat food with my family, and everyone ain't saying 'fuck this' and 'fuck that' instead we be sayin' grace before eating instead of 'pass the fuckin' steak sauce,' you know what I mean? You know I ain't never done that in my whole life, eat food with my family, say grace at the dinner table. My homies in the gang, they was my family. We want something to eat, we go to fuckin' McD's, get a Big Mac and fries, the double order, drink malt liquor when I was eight years old. You ever wonder what that kind of childhood be like, to have Bill Cosby be your daddy?"
"I know what it's like."
"You know someone live like that?"
"Yeah."
"Who?"
"Me."
"Say what?"
"That was my childhood."
"Wait. You saying you lived like that, like that Bill Cosby show?"
"Yeah."
"You had a daddy at home? You eat food with your family? You say grace at the dinner table? You throwed the ball in the backyard?"
"Yeah."
"Then how the fuck you end up in that cell?"
His voice rose, almost as if he were mad at William.
"I thought you was like me, with a fucked-up life. That why you in here. But you sayin' you had all that, a mama and a daddy and dinner at a goddamn table every fuckin' night of your life and you fuckin' end up in here? I dream of that life, but all I got was a fucked life, drugs and guns and gangbangers. You born in heaven but you put yourself in hell? What the fuck wrong with you, boy? I didn't choose to be here. It ain't my fault I'm here. I didn't kill that cop—my destiny did!"
He was almost screaming now.
"You the luckiest motherfucker ever live! You got a fuckin' mama and a daddy! You got a fuckin' family! You got a fuckin' dinner table with real fuckin' food! You stupid fuckin' white boy! I hope you fuckin' die!"
His voice cracked, as if he might be crying, too.
"I don't want to talk to you no more, William Tucker."
The young men's soft sobs were the only sounds of the solitary cellblock that night.