It didn’t come as a surprise that Bridgette Hylton enjoyed a nip or two during the day. Which was why she kept a bottle of Jack Daniels in her bottom desk drawer. Rather, an “emergency bottle” as she referred to it. We stood around her desk drinking the whiskey from yellow Dixie cups while I recapped not only the capture of Moss and Sweet down in that backwoods bomb shelter but also what Sweet relayed to me about the child trafficking and drug running going on in the depths of Dannemora Prison. Inside a place Sweet ominously called the Crypt. I also played her the recording of Sweet’s statement with the smartphone recording app.
She poured us another shot of whiskey apiece.
“Those reporters out there have no idea you just brought Sweet in,” she said. “Or else they’d be tossing rocks through the windows trying to get in. They also don’t know that Moss is dead. I need to alert D’Amico on both counts, just for starters. You know that, right?”
I nodded.
“FBI needs to know also,” I said. “But here’s the catch. I tell my employer the news, he’s liable to take control of the situation.”
“What’s that mean?” Bridgette said.
“What I mean is, what if Valente is involved in the drug-slash-human trafficking ring? In fact, what if he’s the major player?”
“He gonna wanna protect his assets,” Blood interjected while pouring himself a third shot. “Some politicians become governors as a stepping stone to the Presidency of the United States of America. Maybe Valente choose to be governor so he can make himself tens of millions of non-taxable dollars.”
“Stranger stories have been told, Blood,” I admit.
The sheriff looked at me with a tight face. A face that was feeling the effects of stress over two escaped convicts. But ironically, now that one of them was dead and the other recaptured, she seemed even more stressed.
“So, what is it you want to do?” she asked.
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” I said. “Maude’s dead, which means we already have one murder we can link directly to the illicit activity going on in the prison.”
“In other words,” Blood said, “some key players in this thing never intended for us to find Moss and Sweet in the first place. Key players who are supposed to be on our team. The A team.”
Bridgette drank down what remained of the whiskey in her cup. She crushed the cup in her hand, tossed it into the metal waste paper basket.
“I don’t report Moss dead and Sweet captured; I lose my job,” she said. “As it is, I need to get a forensics team out to the site of his death.”
“But we can use Sweet to expose what’s happening inside the Crypt. You do that, you not only keep your job, you get a nice shiny new star.”
She smiled. “Oh, well, I guess I never thought of that. A nice new star. You got a plan for exposing the so-called drug-slash-human trafficking ring inside the prison dungeon?”
“Crypt,” Blood corrected her.
“Crypt,” she repeated.
“I do,” I said. I drank the rest of my whiskey, crushed the cup in the palm of my hand. “But it’s going to involve making a deal with Sweet. Probably his freedom or something close, for his cooperation.”
She shook her head. “How are we going to manage that if we keep his capture a secret? We’d have to make an official appeal to the DA and the courts.”
“Obviously, that would take hours. So what you do instead is have the lovely Karla write up an offer that Sweet can live with. Then the two of you sign it.”
“What then?” Blood said.
“Then we come to the good part. You familiar with the Biblical story of the Prodigal Son, Bridgette?”
“The wayward son unexpectedly returns home.”
“Derrick Sweet is going to be our personal Prodigal Son,” I said, tossing my crushed cup into the basket.