While EMTs and Clinton County Forensics worked the scene of the killings, Blood, Bridgette, and me occupied her office. D’Amico stood foursquare on the floor. Blood and I sat on the couch, sipping more of Bridgette’s whiskey. She, too, sipped a whiskey while sitting back in her swivel chair.
“That’s against regulations,” D’Amico said.
“You ain’t the boss of me,” I said.
Blood stood tall. Taller than tall. He stood not beside D’Amico, but up against him. The trooper came up to the center of Blood’s sternum. He looked uncomfortable. Intimidated. I thought he might pee himself.
“Let me guess,” Blood said. “This be the part where you tell us we had no business going after them two escaped cons on our own.”
D’Amico stood his ground, looked directly up at Blood’s face. David and Goliath.
“You willfully interfered with a state police investigation,” he said. “And now one of the two is dead, and the other’s nearly dead. The two . . . no, make that three corroborating witnesses are dead, and now Clinton County is under siege by some rogue gang who murder at will.” He shot Bridgette a look. “I’m sorry for your loss, Sheriff,” he added. “I know you and Maude were very close.”
Bridgette nodded. “She was my godmother. I guess her murder means four innocents are dead, plus Moss. That’s the largest body count Clinton County has seen in a single day ever.”
I stood up from the couch.
“The good news,” I said, “is that Sweet is alive. And so long as he’s alive, I think we can use him to put an end to whoever is doing the killing.”
D’Amico focused in on me. “You got a theory about who’s doing the killing?”
“Isn’t it obvious, trooper man?” I said.
He rolled his eyes. “Sure it is,” he said, “I just want to hear it from your mouth.”
D’Amico was smarter than I thought. Maybe he’d even suspected something less than kosher going down inside the bowels of Dannemora Prison for some time now. But as a state policeman, his number one priority was the apprehension of the two cons. An investigation into wrongdoings at the prison would be the responsibility of the local police and Sheriff Hylton. At least, at the outset. It would also be the responsibility of those two FBI agents who’d been sneaking around and threatening a federal takeover of the escaped con investigation.
But as for me, I had a job to do. Valente hired me to find Sweet and Moss before D’Amico did and deliver the two cons to his doorstep. My first screw-up came in the form of a dead Reginald Moss. I was now facing my second screw-up, which was delivering Sweet to the Clinton County Jail when I should have just kept driving south to Albany. But then there was his hand. The fact that he was still bleeding. That gangrene could set in at any time. Chances were, if I carted him to Albany, he’d eventually go into shock, followed by death.
But now, I had to make the best of an all-around bad situation, and for me, that meant using Sweet to expose whatever the hell was truly going on inside the Crypt and who it involved, which, at this point, was more than likely the governor of the Empire State.
“Listen, D’Amico,” I said, “the only thing Sweet wants more than a new right hand is to get free of this place. He goes back to prison, or he’s delivered to Governor Valente down in Albany, and he’s as good as a dead.”
The trooper blinked, shook his head.
“You trying to tell me that what’s happening inside the prison—the attack that just occurred inside this jail—is somehow related to the fucking governor?”
Blood crossed his arms over his chest. “That exactly what he trying to tell you, shorty.”
That was when I poured myself another shot and proceeded to recount for D’Amico everything that Sweet told me about the drug trafficking and child pornography ring being operated not only in the depths of Dannemora Prison but potentially in dozens of maximum security pens all across this great country of ours. And just to add backup to the words I so eloquently enunciated for the little guy, I pulled out my smartphone, thumbed the record app, then pressed Play.
As I suspected, D’Amico proved himself an attentive audience.
“Gentlemen and lady,” he said after a long beat. “What we have here is a criminal conspiracy of Biblical proportions.”