The state trooper’s normally stoic, if not rock hard face, took on a decidedly soft patina. It wasn’t the truth about the system that was hurting him, so much as the now destroyed faith in his fellow law enforcement brothers and sisters in arms that had him so down. Or so I could only assume. His gait slow and pessimistic, he walked the few steps to Bridgette’s desk.
“You got an extra one of those Dixie cups?” he said somewhat under his breath.
She opened a drawer, retrieved one, handed it to him from across the desk. Then, she grabbed hold of the bottle neck, set that down hard onto the desk. He poured himself a shot. A double. Then drank it down in one swift swallow.
He set the cup back down slowly, contemplatively, so that the only sound in the square office was the empty, hollow ring of the Dixie cup when its rigid waxed bottom rim connected with the hard wood desk. He nodded as though answering a question he silently posed for himself.
“You’re gonna need another bottle of whiskey soon,” he said. Then, taking a step back, as if to address us all, “We’re also going to require a smokescreen. Some kind of story to keep the press gathered outside this jail and Dannemora Prison from revealing the truth—that Moss is dead and Sweet is incarcerated.”
“And that a team of corrections officers led by Rodney Pappas killed Maude, Joyce, and Mean Gene.”
“That too,” D’Amico said. “We need some real medical help for Sweet. Also, those three bodies are going to start to smell unless we get them down to the morgue.”
“I’ll take care of that,” Bridgette said. “Forensics will need to sweep them. Christ, I haven’t even called the coroner.” She shook her head. “Who knows what the press is reporting? They must have heard the gunshots.”
“They used sound suppressors inside a reinforced concrete block jail,” I said. “Those little pops could be heard all the way out front, but they didn’t alarm anyone. What alarmed them was Mr. D’Amico’s cavalry.”
“Somebody’s got to act like a real officer of the law around here,” the trooper said.
“What are you going to do about the prison? The Crypt?” Bridgette said to D’Amico. “An army of FBI agents is about to come down on Dannemora, and when that happens, all bets are off.”
I set my Dixie cup down on the desk beside D’Amico’s. I shot a glance at Blood. The wink of his right eye told me he knew what I was about to say before I said it.
“I wanna go in,” I said. “I wanna go in with Blood, and I want to do it ASAP, if not sooner.”
Feigning a crooked expression, D’Amico looked at me like I was crazy.
“And how do you propose to do that?” he said. “You can’t just walk through the front door, ask the guard sergeant to see the Crypt.”
“You’re right, D’Amico,” I said. “But we can take Sweet up on his offer to break back inside the prison under the guise of his stealing our three hundred Gs in exchange for his freedom.”
D’Amico walked back to the desk, poured another shot, drank it down. “You’re going to break into prison. Usually doesn’t work that way.”
“How hard can it be?” said Blood. “COs always focused on cons trying to get out. Means they won’t be looking for cons to get back in.”
“Still going to take some skill,” I said, “and some trust in a man who not only killed a cop but ran him over with a Ford F150 twenty times.”
“You think he knows a way back into the joint?” D’Amico said.
“Again, it’s all about the trust. Depends on who he trusts on the inside to let him back in, and if that trust is reciprocal.”
“Sounds complicated,” Blood said. “Like a relationship.”
“That’s why you choose to be single, Blood, my brother,” I said.
“That’s why any woman who gets involved with you eventually choose to be single,” Blood retorted.
My eyes automatically shifted to Bridgette’s. She caught my gaze, read my mind, cleared her throat. I knew she wanted to change the subject like some people want to change radio stations. She stood up.
“I’m going to prepare a statement for the press,” she said. “In the meantime, I’ll make sure Karla contacts a doctor and that we get Sweet fixed up as good as possible for whatever it is you’re all going to face inside Dannemora and down inside the Crypt.”
“Oh, and we’ll need something else too,” Blood said, uncrossing his arms.
“What’s that?” Bridgette said, grabbing hold of the door knob, turning to him.
“More bullets. Lots of them.”