Deadlock (FBI Thriller #24)(59)

Savich nodded. “All right. Let’s say Gay enlisted Angela Zanetti, made Zanetti her front man—woman. Then if any of the eight confess, it would be Angela they’d have to answer to, not Gay. She’d have stayed well out of it. Ask the guards in their unit if Angela and Marsia spend much time together.”

Putney said, “Sure.” His eyebrow went up. “You make Gay sound like a Mata Hari.”

“Gay would leave Mata Hari in the dust, but it’s a lot more complicated than that. I don’t see Gay in the video. She kept away, another smart move. She must have hated missing the show.”

Putney said, “Gay was in the common area speaking to a guard, all chummy, nowhere near the cafeteria. Let me put the video on the monitor.”

Savich pointed at the young man. “Who’s the guard?”

“That’s Crowder, Junior Crowder, a nice kid, conscientious, been here two years. I spoke to him myself. He said Gay is always friendly to all the guards, said she told him she was a famous sculptor until she was framed and sent here. He said he couldn’t tell if she was pleased or upset when someone shouted Veronica Lake had been stabbed. Then he had to run off to control the prisoners in the cafeteria. There’s always a risk of a rampage after violence like that. Violence begets violence here.”

Savich asked Freed to back the tape up to look again at Marsia. She was striking, not beautiful in the accepted sense, but there was something compelling about her face that made you look twice. Her dark hair was longer, pulled back in a ponytail. All her attention appeared focused on the guard she was speaking to, though Savich knew she was aware of exactly what was happening in the cafeteria. He said, “She not only directed the show, she gave a performance of her own.”

Putney said, “However Gay managed it, we’ve got a wall of silence. I’m betting not one of those prisoners will ever give Zanetti up. Like I said, they’re too afraid of her. Grayson was throwing out threats like water, but the prisoners looked right through her.

“It’s amazing Lake is still alive. I didn’t think she’d make it to the hospital. There was so much blood. It was the purest luck our physician happened to be here, and he got to the cafeteria fast, applied pressure until the ambulance arrived. She had to be brought back twice, I was told.”

Putney met Savich’s eyes. “I wish I could say Lake will make it, but I don’t think so, not after seeing her. The prosecutor is very upset, with me, with the guards, probably at the staff serving the spaghetti.”

Savich followed Putney to a small meeting room away from the new visitor’s area with its comfortable chairs and unscratched glass partitions. He wanted a private face-to-face with Marsia Gay. He had no doubt Angela Zanetti had helped Marsia set up Veronica’s grand finale. And he also had no doubt Marsia had seduced her as she had Veronica. Had she offered her another sort of payment, other than sex and her undying love?

He sat on the far side of a scarred laminate table. When Marsia Gay was brought into the interview room, a guard behind her, she wasn’t wearing a prisoner’s three-piece suit, only ties on her wrists. Her orange jumpsuit actually fit her fairly well, and orange was a good color for her. She looked as she had in the video—maybe a bit paler in person, but composed, her face serene as a Madonna’s. She saw him seated at the table and smiled, showing lovely white teeth. Her eyes sparkled. She knew he’d come, and she’d looked forward to it.

She walked to the table, her smile well in place. “My, my, what a lovely break in my routine on this cold November morning. I suppose you’re here to ask me about poor Veronica’s murder.”





38


“Sit down, Marsia.”

She sat gracefully in the seat opposite him, gave him a big smile. “May I call you Dillon, since we appear to be on a first-name basis?”

“No.”

A large female guard with pretty dark eyes and a tight mouth stood behind her, arms crossed. She looked like she could bust heads if she needed to, but when she glanced at Marsia, her face relaxed into a near smile, like she was looking at a friend. Her reaction to Marsia reminded Savich that Gay was a psychopath with the ability to draw people to her, a kind of charisma that camouflaged what she really was.

Marsia sat back and crossed her arms, still smiling. “So it takes a death to bring you in for a visit. I must say you’re looking fit, Agent Savich, and quite handsome. I always thought you put the Rasmussen males to shame. Do you think I’ll be allowed to attend Veronica’s funeral?”

“If you were allowed to go to her funeral, you would have to go dressed in orange. A pity it makes you look rather sallow, since it’s the color you’ll be wearing until you’re too old to care.”

He saw a blaze of rage, then it was gone. Marsia laughed, wagged her finger at him. “Not a bad color on me, actually. We’ll see how long I’ll be wearing it, Agent Savich.”

She sat forward suddenly, enough to make her guard twitch, but not enough to caution her. “I know you believe I was behind Veronica’s murder in the cafeteria, but I didn’t know anything about it until a guard told me. I was in the common area, speaking to that very sweet guard. Junior is what he’s called. I don’t know his last name.”

“What were you talking about?”

“There’s only one thing you talk about in Washington if it’s not politics. Football and the status of the Redskins.”