Blow Fly (Kay Scarpetta #12)(93)
He says nothing to the officers as he moves through another door in a wave of searing heat.
"Not even one visitor?" replies the second officer, Ron Abrams, white, slender, with thinning brown hair. "Pretty pitiful, aren't you, Monsieur Chandonne," he mockingly says.
The turnover rate among corrections officers is very high. Officer Abrams is new, and Jean-Baptiste senses that he wants to walk the infamous Wolfman out to the visitation area. New officers are always curious about Jean-Baptiste. Then they get used to him and then are disgusted. Moth says Officer Abrams drives a black Toyota SUV. Moth knows every car in the parking lot, just as he always knows the latest weather update.
The back of the tiny visitation booth is a heavy wire mesh painted white. Officer Wilson unlocks it and takes off Jean-Baptiste's cuffs and shuts him inside the booth, which has a chair, a shelf and a black phone attached to a metal cable.
"I'd like a Pepsi and the chocolate cupcakes, please," Jean-Baptiste says through the screen.
"You got money?"
"I have no money," Jean-Baptiste quietly replies.
"Okay. This time I do you a favor, since you've never had a visitor before and the lady coming in would be stupid to buy you anything, *." It is Officer Abrams who speaks so crudely.
Through the glass, Jean-Baptiste scans the sparkling-clean, spacious room, believing he doesn't need eyes to see the vending machines and everything in them, and the three visitors talking on phones to three other death-row inmates.
She is not here.
Jean-Baptiste's electrical current spikes with anger.
97
AS OFTEN HAPPENS WHEN a situation is urgent, the best efforts are foiled by mundaneness.
Senator Lord has never been the sort to hesitate in making phone calls himself. He has no egotistical insecurities and finds it is quicker to handle a matter than to explain it to someone else. The instant he hangs up at the pay phone, he returns to his car and drives north, talking on his hands-free to his chief counsel.
"Jeff, I need the number of the warden at Polunsky. Now."
Writing notes while driving in rush hour on I-95 is a special feat the senator was forced to learn years ago.
He enters a bad cell and can't hear his chief counsel.
Repeatedly calling him back, the senator gets no signal. When he does get through, he is greeted by voicemail, because Jeff is trying to call him back, too.
"Get off the phone!" the senator exclaims to no one who can hear him.
Twenty minutes later, a secretary is still trying to track down the warden.
Senator Lord senses-and this has happened before-that she isn't sure she believes the person on the other line is really Senator Frank Lord, one of the most powerful and visible politicians in the country. Usually, important people let less important people schedule appointments and make telephone calls.
Senator Lord concentrates on creeping traffic and angry drivers, and has been on hold for minutes. No one with intelligence or, better yet, a certainty of who she is talking to would dare to put him on hold. This is his reward for humility and taking care of himself efficiently, including picking up his own dry cleaning, stopping at the grocery store and even making his own restaurant reservations, despite recurring problems with ma?tre d's writing nothing down, certain the call is a prank or someone trying to trick him into giving him the best table.
"I'm sorry." The secretary finally returns. "I can't seem to locate him. He's very busy this morning because there's an execution tonight. Can I take a message?"
"What is your name?" Jodi.
"No, Jodi, you can't take a message. This is an emergency."
"Well," she hesitates, "caller ID doesn't show you're calling from Washington. I can't just yank him out of an important meeting or whatever and then find out it's not really you."
"I don't have time for this. Find him. Or, for God's sake, does the man have an assistant?"
Again, he enters a bad cell and it takes fifteen minutes before he can get through to the secretary again. She has left her desk. Another young woman answers the phone and he loses her, too.
98
I'M SICK OF THIS," Nic tells her father. She drove to the Baton Rouge Police Department's old brick building and never got above the first-floor lobby. When she said she had possible evidence about the cases, a plainclothes detective eventually appeared and just stared at the quarters in the envelope. He looked at Polaroid photographs of them on the Wal-Mart parking lot and indifferently listened to Nic's rendition and theory while he continued to glance at his watch. She receipted the coins to him, and was certain when he returned to the so-called War Room, she became the joke of the day.
"We're all working the same cases, and those *s won't talk to me. I'm sorry." Sometimes Nic forgets how much her father abhors swearing. "Maybe they know something that could help us with our cases in Zachary. But oh, no. I am welcome to hand over anything I know, but it doesn't work the same way."
"You look mighty tired, Nic," he says as they eat eggs scrambled with cheese and spicy sausage patties.
Buddy is off in make-believe land with his toys and the television.
"How 'bout some more grits?" her father asks.
"I can't. But you do make the best grits I've ever had."
"You always say that."