Dead Secret (13 page)

Chapter 20

Had she been feeling better and had more time, Diane would have driven the five hours from Rosewood to Birmingham. But she didn’t have the time, nor could she face the traffic through Atlanta or driving for that many hours.

The flight was not a lot better. It was short, but turbulent. The five-year-old sitting behind her kicked her seat the whole way. She turned around once to say something to the mother, but saw that she was young, alone and barely holding herself together. Diane smiled at her and said nothing. By the time the plane set down at the Birmingham airport, Diane was nauseated.

From the air, downtown Birmingham reminded Diane of one of those 1950s photographs of any steel-mill city, though the furnaces were gone now, along with all the enterprises connected with them. Everything about Birmingham was downsized and laid-back compared to Atlanta. The airport was postage stamp-size compared to the Atlanta airport, and not nearly as hectic. Diane had heard it said in Georgia that Birmingham was 120 miles and fifty years away from Atlanta. Alabamians said that the road to hell ran through Atlanta. Truth on both sides, she thought. For her personally, it was like a trip back in time.

She collected her bag from the overhead compartment and walked with the other passengers down the long passageway past security to where she hoped to see Susan waiting for her. She searched the crowd for her face.

“Diane. Over here.”

Susan stood in back of the waiting crowd, waving her arm. She looked just as Diane remembered her—conservative tailored dress, shoulder-length brown hair parted on the side with the ends turned under. A contrast in every way to Diane’s slacks, blazer and short-cut hair.

Diane walked around the escalators taking passengers to the luggage pickup and over to her sister. The hug was perfunctory, their cheeks barely touching. Diane felt awkward. She wondered if Susan dreaded the arguments that would come as much as she did.

“Susan, I hope you didn’t have to wait long. We were late taking off.”

“No. I had to be here anyway to bring the kids to the airport. We sent them to stay with Gerald’s sister until this is cleared up.”

Diane was disappointed. “I’m sorry I missed them.”

Susan’s mouth stretched into what she probably thought was a smile. “They wanted to see you too. Especially Kayla. She’ll be starting college next fall.” Susan fished an envelope from her purse. “She wrote you a letter and wanted me to give it to you. She was hoping maybe next summer to get a job at the museum.”

Diane smiled, glad to have something she could offer, glad her niece wanted to work at the museum. “Sure. There are several jobs she’d like. Is she wanting a museum career?”

“No, she wants to be an archaeologist. Gerald and I are trying to talk her into something more useful, but kids can be so impractical.” Susan turned toward the escalators. “Baggage claim is downstairs.”

“I have everything in here,” Diane said, holding up her duffel bag.

“Is that all? We need you to stay awhile and help us with this.”

Susan continued talking as they walked out of the airport terminal and crossed the street to short-term parking. “I’m glad to get out of there. I just don’t like being in the airport longer than I have to. There’s all kinds of people in there that I don’t like near me.”

Diane let that pass. “I’ll stay as long as I’m needed. I’m hoping we can get Mother out quickly.”

“We all hope that, but Alan says—” Susan stopped suddenly. “This is my car.”

She pushed the remote and unlocked the door of a Lincoln Town Car. Diane put her bag in the rear seat and buckled herself in the front seat.

“I have an appointment with a criminal lawyer this afternoon,” said Diane. “I thought the two of us could go.”

Susan was backing out of the parking space, but stopped abruptly, throwing Diane against her seat back, hurting her arm.

“Shit, Susan, what are you doing?”

“Mother is not a criminal!”

“No, she isn’t. But she is in the criminal justice system, and we have to get her out of it. That calls for a criminal lawyer. Let’s not argue about this.”

Susan drove the winding circular exit lane through the parking deck out to the street. “We thought with your contacts in the State Department you could help learn what this is about. Have you called them?”

“No. We first need to find out why she’s being held. The State Department probably has nothing to do with it.”

Susan sighed heavily. Diane hated that sound.

“And I suppose you have a theory?”

“Yes, a couple. I’ve talked to a friend who’s a detective in the Metro Atlanta Fraud and Computer Forensics Unit. He believes she may be a victim of identity theft.”

“That’s stupid. Her credit cards weren’t stolen.”

“No, but her identity may have been. It’s like, say I’m caught for shoplifting, and when I’m arrested I give them your name and Social Security number. I could just not show up for trial and they would go looking for you.” A scenario that at the moment sounded rather appealing to Diane. “I believe something like that may have happened to Mother.”

Susan didn’t say anything, and Diane knew that meant her sister found her argument persuasive but didn’t want to admit it.

“Susan, we can go at it from both angles. Alan can follow his theory, I’ll follow mine, and maybe between us we can get Mother out. This isn’t a contest. The goal is to get Mother back.”

“That sounds reasonable,” admitted Susan. “You said on the phone that you had a medical procedure. How are you?”

“I’m doing okay. A little sore. I was stabbed in the arm.”

Susan looked over at her, then back to the road. “Well, if you insist on dealing in crime . . .”

Diane had decided on the plane that the best way to get through this visit with her family was to say as little as possible and stay focused on the task at hand.

“I was at the funeral for one of Rosewood’s most prominent citizens,” Diane said.

“I read about that in the paper.” Susan gasped. “They said a student was stabbed.”

“That’s true. I didn’t know I was also stabbed until later. The, uh, knife was very sharp.”

“God, what’s the world coming to?” said Susan. She turned a corner sharply, and Diane held on to the handle above the door for support.

“That’s what we’ve been asking ourselves,” Diane said, keeping her mouth firmly closed about Susan’s driving.

Diane’s sister drove to Mountain Brook, one of the wealthy suburbs of Birmingham populated by new money in old mansions that were layered on wooded hillsides above narrow, winding quiet streets whose curbs were lined with expensive automobiles. Her parents’ home was a large rock-faced structure that looked like an English manor. Susan lived next door in an equally large brick home built a century ago by a steel tycoon. She drove up the steep, winding drive to the garage and parked the car.

“You’ll be staying at Mother and Dad’s. I’ve made up the guest room for you. We’re all having dinner there this evening—including Alan. I hope that’s not a problem.”

“No. Whatever all of you feel comfortable with.”

Susan gave another one of her exasperated sighs. “It’s not about our comfort. Alan is a friend of the family and is Mother and Dad’s lawyer.”

“That reminds me,” said Diane. “We have an appointment in an hour and a half. Do you want to go with me, or do you want me to handle it?”

“I’ll go with you. Like you said, going at it from two directions won’t hurt. Dad went in briefly to the firm today. He’ll be home in an hour or two.”

Diane got out of the car and grabbed her bag from the rear seat. “I’ll just freshen up a bit and we can get started.”

Daniel Reynolds’s office was over the mountain in downtown Birmingham. They made it with five minutes to spare and were ushered straight into his office by a young woman. Reynolds was sitting at a large dark-wood library table stacked with files. His desk was much older, with scrollwork around the sharp edges. Both looked antique. The desktop held pens, a pad of paper and a telephone. All the office walls were lined with glass-enclosed bookshelves filled with law books. There was no computer visible in his office.

Reynolds himself looked like he belonged out West working cattle. Not because of what he wore—he had on a silver-gray dress shirt and gray suit pants with dark gray suspenders, his suit coat thrown over the back of his chair. It was his rugged face that made him look like a cowboy, that and his wiry steel-gray hair. He stood and held out his hand. Diane and Susan shook it in turn and introduced themselves.

“One of you is from Georgia?” He gestured to two chairs.

“That’s Diane,” said Susan. “She lives in Rosewood, Georgia.” She sat down, holding her purse in her lap, and fidgeted with the strap. “I live in Mountain Brook. My husband is in business with my father. They have a brokerage firm here in Birmingham—Fallon and Abernathy. Diane . . . Diane has several jobs.”

Diane suppressed a smile. Susan made it sound like she worked at McDonald’s during the week and Waffle House on weekends. “I’m director of the RiverTrail Museum of Natural History, as well as the director of the Rosewood Crime Lab and the Aidan Kavanagh Forensic Anthropology Lab.”

“You do indeed have several jobs. There’s got to be a story in that.”

“There is. A long one.”

Diane and Reynolds smiled at each other. Susan was clearly out of her comfort zone. Diane would have liked to reach out and take Susan’s hand to give her some measure of solace, but she knew the gesture would not have been welcome.

“So what can I do for you ladies?”

Susan gave Diane the I-dread-this look, but said nothing. “We’ve had a rather odd thing happen to our mother,” said Diane. “She was picked up by federal officers last Tuesday and put in prison. We are having a hard time discovering why. So far we have only speculation. The authorities have said it was for robbing a bank, but little else.”

“They suspect she robbed a bank? Could she have?”

“Mr. Reynolds, this is a woman who won’t wear white shoes after Labor Day because she thinks it’s against the law. No, she wouldn’t have robbed a bank, not now or at any time in her life.”

“She doesn’t think white after Labor Day is illegal,” sputtered Susan. “It’s just in bad taste.”

Reynolds’s homey, pleasant smile spread across his face. “I see. When does she come to trial?”

“She doesn’t get a trial,” said Susan. “They’ve already put her in prison. They said she won’t get out until her time is up.”

“Your mother is a natural-born citizen of this country?”

“Back for ten generations,” said Diane.

“Twelve generations,” said Susan.

“Then they can’t do that. If they arrested her, they have to give her a speedy trial.”

“Even with the Homeland Security laws?” asked Susan.

“Even then.”

“Well, that’s what they did. She was sent directly to prison.”

“Then there must be something else going on.”

“The family lawyer,” said Susan, “that is, the lawyer who handles their finances, thinks that she was witness to a bank robbery and is being held as a material witness as part of this Homeland Security thing.”

Reynolds nodded, then spoke directly to Diane. “Is that what you think?”

“No.” She explained in detail what she believed may have happened, including the possibility that a hacker could have been involved.

When Diane finished, Reynolds turned to Susan. “With due respect to the family attorney, I think identity theft is more likely. She didn’t get a trial because the authorities believe she’s already had her day in court. My guess would be she was picked up on a fugitive warrant.”

Susan looked deflated. “Our mother, a fugitive? This is all so embarrassing. I was supposed to have an interview with Garden Grace’s Kindergarten today. I had to cancel, and now I’m afraid that Christopher will never get in. There’s such a long waiting list, you know.”

“Kindergarten?” said Diane.

“The right kindergarten is important,” said Susan. “It gets the child off to the best start right away. I don’t know what they’ll make of this.”

“Why don’t you send him to Switzerland? They have excellent schools and a stiff language requirement. That’ll be important when he joins Dad and Gerald’s firm,” said Diane, deadpan. She immediately wished she had just bitten her tongue. This wasn’t the place to make fun of Susan.

However, Susan looked at Diane as if she were serious. “I really don’t want him that far away from home.”

Diane turned back to the attorney. “Mr. Reynolds, our mother is very much like my sister, and she is in Tombsberg Prison for Women.”

“I understand,” he said. “I’ll get on it right away. I just need to get some information from you.”

Chapter 21

Susan seemed to be more optimistic when they left Daniel Reynolds’s office. Diane noticed that the lines between her sister’s eyes were smoothed out and she didn’t look so tired. His easygoing, competent nature most likely won her over. Diane guessed that he was probably very good with juries.

They stepped from the office building onto the sidewalk. It had just started to rain. Susan had parked out on the street, so they didn’t have far to walk. They hurried to the car, and Diane slid into the passenger side and buckled her belt.

“Your car smells new.”

“It is. Gerald bought it for my birthday. Dad will probably be home by now.”

They were both quiet as Susan drove. Diane relaxed in the soft leather seat. So few road noises penetrated the passenger compartment it would be easy to lean her head back and drift off to sleep—she felt so tired. Diane closed her eyes.

“What did you mean that Mother is like me?”

Diane jerked awake. There was a tone in Susan’s voice that sounded like suspicion, like she wanted to make sure Diane didn’t have a joke with Reynolds at her expense.

“I meant that Mother isn’t the kind of person who should be in prison. He could see that you clearly aren’t the criminal type. I was trying to tell him that Mother isn’t either.”

Diane wasn’t entirely truthful. What she had wanted to convey to him was that her mother was naive, like her sister, and it was imperative that they get her out of Tombsberg Prison as quickly as possible.

“Oh.” Susan paused for a moment, intently watching the traffic. “I’m glad you’re here. Dad and I have been beside ourselves, and . . . well, frankly, I felt Alan was taking too long to get anything done about getting this mess resolved.”

Ah, the first crack in Alan’s armor. Maybe Susan would stop believing that Diane’s ex-husband had hung the moon. Diane decided to be nice, sensing that disagreement would make Susan turn around and defend him.

“Alan’s very good with finances. It’s just a different world from the criminal justice system,” Diane said. Fortunately her cell rang then, saving her from having to heap any more praise on her ex. She looked at the name on the display and smiled broadly. It was as if the sky cleared and the day was going to be sunny after all.

“Hi,” she said to Frank.

“Hey, babe, how are you doing?”

“We just saw Daniel Reynolds. I feel better about the whole thing.”

“He’s good. I’ve seen him in action—up close.” Frank chuckled; then his voice became serious. “I have some news. I looked up your mother’s arrest warrant in the federal system. It was there with her name, address and Social Security number.”

“How did you know her Social Security number?”

“I’m a detective.”

Diane could almost see him smiling on his end of the phone. “That’s right, how could I forget?” she said.

“Okay, it says she robbed the Bessemer Branch of the First Southern Bank of Birmingham on June fifteenth, 2004. She was captured just over a month later, on July sixteenth. Plea-bargained and escaped on the way to prison.”

Diane looked over at Susan. “That just didn’t happen. I’m sure Mother will know what she was doing on those dates. She keeps a diary.” Susan nodded in agreement at the mention of the diary as she stopped at a red light. “Did you find anything else?” asked Diane.

“Yes. There are several interesting things about the warrant. The dates cluster—both months start with J, all the dates are numbered in the teens. When people make things up, they tend to unconsciously stick to patterns. It’s something about the way the brain works. It won’t convince authorities there, but it’s a tell for me when I’m looking at documents. The thing that should convince the authorities, though, is that I haven’t been able to find an incident report of the robbery, a bail report, or any of a host of other paperwork that should be on file and isn’t.”

“Frank, that’s good. That’s really good, isn’t it?”

“It is. I sent the fingerprints and mug shots via e-mail to your crime lab for them to check the fingerprints—that’ll be faster than if I try to do it here—more discreet, too. David should be calling you soon with the results. I’m expecting that the fingerprint images were lifted from some felon’s file and won’t be your mother’s. I’m also betting that if they look for the actual physical paper file, there won’t be one—her record will turn out to exist only on computer.”

“This should make it easy to get her out, shouldn’t it?”

“I think Reynolds will be able to take care of it without much of a problem, provided nobody gets pigheaded, which sometimes happens when bureaucrats are told they’ve screwed up big-time.”

“Do you think they can discover who created the bogus records?”

“I don’t know. They naturally will not want me looking inside their computer system, so it will be up to their experts. The easiest way for the perp to have done this is to have someone on the inside. I’m sure they’ll be looking into that possibility.”

“I’m really grateful, Frank.”

“It was easy. No one tried to do a really slick job of this. It was just enough to get your mother picked up and sent away. She wouldn’t have even been sent to prison if they’d done the proper checks.”

“I owe you one.” She smiled into the phone as she said good-bye and hung up.

“That sounded like good news,” Susan said.

“It was. I’ll explain in a minute, but first I need to call Reynolds back.”

Just as she started to dial, her phone rang again. This time it was her crime lab.

“David?”

“Hey, Diane, how’s it going? Your arm still attached? How about your mental health? Personally, I think relatives ought to be against the law.”

“Everything’s working fine, so far,” she said.

“Frank sent me some prints. I ran them through AFIS. They belong to a Jerome Washington, who’s doing time for armed robbery of a convenience store.”

“That’s music to my ears.”

Diane looked at Susan and gave her a thumbs-up. Susan pulled off the road and parked the car.

“I need you to send the information to a lawyer here in Birmingham. I’ll get his fax number and then call you right back,” Diane said. “Did you get a chance to look at the mug shots?”

“Yup,” David said. “They’re clearly fake. The head has been glued over the background and the number has been pasted over that. Easy to see when you get down to the pixel level.”

Diane let out a sigh of relief and smiled at her sister. “What’s going on at your end?” she asked David. “How is Neva?”

“She’s really pissed. I don’t blame her. She told me she’s staying at Frank’s tonight. That’s a good idea. Someone has it in for her.”

“You and Jin keep on the lookout, too.”

“Always. As you know, I’m paranoid, and I’m training the others well.”

Diane laughed. “Thanks, David. I’ll call you back in just a minute.”

She grabbed a pen and paper from her purse, called Reynolds’s office and relayed everything that Frank and David had given her.

“What’s your fax number? My crime lab is going to fax the fingerprints and an analysis of the altered mug shots to you.”

“You work fast, don’t you, girl?” Reynolds laughed as he read her his fax number.

“It helps to know the right people,” she said.

“I hear you there. I believe we can get your mother out by tomorrow. In the meantime I’ll try to get her moved to a private cell. My assistant has gone to the bank to find out if it was actually robbed. Since apparently it wasn’t, she’ll get an affidavit from the manager. You and your sister go home and relax. I’ll call you in the morning.”

“Thanks for getting on this quickly.”

“The only thing that gets under my skin worse than injustice is stupidity, and we seem to have both here.”

When Diane finished talking to Reynolds she called David with the fax number. Susan started the car again and pulled out into the traffic. “All that sounds like good news,” she said.

“Reynolds thinks he can get Mother out tomorrow,” Diane said.

“Are you serious? Alan said that his contacts told him it could take months.”

“Alan probably approached those people by saying something like, ‘What are the chances of getting someone out of a federal facility who’s been picked up as a material witness in connection with terrorists?’ I’m sure Alan didn’t doubt his own initial analysis of the situation and framed all his questions based on that.”

Susan sighed. “That is a little like him. Gerald isn’t fond of Alan.”

Diane was completely surprised by Susan’s admission.

“Gerald has always struck me as a no-nonsense kind of guy. I imagine you have to be, in his business,” she said, trying to both agree with Susan and to not strike a chord that would set her sister off into defensive mode. It was a game she had learned to play when they were children. The way it usually played out, however, was that Diane would get tired of it and lose her temper, and all her careful phrasing was for nothing.

“Gerald is very levelheaded. I don’t know what Dad and I would have done without him these last few weeks.”

“I’m sure he and Dad are going to be relieved at the news we’re bringing home. Reynolds is going to have Mother moved to a single cell tonight.”

“What does that mean? Isn’t she in a cell now?”

“I haven’t been completely frank with you, Susan.” Diane decided to go ahead and tell Susan about the prison their mother was in. She didn’t want it to be a complete shock to Susan when her mother told them about her experience in the prison. “Tombsberg is one of the worst facilities in the country. It’s severely overcrowded and riddled with disease. Most of the inmates are housed in a dormitory—young and old together. She probably has a bunk in with several hundred others. She’ll need to disinfect herself when she gets out, and she’ll have to see a doctor. The place is rife with
Staph
infection, HIV, and sexually transmitted diseases.”

Susan sat driving in silence, her eyes never leaving the road. Diane noticed tears rolling down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” said Diane. “I didn’t want to worry you.”

“What if this has changed her?”

“It will have. Let’s just hope she can get her old self back. It’ll help if she sees a therapist. Would she be willing to do that?”

“I don’t know. Let’s not tell Dad about that. Not right now. Let’s just tell him that we think she’ll be coming home.”

“Okay. I’ll follow your lead on that,” Diane said, acknowledging that her sister understood their parents much better than she did.

They turned and drove up the winding drive of their parents’ home. A Lincoln not unlike Susan’s was parked in the garage. Next to it was a silver-blue Jaguar.

“That’s Dad’s car,” Susan said as she pulled in behind the Lincoln. “The Jag belongs to Alan.” She pulled down the visor, looked in the mirror and carefully dried her eyes. She took out a compact and lipstick from her purse, smoothed her makeup with a little powder and applied color to her lips. “We have a good life here. Why would anyone do this to us? We haven’t hurt anybody.”

“I don’t know. There’s a lot of mean people in the world. Just as I was leaving to come here, someone broke into the home of one of my employees and trashed everything she owned. I have no idea why.”

“How do people get like that? I just don’t understand.”

“I’m not sure there is any understanding it, Susan.”

Diane hadn’t visited her parents in a couple of years. Not since she had returned from South America. Not since they had shown no sympathy whatsoever when Diane’s daughter died, simply because Ariel was not born to Diane, simply because she was a native South American Indian. That memory cut through Diane like a sharp knife.

They got out of the car and she followed Susan into the house.