Braving the Boneyard

Chapter 3-1

3

We’d start with me interviewing our client and one of his codefendants, Kevin Moore. Roger’s assistant had already made me appointments at West Florida Correctional for the next morning. (“If you’d said no, we would have canceled,” Ralph justified.) I spent the evening familiarizing myself with the case, reading depositions and highlights from the codefendant’s trial transcript.

With the exception of the poor victim’s injuries, it read like the Keystone Cops (Keystone Robbers?). Jerome Adams and his friend Kevin Moore had gone to rob a convenience store while Trevor Rose waited in the car. Our client Jerome had opened fire, but he was a lousy shot, firing three times and striking the store owner once in the shoulder. A couple of uniforms in a patrol car were driving by just as the shots were fired and apprehended Kevin and Jerome on their way out. Meanwhile, Trevor Rose was as lousy a driver as Jerome was a marksman. Trevor had sped away when he heard the shots and struck a parking meter a couple of blocks from the store. Stunned from the impact, he’d surrendered to a nearby parking enforcer, mistaking him for a police officer. The uniformed man had had enough composure to order Trevor to lie facedown on the ground before Trevor noticed he didn’t carry a gun (or have arrest authority).

A relative newcomer to the criminal justice system, Trevor Rose had just a couple of misdemeanors to his name (not surprisingly, driving offenses). The wheel man had pled out on the robbery, testifying against Kevin Moore in return for five years. Ultimately, Kevin was found guilty and sentenced to fifteen years. Trevor’s trial testimony hadn’t done much to hurt Moore (he’d testified that he didn’t know that Jerome had been armed and couldn’t say if Kevin had known). It would be far more damaging to Jerome since it established Jerome as the mastermind of the enterprise.

I’d interview Jerome and Kevin at West Florida Correctional, but Trevor was being held at Latham Correctional Institution. The State had listed him as a witness against Jerome, so for now he was off limits to us. Roger would argue for another deposition, but since Jerome’s previous counsel had already done one, whether we actually got to speak with Trevor pretrial was in the judge’s discretion.

My own Cecil is generally my vehicle of choice for day trips. However, there was a chance I’d be stuck out of town overnight, so I picked up a rental car instead and set out bright and early. My first visit at WFC was with Jerome at nine-thirty, late enough for any fog (and its accompanying security headaches) to dissipate. I arrived ahead of time, so I spent a few minutes reviewing my notes and adding to a list of people I needed to track down.

It was sunny but not hot, a beautiful late fall day in north Florida, even in a parking lot. Coincidentally, it was a parking lot I hadn’t set foot (or wheels) in since I’d nearly been shot there this summer, setting a corruption investigation in motion that had shuffled the personnel deck at WFC pretty well. No one had gone to trial yet, but I kept hoping. Would I recognize anyone, and more importantly, would any of the staff recognize me? Only one way to find out.

I made it through security as quickly as I ever do, so that was good. And no one seemed to dislike me any more than usual. (After all, I was a defense investigator.) Still, it was eerie. No matter how many times I’ve set foot inside prisons, I always feel some anxiety, and today my overactive monkey-brain was not helping. Did the woman behind glass at the entrance do a double-take when she saw my name on the sign-in sheet, or was I being paranoid? The man at the first checkpoint was coldly polite: his habitual state, or a combination of resentment and wariness of a known enemy?

I’d dressed with more care than I typically do, taking comfort in the rustle of my full trousers and the hard, impersonal staccato of my chunky, high-heeled boots on the buffed floors. The deliberate sounds helped maintain my calm. Once I’d passed through the prison doors, my state of mind was the only thing I could control. That and my pace, which, in turn, determined that of my uniformed escorts.

After multiple checkpoints and long hallways, I found myself in a small room, no windows except one in the door, and no furniture except two chairs separated by a basic wooden table that looked cast off from an old schoolhouse. I flipped a few pages into a new legal pad, uncapped my pen and waited, apparently relaxed with my legs crossed, resisting the urge to doodle. Soon there was a guard at the door, escorting a prisoner into my room. He was black, about my age, lean in prison blues, and his mouth curled in one of those perpetual half-smiles that didn’t meet his eyes, the kind that desperately tell the world I know something you don’t, and it’s gonna kill you. His hands were cuffed, with the cuffs hooked into a waist chain, so I stood and stretched my hand across the table to meet his briefly before the guard pushed him impatiently into his chair.

“Remember,” the guard said, squeezing the prisoner’s shoulder before leaving the room without uttering a word to me.

“What was that about?” I asked.

“Nothing. Looks like somebody put you in your place,” he said, bending his neck forward and crooking his elbow to point at his cheek.

And it begins. Guess I should have worn makeup to hide the shiner. “Right before I put him in his. On the floor. You’re Jerome Adams?”

“That’s what they tell me. And you must be my new attorney, the one my mom got.”

“Sydney Brennan,” I said. “I’m an investigator, working with your attorney, Roger Weber. As you know, we’re running up against the clock, so I’m not sure how often I’ll get in here to see you, but I wanted to touch base. Let you know what we’re doing.”

“Investigator, huh?” He took his time looking me up and down. I held my arms still, resisting the urge to cross them over my chest when his eyes lingered. “You gonna f**k the information out of people?”

I shook my head. “Now, see? Why you wanna be like that? Here I am, the only chance you’ve got at not being stuck in prison for the rest of your life. Why do you wanna antagonize me?”

He shrugged. “Sorry,” he said, but he didn’t sound it. “Reflex, I guess. So what’s your master plan for getting me out of here?”

“First thing I’m going to do is see Kevin Moore, right after you’re done harassing me. We’re also hoping to take another shot at your old buddy, Trevor Rose, but I wouldn’t hold my breath on that.”

“Trevor Rose was never my buddy. Wish I’d never seen that motherfucker. Bad luck. Kevin’s okay, but he ain’t gonna talk to you.”

“Then make him talk to me.”

I slid my legal pad and pen across the table, hoping the guard wasn’t watching us. Guards can get twitchy about inmates with pens, especially when you don’t give them a heads-up first. Jerome shifted in his seat, trying to get enough slack to write awkwardly with his cuffed hands. I watched him write, but couldn’t read his handwriting upside down from across the table. He finally finished, set the pen back on the pad and nudged it over toward me.

Kevin,

The red-headed b***h is with me.

Jerome

It was going to be a long trial.