Middle Of Nowhere

   "Erased?" Boldt inquired of a confused warden. He

and Daphne exchanged glances, and he could see her concern as well.

   "To my knowledge," the man said, "the system does not allow it. You can't erase any information from the private commerce database. That's one of the stipulations. Just in case something like this ever happened."

   To Daphne, Boldt stressed, "We need Flek to implicate whoever was doing these burglaries. If that guy was not at Sanchez's . . . if he never hit Sanchez's place . . . if we can confirm it . . . prove it . . . then maybe we have the ammo we need to go knocking on I.I.'s door and get a look at whatever they know."

   She nodded, though her concern, like his, was palpable.

   To the warden, Boldt said, "We need to speak to Flek right now!"

* * *

The prison's interrogation room still smelled of the glue used to fasten down the vinyl flooring. It ranked as the cleanest interrogation room Boldt had ever seen. Better than even the FBI or BATF. A video camera looked down on the occupants. Built into the wall was a twin cassette tape recorder that kept track of every spoken word, every sound. The twin cassette concept, borrowed from the Brits, ensured that no one could later edit the content of the interrogation to fit his needs; one tape went with the officer in charge, the other was filed in a vault accessed only by the warden— a failsafe against corruption.

   David Ansel Flek wore the demeaning zebra suit, his number EJC-42 on a patch sewn onto the right breast pocket and on another that ran shoulder to shoulder across his back. "Forty-two," the guards called him, never using names, never personalizing or humanizing the process. A team of privately contracted criminal psychiatrists had advised Etheredge Corporation on how to treat the prisoners in order to maintain discipline and keep peace, so it came as something of a shock to the man in the jumpsuit when Boldt and Matthews addressed him by his Christian name. It also served to mark the two as outsiders—exactly as Matthews had advised Boldt.

   "Who are you?" the man inquired. Flek's boyish face and blond surfer-dude hairstyle, his blue eyes and white teeth reminded Boldt of one of the Beach Boys, or Tab Hunter in a Fort Lauderdale movie. His smallish frame had been beefed up in the gym. Boldt knew the ordeal such looks suffered in any prison. They called them babes, wives, soapies—the young men forced to lie on their stomachs for the rulers of the pen. But to his surprise, Boldt did not see the steely-eyed resentment he associated with the abused. The more he studied Flek, the more he believed the man had somehow escaped the role of girlfriend, either a credit to Etheredge's management of the facility, or testimony to the ruthlessness of Flek himself.

   "We're your only hope," Daphne said.

   Boldt clarified, "Your only hope, unless you like it here."

   "Unless you're thinking of turning fifty in here," Daphne said. Dates or age had a way of shaking up any inmate—the passage of time was the only god in such places, the only redeemer. According to his file, the man was twenty-nine years old, and Boldt's comment seemed to hit home.

   "What's it about?" he asked.

   "The harder you make us work for it," Boldt informed him, "the fewer years we trim off what's going to be added to your sentence. You want to get out of here by forty? Thirty-five? Then don't play dumb."

   His ice blue eyes searched them both. They favored Daphne, and for a little too long.

   Boldt cautioned, "There are no second chances, Flek. We leave, and we take twenty years of your life out the door with us."

   "I requested my public defender," the man reminded.

   "And she's on her way, as I understand it," Boldt said. "You know how busy they are."

   "So we wait," Flek said confidently.

   Boldt and Matthews exchanged glances. Daphne spoke to the inmate. "I'm not advising you one way or the other, David—"

   "Ansel," he corrected a little too quickly.

   "You're somewhat new to the system," she said. He winced; he didn't want to be told that. "We've seen your file. First offense, light sentence. They were lenient with you. You're lucky in that regard, as I'm sure you found out once you took up residence here."

   "You have a little over a year left to go," Boldt reminded him. "So why add ten to twenty to that?"

   "Our point is," Daphne continued, "that going the attorney route is your legal right, and even if we could help you out here, we can't do anything to stop you from exercising that right. And, in fact, you've already invoked that right, which is perfectly acceptable to us, though in my opinion not in your best interest."

   In a calm voice, he answered Daphne. "But you are in my best interest? A couple of cops? I don't think so."

   "Ten to twenty," Boldt informed the man.

   Daphne echoed, "You need to be thinking about turning fifty here at Etheredge."

   Boldt reached across the table and forced the man's hands up in plain view.

   Flek said, "I was scratching, is all," still not breaking his eye contact with Daphne.