Middle Of Nowhere

   Daphne allowed the facility's forced air system to account for the only sound in the room. It swallowed the three of them. She asked, "Maybe you want to put the idea of an attorney aside for a moment and at least listen to our offer."

   "What can it hurt to listen?" Boldt asked.

   "So talk," Flek said.

   Boldt felt a minor victory. He knew from the man's file that Flek had graduated from junior college, and decided to approach him in a businesslike manner. Boldt informed him, "We'd like to start with the phone solicitations you made and then continue on to the sub sequent pay phone calls made to the cell phone based in Washington."

   Daphne added, "The more details you provide . . . the more they prove out for us . . . the stronger voice we'll have in your sentence recommendation, which for you translates to fewer years the judge tacks on to your time here."

   "No matter what, you hold out on us and you're looking at more time," Boldt explained, "including the possibility of accessory charges to a felony assault. So the smart money says cooperate before the attorney arrives and screws it all up."

   "Wasting your time," Flek told him, his words spitting across the table. He motioned toward Daphne, "I enjoy the scenery. But all the small talk I could do without. I don't have a clue what you're talking about." What she knew about his background didn't jibe with the man in that chair, making her psychologist side immediately suspicious. He was hiding behind his inmate persona. Why?

   "We have the phone logs," Boldt countered. "The phone solicitations are all tracked on computer. The pay phone calls to the cellular number—we've got those too. Are you dumber than you look, or what?"

   "I'm represented by a public defender," he said. "All inquiries should go through her."

   "What happens in places like this," Daphne said, meeting eyes with him, "is you get tunnel vision. You get so you can only think like everyone else thinks. And the everyone else I'm talking about are not exactly the cream of the crop, you know? They're losers. You start to think like a loser. Don't be a loser, Ansel," she said, switching names. "We're talking about adding twenty years to your time in here. You'll be forty-nine years old before you're eligible for parole."

   The man's nostrils flared and his eyes shone wetly. He repeated, "All inquires should go through my public defender."

   "You don't win anything," she pleaded, "by playing tough."

   Flek shook his head.

   Boldt asked the man, "Why would you willingly add twenty years to your time here? You answer a half dozen questions and maybe we just walk out of here as if none of this ever happened? You can't be that stupid."

   "We wait for my attorney."

   Boldt stood from his chair. Daphne followed his lead. "Wrong answer," Boldt said.

   The events of the next few hours unfolded in a way that he never would have expected.

C H A P T E R

29

Boldt's official complaint, which he filed with the Colorado Department of Corrections, clearly touched off a nerve. It took the spotlight in news reports—politicians quickly attempting to distance themselves from state-sanctioned phone solicitation programs involving inmates. At first it seemed nothing more than electionyear candidates seizing an opportunity to grandstand. How else could Boldt's one-page report have mushroomed into a media feeding frenzy? No doubt some clerk had leaked the complaint within minutes of its filing. That leak had spread through media, and the media's subsequent outrage had caught fire when combined with the ulterior motives of politicians seeking reelection.

   By the time Boldt and Daphne returned to the hotel at mid-day, a half dozen press and radio reporters were already waiting for them in the lobby.

   Boldt and Daphne issued, "No comment," pushing toward the elevators.

   When they returned to the lobby thirty minutes later to check out, the reporters had been joined by two television crews, three state representatives, the staff of a United States senator, and two mayoral aides. The hotel had requested and received crowd control from the Denver police—two of whom pressed through the reporters to help Boldt and Daphne reach the registration desk.

   The shouting from the reporters was nearly all the same: "Is it true that inmates at Etheredge's Jefferson County facility were engaged in a phone sales campaign?" "Do you know who authorized such a campaign?" "Has the governor had any comment, to your knowledge?" "Is it true that inmates conducted crimes from within the privately operated prison?"