“State your business.”

“Detectives Cross and Sampson, MPD. We need a temporary custody order on two prisoners, Anthony Nicholson and Mara Kelly.”

“You got a letter on file?” He was already picking up the phone.

“We’ve interviewed them before,” I said. “Just a few follow-up questions and we’re out of here.”

It was worth a shot, anyway. Maybe there was a crack we could fall through.

The deputy wasn’t on the phone for long, and he shook his head at me as he hung up.

“Well, A, you don’t have a letter for today, and B, it don’t matter anyway. Your people are gone, Nicholson and Kelly both.”

“Gone?” I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. “Please tell me you mean they were transferred.”

“I mean gone, man.” He flipped open a black binder on the desk. “Yep, right here. Eleven hundred hours today. Someone named Miller posted—Jesus—full cash bonds on both of them. A quarter mil each.”

That got the attention of the other two guards, and they came to look over his shoulder. One of them whistled low. “Must be nice,” the other one said.

“Yeah, right?” the kid agreed.

This wasn’t their doing and it wasn’t their fault, but they were the ones standing in front of me.

“What is going on around here?” I said. “Nicholson is a major flight risk. Did anybody bother to check on that? He had plane tickets booked the day he was arrested!”

The young guard was staring at me now. The other two had hands on their batons. “I hear you, man, but you’ve got to step back, right now.”

I felt Sampson pulling on my shoulder. “Don’t waste your breath here, Alex. Let’s go. Nicholson and the girl are gone.”

“This is a disaster, John.”

“I know, and it’s done. Come on.”

I let him pull me away, but I would have paid good money to take a swing at someone. Tony Nicholson, for one. Or that smug lawyer Miller.

Even as we were leaving, I could hear the guards talking about their former prisoners. “Fuckin’ Richie Riches, man. They get their own breaks and everyone else’s too.”

“Yeah, right? It’s like they say, the rich just get richer, and the poor—”

“Work here.”

The last thing I heard was the guards laughing among themselves.

Chapter 86

WHAT AN INCREDIBLE circus! Whether or not it was Nicholson’s own money that got him out, he still would have needed a federal judge to sign the Form 41, and someone else even higher in the food chain to broker the deal.

The cover-up was getting broader and deeper and dirtier every day, wasn’t it? I think I was more awed than shocked by the whole thing, and worse, I suspected it wasn’t close to being over.

John and I went through the motions of running out to Nicholson’s house and then Mara Kelly’s apartment, but we found exactly what we expected.

There was yellow police tape on the doors, but no indication that anyone had been there for at least a couple of days. Even if they had been, they were long gone now. I doubted that we would ever see Nicholson or Kelly again.