Young Writers Society

Nyssa, disguised as his lawyer, helped Peter "Viggo" Carlsen break out of jail. But now, investigators are digging into this so-called "lawyer".

To know more, read Chapter 9.1.

Reims and Jenks spent a good part of the night bent over Saint-Paul's files. For the most part, their interviews of former Saint-Paul inmates had been a bust. They had talked with people in the five other prisons Carlsen had been held in with the same lack of results. The most informative guy had been a trustee working in the library. He described Carlsen as a loner who craved books and occasionally served as a bit of a jailhouse lawyer. It was interesting, if not particularly useful.

But now that digital copies of the prison's files had been unearthed, Reims hoped they would make some progress. The visitors log had seemed like a good starting point. There was nothing in there, but it took him hours to ascertain that. Hard as it was for Reims to feel sorry for Helen’s killer. Still, every page of no visitors brought home just how alone Carlsen was.

“Anything?”

Reims raised his head at the rumble of Jenks' voice. The FBI agent stood beside him with two cups of coffee. He looked pretty exhausted himself.

“Not really. God, my head is killing me.”

Reims stretched and yawned. His eyes itched from too much reading.

“Here is magic potion to make your head right again,” Jenks said in a dry tone.

While he rarely cracked a smile, there was a very real spark of humor in him. And his coffee wasn't half bad. Reims gratefully took the mug and motioned for the other man to sit. He was surprised at how well he got along with the FBI agent, but Jenks was a dedicated professional with much the same understanding of personal space as him.

“So? Those logs?”

“Nothing.” Reims sighed. “I almost feel sorry for him. Not even his mother visited him.”

“So, we've got zilch?”

“Well, unless he planned his escape with his lawyer…”

“His lawyer?” Jenks repeated, sounding interested.

“Yeah.”

“That’s weird. I was looking at his mail and…”

“You got his mail?”

“Of course not. It’s probably six feet under. I’ve got a log of everything that went in or out. Wait.” Jenks left the room and came back carrying a stack of paper. “Look there.”

Reims blinked. It didn't qualify as light reading – and his eyes already itched. But, well…

“Alright,” he grumbled. “What am I looking at?”

“Eight years' worth of mail,” Jenks told him. “It's scary how many letters murderers receive.” Eye roll. “Believe me, we're lucky not to have to read that crap. But look at this.”

He pointed to a highlighted line.

“Arthur & Brandt?” Reims read. “Wait. That's his lawyer's firm. The lawyer herself…Wait, I've got her name somewhere. There. Ines Valdez.”

“A woman?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Nothing. Just…” Jenks shrugged. “Carlsen was attractive, wasn’t he?”

Reims nodded. Nobody could deny that. Carlsen and Pierce had made a glamorous pair. The bitter-sweet memory of Helen Defoe flirtingly asking them if they were GQ models posing as police detectives made him smile.

Poor Helen…Despite his determination to keep his professional and personal lives separated, they had bonded over their experience as parents and cops. She had been trying so very hard to be a good mother and a good spouse despite an emotionally and physically exhausting job. They had been friends – a mistake he had never made again with a partner.

“If he’s got outside help, it could be a woman,” Jenks went on. “We ran background checks on the female wardens and teachers intervening in Saint-Paul. They all checked out before we even set out for San Francisco.”

“And you didn't check out his attorney?”

“We didn't even have her name because the…”

Jenks went completely still, eyes so wide Reims could have mapped the red lines in his sclera.

“What? What is it?”

“We didn't check her out because, as far as we knew,” Jenks explained, “Carlsen's attorney was still a man called Jonathan Reese. And the reason we thought he was his lawyer was that he filed Carlsen's last motion.” In an undertone, he added, “Two and a half years ago.”

Reims gaped. “But…” He fumbled with his logs and spread the pages all over his desk. “He’s received over a dozen visits in the last two years!”

“And I counted – what? – fifty-two letters going in and out. With no legal work getting done.”

They looked at each other, then back down at the logs.

“Wait a minute,” Reims asked, and turned on his computer. “Let me check out that firm on Google.”

They found the firm's website easily enough. It looked legit, classy even. Reims called them. It took him half an hour to get a junior partner on the line. After a five-minute conversation, he hung up, very pale.

“So?” Jenks prompted.

“So, they’ve never worked for Carlsen, and they’ve never heard of Ines Valdez.” Reims picked up the logs and waved them as his – sort of – partner, “Who was that woman?”

The FBI agent took out his cell.

“What are you doing?”

“I’m calling my boss, so he’ll ask the correctional services chief for video of the visitation. We won’t have sound, but we’ll be able to put a face to the name Ines Valdez. I’ll need exact dates and hours for those visits.”

Reims nodded.

***

It was a quick and easy process. The videos were sent on Jenks' professional mail during the night. They watched them together, first thing in the morning.

“We’ve got sound for the first visit. They met in the standard visitation room. Look.”

Jenks started playing the video on his laptop. Four simultaneous pictures of one gloomy visitation room filled the screen. Two showed the opposite sides of a scratched bulletproof glass. The others showed both corridors leading to the boots.

A prison guard led “Ines Valdez” into the room through the visitors' corridor, a hand at the small of her back like he might have to catch her. The man’s attitude tipped Reims off before he could see her face. He watched people for a living and he knew one woman who inspired that kind of solicitude in men.

He refused to believe it up until the moment she sat in the visitors' chair.

“She looks terrified,” Jenks remarked.

It jolted Reims out of his trance. Yes, there was an expression of near-terror in those familiar eyes. The sophisticated pantsuit was new.

He opened his mouth, but Jenks, leaning close to the computer screen, asked, “Is that Carlsen? My God, he's huge…”

Now that the FBI agent pointed, Reims recognized the orange colossus being dragged down the prisoners' corridor. He looked even bigger in his prison uniform. He arrived in sight of his visitor and, for one second, he looked absolutely thunderstruck.

Well, welcome to the club.

“He wasn't expecting her.”

“Clearly.”

But Carlsen's utter stupefaction gave way to a smirk. He looked positively malicious.

“They both look scared.”

“You think he looks scared? I think he looks pissed.”

“Hush. They're talking.”

“Good afternoon, Mr. Carlsen,” she said, and her voice was one you didn’t forget.

“Afternoon, ma'am.”

Jenks mumbled, “Why are they pretending to be strangers?”

“They know they're being recorded.”

Of course, they knew. They were both professionals.

“My name is Ines Valdez. I work for Arthur & Brandt.”

“Law firm?”

“Yes. Civil rights. You know the kind, you were a cop.” Lengthy pause. “I want to represent you.”

“What do you reallywant?”

Jenks laughed quietly to himself. “Ah, he's tired of playing her game.”

“I believe you.”

Reims, gaping at the tragedy of it all, repeated, “She believes him.”

“What does she mean, do you think? That she believes in his innocence?”

“Poor kid…”

What kind of desperation could have driven such an intelligent young woman to embrace a delusion of this magnitude?

“Peter…Viggo…”

Jenks cleared his throat. Reims had to look away. The tone of her voice made him feel like he was eavesdropping on an intimate scene.

“Oh, those two know each other, that's for sure…Did you see the look in his eyes?”

“I’m ready for a change of lawyer.”

“Thank you. Thank you, Viggo. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks, once I’ve taken care of the paperwork.”

“Sure. See you, ma'am.”

Carlsen hung up. She remained seated as a guard unchained and led him away. Reims almost missed the last glance the Iceberg flitted above his shoulder as he stepped out of the room. His blue eyes were filled with questions.

Reims had his own.

“Let's print a still of her face and pass it around,” Jenks offered. “We've got to identify her.”

“I can do that for you, if you want.”

“You know her?!”

“Sure. That’s Pierce’s girlfriend. Nyssa Malik.”

Jenks gaped at him. “Oh, shit.”

“Yeah. Aptly put.”

***

It had taken a bit of finessing to get rid of Russel Pierce long enough to hold a crisis meeting. Flores, who was completely incapable of keeping a secret, was sent on an errand. Marvici paled when Jenks briefed her and Rotwell. The marshal, on the other hand, stayed very calm.

“Didn't he say that this Malik girl hated Carlsen?” she asked.

“Love and hate,” was the Marshal's flippant reply. Reims found that annoying as hell, especially when the boy went on, “Should we assume that Pierce knew?”

“No, we absolutely shouldn't,” Reims barked. He didn't like Pierce but, in this one instance, his colleague had come by his hate honestly. “He doesn't know. He can't know.”

Jenks patted his shoulder. “We've got to make sure, Reims. You know that.”

Reims, with a little sound of frustration, sat down behind his desk again. “Fine. What do we do now?”

“We need an excuse to keep Pierce busy while we serve search warrants for his house, desk, gym locker, etc.”

“What about Malik?” he asked.

“I think Pierce mentioned something about her leaving for her mother's?”

Reims nodded. “Captain Levowsky should have the address on file somewhere.”

“Let's get a warrant for her phone and her finances too,” Mavrici said. “The sooner we locate her…”

They shared a long look. “Agreed.”

***

Seven hours later, Jenks and Reims were sitting in the same place watching another video of Nyssa Malik. She was alone in it, wearing jeans and a huge sweatshirt. The hair she had worn in a bun while impersonating a lawyer was now loose on her bony shoulders. A suitcase was open on the bed behind her and she was busily stuffing clothes in it.

“Hi. Wow, I feel odd recording this. I just hope I'll find the right words and the courage to tell them to your face. I overheard you on the phone this morning…” She paused, tears pooling in her eyes, sparkling and rolling down her cheeks. “I can't believe he's free. I know he would have sold his soul for two hours of freedom. I know how he feels because you’ve made me a prisoner too…” She paused again, sounding like her throat was closing on her voice. She raised two fingers to her mouth, and her sleeve slipped, revealing dark bruises on her wrist. “I’ve got proof, he helped me find proof. You can’t…can’t…you c…c…can’t…” she stammered, shaking like a leaf, her arms crossed over her chest like she could protect herself. “I deserve to be free too! I…Don't hurt me. Shit, let’s try again.”

She reached out, turned off the camera, the screen went dark. This was the shortest of all three breakup videos they had found on her hard-drive.

“What do you think?” Jenks asked.

Reims couldn't look away from the pixels that had been dark with her bruises.

“I honestly don't know,” he said, hoarsely. “I can’t imagine Carlsen just helping her out of the goodness of his heart. As for the rest…Where are Mavrici and Rotwell in their search warrants?”

“I’ve no idea. Ah, look. There they are.”

Jenks was pointing toward the door. The other two Feds were carrying boxes into the room.

“Did you find anything interesting?” Mavrici asked, lowering her box to the ground.

“Yes. Videos. What have you got?”

“Look,” she said, handing Jenks a bagged envelop.

“Where did you find this?” he asked, turning it over so he could see the addressee's name.

There was none.

“It was taped under her desk,” Mavrici replied with a shrug.

“Sounds suspicious. Is this covered in the warrant?”

“Absolutely, partner. I thought you'd want to open it yourself.”

Jenks slipped on a pair of gloves and carefully opened the evidence bag. The first item he extracted from the envelop was a key. It wasn't very self-prepossessing, as far as keys went. It was on the small side, gleaming steel, a little thick. Next, he took out a sheet of paper and unfolded it.

It read, “In case something happens to me. First National Bank. Lennox Ave branch. Account number ****-****-***-352. They will grant Captain Levowsky access.”

To know what's in Nyssa's safe, read Chapter 10.1.