Guilty Blood Read online

  Brandon had been trying to teach himself about DNA evidence through the jail’s library. There was a lot there, but it seemed to be mostly either basic science about how DNA testing worked or very complicated arguments about statistics. The science was interesting, but it didn’t seem to be very controversial. The scientific techniques used by the FBI and the California Department of Justice had been around for decades and been proven reliable in study after study. Unless the lab simply made a mistake, there wouldn’t be much for an expert to criticize.

  The statistics were a different matter. The FBI had come under fierce attacks from mathematicians who claimed that its calculations were way off. The mathematical arguments were far over Brandon’s head, but the gist of the debate appeared to be that a lot of outside experts thought that the chances of a random DNA match were much greater than the FBI admitted.

  At first, Brandon was excited by what he read. But the deeper he dug, the less promising it sounded. As far as he could tell, the debate pitted statisticians who thought the odds against a random match in the FBI’s database were in the trillions against other statisticians who thought the odds were merely in the millions. That might be a huge difference in terms of numbers, but it was no difference at all in terms of Brandon’s future. If the best his expert could say was that the odds that Brandon’s DNA matched the crime-scene sample by chance were “only” one in five million or something like that, there was no way the jury would find a reasonable doubt that he was guilty. Even from Brandon’s viewpoint, he could see that a one-in-five-million chance that he was innocent just wasn’t a reasonable doubt.

  He needed the expert to say that the crime-scene DNA came from someone other than Brandon Ames. If that wasn’t what the expert reported next week, then—

  Brandon heard the scuff of sneakers on cement behind him. An instant later, someone landed on his back.

  Brandon collapsed under his attacker’s sudden weight, and the air whooshed out of his lungs. His head hit the ground hard and spots appeared in his eyes.

  His attacker’s muscular left arm snaked around Brandon’s neck. Brandon grabbed at the arm, desperately trying to suck in a breath.

  Then the man’s heavily tattooed right hand came at Brandon’s face, holding something. Brandon grabbed the man’s right wrist at the same instant he saw what the hand was holding: a shiv—a toothbrush handle with a razor blade wedged into it.

  Terror shot through Brandon. The blade was inches from his face, and his attacker was straining to bring it closer.

  Brandon had seen inmates who had been attacked like this. Their faces were spiderwebbed with scars. Some had lost eyes or parts of ears.

  Brandon’s wrestling instincts took over. He rolled to his right, trapping his attacker’s arm under him. Ignoring the arm around his neck, Brandon jammed his thumb into the space between his attacker’s right thumb and index finger.

  The arm tightened around his neck, strangling Brandon’s air pipe and cutting the blood flow to his brain. But if he let go of the man’s wrist, the shiv would slice into his face a split second later.

  Brandon dug his thumb in as hard as he could. He saw the man’s grip loosen a fraction. Brandon grabbed the shiv just below the blade and pulled.

  It slipped free! Now Brandon was the one who was armed. But he would pass out in seconds if he couldn’t get out of the headlock.

  Brandon drew the blade across his opponent’s exposed right wrist, putting as much weight and muscle behind the cut as he could. The blade sliced deeply, cutting artery and tendon.

  Blood sprayed everywhere. It covered Brandon and blinded him for an instant. The man screamed and let go of Brandon’s neck.

  Brandon sucked in a huge breath of cold air. His head cleared, and he rolled free—but he kept his grip on the man’s right arm, now slick with blood. Brandon jerked the arm down as he pushed himself up, throwing his opponent back to the ground.

  Brandon staggered to his feet while his opponent was still on his knees, grabbing his damaged wrist. Brandon slammed a heavy punch into the base of the man’s shaved skull, putting his full weight behind the blow. The man collapsed to the ground and lay still in a growing pool of blood.

  Brandon whirled around, the shiv still gripped in his right fist. Three Los Reyes members were running toward him. They slowed, and shock came into their faces. Mo remained huddled against the wall.

  Adrenaline and rage coursed through Brandon’s veins. “Come on!” he shouted at the Los Reyes thugs.

  They stopped a few yards away, staring at him. He stood in a fighter’s stance—feet apart, slightly crouched, hands out front, knife ready.

  “I’ll kill all of you,” he growled at them. “Right here, right now.”

  “Freeze!” someone shouted behind him. He heard running footsteps, but didn’t take his eyes off his enemies.

  A guard appeared in his peripheral vision. “Drop it, Ames!” Other guards rushed to get between him and the Los Reyes gangsters.

  Brandon did as ordered, then allowed himself to be led away. His muscles quivered with strain and spent adrenaline. A jumbled mix of emotions rushed up in him and he felt a strange urge to cry. But he couldn’t, not with hundreds of eyes on him.

  The yard was full of prisoners now, and they were all staring at him—or at the spot behind him where he had left his opponent on the ground—murmuring to each other in low voices.

  CHAPTER 31

  Wente was a sprawling old winery nestled in a little dale in the Livermore hills, a few miles from Nate’s house. Jessica loved it, but it was pricey and she hadn’t been there since Tim died.

  The winery didn’t have a bar, but it did have two restaurants and a tasting room—and Jessica happened to know the manager of the tasting room. She had a quiet word with him, and a bottle of champagne and two flutes appeared at the end of the tasting bar.

  Her phone rang. She took it out of her purse and glanced at it. The number was local, but she didn’t recognize it. She decided not to answer. If it was important, whoever it was could leave a message. She dropped the phone back into her purse, then fished out her wallet. But when she looked up, the manager was running Nate’s card through the scanner.

  “I said this was my treat,” she objected.

  He smiled and shook his head. “You’re going to have to be faster than that if you want to pay.”

  He filled the flutes and handed her one. She lifted it. “To good news.”

  He tapped his glass against hers with a soft chime. “And good friends.”

  She took a sip of the champagne. It was delicious—light, fresh, and just a little sweet. It was like drinking the sunshine from a bright spring day.

  Jessica discovered that she was happy. The feeling caught her a bit by surprise. Over the past few months, she had felt a wide range of emotions. But she’d rarely been happy since Brandon’s arrest.

  She breathed in the moment, savoring it. She wanted to capture every detail and preserve it in her memory—the way the little columns of bubbles rose in the champagne glass in her hand, the warm colors that the sunlight brought out in the old wood of the bar, the glimmer of hope in her heart that made everything feel fresh and full of promise, the affectionate glint in Nate’s bright-blue eyes as he looked at her over the rim of his glass.

  Nate. Jessica had always liked him, both because of his own merits and because he was Tim’s best friend. But they hadn’t really been close until Tim died. Then Nate had become the rock she clung to in the surging sea of grief—someone who knew Tim well, knew what it was like to lose a spouse, and knew what needed to be done with the hundreds of loose ends left by Tim’s death. He had been there for her, just like he was here for her now.

  A warm wave swept over her. She wanted to hug him and somehow find words adequate to tell him how grateful she was to have someone like him in her life. She wanted to wipe away the lonely sadness she had seen in his face back at his house. She wanted to—

  Nate’s phone rang. His eyebrows went
up when he saw the number. “It’s Sofia,” he announced. “I’m surprised to hear from her on a Saturday.”

  “You should take it,” Jessica said.

  He tapped the phone and held it to his ear. “Hello, Sofia. What can I do for you?”

  He listened in silence for several minutes. His face went from relaxed to shocked to grim. The champagne vanished from Jessica’s soul, replaced by a cold fog of fear. This was about Brandon. It must be. And it was serious, or Sofia wouldn’t be calling Nate’s cell phone on a Saturday. Was Brandon hurt? Dead? She thought back to the call she’d received a few minutes ago—had that been the jail calling her with the news?

  Nate nodded. “I understand. I’ll be there in thirty minutes. Less if I can.”

  He paused, listening. Then he said, “She’s actually right here. I’ll tell her.” He turned off the phone and took a deep breath. “There’s been an incident with Brandon. A fight. He’s all right, but the other inmate died. They started questioning Brandon, but he insisted on having a lawyer present, which was smart of him. I’ll go over now.”

  CHAPTER 32

  Brandon sat in the holding cell, staring at the wall. A lump on the side of his head ached and a pulled muscle in his neck fired off a jolt of pain whenever he moved his head. Other than that, he was fine. Physically, anyway.

  After the fight, the guards took him straight to the infirmary. As soon as the doctor realized that the blood covering Brandon wasn’t his own, he handed Brandon off to a nurse and went back to his other patient.

  The nurse asked Brandon a few questions and checked him with rubber-gloved hands. Then the guards took him to a shower room he hadn’t seen before and had him disrobe and throw his clothes into a trash can marked with a large red biohazard symbol. Then they gave him a special disinfectant soap and he took a long, thorough shower under their watchful gaze. When he was done, they gave him a fresh set of clothes and watched silently while he dressed.

  They took him to an interview room, where two guards he didn’t know waited for him. With little preamble, they started peppering him with questions about the fight and Hector Garcia, who must have been the Los Reyes thug who attacked him.

  Brandon had felt like he was sleepwalking, but he was awake enough to say he wanted to talk to his lawyers. That promptly ended the interrogation.

  And then they brought him here. The door had closed behind him an hour ago—and nothing had happened since then. He guessed that they were parking him here until Sofia or Nate showed up. But he didn’t know. And he had difficulty caring. He had much bigger worries.

  They had nearly gotten to him. If Garcia had been just a fraction faster or stronger or luckier, Brandon would have been the one left in a pool of blood. And all he did to trigger this attack was kidney punch Tony Cruz. What would happen now that he had spilled Los Reyes blood? Brandon wondered whether he would live long enough to reach his trial date.

  The embers of anger had burned in his heart ever since his arrest. They now flared to life again. Los Reyes had come out on the losing end both times they had crossed him so far, and he resolved to make sure that kept happening. If they killed him, he would take as many of them with him as possible.

  And what had happened to Mo? His celly was supposed to warn him if Los Reyes attacked, but he hadn’t made a sound. He must have seen Garcia coming. The yard had been mostly empty, and Garcia would have had to cross most of it to reach them. No way Mo could have missed that.

  Which meant Mo probably betrayed him.

  The cold realization sank in. His celly—a man he almost considered a friend—sold him out to Los Reyes. That explained why they didn’t have anyone watching him today. They didn’t need anyone because they had Mo.

  Brandon wondered bitterly what Mo’s thirty pieces of silver had been. A gallon of “wine”? A bag of pot? Money? Brandon flexed his fists and resolved to find out after lights-out that night.

  The lock on the door rattled and the door clanged open. A burly guard stepped inside. “All right, Ames. Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER 33

  Nate and Sofia sat side by side at a table in an interview room, their notepads in front of them, facing the door. It opened and Brandon entered. Nate was surprised by the change in him since the PX. It wasn’t anything obvious—Brandon didn’t have any new scars or tattoos. His blond hair was a little longer and more ragged than Nate recalled, and his perpetual tan had faded some. It was his eyes, and the way he carried himself. There was a hardness and repressed anger that Nate hadn’t seen before. Brandon had always been big and muscular, but he had never seemed menacing. Until now.

  They rose as Brandon walked toward them. Nate went around the table and clasped Brandon by the shoulder. “We’re so glad you’re okay, Brandon. I was with your mother when I got the call from Sofia. She was very worried. She’ll be relieved when I tell her I’ve seen you with my own eyes and you’re all right.”

  Emotion flickered in his eyes. “How’s Mom doing?”

  “She’s fine,” Nate said. “Concerned about you, of course, but doing well otherwise. In fact, she’s been helping Sofia and me with your case.”

  Brandon relaxed a little and smiled. For a moment he looked like his old self. “I should’ve known she’d find a way to get involved.”

  “Indeed.” Nate gestured toward a chair. “Please have a seat,” he said as he stepped back to his side of the table.

  “They want to ask you some more questions, but we can talk first,” Sofia said when they were all sitting down. “Could you tell us what happened?”

  Brandon nodded. “Sure. I was in the yard doing push-ups, and the next thing I knew, this guy jumped on my back and started trying to cut my face with a shiv.” He glanced at Nate. “That’s a sort of knife—a razor blade in a toothbrush handle.” His voice was steady but held a note of anger.

  Nate stared in shock. That’s what happened? The jail officials had only said there was a fight between Brandon and another inmate, which resulted in the other inmate’s death. This sounded like attempted murder. And yet Brandon described it in a terse, matter-of-fact tone and seemed more mad than upset. What was jail doing to him?

  “What . . . what happened next?” Nate asked.

  “I pinned his arm and got the shiv away from him. He had his other arm around my neck, so I cut his wrist—the one on the pinned arm. Then he let me go. I punched him and he went down.” Brandon paused and the tough facade cracked for an instant. “There was a lot of blood.”

  Nate tried to imagine what it would be like to be trapped in a life-and-death struggle like that. He failed. “Was that the end of the fight?”

  Brandon shrugged one shoulder. “Pretty much. Some other guys came running toward me, but the guards showed up and got between us. No one threw any punches or tried anything else after that.”

  Sofia jotted a note on her pad. “So it was totally unprovoked? You didn’t say or do anything to him before the attack?”

  “No. I didn’t even look at him. I’d never met him before today.”

  “Any idea why he jumped you?” she asked.

  “Because he’s Los Reyes,” Brandon said, his face hardening again.

  “Huh.” She tapped her pen against her pad for a moment. “You obviously didn’t join the Tigres, so why would Los Reyes be after you?”

  Brandon looked down at the table and fidgeted. “I got in a shoving match with a guy at the commissary. He tried to steal some Goldfish from me and I wouldn’t let him. It turns out he was the Los Reyes shot caller.”

  She cocked an eyebrow at him. “They tried to cut you up over a shoving match?”

  “I may have punched him,” Brandon admitted.

  She sighed. “Well, it’s in the past. I’m just glad you’re not hurt. But this could be a problem. They could charge you with murder over this.”

  “Murder?” Brandon’s eyes went round with shock. “He’s dead?”

  “Yeah, they didn’t tell you?” Sofia shook her head. “They must’ve b
een planning to drop that on you later in the investigation, to rattle you and maybe get you to say something they could use against you.”

  “But why would they do that?” Nate asked in surprise. “Why try to charge him? It sounds like a clear case of self-defense to me.”

  “Me too,” she said. “This happened in the yard, so I’m assuming there’s video from the surveillance cameras. We’ll need to see what that shows. But they may charge you anyway. This is embarrassing to the jail. They’ll be mad about it and looking for someone to blame.” She nodded toward Brandon. “You’re an obvious candidate. By the way, were you armed?”

  “I had a razor blade in my shoe,” he admitted. “But I never used it.”

  “Did the guards find it?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s not good,” Sofia said. “I understand why you were carrying, but it helps them argue that this was a mutual thing—you and the other guy were looking for an opportunity to fight, so it wasn’t really the guards’ fault that they couldn’t stop you.”

  “He’s dead,” Brandon said again, the words no longer a question. His face was slack and his voice almost childlike with shock.

  “Try not to think about it,” Nate said. “Focus on other things until we see the tape. That will tell us whether this is a case of self-defense. It certainly sounds like it, based on your description.”

  Brandon nodded stoically, his tough facade back in place. “I’ve got bigger worries.”

  “You mean that Los Reyes will come after you again?” Sofia asked.