“I hoped you’d disappoint me and not go back to Six D.”
“Sorry not to disappoint you.” Mace poured another cup of coffee and sat down at the table. “Saw Eddie Minor.”
“Who?”
“Small-fry huckabuck,” replied Mace. “He said your guys were down there asking questions about my case just last week.”
Beth put down the folder she was holding. “Okay, so?”
“So you still working it?”
“I work all cases where justice hasn’t prevailed.”
“Eddie said you might be pissing off some high-ups over this.”
“Come on. You’re listening to a huckabuck’s take on D.C. politics?”
“So it is political?”
“I’ve obviously forgotten that you tend to take every word literally.”
“Is that what the heightened security’s for?”
“What do you mean?”
“People gunning for you because you won’t let the case go?”
“If there are some higher-ups in town who think I’m being a little overzealous in pursuing what happened to you, they sure as hell aren’t going to order a hit on me. They have other avenues they can employ.”
“So why the extra security?”
“The number of threats against me has gone up a little. Some of them are credible, so a few extra precautions were in order. I don’t like it but I have to live with it.”
“Where are the credible threats coming from?”
“Don’t lose sleep over it. If I had a dollar for every death threat I’ve gotten over the years.”
“It only takes one, Beth.”
“I’ve got lots of folks watching my six.”
“Well, you just got one more added to the group.”
“No! You focus on you.”
“Beth—”
“Focus on you.”
“Okay, so what exactly are my options?” she asked bluntly.
“You don’t have many.”
“That wasn’t my question.”
Beth sat back, double thumbing her BlackBerry with skill. “You have a felony conviction involving a firearm and you’re now out on probation. You obviously can’t be a cop anymore with that hanging over you.”
“Someone kidnapped me, strung me out on multiple meth cocktails laced with who knows what, and forced me to participate in armed robberies while I was whacked out of my mind.”
“I know that, you know that, but that’s not what the court found.”
“The jury and the judge got steamrolled by an overzealous U.S. attorney who had it in for me and you.”
“That overzealous U.S. attorney now heads up the entire office.”
The color slipped from Mace’s face. “What!”
“A month ago Mona Danforth was named interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia by the AG.”
“U.S. attorney! Dad’s old office?”
“That’s right,” Beth said with disgust.
“The attorney general named her? I thought they had to be Senate confirmed after the president appointed them.”
“The AG gets to appoint Mona for a hundred and twenty days. If the president doesn’t name a permanent candidate and have that appointee confirmed by the Senate by then, the authority to appoint goes to the district court. The problem is, the AG, the president, and the district court folks all love Mona. So she’s a lock for the job any way you cut it. I expect the president to formally name Mona any day now. And from what I understand the Senate confirmation is a gimme.”
“I can’t believe that woman is running the largest U.S. Attorney’s Office in the country. She has the least morals of any prosecutor I’ve ever been around.”
“She’s still out there screaming that you got a sweetheart deal because of your connections. Meaning me, of course. And if we hadn’t gotten the sentence knocked down on appeal she might have been crowing instead of screaming.”
“She ought to be in prison. How many times has she looked the other way when evidence got doctored or else went missing when it didn’t cut to her side? How many times has she sat and listened to people on the stand commit perjury by feeding back the lines she wrote for them?”
Beth slid her BlackBerry in her pocket. “Proof, little sister. Hearsay won’t cut it. She’s got everyone who matters to her climb up the ladder snookered.”
Mace put her head in her hands and groaned. “This has got to be the parallel world where Superman is evil. How do I get off the ride?”
“You never get off the ride. You just learn to hold on a different way.”
Mace looked at her sister through a gap in her fingers. “So, is the political pressure on you coming from Mona and her demented heavyweight supporters?”
“Mona has never been my biggest fan.”
“I’ll take that as a hell yes.”
“And I can handle it.”
“But it would be better if you backed off trying to find out who set me up.”