Endangered Species Endangered Species (Time Served #1) - Onley James Page 0,4

“Why would your stepbrother want you dead?”

“Because I’m the one who put him away for twenty-five years,” Webster said, his chest tight.

“Jesus,” Chao muttered.

Webster ignored her, thinking of flashes of honeyed eyes and the look of betrayal as they led Cy from the courthouse in his black pants and white button down shirt. The same clothes Cy had worn to his father’s funeral. It had been so long.

“It’s already done, even if you don’t take the deal. They denied bail. They’ll send you there until sentencing,” Ms. Chao said, her tone clipped, like she had somewhere else she’d rather be.

Part of Webster wanted to go. It seemed almost fitting. If he was going to get slaughtered by somebody, maybe it was some kind of poetic justice that it was Cyrus who wielded the weapon. What did he look like now? Would he still call Webster Nicky? Webster shook his head at the name. Nobody called him that anymore. Nobody except Linc.

“If they send me there, I’ll never make it to sentencing,” Webster promised.

“If they’re setting you up, there has to be a reason. What were you doing on vacation last week? Did you run into anybody? Did you flirt with the wrong person? Did you accidentally dent a judge’s jag? Call out the wrong senator on a social media post?”

“No.” Webster scrubbed his hands over his face, his head feeling like it was cracking in two. “This has to do with Cy. Somehow.”

“How do you know that?” Chao asked. “Did you remember something?”

“Look, there’s only one thing I’ve been working on, and it’s the same case I’ve been working on for the last twenty-years. Cy’s. All I did last week was create a program that looked for patterns in random data, and I fed Cy’s case details into the program.”

If possible, Linc frowned harder. “Why? What were you looking for?”

Webster sat back. “The same thing I’ve been looking for since he was put away. A way to prove his innocence.”

Chao was suddenly interested in the conversation once more. “Your testimony put your brother away, but you think he’s innocent?”

“I know he’s innocent,” Webster snapped, the pain in his head becoming almost unbearable.

“How?” Linc shouted. “We need to know what you know so we can help you.”

“I’m doing my best here, Linc. I’m not trying to be cagey. I just can’t think straight.” He dug his palms into his eyes, sighing as the lights overhead were blotted out, leaving only the sparks dancing behind his eyelids. “I was forced to testify against him. I tried to tell the truth, but it was a kangaroo court. The whole thing was a joke. Nobody cared about the truth. They just wanted Cy convicted. Everybody in that town knew who killed my stepfather, but they also knew they’d never get a conviction.”

“Who killed him?” Chao asked, her voice taking on an almost gossipy tone.

Webster sighed, dropping his fists to the table. “My mom.”

Chao was once more scribbling on her notepad. “The town protected your mom? Was she wealthy or connected?”

Webster gave a humorless laugh. “Hardly. Well, I guess she was connected in that she was sleeping with the Sheriff and the judge and probably the prosecutor. It was a real small town. But, like a lot of dying towns, we had a high rate of recidivism. Lots of crime. Lots of criminals. Somehow, most of them black, despite eighty-five percent of the town being white.”

“Your brother was black,” Linc said. It wasn’t a question.

“Half. His dad was white, but that hardly mattered in a shitty racist town filled with criminal biker gangs neck deep in everything from drugs to prostitution and a whole town with their hands in the till.”

“What did your computer program show?” Chao asked.

Webster stopped short. “I-I don’t know. I had it scanning all of California. It was still running in the background when the cops busted in and dragged me out.” Webster flinched as the sound of the lock disengaging filled the room. “You gotta figure out if my computer program flagged anything. That has to be it.”

The guard returned, and Webster gave Linc one last pleading look. It wasn’t like he’d never fought or taken a punch before. He was a fucking bodyguard as well as a computer nerd, but he’d never been to prison, never had a situation where he was going to be on the same side of the bars as a man he’d put away.

The guard once more uncuffed him so he could stand. As he