Rylann was still missing something here. “Why didn’t the FBI simply talk to him at home?”
“They tried,” Cameron said. “So far, they haven’t been able to get past his lawyers. Which is why they brought the case to us. If we want to talk to this man, we’re likely going to need a grand jury subpoena to do it. I doubt he’ll cooperate voluntarily.” She peered across the desk at Rylann, looking slightly amused. “He’s probably feeling a little prickly toward the U.S.
Attorney’s Office these days. Especially since we called him a ‘terrorist’ and a ‘cyber-menace to society.’ “
Rylann blinked. “Kyle Rhodes is potentially our key witness?”
“Potentially your key witness,” Cameron emphasized. “Starting now, Rylann, the case is all yours. One Twitter Terrorist included.”
So much for out of sight, out of mind.
“Strange, how he keeps popping up in my cases these days,” Rylann said. She hadn’t seen the guy for nine years, and now he kept turning up like a bad penny. A very bad penny.
Wickedly, dangerously bad.
Cameron acknowledged this with a nod. “The motion call was pure happenstance. I needed a senior AUSA in special prosecutions to cover for Cade, and you, being the new kid on the block, had an open schedule. But when the FBI brought the Brown matter to me yesterday, admittedly, yes, you were the first person I thought of. If anyone in this office stands a chance of getting Kyle Rhodes to voluntarily cooperate, it’s you. I read the transcript from Tuesday’s motion. From Rhodes’s point of view, you’re the one person here who has actually argued for his release.” She grinned. “Hopefully you can now use those persuasive powers to get him to talk.”
Or maybe he’ll just slam the door in my face.
Probably not the best time to tell her new boss that she’d kissed the defendant in her first case, then given him the cut direct in court.
“And if that doesn’t work?” Rylann asked. “How far do you want me to take this?”
“All the way.” Cameron sat forward in her chair, turning serious and appearing every bit the U.S. attorney right then. “When I took over this office after my highly unesteemed predecessor, I made a vow to take down government corruption at all levels. Based on what the FBI has told me, we’ve got a federal corrections officer who’s been exacting his own form of justice against inmates, and his actions have now led to a man’s death. He’s not getting away with that on my watch.” She looked Rylann in the eyes. “If Kyle Rhodes heard that threat, I think we’ve got enough for an indictment. Let’s make that happen.”
Seeing the look of determination on her boss’s face, Rylann had only one answer to that.
“Consider it done.”
Nine
NOT HAVING ANY plans that evening, Rylann stayed at the office until eight and ordered Chinese takeout for dinner when she got home. She changed into jeans and a T-shirt, then settled into the couch to call her parents. They’d retired several years ago and now spent the winters in a two-bedroom townhome they’d bought near Naples, Florida. Over the course of the last few years, Rylann had noticed that her parents’ definition of “winter” seemed to be significantly expanding, and thus had a sneaking suspicion she wouldn’t see them north of the Mason-Dixon Line anytime before June.
“Well, if isn’t the woman of the hour,” Helen Pierce said with a note of pride when she answered the phone. “Why didn’t you tell me you were working on the Twitter Terrorist case? I’ve been showing off your photograph to everyone in the neighborhood. The one they got of you in the courtroom, standing next to that Kyle Rhodes.”
“It was a last-minute thing,” Rylann explained. “My boss needed me to cover for someone else.”
“I think he’s staring at your chest.”
It took Rylann a moment. Right, the photograph of her and Kyle. “He’s not staring at my chest, Mom.”
“Then what’s with the look? That’s the kind of look a man gives you when he’s seen you naked. Or wants to.”
Immediately, Rylann thought back to the daring way Kyle had held her eyes the moment that photograph had been taken.
He’d remembered her, all right.
“I didn’t notice anything strange about the look,” she fibbed.
Helen didn’t seem entirely convinced. “Hmm. Good thing your work on that case is done, or I’d probably have to give you some kind of lecture about staying away from boys like that. Motherly duty and all.”
Rylann smiled at that. “Kyle Rhodes is hardly a boy, Mom.”
“Oh, believe me, I noticed.”
Ewww. Rylann was about to change the subject, deliberately failing to mention that her work with Kyle wasn’t quite finished, when her mother beat her to the punch.
“So aside from the Twitter Terrorist case, what else do they have you working on?” Helen asked. Before retiring, she’d been a paralegal at a criminal defense firm in Chicago and enjoyed talking shop about Rylann’s cases—even if, as she often joked, her daughter played for the “other team.”
For much of Rylann’s childhood, the traditional gender roles had been reversed in the Pierce household. In fact, her mother had been the primary breadwinner during most of those years. Rylann’s father, an HVAC repairman, had injured his back when Rylann was seven years old, and despite treatment and physical therapy, he had never been able to work more than a part-time schedule after that. Thus, her dad had been the parent who would drop her off and pick her up from school, working a few repair jobs in between, and at six o’clock her mother would walk through the door, change out of her business clothes, and join them for dinner—usually entertaining them with stories about the cases she and “her lawyers” were working on.