Gathering Dark, Candice Fox [inspirational books for students .TXT] 📗

what he said, so I had the guards send me the security footage as well.” She hit the button on the video. The figures started moving, talking. We all listened as Fishwick told Dayly about a river near the house where he grew up in Utah. Jessica paused the video and told us about John Fishwick’s bank robberies, the massacre in Inglewood, the buried cash found by construction workers and turned over to the government. “I’ve watched the video. He doesn’t tell her anything about anything during the visit, or in his letters to her,” Jessica said. “In the cage they discuss the possibility of him being her father, briefly, but he’s not willing to submit to a DNA test. They chat about his upbringing, her studies. And then this happens.”

We watched as John Fishwick suddenly leaped from his chair. Dayly didn’t seem to realize the contact was coming. He grabbed her and slammed her body into the side of the cage with his, forcing his mouth onto hers, his hands on her cheeks. I watched as guards rushed the cage, dragging Fishwick off the distressed girl, who slumped into the corner, crying and rubbing her face.

“Oh my god!” Sneak covered her mouth with her hands.

“He attacks her. He kisses her,” Jessica said. “At first I thought that was all he was doing, but now—”

“Now you know.” Ada smiled. “He passed her something.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“Right there.” Jessica rolled the video back, played the kiss again. “See how his hand comes up, covers their mouths? That’s in case the package slips out.”

“What package?”

“He’s got something in his mouth,” Ada said. “I’ve seen it in prison a hundred times. It’s a kiss pass. You tongue a pill or a secret message or a paper clip or something. You go kiss another inmate, pass it to her in the kiss. You grab her face, just like that, so you can make sure the package gets across, make sure nobody sees the pass. Watch Dayly when she falls to the floor. She makes a motion as if she’s wiping her mouth in disgust. She’s taking the package out and pocketing it.”

We watched the kiss again three times. I searched my memory.

“I saw something at the apartment,” I said. “A little shred of tape on Dayly’s desk. It was sort of folded weirdly, doubled over on itself, making a tube. Maybe it was the seal. He wrote something on a piece of paper and rolled it up tight, covered it in tape to stop it getting wet in his mouth, maybe. Does that sound right?”

“He would have had to do that.” Ada nodded. “If we’re talking about a secret this big, he couldn’t put it in the letters. Or tell her on the phone. Or tell her in the cage. One of the guards would have heard it.”

“So did she know it was coming?” Sneak asked. “The message?”

“She must have,” Ada reasoned. “The exchange is pretty swift. Seamless.”

“But how did he alert her that he’d be passing her something if the guards are watching his letters and calls?”

“Oh, there are ways,” Ada said. “You get the message out through another inmate who tells their visitor, who calls her up and tells her. Or you just show her the package during the visit. Let it poke out between your teeth. She’d have understood what he wanted to do.”

“So, wait a minute,” Mike broke in. His lip was curled in horror. “This chick willingly kissed a guy who’s probably her own dad?”

Everyone looked at Mike. I was as shocked that Mike had spoken at all as I was at what he said. I was used to the almost complete silence of Ada’s goons.

“He kissed her,” Sneak said. “She didn’t really do any kissing. She was kissed.”

“Will you idiots try to focus on the issue at hand here?” Ada snapped.

“I thought it was weird, him attacking his own daughter like that,” Jessica said. “I asked him about it. He was very convincing. He told me the whole buried cash thing is bullshit. It was just a story to lure her in so he could … you know. But then he told me that if he was going to do it again after he buried the first lot, he’d have devised a way to make sure that only the person he chose got the money. It sounded specific. Like he’d thought about it before. He said he’d want to choose his beneficiary.”

“How?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” Jessica said.

“All that doesn’t matter,” Ada said. “What matters is putting all this together and finding out where the cash is. Because that’s where Dayly is. Whether she’s the chosen beneficiary or whatever the fuck, that note that he passed to her tells her where the money is. It’s probably coordinates. Longitude and latitude. And that tells us where she’s going to be.”

We looked at the maps before us. At 17 Redduck Avenue, where Ada’s finger was pressed against the small rectangle indicating the hoarder house into which I’d seen Officer Lemon disappear.

“So what’s with the sewers?” I asked. “If the cash is in the hoarder house?”

“Maybe it’s under the house,” Sneak said.

“Or maybe it’s nearby,” Ada said. “These houses, eleven through seventeen, they’re not far from the sewer line.” She traced a line from the hoarder house to a blue line with red bubbles on it that streaked across San Jasinte. “Maybe thirty, forty yards. Explains the presence of the plumber. He’d have experience working underground. Accessing the tunnels. I think they’re using the house as a way to get underground unnoticed, get into the sewer lines. That’s why they reconned the other houses.”

“Why?” I asked.

“To see which one would best hide their activities,” Ada said. “Not the house with the family of four. Not the house with two guys living in it. The hoarder house with the old man.”

“So where does the sewer line go?” Sneak asked. “Once they get into it?”

“Well, this way heads for downtown,” I said,