Murder Deja Vu

confirmed whether she was with Reece Daughtry, and if she was, whether he kidnapped her or she went voluntarily. There were no sightings, and her disappearance could be a coincidence.
    Frank laughed. “I love coincidences.”
    “But in case I am with Reece, they’re exposing my life for all to see.”
    “Is that the infamous Robert Minette?” Frank asked.
    “That’s Robert, basking in his fifteen minutes of national fame, hoping for an hour.” He filled the screen with his smarmy attitude, looking like a mob’s mouthpiece instead of the district attorney of three North Carolina counties.
    “Even though I divorced my wife,” Robert said into the camera, “I care about her welfare and hope for her safe return. Daughtry will be given a fair trial in Harold County. I’ll see to that.”
    The blood pulsing through Dana’s veins boiled. “What bullshit. He didn’t divorce me. I divorced him.” A clip of some reporter sticking the mike into the face of her younger son flashed into view and almost sent Dana through the roof. “These people have no morals. They’ll do anything for a story. They—” She watched as David calmly pushed away the mike and said, “No comment,” then disappeared into his dorm building.
    “Damn them,” Dana said.
    “Dana, please.” Lana moved to the windows to close them. “Someone might hear you. With all the noise we’ve made, I can’t believe someone hasn’t already.”
    “I’m sorry. I forgot. I’m just so upset.” She paced the room, going in circles until she was dizzy. “I need to call the boys.”
    “No, you don’t,” Frank said. “You’re here and you’ll stay here, off the radar. That’s what they want you to do. You might give yourself away without meaning to. Stay calm. We’ve been lucky so far, but that’s all it is, luck. Can’t get anywhere in life without some of it.”
    “I wish I could speak to Reece, so I’d know for sure he’s all right.”
    “You can call him if you want,” Frank said. “His phone is clean, and so is this cell. But I’d advise you not to. Let him do what he needs to do.”
    “If something happened,” Lana said, “you’d hear it on the television. I’ll make you a cup of coffee.”
    Frank patted Lana’s ass as she walked passed. “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?”
    Dana smiled, in spite of the gnawing in the pit of her stomach.
    “Now, sit down. Relax. I’ll tell you some stories. Want to hear how Reece wound up in solitary again?”
    “I don’t know, Frank. Injustice is hard to swallow. Maybe I don’t need to know everything.”
    “Did he tell you he did the same thing for a couple of young kids that I did for him?”
    “You mean he attacked four big convicts? Doesn’t sound like Reece.”
    “Not four. Two. They were sodomizing a young boy, not for the first time either. The kid must have been around eighteen, caught with a gram of coke in his car. He wasn’t dealing, just putting it up his nose. The court decided to make an example and threw him in with serious offenders. Might as well have put a bull’s eye on him for target practice.”
    Lana shook her head. She handed Dana a cup of coffee. “Something’s wrong with the system to do that. Something’s very wrong.”
    “Yes, my dear. The system is imperfect. More than I could ever explain. Anyway, Reece saw it and went ballistic. There’s a hierarchy in prison sex. The predators or pitchers, as they’re called, prey on the young and innocent. Reece took on both of them and put them down. I wasn’t around or I’d’ve helped. He served a couple of weeks in the hole for that. When he made it back into the population, the men treated him differently, with respect. Not everyone inside is a pervert.”
    “And after being locked in solitary?”
    Frank shook his head. “Not good. But he did it again anyway and found himself back there. I tried to explain he couldn’t get them all, and if he was going to be a vigilante, he’d better do it when the guards were looking the other way.”
    “If the guards were looking, why didn’t they stop the rape?”
    “You know what they say about power corrupting. There are all levels. You see it in the police, people who are supposed to watch out for the weak. Doesn’t always happen. Prison brings out the worst in men. Bad men get worse, good men go bad, and a pecking order develops where the strong rule the weak. Lord of the Flies . Good book. Reece gave me that one.”
    “What happened when he