Sam Kincaid 01 - The Commission

both stood and I said to him, “Okay, Eddie, sorry to have bothered you. You can go back to class now. But one more thing. By tomorrow, it won’t be half the cons in here who think you’re a punk-ass snitch. By the time I’m finished, it’ll be all of them. So why don’t you just sit your sorry ass down and help me out.”
    He gave me a cold, hard stare, shrugged his shoulders, and said, “I got the ticket around four-forty-five, maybe four-fifty.”
    “You’re sure about the time?”
    “Why do you want to know, man?”
    I ignored the question.
    “I’m sure,” he snapped.
    “What makes you so sure?”
    “Look, man. I’m sure because we stand for mandatory count at four-thirty and I go to chow at five o’clock. I got the chicken-shit ticket between count and dinner. I remember thinkin’ if the hack bitch would just shut the fuck up and write the ticket, I’d make the culinary on time with the rest of my homeboys. I was hungry, okay.”
    I pulled the ticket out of my pocket to confirm what I already suspected. Stimson had written that the incident occurred at 1720 hours. That’s military time for 5:20 p.m. She had fudged it by a good half hour.
    I found Webb, Gill, and Stoddard in the small conference room adjacent to my office putting the finishing touches on the warrant affidavit. Kate had recently checked in and continued to report no activity around Stimson’s home.
    I dropped the ticket Stimson had issued to Eddie Sandoval on the conference table in front of them. “I think I just discovered something that will strengthen our search warrant.” All three immediately looked up.
    “You have our undivided attention,” replied Gill.
    “I just spoke with the inmate who received this disciplinary. Note the time Stimson wrote on the ticket. She says she wrote him up at 5:20 p.m. Sandoval says that’s a crock. He was eating chow in the culinary at five o’clock with his housing unit. He says the incident went down at 4:40, maybe 4:45, shortly after he stood for a mandatory count. I double checked him on both the schedule for dinner and the mandatory count. He’s telling the truth.”
    “Solidifying her alibi,” muttered Stoddard. “She took a calculated risk that we wouldn’t verify the time line, and even if we did, she could still claim the whole thing was an innocent mistake. This is a very smart lady.”
    “I’m glad you thought to check that, Sam,” said Webb. “By itself, it’s an innocuous mistake. But combine it with her apparent involvement in getting Sorensen to forge the suicide note, and it’s no longer insignificant. We’ll add this information to the warrant affidavit. It will definitely help. I want to place a pickup order on Officer Stimson right now. We’ve got more than enough to bring her in for questioning. We can decide after the interrogation whether or not to book her.”
    “And do I ever feel like a dumb shit,” said Gill. “I interviewed the lady myself and even got a copy of the ticket. I just never thought to verify the time sequence. Maybe I’m getting too damned old for this job.”
    “Don’t be so hard on yourself,” said Webb. “You are as old as dirt, but this was an easy one to miss.”
    I left the conference room and returned to my office. As I walked by her desk, Patti looked up and said, “Did Bob Fuller get hold of you?”
    “I didn’t see Warden Fuller. Where was he?”
    “He came by to see you. Said it was important. The last time I noticed, he was sitting right outside the conference room door while you were in your meeting. I thought you saw him. He sure left in a hurry.”
    ***
    Bill Allred was a guy who made a habit out of driving in his rear-view mirror. He spotted the tail. He’d just completed a full morning of parole violation hearings and was on his way back to the office.
    He first noticed the white Ford Taurus after leaving the prison’s main gate. It followed him to the freeway entrance and then north to Salt Lake City. Instead of driving straight to his office, Allred diverted onto several side streets before turning into the South Town Mall. The Taurus stayed right with him until he turned into the parking lot, then it continued past. The lone occupant never got close enough for Allred to get any kind of look at him. He always felt a certain level of paranoia about the possibility of being stalked by ex-cons or their associates. Yet this Taurus looked more like a plain vanilla cop car than something an offender might