Chapter 30

They held me for three days, the last of which stretched the legal limit and led my lawyer to yell bloody blue murder. Toward the end it was only Richard's stubborn insistence that kept me there. I'd known from the start that he'd be my most difficult hurdle, but his persistence in the face of so much contradictory evidence was quite impressive.

No-one ever said as much, but it appeared that I'd been right about the older voice-prints not matching. They had me recite written passages they'd excerpted from a number of my phone calls—from what I could recall they were word-for-word—and then huddled together with their recordings while I was escorted back to my cell.

Another time they got me into a line-up with several other men, none of whom was very similar to me in appearance. I wasn't happy with it and neither, apparently, was my lawyer, who I learned later argued about it so long and vigorously that they pulled a couple of the men out and replaced them with others who bore at least some hint of resemblance to me.

I had no idea who was looking, but I wasn't that worried. It had to be somebody who'd known me before as Jack Heyward, and that was five years earlier. People's appearances change considerably over that much time, especially comparatively young people, and visual memories fade.

A little later I found how true all this was when they took me out of the line-up, sent me back to an interrogation room instead of my cell, and Richard came in with Jerry Weisfelder and another former co-worker at DOD. I gave no sign of recognition.

"Jack?" said Jerry, a little hesitantly.

I wondered did he still suffer from migraines. No way to ask, though. I smiled in the kind of casual way you do at strangers. "Do I know you, sir?" I asked.

My lawyer, who'd insisted on being present as well, frowned at me. "My client has nothing to say," he told Richard pointedly, clearly meaning for me to take the hint. I smiled at the lawyer and nodded understanding. Jerry and the other man, I couldn't even recollect his name now, looked me over uncertainly for a little while and then everybody walked back out. It was apparent they couldn't identify me for sure, and in court "I guess so, maybe" doesn't wash.

My accommodations in jail were a little, well, Spartan, but the mattress was acceptable and thankfully vermin-free, and the food was at least nourishing even if it fell far short of Lee's cooking and the restaurants where we occasionally took meals. I saw little of my fellow inmates except for when they'd take one of us out for something; they seemed generally a little unsavory, but on the whole not much different from people you'd encounter on the street of a busy after­noon.

And the guards were unfailingly polite, even pleasant insofar as they might be. One was kind enough to bring me the morning 'paper a couple of days into my stay, where I got to read about the "prominent local citizen" who was being held on unspecified charges at the Feds' request. He also brought in two or three magazines, not very recent but at least reading matter with which to pass away the time. Being "prominent" does come with a few perks, I guessed.

The kicker came on the third morning, as I'd known it would. I'd arranged with Spook that, if I hadn't been released by then, he'd put in a call to Richard. In my voice. Giving the best tip he could come up with; I'd figured in that much time there'd be something he could use. I'd told him to make the call long enough to cement the identification but short enough that Richard wouldn't have time for exploratory questions that might trip him up.

At that I had to be impressed again by Richard's quickness. Spook recorded the call and played it for me later, and just at the end Richard got in one fast question. "If you're Jack Hey­ward, what's my middle name?" he barked.

"Jeremiah," Spook answered in my voice just before breaking the connection. He told me he hadn't monitored my prior calls but got the name off Richard's personnel records. I was thankful Richard hadn't come up with something more personal to ask.