“Listen, there’s no easy way to say it, so I’ll get straight to the point,” said Klein. “There has been a complaint filed against you. Both of you.”
“What?” said Gomez. “By who?”
Finn laughed without meaning to. “Figueroa, right?”
Klein looked at him apologetically. “I can’t tell you. I’m supposed to protect his anonymity,” he said.
“What a load of bullshit,” said Gomez. “Can’t you shut it down?”
“He went over my head. The inspector general’s investigating, which means I have no choice but to take you both off active duty until they’ve finished.”
Finn’s spirits sank. If there was any government department that could be counted on for endless bureaucratic process, it was the Office of Inspector General.
“Come on, Keith. You’re the director. Surely you can make this go away,” he said.
Klein shook his head. “There’s nothing I can do. You’re just going to have to wait it out.”
“How long?” said Gomez.
Klein shrugged.
“So now what?” said Finn.
“Got any leave due?” Klein asked.
“A couple of weeks,” said Finn.
“It’s gonna take longer than that.”
“You telling us to take unpaid leave?” said Gomez.
“No. I just don’t know what to do with you. You’re my best crew. You’re no good to me on land.”
Klein leaned against the wall and tapped his foot.
“There’s one thing I could do. I’m supposed to send people to Riverside, to familiarize themselves with the new systems there. They say they want to get us ready for the future. I could start with you two.”
Finn reflected. The Air and Marine Operations Center at March Air Reserve Base in Riverside was a ninety-minute drive away. He didn’t relish the prospect of spending three hours a day behind the wheel. On the other hand, what else was he going to do? He looked at Gomez and raised a querying eyebrow. Gomez gave a resigned shrug.
“All right, fine,” said Finn.
Gomez shook his head. “You should’ve cited Figueroa,” he said to Finn.
“Cited him for what?” said Klein.
“Forget about it,” said Finn.
Klein nodded. “This new administration, they’re recruiting like crazy, but nobody wants to work for CBP anymore. We’re scraping the bottom of the barrel.”
Finn reflected for a moment. Then he said, “Should we be worried, Chief?”
Klein shook his head. “It’s just procedure. The OIG will send someone to interview you both, as well as Chinchilla. Your stories will match. You’ll all say you acted appropriately. I’ll write a glowing assessment, saying you’re my best crew. And that’ll be that. Oh, and one more thing.”
“What?”
“You should call the union.”
“You just said there was nothing to worry about!” said Gomez.
Klein had one foot out the door.
“Just in case,” he said.
FOUR
THE U.S. district courthouse in Paradise, California, was a dreary cinder block box surrounded by baking asphalt. Someone had tried to gild the lily by planting greenery out front, but the desert shrubs only emphasized the building’s desolate air. Mona parked in its shadow, next to a row of BSCA prisoner-transport buses liveried with the company’s logo of a swooping eagle. She replied to Finn’s text with a series of emojis: a boxing glove to represent the fight, a set of scales to represent justice, and a heart to represent her feelings for him. Then she climbed the steps into the courthouse.
In contrast to the parking lot, the courtroom was teeming with people. Rows of shackled, jumpsuited prisoners sat crammed along the benches in the public gallery; more stood lined up along the back wall. Even the jury box was packed with defendants. Mona scanned the room but couldn’t see Carmen anywhere. A tired-looking clerk with an armful of files elbowed past.
“I’m looking for my client, Carmen Vega?” said Mona.
“Keep looking,” said the clerk, barely slowing to answer. “We’ve got 111 cases on the docket today.”
Mona squeezed her way past the bar to the defense table, where an attorney sat holding a phone to her ear, despite the big notice on the wall saying NO CELL PHONES. Mona pointed at the seat next to her and mouthed, “Is that free?”
The attorney cradled the phone between chin and shoulder and removed her box file from the chair. “I was saving it for my colleague, but looks like he’s a no-show, again,” she said. She hung up the phone and slid it into her handbag.
Mona sat and put down her own box file on the table. The attorney introduced herself.
“Kristin Chase, public defender’s office. First time in Paradise?”
Mona nodded. She looked around at the crowd. “Is it always this busy?” she said.
“Operation No Return,” said the attorney, referring to the new law that made every reentry an automatic felony. “Keeps the place ticking over, as you can see. To speed things up, the judge hears a dozen cases at a time.”
Mona raised an eyebrow. “I’m guessing he’s not a due-process kind of guy,” she said.
The attorney sighed. “Judge Ross wouldn’t know due process if it came flying down the fairway at his country club and nailed him between the eyes. He’s a lock-’em-up kind of a guy. Every single person here’ll be back in lockup by the end of the day. It’s so predictable, my colleague hardly bothers showing up anymore. He doesn’t see the point,” she said, checking her phone again.
“Are they all like this?” said Mona.
“All? The county’s got only two judges, one bad and the other worse.”
“Which one’s Ross?”
“The worse one. No one wants to live in Paradise anymore. The town’s been dying since all the water dried up. Used to be crop fields all around. Now all the young people are moving to wherever you’ve just floated in from. LA, I’m guessing?”
Mona nodded. When the woman asked which firm she was with, Mona said, “I work for Juntos. Most of the time, I’m in immigration court.”
The attorney pulled a squirt bottle of hand sanitizer from her purse. “A lot of these people haven’t been medically screened,” she said, squeezing goo onto her hands. Mona caught a whiff of antiseptic. The attorney went on, “I’ve read about Juntos. Great outfit. But immigration court, that’s the civil system. You’re in the criminal justice system here. And believe me, it’s not a sanitary place. You’ll want some of this,” she said, offering the squirt bottle to Mona.
“I can’t see my client anywhere,” said Mona, declining the sanitizer. That stuff dried her skin.
“Sometimes they keep the overflow in the conference room until their cases come up,” said the attorney. “What’s the charge? Illegal reentry?”
“Illegal reentry,” said Mona, getting up. She remembered seeing the door to the conference room out in the corridor, and she wanted to talk to Carmen before proceedings started, if only to reassure her. But then came a hush, like a crowd on a platform when the train is running late: everyone peering in the same direction, on edge. A moment later, the judge walked in. Everybody rose.