Silent Witness Read Free Page B

family split and has gone into hiding somewhere in southern Utah, along the Arizona strip. But I don’t put much credence in that.”
    â€œBecause?”
    â€œFirst, consider the source. The inmate rumor mill is rife with misinformation. Besides, I just don’t believe that the Bradshaw family is willing to abandon the prophet to whatever fate awaits him, which might well be a date with the executioner.”
    â€œMakes sense,” said Kate. “You think they’re unwilling to put Bradshaw’s fate in the hands of the Lord?”
    â€œDoubt it. What kind of help do you need?”
    â€œWhy don’t you start with Walter Bradshaw. Why don’t you pay him a visit and see what he has to say. And I know you’re going to love this one, but how much will it cost me to get you to attend the autopsy?”
    â€œIt’s going to be very expensive but everything’s negotiable. In the meantime, what will you be doing?”
    â€œI’ll start scheduling interviews. There’s going to be a boatload of people to talk to. I’ll also find out what the CSI unit has come up with, although it might be too soon on that score. After then we can hook up and see where things stand.”
    â€œSounds like a plan.”
    â€œWhat about your new boss? Should you touch base with him before you commit to work on this one?”
    â€œThanks for asking. The rules of the game have definitely changed, but I think he’ll go along.”
    The new boss Kate referred to was Benjamin Cates. Cates had recently been appointed executive director of the Utah Department of Corrections.
    In the aftermath of the massive scandal that had rocked the corrections department, the governor, with the encouragement of the state legislature, had moved quickly to make changes. His first step was to fire my former boss, Norm Sloan, and replace him with a reform-minded, retired sheriff from the King County Sheriff’s Department in Seattle, Washington.
    From what I had learned, Benjamin Cates was a highly regarded sheriff who also had the responsibility of running one of the largest jails in the country. He purportedly ran a tight ship and had a zero tolerance policy for staff who tried to operate outside the rules. That was a good thing.
    Cates had wasted no time cleaning house. He left probation and parole largely intact, but came down with a vengeance on the prison. He demoted several prison managers, reassigned others, and fired two, including the second highest ranking member of the department, the Director of Institutional Operations. Several other supervisors with enough years in the system simply opted to retire.
    As for me, I had somehow managed to survive what the newspapers had dubbed the “weekend massacre.” My unit, the Special Investigations Branch (SIB), had emerged from the scandal relatively unscathed. The closet thing to criticism we received came from a couple of state legislators who made vague public statements that the scandal should have been discovered and squashed before it ever became one.
    Yet my relationship with Cates felt like a tentative one. I was under the microscope. He knew it, and so did I.

Chapter Four
    I left my Park City home early the next morning and headed for my office at the state prison. Juggling a cell phone, a cup of hot coffee, and a cinnamon roll, while rocketing down I-80 with the other Nascar commuters, was a serious challenge.
    I phoned Patti Wheeler, my secretary, and asked her to pull the inmate file on Walter Bradshaw. I had been worried about Bradshaw and his impending, preliminary hearing even before the call from Kate the previous night. The prospect of transporting a high-risk inmate, like Bradshaw, was daunting knowing that the other fugitive members of his family were still at large. Add to that the murder of one of the witnesses and the apparent disappearance of another. Mere coincidence seemed an unlikely explanation for this chain of