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her dark hair back in a short, stiff ponytail and had a strong, killer body, even in the olive green jumpsuit worn by FDC prisoners. Her manner made the handcuffs seem oddly like sex toys.
    Bristow was seated, cuffed and shackled, in the chair next to Melendez, and her lawyer had gone positively goofy in her presence. Suddenly Vicki understood why he'd been suckered into believing in her innocence. And also why he'd worn his cardamom aftershave.
    "Reheema, how are you today?" Melendez boomed, grinning.
    "I'm fine, thanks," Bristow answered, and Vicki reacted viscerally to the sound of her voice, soft, but hardly ingratiating. Streetwise, but not street. Sonorous, if it hadn't come out of the mouth of a criminal. Vicki couldn't forget that Bristow could know who killed Morty and Jackson. She could know Teeg and Jay-Boy. She could even have hired them, or maybe whoever she was buying the guns for had hired them.
    "Ms. Bristow." Vicki introduced herself and explained, "I'm the new AUSA on this case. I'm replacing Jim Cavanaugh, whom you met with before. I believe that was the only proffer conference you had with my office, correct?"
    Bristow nodded, and if she recognized Vicki from the TV, she didn't let it show, which proved she was one great liar. News of the triple homicide had to be all over the FDC, learned from TV or the "bowl," the way prisoners communicated after lights-out; each inmate flushed the toilet a few times to evacuate the water, enabling the plumbing to carry voices as efficiently as Nextel. The Bureau of Prisons couldn't do anything about it, short of replacing the plumbing at taxpayer expense, but nobody was funding better johns for felons.
    Vicki continued, "I called you here today for a conference, and we'll start by asking you a few questions. As you know, you've been charged with two counts of a straw purchase, in violation of 18 U.S.C. Section 922." Vicki glanced at her file as she read. "The indictment charges that you purchased two Colt .45–caliber handguns and illegally resold them. As you may know, when such a multiple weapons purchase is made, Pennsylvania gun dealers are required automatically to send a report to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives. Would you like to see the report concerning your purchases, or the indictment against you? I have both."
    "No. I told the first lawyer, Cavanaugh, I don't want to plead guilty."
    "Is that because you didn't do it?"
    Bristow's lovely gaze shifted sideways to Melendez. "Do I have to answer?"
    "Not if you don't want to."
    "No comment," Bristow answered, which gave Vicki pause. Most felons knew that "no comment" was for reporters, not government lawyers.
    "Reheema, may I call you Reheema?"
    "Yes."
    "Reheema, you do realize that if you are convicted in this case, and you will be, you'll spend five years in federal prison, a chunk of the prime of your life?"
    Bristow didn't say anything.
    "I see from your file you have no priors, so you may not know that federal prison isn't as nice as the FDC, new and clean. It isn't like on TV, either."
    Bristow didn't blink, which set Vicki's blood simmering. She had given this speech in three other straw cases and had never gotten this far. Unlike state jail time, federal sentencing guidelines removed the judge's discretion, so cooperating was the only thing defendants could do to help themselves. The guidelines were a huge hammer for federal law enforcement, but coming from the D.A.'s office, Vicki secretly thought they also took the sport out of the contest. They'd created a culture of snitches, and after most indictments, crooks raced to flip on their friends. Last month, Vicki even got a confession on her answering machine.
    "Reheema, prison is ugly, brutal, nasty. Women beat each other up, some of them daily. Think. Five years of that."
    Bristow said nothing, her expression as impassive as if she were posing for a Vogue cover, and Vicki guessed she had to know that Jackson had been killed and