Chapter 14: Meeting Gallows

Immediately Jeff left Athena walked into the office looking completely stunned.

"What the hell was that?" She asked a little bit surprised at how the interview had turned out.

"You still have a lot to learn Athena. When you're in this line of business as long as I have been,you will learn that the only language these people understand is playing dirty. They will not care about who you are or what you are capable of,they will beat you down until you can't take it any longer. So you just have to adopt or perish. Now I'm sure you will notice that no other news outlet will be willing to go head on with us for quite some time. I just bought us valuable time from the media to be able to get our act together so that when we go to that court hearing next time we have more that enough evidence to prove that our guy is not who they think he is."

"And do you think Jason will be the one to tip the tables in our favour?" Athena asked

"He must tip them over. He must." Alpha responded getting up from his seat.

"Is there something I should know about the case that I'm not currently briefed about?" Athena asked as they both headed out of the office and got into the lift.

"Not that I can think of any that you don't already know,why do you ask?" Alpha asked

" Nothing. I just feel like something's off.I don't know how to put it but, something just doesn't feel right. Let's call it a gut feeling. " She responded.

"Well gut feeling or not,you have nothing to worry about. Maybe it's just your hunger levels going off the roof,get yourself something to eat and take some rest. Its a Saturday, none of us should even be here. Go and enjoy what's left of your weekend." Alpha said to her as they arrived at the ground floor.

Immediately they walked out of the lift Alpha was received by a couple of his staff cheering him on while others applauded for him.

"Yeah,yeah,yeah. You can all thank me later by at least inviting me over for a drink. Now the best that you can do for me is ensure that everything is in order because I want all of you to be enjoying your weekend as from 3 o'clock. Close the place up and please,try not to allow in a shooting maniac in my premises. I've had enough drama for a day. Have a wonderful weekend all of you,see you on Monday." Alpha said as he left the building and walked into his limo. 

"Take me home" he said to his driver.

 After about ten minutes of driving his phone rang with an encrypted phone number.

"Hello?" He answered

"Hello,am I speaking to Mr Legit Alpha?" The voice on the other end enquired.

"It depends with who's asking" Alpha responded.

" This is the cabinet secretary of security and with me here I have the mayor of Sin City." The voice responded

"Those are some pretty big titles. What can I do for you?" Alpha asked

"We would like to inform you that Mr Daymond has arrived at a secure location safely. On behalf of Sin City, allow me to offer our gratitude on how you handled the matter at hand. We do not know how we could possibly repay you."

"You can possibly repay me by assuring me that he doesn't get shot at again when in your custody. I have had enough trouble already trying to clean up your mess with the press, I'm not going to such lengths again. I hope I'm clear with that." Alpha responded equally serious

"Leave that to us. Thank you once more" the CS said.

"Now if you don't mind, I have another call coming in" Alpha said as he switched calls.

"Jason,please tell me you gave some good news for me." Alpha told him as he answered it

"Well this could be your lucky day Legit,who nearly gets shot and survives to tell the tale the same day? Well again you are in luck,I've just gone through some of the files that were handed over to me,and you won't guess what I have just found out. In one of the witness statements given here there is a discrepancy with it." Jason replied as he continued to shuffle over the files

"And what would that be?" Alpha asked

'Well,in one of these documents one witness claims to have seen Daymond pick his daughter up from a bus station at around 6pm and drive off only for her body to be found two days later murdered. " Jason said

"Yes, I believe that is what everyone knows" Alpha responded a little keen to hear what Jason had to say.

"I've pulled up some press released from my phone and according to the same witness, he said that he saw Daymond picking his daughter up from the same bus station,but now he says it was 6am. Which is the next morning. Now according to me I've come to learn that the Magraff's daughter was supposed to be at a friend's place for a sleepover. And she was to head straight to her friend's house immediately she left school. So what would Mr Magraff be doing picking her up from the bus station at 6pm yet schools close by 4 pm. The distance from the school to the bus stop is just ten minutes. So try explaining to me how a ten minute walk turned into two hours and how comes our murder victim is seen at 6 pm and 6 am when she was supposed to be at the sleepover. Even more confusing is the fact that she never made to her friends house, and even more disturbing is the fact that her friend says she received a call from the Magraff's saying that they had cancelled the sleepover. And you will not guess which phone made that call" Jason said

"The Magraff's home phone?" Alpha enquired

"Exactly, so her friend did not see it odd that she did not show up evening. Another report here shows that no such call was made using their house phone, something is not right here. Either we have someone on the inside pulling the right strings on an unknown end and no one seemed to have notice or our killer knows his way around the tech." Jason said as he tried to piece the missing information together.

"Jason,a bunch of theories and facts are something but you know well that we do not just use tiny bits of information when we are in court. If you are right,and there is someone on the inside tampering with the case, I wouldn't be surprised if the jury sees in favour of the nation one way or another. Get more valuable info that will convince the whole nation either our guy is innocent or someone is tampering with the evidence. One of these should be able to buy us some more time to finally get the actual perpetrator." Alpha said as he hang up

The rest of the weekend went on smoothly as the whole nation kept talking about how Alpha had brought the truth out in Jeff with others dubbing it as the Turnover. With a lot of focus on whether he was friend or foe to the citizens, all workers at LA's firm were guaranteed a peaceful weekend without any more dramas for a good 48 hours.

Monday morning found Jason,Athena,Alpha and the Krovacic brothers in the same conference room discussing what Jason had unraveled from the case files. All of them were seated except for Jason who was trying to shed some light on the odd findings that he had come across. What I'm trying to tell all of you is that either we have someone on the inside doing something to these case files and no one seems to notice and I wouldn't be surprised if the whole judicial system either doesn't know or doesn't care about what's happening." Jason said as Kayla knocked on the door revealing her milky white teeth accompanying a well built man in a suit who was an all to familiar face to everyone in the room. It was the Mayor of Sin City, Mr Gallows.

Immediately Jason saw him standing in front of the door,he stopped his presentation and closed his documents,something which Alpha immediately noticed but decided to ignore for the moment. Alpha got up from his seat and went to usher the Mayor into the room.

"Good morning Mr Gallows, to what do we owe you this fine visit today?" Alpha said as he shook hands with the Mayor.

"Well I had to drop in and check in on the most famous crew in town. So did you find anything concerning the case?" The mayor asked

"Well, we have found..." Mikhail started before he was interrupted by Jason.

"We found out that nothing's wrong at the moment and we need to dig a little more to be able to beat the two week deadline for the next hearing. Currently we are floating in the cosmos with nothing to argue with the whole jury about. If the hearing was to even happen today,you can be damn sure that our client will hang by the neck and there's nothing that we can do about it." Jason said as he looked at everyone else in the room who all seemed to be in utter confusion at his uttering. The Mayor looked a bit pleased but tried to hide his reaction from everyone else in the room and turned to Jason.

"I don't believe we have met. I'm Mr Gallows, the..." He started as he straightened his hand for a handshake.

"Mayor of our great city. I already know who you are Mr Gallows, no need for you to introduce your self since you are an all too familiar face around every corner." Jason cut him in as he shook his hand.

"I'd like you to meet Jason West. He's helping us out with the case since we saw that his knowledge could be a valuable item in the ongoing investigations." Alpha said as he introduced Jason to the mayor.

"I didn't know that you added an extra hand to your crew. I thought you had it all covered" the mayor said as he looked around the room

"Well you don't expect us to go public about everything that we do behind our office doors. That will be asking Athena to go and publish whatever we charge each of our clients but you don't see us doing that." Jason said

"Fair point. Well I'm not here to stay since I don't to distract you while you are all working. In light of that,allow me to leave you to your work. Have a good day." The mayor said as he was leaving.

Everyone watched as he walked out of ears reach when they all decided to speak up with Alpha looking like he had more questions than answers. So everyone decided to let Alpha speak first.

"What the hell was that!!!?? Not only did you lie to the mayor but the choice of tone, well I can't say that you were rude to him but that was not the best way to talk to a respectable man of the state."

Jason took some time to look at everyone in the room before replying, he started arranging his documents bit by bit as he placed them in his briefcase.

"You are all in the defence of someone who the whole state wants behind bars. And when the mayor comes poking around you don't see it as a red flag. Whatever you come across during the course of this case, I'd see it best that you try not to disclose it with anyone who is not in this room. As at now,the case has so many false entries that no one seemed to care about. So the questions you need to be asking is not why I gave Gallows a cold shoulder,the question you should all be asking is how did all those go unnoticed while we still claim to have an airtight judicial system. Now if you all excuse me,I need to be looking deeper into these files." Jason said as he got up and took his briefcase with him.

Alpha closed off the meeting with the rest of the group and proceeded to follow Jason and stopped him before he got to the office they shared with Athena.

"Hey Jason, give me a minute will you? I know something's definitely up. From the way you talked to the mayor,the others may not know you that well but I do. So tell me what's really happening with you" Alpha said as they stopped in the lobby where not a lot of employees passed through so they could speak freely.

"Remember when I told you that someone might be pulling the strings from the inside? This is exactly what I meant, I have a feeling that our case is being tampered with by the state just to put this matter to rest. Another thing that might just fuel it is that the election season is three months away, you will be surprised to know what depths these leaders would go to just to retain their seats" Jason said as he made sure that no one else could hear what he was saying.

"Are you trying to tell me that our mayor could have his hand in this ?" Alpha asked

" I wouldn't be so surprised if he did. I mean try explaining the sudden interest in the case,something I'm sure you don't expect since politics doesn't mix well with justice. So pardon me if I think that the sudden interest in our case by Mr Gallows seems like a red flag to me,but I'm not going to fall victim to a rue,not now not ever. So anything that I share with the rest of you in that room, please try and tell them that I'll be grateful if it only stays in that room." Jason responded

"Who do you fear when it comes to this case?" Alpha asked.

"Fear? I fear no one. You should've asked who I trust. Of which I also don't trust anyone. Now if you don't mind, I need to get to work." Jason replied as he walked into his office.