BRAINSTORM

Chapter Forty-five - Incomplete redemption.

Jack sat on the thin, filthy cot. It reminded him of the bedrooms in his fraternity at Harvard. It was disgusting.

He had already sent out the video. He was positive of that, even though his memory felt shaky. That evidence should help him get exonerated, shouldn't it? The alternatives weren't worth thinking about.

He guessed he should be thankful they had put him in a single cell. Jack wasn't sure if the rumors about prison life were true or not, but he sure didn't want to find out. 

The problem was there was too much time—time to think, regret, mourn. Things were easier when he had to move, decide, and take action. This was much, much worse. There was no urgency to help him push aside the image of Ellen's dead body.

When he heard the sound of the door opening, Jack lifted his head. It felt heavy, hard to move.

"You're free to go," Jimmy Hudson said as he and the sheriff approached Jack's cell.

Jack jumped up from his cot. "What changed?"

"I'll explain once we get you out of here," said Jimmy. 

It would feel good to be a free man again. His thoughts flashed toward the trapped beings of the TR Center. Were they free now, too? He hoped so. It felt awful to be caged.

Once they were alone in Jimmy's car, his friend explained all that had transpired in the past seventy-two hours. The footage of the TR Center had been played on the news for the whole world to see. And the whole world was definitely watching. It was all anyone was talking about. 

Jimmy filled in the rest. "Maxwell bribed Warner years ago to take on the CIRAS Tabula Rasa project. It was an offer Warner couldn't refuse because the doctor offered him an outrageous bribe. Maxwell had the money – trust fund kid, you know. Jameson never knew anything about it. And since Warner was interested in making more money than the NIH would ever pay him, he started looking for other ways to profit from his relationship with Maxwell. Ultimately, Warner cultivated a bribery ring between himself and the clients of the Mafia. Nobody else knew about it until just a few days ago."

"But that doesn't fully explain why they let me go. I mean, I'm kind of the one who brought everyone's precious research center crashing to the ground. They could have kept me in jail just for the hell of it."

"Well, the US government is in a deep load of shit now, and they don't want to be. Maybe they think they can't trudge out of it no matter how high their wading boots are." He paused. "Also, they did an autopsy on Ellen's body." Jack winced at his words, and Jimmy looked apologetic. "Sorry. Anyway, they found out that because of the angle of the bullet wound, someone much shorter than you must have shot the gun."

"Someone Maxwell's height."

"Exactly."