The Four Stages Of Cruelty Part 18

Could I just leave Josh? I wanted to go. I wanted to walk straight across the yard and out the front gate. Get the h.e.l.l out of Dodge.

"How can I believe you?" I asked.

Another shrug.

"If you want me to make this happen, you have to tell me what's going on."

"How am I supposed to tell you what I don't understand?"

"Josh, you know more than you're saying. We both know that."

"Okay," he said. "Here's what I know. Roy isn't Roy."

I took a moment to answer.

"What do you mean by that?"

"You think Roy is this fat old man with one leg who smells bad and tells stupid jokes, but he's in on everything. He arranges deals. He makes things happen. I think Crowley did drawings for him as a way of pa.s.sing messages."

"About what?"

"Money."

For the first time, I got a vibe of truth in my bones. Not Brother Mike's bulls.h.i.t about a prophet in a prison, but that other profit.

"Money how?"

"I don't know."

"Christ," I said, weary again, wondering how to get more out of him in the time we had left. "Do you think you could draw a little bit of it from memory, show me how it worked?"

Josh looked up. "I gave it to you," he hissed. "If you'd believed me then, none of this would have happened."

All kinds of accusation in those eyes, and a little shine of fear. He was begging me. I thought of a shoe dangling from a barred window, the beggar's grate. I thought of hands outstretched and people in finery trying to avoid the touch. I had an insight then, a flash of understanding. The neediness for compa.s.sion was thicker than any need for money.

Something in me giving up, softening ever so slightly.

"Why do you want to transfer into B-three? That's Fenton's range. You really think he's going to look after you?"

Josh just peeled the gauze off his forehead and balled it up in his hand.

"Said he would."

"Who gave you the drugs, Josh? You have to give me a name."

"I can't," Josh said. "I can't rat on him."

"Was it Fenton?"

Nothing more than an eyeblink, but I knew I was right, except I couldn't do that to Fenton; my own complicity made it impossible.

"I understand," I said. "You're afraid. We'll say it was Roy Duckett. You've had lots of contact with him. It's plausible."

"Okay," Josh said. He winced, as if the reality of the compromise was painful to him. "That will work," he continued. "I'll make that work."

"You don't need to do anything," I warned him. "You need to keep yourself alive and out of trouble."

"I need to get into population," Josh said.

"I'll do what I can do."

"Soon," he said, and added, "Please."

33.

Melinda poured us tall coffees and added the kind of cream that doesn't go bad even if it never sees the inside of a refrigerator. She swiveled back and forth on her chair, eager for information.

I was bone tired the moment I got out of the room with Josh. It wasn't healthy feeling this way, a plodding heaviness in my step, the ribs in my chest all sunken from the weight of lousy posture. My hearing wasn't right, as though my ears had popped without my noticing and had failed to recover.

"I'm not sure I understood everything he was trying to tell me." I stopped as though confused. "Can you even rely on an inmate informant?" I was trying to figure out what to say and how to blame Roy, and I needed some way to explain my reluctance. "They're born liars. They'll tell you whatever you want to hear."

"Sure, they will," Melinda said. "But how does the old saying go? Crimes committed in h.e.l.l don't have angels as witnesses. The great big magical secret to all successful detective work is finding someone who will tell you what actually happened. Then you corroborate with evidence. But n.o.body trades information for free. They want leniency or special favors, and sometimes they want you to turn a blind eye to their own illegal activities. There's always a risk you can get played. But I get my best leads from inmates, or from people around the inmate with an ax to grind."

"What kind of ax?"

Melinda grinned. "Had a good example last week. I got a call from a woman telling me a shipment of drugs will be coming into Ditmarsh through a visit to a particular inmate. Sure enough, the inmate she mentioned has a PFV scheduled with a different woman that very afternoon. After it was over, we put the inmate in detention and waited, and retrieved a tube of pills once he dispelled."

I tried not to think about the condom of drugs in my pocket, wrapped in tissue like the dirty aftermath of illicit s.e.x. Practically the same contents, as though it were a missed delivery rescheduled. "But what was the motive of the person who called the information in? Does that ever factor into how you handle it?"

Melinda hesitated, parsing her thoughts.

"You're asking me if I was doing someone's bidding, maybe hurting the compet.i.tion on behalf of some rival distributor for example? Of course I question everyone's motivation. In the case I just mentioned, the motive was pretty clear. The caller was the inmate's wife. She ratted out her husband because of the girlfriend. But it comes down to basic principles. How can it be bad to stop a shipment of drugs, regardless of who is behind the information?"

Case closed. So black-and-white when viewed from Melinda's perspective. Such a tangled mess when viewed from Ruddik's.

"So what did Josh tell you?" Melinda asked. "Anything worth acting on?"

"He told me the drugs came from Roy Duckett." I was stuttering, hesitant, trying out my line in real time, obviously lying. But she kept listening.

"He said Roy's been forcing a number of vulnerable inmates to bring stuff in, and he has people outside putting pressure on family members, too. Josh was an easy target."

Melinda said nothing for a moment, the information working its way through some algorithm inside her head.

"Roy Duckett. It's never who you expect, is it?" she said finally.

I nodded, worried that I'd strained credulity. I talked fast, pushing us forward. "I guess so. There's something more. Josh asked for a favor in return. I thought you'd be okay with it, so I said we'd make it happen. I should have asked first."

I could see the uptightness sneak into her expression.

"What is it?"

"In exchange for that information, he wants to be moved out of the infirmary and into general population, on B-three, where he has some friends."

She took it well.

"Not in protective? That doesn't sound very safe."

"He thinks the opposite. He thinks there will be less suspicion if he goes public."

"Maybe. Usually these guys want to run and hide."

"I guess he's tired of hiding."

"Okay. Let me make some calls. We'll get Josh out and lodge Duckett in dissociation while we start questioning him, figure out who else is involved. But Kali"-she gave me one of those locked-eye looks-"this is really helpful. This is the kind of teamwork we need between investigations and corrections. I've been pushing for better cooperation for three years, and you'd swear by the response I get that I'm trying to investigate COs. This is a start, Kali. You and I can make a difference. Spread some success around."

I shook her hand, wondering how hard you press a grip when you're betraying someone's trust.

By the time I was done with the Pen Squad, my shift was half over. Keeper Pollock asked me loudly, and in front of the others, if I'd be available for my duties now or whether I'd applied for a new job. I knew he didn't have the b.a.l.l.s to ask much in the way of detail. But my status as a snitch among the COs had been announced.

When some of the longest hours of my life finally ended, I walked out into the parking lot, opened the truck, and sat inside. The engine groaned, and the heater jetted cold. The condom of drugs was still in the tissue in my pocket. I couldn't go to the library. They knew about the drop. I couldn't bring the drugs back inside. I'd have a f.u.c.king heart attack. I opened the glove compartment, wedged a map and a manual over top of them, and slammed it shut.

When Ruddik answered the phone, he could tell I was upset. He wanted to know what was going on. I told him about the Pen Squad calling me in. He waited for more. I told him that I'd carried the drugs inside, found out the library was under surveillance, and backed off. He told me not to panic. We'd come up with a plan. I didn't tell him about what I'd done to Roy Duckett. Instead, I told him what I'd learned from Josh about the comic book.

"He said it's about money. He said it was a way of sending messages."

"Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned," Ruddik said, respect in his voice. "That's interesting." And he stopped talking, as though lost in thought.

I got tired of waiting for Ruddik's contemplation to come to an end.

"What next?" I meant the drugs. I meant me extracting myself from the tangled web of my own lies.

He told me to go home and get some sleep. I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull that off.

34.

A jack showed up at his drum and tossed him a canvas bag.

"Pack your s.h.i.t up. You're moving."

He'd fantasized about the ways a transfer would solve all his problems. In the whirling part of his brain, the desire was part of a desperate calculation. Roy was trying to use him, and Roy knew too much about him. Seeing Roy with the drawings in his hand had sp.a.w.ned in Josh the worst kind of panic. But getting rid of Roy was only a partial solution to his problems. He needed to align himself with someone else. So he locked onto Fenton as an alternative protector. Fenton had sent Deanna. Fenton liked him. Fenton might be the only one who could stand up to Roy.

But now the reality of leaving the infirmary made his stomach sink. Could he make Fenton understand it hadn't been his fault the drugs were seized? He hadn't ratted Fenton out, thank G.o.d for that. Fenton might even appreciate that Roy was the one getting the blame. Josh wanted to deliver that news firsthand. He crammed clothes and letters and boots into the bag and prayed he was doing the right thing.

The jack avoided the yard and walked him through the tunnel. Josh had never been in the south tunnel before. The hallway was wider than he would have expected. Their footsteps echoed. He wondered why he felt so isolated and buried; then he realized there were no cameras. A jack could do whatever he wanted with an inmate down here. Josh kept his gaze dead forward but felt the jack's presence behind his right shoulder.

The gate sprung them into the main hub. The hub was empty of inmates. A group of jacks stood next to the bubble. He and his jack took the tunnel into B block. As they neared the entrance, the noise got worse. All the inmates were in their cells, but the block was a stadium of noise: music, singing, talking, whooping, swearing, clanking. Every sound thudded off the steel and concrete.

"Oh, you're not going to like this." The jack laughed softly to himself.

The third-level hallway was narrow, less than six feet across, marked down the middle by a peeling white line. On the right was the long row of cells. On the left was a railing separating the hall from the floor below. The floor above extended up and over, like a cliff ledge that could collapse. The smells. Body odor. Cooked food, rank dampness-all mixed into air that was bone cold. The doors were not covered, as they were in the infirmary. They were just bars. You could see into every house if you wanted to. Some of the men looked up and glanced at him. A few wolf whistled. Most ignored him, doing their thing, reading books, writing letters, playing paper chess with someone next door, fixing a shoe, taking a s.h.i.t. He looked for Fenton but did not see him.

They stopped before an empty drum. Seeing it, Josh's heart dropped even further. Soiled sink and toilet. Peeling paint. Broken shelf leaning against the wall. The thin mattress was warped like a slice of dry toast and stained with s.h.i.t or dark blood in the middle. He looked back at the jack, wondering if this was some kind of cruel hoax. But the jack pushed him in, then got his face into Josh's. Clean-shaven but ill-looking, black whiskers in his nostrils, lower jaw smaller than normal, an overbite.

"You little s.h.i.t f.u.c.ker. You make me waste my f.u.c.king time carrying your leash over here and now you don't want to run into your new home?"

He slammed the bars shut and keyed the lock.

"Don't choke on any c.o.c.k."

Alone, Josh felt the weight of the bundle he carried a hundred times heavier than before. He put it down and leaned against the wall, staring at the bed. By the look of the dust bunnies and dead roaches, no one had swept the cell in months. The toilet was filled with a yellow-brown slurry that didn't stir when he pushed the handle. He lifted the mattress with the toe of his sneaker to investigate a big lump. There was a dead rat stretched lengthwise and wedged against the wall. He stared at it, unable to believe what had befallen him, and slunk down the wall into a crouch.

The grub buzzer sounded an hour later, and the bolts clanked back. A half step behind, Josh stumbled out and lined up with the rest of the men, hands dug into his pockets. He didn't know the routine, but his body followed. The jack shouted orders, and the line began to move. He'd never eaten in the mess hall before. The line stayed single file right up until the chow counter. He didn't see Fenton, an absence that was drawing him into panic. No one spoke to him, though he sensed looks. He grabbed an open seat at a table and regretted it immediately. A r.e.t.a.r.ded man sat opposite him. A scared-looking man two seats over. A table for rejects and outcasts. Thirty-five minutes later, when the line got back to the block, there was free time. Some of the men sat in their cells with the doors open. Others hung out in the hallway or in the small rec room at the far end of the block. Josh flipped the mattress up and stared at the dead rat, wondering what the f.u.c.k to do about it. He found a piece of cardboard in the trash bin and used it to slide under the sodden, heavy body, fearful that it would roll into his hand and touch his skin.

He walked out of the cell with it and headed back to the trash bin in the middle of the range.

"Yo."

He looked over at the sound, the voice of a young man standing next to one of the cells in the middle of the range.

"Don't you put that f.u.c.king rat in my f.u.c.king garbage can. That belongs in your drum."

Josh stopped, sensing that everyone surrounding him was watching. He heard a few dark chuckles but knew it was no joke. Wordlessly, he turned and walked back to his cell, still carrying the rat.

"Yeah, just flush it down your toilet," someone else said.

That night he threw his arm over his eyes and told himself not one f.u.c.king tear. He knew if he started, he might never stop.

In the morning he wrapped the rat in his worst T-shirt. When he walked out with everyone, hands shoved into his pockets, bleary-eyed, stomach in pain, aching to use the bathroom, he carried the rat under his clothes. He hunched over slightly so that no one would notice the bulge in his gut, feeling the weight of the rat against his skin like a thing that could still shimmy and move. He ate breakfast with the rat resting under his sweater on his lap, trying not to retch. When he got out into the yard, he let it drop to the ground, and he walked away, swallowing the saliva that ran freely in his mouth.