PRIVATE EYE, HELD ON KIDNAPPING CHARGE, FLEES COOLIS
For the second time this summer, a woman managed to run away from the experimental jail–prison complex operated by Carnifice Security in Coolis. This time, though, the hue and cry is much louder: the woman in question is notorious in Chicago, being private eye V. (Victoria) I. (Iphigenia) Warshawski. Warshawski had been arrested on charges of kidnapping the son of Carnifice chief Robert Baladine and spent a month in the jail wing at Coolis after failing to post bail.
She was not an easy prisoner, Warden Frederick Ruzich said, often getting involved in fights with other inmates and ignoring orders from corrections officers, whose job includes trying to smooth the adjustment for women new to the Coolis system.
How Warshawski managed to escape may never be known. Her body was found at the foot of the Belmont ramp to the Kennedy. Although she is still alive, she suffered severe brain damage and may never speak again. Dr. Charlotte Herschel, Warshawski’s physician at Beth Israel Hospital, says Warshawski is able to breathe on her own, which gives them hope for some partial recovery. She has been moved to a nursing home, but Dr. Herschel declined to tell reporters where.
Warshawski is best known for the work she did in tracking down the murderer of social activist Deirdre Messenger last year, but her successes in investigating white–collar crime have earned her respect from many quarters in Chicago, including the Chicago Police Department.
Robert Baladine, the president of Carnifice Security, is angry at lapses in security at the Coolis complex, which have made escape begin to seem like a routine matter for the inmates. He promised a thorough investigation of security measures at the prison. Illinois House Speaker Jean–Claude Poilevy (R–Oak Brook) says the legislature granted a number of tax breaks to Carnifice to get them to take on the women’s prison and expects them to live up to their side of the bargain. (See Murray Ryerson’s story on Page 16 for a summary of Warshawski’s most notable cases.)
The story included a map of Illinois, with a blowup of the northwest corner showing the town of Coolis, the prison, and the roads running to Chicago.
I put the newspaper lethargically to one side. I didn’t even care what Murray had to say about me. I had remembered recently what was troubling me about my watch, and it left me feeling so futile that it was affecting my recovery.
“That mini–camera that got me these wounds—it’s disappeared,” I muttered to Morrell. “I don’t know if they took it off me when they put me in segregation or if it just got lost at the hospital, but it’s gone.”
Morrell’s eyes widened. “V. I.—they were supposed to tell you when they gave you back your father’s watch. I have it. I took it to the Unblinking Eye to get the pictures developed. I didn’t mention it because they keep telling me not to get you excited, and I thought you’d bring it up when you were ready to look at the pictures. They’ll be ready in another day or two.”
After that I felt giddy with relief. “Did you and Lotty really think I might never talk again, or was that wishful thinking?”
Morrell grinned. “Alex Fisher from Global kept pumping me, so I thought I’d play it safe. When I told Freeman what she and I said, he thought it was such a good idea that he put it out in a press release. The only people who know the truth besides him and Dr. Herschel are Sal and of course your neighbor. Dr. Herschel thought it would be intolerably cruel to Mr. Contreras to imagine you in such straits. And it gives us some wiggle room to figure out what to do with Baladine and Global Entertainment.”
Yes. Baladine and Global Entertainment. I wanted to do something about them, but right now I couldn’t imagine what. My first week at the Berman Institute I was too tired and too sore to think about what I’d been through. As I grew stronger physically, I was bewildered by my wild mood swings. At one moment I’d be euphoric over my escape and the knowledge that I had managed to smuggle out pictures; the next I’d see a stranger coming toward me and think it was one of the corrections officers, Polsen or Hartigan. I’d start feeling unbearably helpless, as I had in Coolis, and would find myself moving away as fast as I could, my legs wobbly, as if I expected to be hit again with fifty thousand volts of electricity.
The institute treated many people who had been held longer and in greater duress than I. I felt guilty for taking up room that someone from Rwanda or Guatemala could have used, but the psychologist who met with me twice a week told me the institute didn’t see it that way.