I finished with the slides I’d taken of CO Polsen assaulting Dolores in the laundry room. The only sound in the room now was Peppy, crying to be allowed to come to me.
“This kind of thing is a daily occurrence. I witnessed it, I was humiliated in similar ways myself. Women have no recourse against this kind of abuse. Illinois law has no serious provision for removing abusive guards or for disciplining them. It can take over a year for a woman prisoner complaining of rape or battery to get a court hearing. During that year she can be put in segregation. She can be repeatedly assaulted. And if her case is found to be without merit, then she is cattle fodder for the corrections officers. That’s daily life at Coolis.
“I understand Robert Baladine sent around an e–mail, offering to resign. I don’t know if it’s true or not, but if it weren’t for the fact that Lucian Frenada was—probably—killed in an effort to cover up the Global manufacturing operation, I’d think Baladine should resign not because of Frenada but because of the degradation of prisoners that goes on hourly in a prison that his company built and runs for the state of Illinois.”
I’d lost my dry composure. I sat down, shivering, my teeth chattering. Morrell was at my side to put a jacket around my shoulders. Murray had stepped forward along with the rest of the team in the room, but when he saw Morrell behind me, he turned on his heel and left.
Lotty and Sal and Mr. Contreras applauded vigorously, and Mr. Contreras finally let Peppy come up to me. I sank my hands gratefully into her gold fur and tried to calm down enough to answer other questions.
What the reporters most wanted to know, besides their fascination with sex in the prison, was how Baladine came to be injured.
“He says he needed to break into the church to get his son back. I believe Father Lou has made a sworn deposition that Baladine never approached him about his son. Indeed, Robbie arrived at the church only a few hours ahead of his father, who could have phoned or come to the door the way most people might. But someone watching my home apparently saw him arrive, tailed him here to St. Remigio’s, and then called Baladine for instructions. He chose to approach his son in this highly unusual way, and a police officer is dead as a result.”
One of the Carnifice Security men who’d been in the church last week had decided to do a deal with the State’s Attorney. No one in the State’s Attorney’s office cared much about Lucian Frenada, or Nicola Aguinaldo—or me. But Father Lou was a local legend. For forty years, any policeman who’d ever boxed grew up knowing him. An assault on him in his church was more than blasphemy. So the guy Father Lou had knocked out, after realizing that the cops were more interested in finding out exactly what punch the priest had used on him than in sympathizing with him, turned on his boss and his partner and told the cops the story of his watch on my building, of seeing Robbie arrive on foot, of calling for instructions.
“Isn’t the dead officer the same man who was in your office with the cocaine?”
I smiled. “You’ll have to ask the department about that one. I never actually saw the man who died at St. Remigio’s: everything took place in the dark.”
“And what about Baladine?” Beth Blacksin from Channel 8 asked. “I hear he’s undergoing shots for rabies because your dog bit him? Is he suing you?”
“You have it backward,” I said. “I’m giving my dog Mitch a series of rabies shots in case Baladine infected him. No, seriously, he shot the dog and thought he’d killed him, because the dog tried to stop him from chaining Father Lou to my old friend and neighbor Salvatore Contreras. When Baladine was strangling me, Mitch somehow made a supercanine effort, dragged himself up on his weak legs, and dug his teeth into Baladine’s ass. If Baladine chooses to sue me, my lawyer is looking forward to cross–examining him, but we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
Regine Mauger, the Herald–Star’s gossip columnist, got up to demand what right I had to vilify the Trant family. Abigail Trant was a lovely woman who was doing an enormous amount of good for needy Chicagoans, and Regine thought I should be ashamed for attacking her husband in this way.
I didn’t tell her I had called Abigail Trant myself the day after the fight in the church. After her efforts to help me, she deserved advance notice of what I was going to say about her husband. She asked only if I was sure. And I said, not about everything but about Trant’s being with Baladine and Frenada the night Frenada died. And about the production of Global spin–offs at Coolis.
She didn’t say anything else, but two days later she came to see me—again without warning, leaving the Gelaendewagen double–parked on Racine. She was as exquisite as ever, but the skin on her face was taut with tension.