Love You More: A Novel

“Yes. But the embezzlement started twelve months prior, a series of payments made to an insurance company, which it turns out, doesn’t exist.”


“But the checks have been cashed,” Bobby stated.

“Each and every one,” Hamilton replied.

“Who signed for them?”

“Hard to make out. But all were deposited into the same bank account in Connecticut, which four weeks ago was closed out.”

“The fake insurance company was a shell,” D.D. determined. “Set up to receive payments, a quarter of a million dollars’ worth, then shut down.”

“That’s what the investigators believe.”

“Bank’s gotta have information for you,” Bobby said. “Same bank for all transactions?”

“The bank has been cooperating fully. It supplied us with video footage of a woman in a red baseball cap and dark sunglasses closing out the account. That has become internal affair’s biggest lead—they are pursuing a female with inside information on the troopers’ union.”

“Such as Tessa Leoni,” D.D. murmured.

The lieutenant colonel didn’t argue.





23


If you want someone dead, prison is the perfect place to do it. Just because the Suffolk County Jail was minimum security didn’t mean it wasn’t filled with violent offenders. The convicted murderer who’d just served twenty years at the state maximum security prison might finish up his or her county sentence here, completing eighteen months for burglary or simple assault that had been in addition to the homicide charge. Maybe my roommate Erica was locked up for dealing drugs, or turning tricks, or petty theft. Or maybe she’d killed the last three women who’d tried to get between her and her meth.

When I asked the question, she just smiled, showing off twin rows of black teeth.

Unit 1-9-2 held thirty-four other women just like her.

As pretrial detainees, we were kept separate from the general inmate population, in a locked-down unit where food came to us, the nurse came to us, and programming came to us. But within the unit, there was plenty of intermingling, creating multiple opportunities for violence.

Erica walked me through the daily schedule. Morning started at seven a.m., with “count time,” when the CO would conduct head count. Then we would be served breakfast in our cells, followed by a couple of hours “rec time”—we could leave our cells and roam unshackled around the unit, maybe hang out in the commons area watching TV, maybe shower (three showers located right off the commons area, where everyone could also enjoy that show), or ride the squeaky exercise bike (verbal insults from your fellow detainees not included).

Most women, I quickly realized, spent their time playing cards or gossiping at the round stainless steel tables in the center of the unit. A woman would join a table, pick up one rumor, share two more, then visit a neighbor’s cell, where she could be the first to provide the big scoop. And around and around the women went, table to table, cell to cell. The whole atmosphere reminded me of summer camp, where everyone wore the same clothes, slept in bunks, and obsessed over boys.

Eleven a.m., everyone returned to their assigned cell for the second session of count time, followed by lunch. More rec time. Count time again at three. Dinner around five. Final count time at eleven, followed by lights out, which was not to be confused with quiet time. In prison, there was no such thing as quiet time, and in a corrections facility that housed both men and women, there was definitely no such thing as quiet time.

The females, I quickly learned, occupied the top three floors of the Suffolk County “tower.” Some enterprising woman (or man, I suppose) determined that the plumbing pipes from the upper floors connected to the lower floors. Meaning that a female detainee—say, my roommate Erica—could stick her head inside the white porcelain toilet bowl and proceed to “talk” to a random male on the lower floor. Though, talking isn’t really what any man wants to do. Think of it more as the prison version of sexting.

Erica would make lewd comments. Nine floors beneath us, a faceless man would groan. Erica would make more lewd comments: Harder, faster, come on, baby, I’m rubbing my tits for you, can you feel me rubbing my tits for you? (I made that up: Erica didn’t have tits. Meth had dissolved all the fat and tissue from her bones, including her breasts. Black teeth, black nails, no boobs. Erica should be starring in a public service announcement targeting teenage girls: This is your body on meth.)

Faceless man nine floors below us, however, wouldn’t know that. In his mind, Erica was probably some buxom blonde, or maybe the hot Latina chick he’d spotted once in Medical. He would whack off happily. Erica would start round two.

As would the woman in the cell beside us, and the cell beside her and the cell beside her. All. Night. Long.

Prison is a social place.