Coates sipped from the coffee cup she’d just refilled. It was bitter. She took another sip anyway. She was feeling optimistic. The day was an apocalypse, but her daughter was driving home and she was finally ridding herself of Don Peters. Amid the fecal mounds there occasionally glimmered a pearl or two of satisfaction.
“You’re a scumbag, and you’re lucky we can’t deal with you to the extent you deserve right now.” From the pocket of her suit jacket she produced a Baggie. She held it up and gave it a shake. Inside the Baggie were two Q-tips. “Because, you see, we do have proof.”
Peters’s grin faltered, tried to come on strong, didn’t quite make it.
“It’s your squirt, Donnie Boy. From the Coke machine.” Coates took a big swig of the lousy coffee and smacked her lips. “Once everything settles down and we can deal with you as you deserve, you’re going to jail. Good news is, they keep the sex offenders in a special wing, so you might survive, but the bad news is, even with a good lawyer you’ll be in there for quite awhile. Don’t worry, though, you’ll still get to see me at your parole hearings. I’m on the board, you know.” The warden twisted to her intercom and pressed the call button. “Blanche, can you rustle up a fresh bag of coffee? This stuff is dreadful.” She waited a moment for a response and then pressed the button again. “Blanche?” Coates released the button. “She must have stepped out.”
Coates returned her attention to Peters on the couch. His grin had given up entirely. The officer was breathing hard, running his tongue around under his lips, clearly working through the implications of the DNA evidence that had just been waved in his face.
“For now,” the warden said, “just turn in your uniform and bug out. Telling you we have the goods on you was probably a mistake on my part, but I couldn’t resist the opportunity to gloat. It gives you a few extra days until the hammer falls. You could hop in your car, head for Canada. Who knows, maybe you can keep your head down, become an ice fisherman.”
“Set-up!” Peters leaped to his feet. “This is a set-up!”
Clint could no longer hold back. He stepped forward, grabbed the shorter man by the throat, and pushed him against the wall. Don batted at Clint’s shoulders and face, scraping Clint’s cheeks with his nails. Clint squeezed. Under his fingers Clint could feel Peters’s pulse squirming, could feel his Adam’s apple shrinking, could feel the impossibility and frustration and fright of the entire day pooling out around his hands like juice from a grapefruit. A moth was fluttering around his head. It planted a ghost-kiss on one temple and was gone.
“Dr. Norcross!”
Clint drove a fist into the soft sack of Peters’s belly and then let go. The officer fell onto the couch and slid off, onto the floor on his hands and knees. He made a choked animal noise: “Hee-hee-hee.”
The warden’s door banged open. Tig Murphy stepped in, holding a Taser. Damp glistened on Tig’s cheeks and his color was poor; he’d told Clint he was fine, but he wasn’t fine, nothing was fine and nobody was fine.
“Hee-hee-hee.” Peters began to crawl away from Clint. The moth had lost interest in Clint and now it was circling the crawling man, seemingly ushering him out.
“We were just going to call for you, Officer Murphy.” Coates, still at her desk, proceeded as if nothing had happened at all. “Mr. Peters was about to exit the premises and he tripped over a fold in the rug. Help him up, would you? He can leave his things in the locker room.” The warden toasted Tig Murphy with her coffee cup and drank it down.
CHAPTER 12
1
“Now, Officer, you know I’m prone to fits of temper, right?”
Angel, standing at a respectful distance from the Booth, presented this rhetorical question to Vanessa Lampley. Jeanette, beside her, had no illusions: they were facing an uphill battle.
Behind the plastic shield of the Booth, seated at the board, Lampley’s broad shoulders were curled dangerously forward. She looked prepared to leap straight through the shield. Jeanette figured that in a fight Angel could dish out plenty despite her narrow frame—but not enough to handle Lampley.
“Fitzroy, is that some kind of half-assed threat? With the shit that’s going on today? Now I got three inmates covered in cobwebs, I’m way past when I should have clocked out, I’m weary as hell, and you want to test me? That is a bad idea, I promise you.”
Angel held up her palms. “No, no, no, Officer. I’m just sayin, I wouldn’t trust me in a situation like this either, okay? My felony record speaks for itself and there’s lots else I got away with, though you understand I can’t share specifics.”
Jeanette touched her forehead and studied the ground. If there had ever been a plan for Angel, post-parole, to move into the area of international diplomacy, someone needed to revamp it.
“Get out of here, you fucking nitwit,” Lampley said.
“Which is why I brought Jeanette.” With this, Angel threw out an arm: ta-da!
“Well, that changes everything.”
“Don’t mock.” The arm that Angel had raised dropped to her side. What had been collegial in her expression flattened. “Don’t you mock me, Officer.”
“Don’t you don’t me, inmate.”
Jeanette decided it was now or never. “Officer Lampley, I’m sorry. We’re not trying to make any trouble.”
Van, who had started to rise, imposingly, from her chair, settled back. Unlike Fitzroy, who basically lived on Bad Report, owning it like a damn property in Monopoly, Sorley was known for her friendly attitude. And according to Ree Dempster, Sorley had been molested by that poisonous toad Peters. Van supposed she could hear her out.
“What is it?”
“We want to cook up some coffee. Some special coffee. To help everyone stay awake.”
Van held her finger on the intercom for a second or two before she spoke, then asked the obvious: “What do you mean by special?”
“Stronger than regular coffee,” Jeanette said.
“You can have some, too,” Angel said, and tried for a magnanimous smile. “It’ll sharp you right up.”
“Oh, that’s just what I need! A whole prison full of hopped-up inmates! That would be wonderful! Let me guess, Fitzroy: the secret ingredient is crack cocaine.”
“Well . . . not exactly. Since we don’t have any. And let me ask you this: What’s the alternative?”
Lampley admitted she didn’t know.