“Where are you going, Dr. Norcross?”
The question sounded like an accusation, but at least it came out clearly. Although Lore Hicks looked disheveled—his hair a mussed halo around his bald spot, stubble on his jowly cheeks, dark circles under his eyes—the Novocain from his morning dental procedure seemed to have worn off.
“To town. I need to see my wife and son.”
“Did Janice okay that?”
Clint took a beat to control his temper. It helped to remind himself that Hicks had either lost his wife to Aurora or would soon. That did not change the fact that the man standing before him was the last guy you wanted in charge of an institution like Dooling in a time of crisis. Janice had once told Clint that her second-in-command had less than thirty credit hours of Prison Management—from a degree-mill in Oklahoma—and no hours at all in Prison Administration.
“But Hicksie’s sister is married to the lieutenant governor,” Janice had said. She’d had an extra glass of Pinot on that occasion. Or maybe it had been two. “So you do the math. He’s great at scheduling and checking inventory, but he’s been here sixteen months, and I’m not sure he could find his way to C Wing without a map. He doesn’t like to leave his office, and he’s never done a single duty tour, although that’s supposed to be a monthly requirement. He’s scared of the bad girls.”
You’ll be leaving your office tonight, Hicksie, Clint thought, and you’ll be touring, too. Strapping on a walkie and making three-wing rounds, just like the other uniforms. The ones that are left.
“Did you hear me?” Hicks asked now. “Did Janice okay you leaving?”
“I have three things for you,” Clint said. “First thing, I was scheduled out at three PM, which was . . .” He checked his watch. “About six hours ago.”
“But—”
“Wait. Here’s the second thing. Warden Coates is asleep on her couch, inside a big white cocoon.”
Hicks wore thick glasses that had a magnifying effect. When he widened his eyes, as he did now, they looked ready to fall out of their sockets. “What?”
“Long story short, Don Peters finally tripped over his own dick. Got caught molesting an inmate. Janice canned his ass, but Don managed to load up her coffee with her prescription Xanax. It put her down fast. And before you ask, Don is in the wind. When I see Lila, I’ll tell her to put out a BOLO for him, but I doubt if it will be a priority. Not tonight.”
“Oh my God.” Hicks ran his hands through his hair, further disarraying what was left of it. “Oh . . . my . . . God.”
“Here’s the third thing. We do still have the other four officers from the morning shift: Rand Quigley, Millie Olson, Tig Murphy, and Vanessa Lampley. You are number five. You’ll need to make midnight rounds with the others. Oh, and Van will bring you up to speed on what the inmates are calling Super Coffee. Jeanette Sorley and Angel Fitzroy are pushing it.”
“Super Coffee? What’s that? And what’s Fitzroy doing out? She’s not trustworthy, not at all! She has anger issues! I read your report!”
“She’s not angry tonight, at least not yet. She’s pitching in. Like you need to. And if nothing changes, all these women are going to fall asleep, Lore. Every single one. Super Coffee or no Super Coffee. They deserve some hope. Talk to Van, and follow her lead if a situation comes up.”
Hicks grabbed Clint’s jacket. His magnified eyes were panicky. “You can’t go! You can’t desert your post!”
“Why not? You did.” Clint saw Hicks wince and wished he could have called those words back. He took Hicks’s hand and removed it from his jacket gently. “You checked on your wife, I need to check on Jared and Lila. And I will be back.”
“When?”
“As soon as I can.”
“I wish they’d all go to sleep!” Hicks burst out. He sounded like a petulant child. “Every last thieving, whoring, drug-taking one of them! We ought to give them sleeping pills instead of coffee! That would solve the problem, wouldn’t it?”
Clint merely looked at him.
“All right.” Hicks did his best to square his shoulders. “I understand. You have loved ones. It’s just . . . all this . . . all these women . . . we have a jail full of them!”
Are you just figuring that out? Clint thought, then asked Hicks how his wife was doing. He supposed he should have asked earlier. Except, hell, it wasn’t as if Hicksie had asked after Lila.
“Awake, at least so far. She had . . .” Hicks cleared his throat, and his eyes shifted away from Clint’s. “She had some pep pills.”
“Good. That’s good. I’ll be ba—”
“Doc.” It was Vanessa Lampley, and not on the intercom. She was at his elbow in the hall by the main door. She had left the Booth unmanned, a thing almost unheard of. “You need to come and see this.”
“Van, I can’t. I need to check on Jared, and I need to see Lila—”
So I can say goodbye, Clint thought. It occurred to him suddenly. The potential finality. How much longer could she stay awake? Not much. On the phone she had sounded—far off, like she was part of the way to another world already. Once she nodded off, there was no reason to believe she could be brought back.
“I understand,” Vanessa said, “but it won’t take more than a minute. You too, Mr. Hicks, sir. This . . . I don’t know, but this might change everything.”
2
“Watch monitor two,” Van said when they reached the Booth.
Two was currently showing the A Wing corridor. Two women—Jeanette Sorley and Angel Fitzroy—were pushing a coffee trolley toward the soft cell, A-10, at the end. They stopped before they got there to talk to an extremely large inmate who for some reason had taken up residence in the delousing station.
“So far we’ve got at least ten women asleep inside that webbing crap,” Van said. “Might be fifteen by now. Most in their cells, but three in the common room and one in the furniture shop. That shit spins out of them as soon as they fall asleep. Except . . .”
She punched a button on her console, and monitor two showed the interior of A-10. Their new intake lay on her bunk with her eyes shut. Her chest rose and fell in slow respirations.
“Except for her,” Van said. There was something like awe in her voice. “New fish is sleeping like a baby, and the only thing on her face is her Camay-fresh skin.”
Camay-fresh skin. Something struck Clint about that, but it slipped away in his surprise at what he was seeing and his concern about Lila. “She’s not necessarily asleep just because her eyes are shut.”