No one around here, not even his parole officer, could help him. Some things just didn’t get fixed, no matter how good peoples’ intentions were.
He thought of Doc Jones and her pretty, but sad face. She’d tried to help him. She was one smart cookie, the way she’d scooped up that note he’d dropped in her hand during his medical exam. She’d be a helluva card player, he figured, smiling at the image.
He sighed deeply and then shivered as if someone had walked over his grave. He sure hoped he hadn’t put the doc in harm’s way. He didn’t want that on his conscience, along with all his other mistakes.
Opening the packet of materials his parole officer had given him, he started reading. It was a laborious task, his reading skills being only slightly better than his writing, but using the map provided, he realized he was right around the corner from the shelter Officer Cruz had referred him to.
Jesus Saves. Sounded hinky to him. He didn’t trust much in Jesus freaks. They were always wanting to convert you to something in exchange for a bite of food or a place to bunk for the night.
Still, Cruz had sounded sincere. Maybe he’d give it a once-over in the morning.
He dosed a bit, wakening up around midnight. Taking his backpack with him, he walked down the stairs and next door to a twenty-four-hour, old-fashioned drive-in where he got a black coffee and sat quietly in the corner, planning and thinking.
At last the manager, a pimply-faced teenager who’d been eyeing him for some time, walked over to his booth. “Uh, sorry, sir, but you can’t stay here, uh, any longer. That is, uh, unless you order something.”
Cole was pretty sure the kid was scared to death, but he didn’t want to start off his release with some kind of unnecessary altercation, so he simply nodded and rose, taking his coffee with him. He wandered around the area, silent and mostly empty except for the occasional street person settling down for the night in an alley or behind a secluded dumpster.
Even though it violated his parole, Cole knew he had to have something to defend himself with. You couldn’t live a life on the street without protection. A gun was out – too hard to get, too easy to get caught with, and too expensive.
Some kind of blade, maybe a hunting knife. Anything over three or four inches violated parole, too, but was easier to hide or ditch.
A steak or paring knife would provide some protection, although not much. He decided tomorrow he’d go to the Walmart store across town and see if he could shoplift a suitable weapon.
Returning to his room, he settled down for the night, having found a hefty, good-sized rock in the alley behind the hotel. The rock would have to do until he boosted a blade.
Chapter 18
Anson Stark wasn’t anything like Frankie had expected. How could the whole damned prison be terrified of such an ordinary-looking man? Stark was only a few inches taller than Frankie, who was five feet seven, and he had a slight, but wiry frame.
He didn’t look much of a threat, probably weighed about twenty-five pounds more than her. But she’d learned a lot about killers in the last year, and the look in Stark’s eyes and the expression on his face chilled her to the bone. He wasn’t someone you’d turn your back on.
He was heavily shackled. By law, inmates had to receive requested medical attention, but security was taking no chances with Stark. Wrists cuffed behind his back, with a chain extending to his feet and linking them together, he was forced to hunch over when he walked. The whole affair gave him an awkward, stilted gait.
When he saw Frankie, however, he pulled himself erect – at the cost of some pain, she imagined. The strain on his posture would be tremendous. Pride or control, she wondered?
Both guards remained inside the examination room, although protocol demanded that the inmate receive some attempt at confidentiality. Stark wouldn’t dare threaten her in front of the hefty correctional officers.
Still, Charlie Cox’s words rang in her ears. She was in danger, and who else but the leader of the most powerful prison gang could possibly be a threat to her? She’d never had even the slightest fear around her inmate patients. In fact, they were remarkably respectful to her.
She thought of Cole Hansen’s note, lying on her coffee table at home, paper clipped to the inside of the pilfered medical file. When she returned to work, she’d discovered Cole’s real medical file exactly where it was supposed to be – between Haddock and Hobson in the H section, but when she opened it, the record was largely redacted, many of her marginal notations blackened out.
Why? What valuable information lay in an inmate’s medical record? She felt like she’d unwittingly stepped inside a CIA covert operations movie.