“Yes, sir.”
Jerry’s forehead wrinkled, and he began thinking out loud while reading the report. “Hmm, you served twenty-six months of that … if you followed the rules you would have gotten out sooner … I don’t see—ah,” he nodded, turning the page. “You got sixty days in solitary on your first day inside.”
He glanced up to find Madsen’s clear blue eyes darkening with an unreadable emotion. Grant’s chest tightened as his parole officer inquired, “Why were you thrown in solitary?”
An image flashed through Grant’s mind: cold, black eyes staring at him, forcing him to submit to their will; eyes Grant had known for years … intense, intelligent, frightening charcoal eyes. He swallowed, trying to shake off the past.
“I was sent to solitary for assaulting another prisoner. The warden wasn’t too pleased with me getting in a fight on my first day.”
“I would think not,” Jerry replied, resuming his reading.
Grant closed his eyes, dreading what might come next. Please, please, don’t be in the report. Please.
“Huh, it says here you didn’t stay in the hole for the entire sixty days.”
Shit. It was there. Grant opened his eyes to find the officer staring at him, and then he continued to read.
“You, uh, had a breakdown of some sort, and had to be transferred to the psych ward after three days in solitary.” He watched a blush form on Madsen’s neck and creep upward, blooming across his cheeks. Grant found himself gazing down at his hands.
Jerry observed him twisting his hands nervously in his lap. They were an artist’s hands, with long, elegant fingers, not a convict’s hands. They were not the hands of a man who assaulted a fellow prisoner. They were not the hands of a man who attempted to burglarize a club, waving around a stolen gun in the process.
Jerry sighed. He could tell Madsen was intensely uncomfortable, but he had to know what he was dealing with. “What happened in solitary?”
Continuing to look down, Grant waited a few moments before responding, “I had a psychotic break, I guess. That’s what they told me anyway. They put me in the psych ward and made me take medication, and I had to stay there until my sixty days were up.”
“Are you still taking the meds?”
Grant looked up sharply. “No, sir. I was fine once I got out of solitary.”
Studying the man across from him, Jerry had to admit he didn’t seem crazy. But he would have to pay extra attention to this one, as violence and mental illness were not a palatable combination.
Perhaps Madsen could benefit from the psychological services of the woman who had just left his office, Jerry thought. He smirked, thinking of a million reasons that would be a bad idea—particularly because Taylor no longer had a license, and it was never a good idea for cons to commingle.
Sometimes Jerry and his fellow parole officers joked about starting their own dating service, matching up the hapless cons who crossed their doorsteps. When they were in particularly contemptuous moods, they would brainstorm potential names for the company. Instead of Perfect Match, Jerry suggested Perfect CONnection. Al came up with a substitute for It’s Just Lunch, offering It’s Just Cuffs as an alternative. And Sheila perverted to .
Jerry cleared his throat and tried to get back on task. “I need an address for you, Mr. Madsen.”
“I don’t have one yet,” Grant admitted.
“Don’t you have any family?”
Grant grimaced. Not the type of family I want to see. “No, sir. I stayed at the Y last night using a voucher from Gurnee, but I’m going to look for something today.”
“And I suppose it would be presumptuous of me to assume you already have a job?”
Grant bit his lip. “No job yet, sir. But I’ll get one. I promise.”
The officer and parolee looked at each other awkwardly after that comment, both knowing a con’s promise was worth exactly zilch.
“You were twenty-eight when you began your sentence two years ago,” Jerry calculated. “What was your former occupation?”
Grant exhaled in frustration. More questions he’d rather not answer. More questions eliciting his shameful past. “I was in the Navy, sir.”
Bingo. Jerry smiled inwardly, pleased that his intuition about Madsen was correct. “You were in the Navy when you were arrested?”
“Yes, sir … but I’m not anymore.” Grant averted his eyes. “They discharged me when I was convicted of a felony.”
Jerry kept staring at the parolee, wondering how the hell this young man had made such a mess of his life. Grant glanced at the peeling paint on the walls, the window, the grimy linoleum floor—anything to avoid meeting the disappointed gaze of yet another authority figure. Despite his best intentions, all Grant did was let down his superiors. He felt the familiar pangs of guilt when he thought about the man he had disappointed most: Joe, his mother’s brother, who had become a father to him and who now wanted nothing to do with him.
“Your life is kind of fucked up, Madsen,” Jerry observed wryly.
Grant half-chuckled. “Kind of, sir.” He supposed he should feel offended by the comment, but actually the parole officer was right on. Grant was one fat disappointment to all those around him. And Officer Stone didn’t even know anything about his family. How would the grizzled PO describe his life if he knew how destructive his family truly was? A hopeless failure?
Grant certainly felt hopeless much of the time, and his intense curiosity about the woman he had seen before this appointment surprised him. Any intense feeling surprised him at this point. Despite his conversation with Officer Stone, he felt a little lightness when thinking about her sultry eyes and shiny hair. A woman had not had an effect on him like that in quite some time.
When Jerry began speaking, Grant snapped his gaze back to his PO. “Let me explain how things will work, Madsen. We’re going to meet weekly, same time, same place. You screw up just this much,” he held his thumb and forefinger centimeters apart, “and your ass is going back to prison. Make your appointments, get a place to live, and get a job ASAP. Are we clear, sailor?”
“Aye, sir.”
Jerry considered the abrupt changes in Madsen’s life, including the Navy discharge, the violence, and the psychosis. Then he made an executive decision. “Our last order of business today is a drug test. When we’re done here, you are to report to Room 212 down the hall and pee in a cup.”
Watching Grant nod, Jerry added, “Should I expect a positive drug test? It would be better to tell me now.”
“No, sir. I don’t take drugs.”
“Good. Keep it that way and you’ll serve the last ten months of your sentence outside the walls of Gurnee. Our time’s just about up. Do you have any questions?”
Eager to get out of there, Grant replied, “No, sir.”
“See you at nine-fifteen next week, and don’t be late, Madsen.”