Part 18 (2/2)

Melinda said nothing for a moment, the information working its way through some algorithm inside her head.

”Roy Duckett. It's never who you expect, is it?” she said finally.

I nodded, worried that I'd strained credulity. I talked fast, pus.h.i.+ng us forward. ”I guess so. There's something more. Josh asked for a favor in return. I thought you'd be okay with it, so I said we'd make it happen. I should have asked first.”

I could see the uptightness sneak into her expression.

”What is it?”

”In exchange for that information, he wants to be moved out of the infirmary and into general population, on B-three, where he has some friends.”

She took it well.

”Not in protective? That doesn't sound very safe.”

”He thinks the opposite. He thinks there will be less suspicion if he goes public.”

”Maybe. Usually these guys want to run and hide.”

”I guess he's tired of hiding.”

”Okay. Let me make some calls. We'll get Josh out and lodge Duckett in dissociation while we start questioning him, figure out who else is involved. But Kali”-she gave me one of those locked-eye looks-”this is really helpful. This is the kind of teamwork we need between investigations and corrections. I've been pus.h.i.+ng for better cooperation for three years, and you'd swear by the response I get that I'm trying to investigate COs. This is a start, Kali. You and I can make a difference. Spread some success around.”

I shook her hand, wondering how hard you press a grip when you're betraying someone's trust.

By the time I was done with the Pen Squad, my s.h.i.+ft was half over. Keeper Pollock asked me loudly, and in front of the others, if I'd be available for my duties now or whether I'd applied for a new job. I knew he didn't have the b.a.l.l.s to ask much in the way of detail. But my status as a snitch among the COs had been announced.

When some of the longest hours of my life finally ended, I walked out into the parking lot, opened the truck, and sat inside. The engine groaned, and the heater jetted cold. The condom of drugs was still in the tissue in my pocket. I couldn't go to the library. They knew about the drop. I couldn't bring the drugs back inside. I'd have a f.u.c.king heart attack. I opened the glove compartment, wedged a map and a manual over top of them, and slammed it shut.

When Ruddik answered the phone, he could tell I was upset. He wanted to know what was going on. I told him about the Pen Squad calling me in. He waited for more. I told him that I'd carried the drugs inside, found out the library was under surveillance, and backed off. He told me not to panic. We'd come up with a plan. I didn't tell him about what I'd done to Roy Duckett. Instead, I told him what I'd learned from Josh about the comic book.

”He said it's about money. He said it was a way of sending messages.”

”Well, I'll be d.a.m.ned,” Ruddik said, respect in his voice. ”That's interesting.” And he stopped talking, as though lost in thought.

I got tired of waiting for Ruddik's contemplation to come to an end.

”What next?” I meant the drugs. I meant me extracting myself from the tangled web of my own lies.

He told me to go home and get some sleep. I wasn't sure I'd be able to pull that off.

34.

A jack showed up at his drum and tossed him a canvas bag.

”Pack your s.h.i.+t up. You're moving.”

He'd fantasized about the ways a transfer would solve all his problems. In the whirling part of his brain, the desire was part of a desperate calculation. Roy was trying to use him, and Roy knew too much about him. Seeing Roy with the drawings in his hand had sp.a.w.ned in Josh the worst kind of panic. But getting rid of Roy was only a partial solution to his problems. He needed to align himself with someone else. So he locked onto Fenton as an alternative protector. Fenton had sent Deanna. Fenton liked him. Fenton might be the only one who could stand up to Roy.

But now the reality of leaving the infirmary made his stomach sink. Could he make Fenton understand it hadn't been his fault the drugs were seized? He hadn't ratted Fenton out, thank G.o.d for that. Fenton might even appreciate that Roy was the one getting the blame. Josh wanted to deliver that news firsthand. He crammed clothes and letters and boots into the bag and prayed he was doing the right thing.

The jack avoided the yard and walked him through the tunnel. Josh had never been in the south tunnel before. The hallway was wider than he would have expected. Their footsteps echoed. He wondered why he felt so isolated and buried; then he realized there were no cameras. A jack could do whatever he wanted with an inmate down here. Josh kept his gaze dead forward but felt the jack's presence behind his right shoulder.

The gate sprung them into the main hub. The hub was empty of inmates. A group of jacks stood next to the bubble. He and his jack took the tunnel into B block. As they neared the entrance, the noise got worse. All the inmates were in their cells, but the block was a stadium of noise: music, singing, talking, whooping, swearing, clanking. Every sound thudded off the steel and concrete.

”Oh, you're not going to like this.” The jack laughed softly to himself.

The third-level hallway was narrow, less than six feet across, marked down the middle by a peeling white line. On the right was the long row of cells. On the left was a railing separating the hall from the floor below. The floor above extended up and over, like a cliff ledge that could collapse. The smells. Body odor. Cooked food, rank dampness-all mixed into air that was bone cold. The doors were not covered, as they were in the infirmary. They were just bars. You could see into every house if you wanted to. Some of the men looked up and glanced at him. A few wolf whistled. Most ignored him, doing their thing, reading books, writing letters, playing paper chess with someone next door, fixing a shoe, taking a s.h.i.+t. He looked for Fenton but did not see him.

They stopped before an empty drum. Seeing it, Josh's heart dropped even further. Soiled sink and toilet. Peeling paint. Broken shelf leaning against the wall. The thin mattress was warped like a slice of dry toast and stained with s.h.i.+t or dark blood in the middle. He looked back at the jack, wondering if this was some kind of cruel hoax. But the jack pushed him in, then got his face into Josh's. Clean-shaven but ill-looking, black whiskers in his nostrils, lower jaw smaller than normal, an overbite.

”You little s.h.i.+t f.u.c.ker. You make me waste my f.u.c.king time carrying your leash over here and now you don't want to run into your new home?”

He slammed the bars shut and keyed the lock.

”Don't choke on any c.o.c.k.”

Alone, Josh felt the weight of the bundle he carried a hundred times heavier than before. He put it down and leaned against the wall, staring at the bed. By the look of the dust bunnies and dead roaches, no one had swept the cell in months. The toilet was filled with a yellow-brown slurry that didn't stir when he pushed the handle. He lifted the mattress with the toe of his sneaker to investigate a big lump. There was a dead rat stretched lengthwise and wedged against the wall. He stared at it, unable to believe what had befallen him, and slunk down the wall into a crouch.

The grub buzzer sounded an hour later, and the bolts clanked back. A half step behind, Josh stumbled out and lined up with the rest of the men, hands dug into his pockets. He didn't know the routine, but his body followed. The jack shouted orders, and the line began to move. He'd never eaten in the mess hall before. The line stayed single file right up until the chow counter. He didn't see Fenton, an absence that was drawing him into panic. No one spoke to him, though he sensed looks. He grabbed an open seat at a table and regretted it immediately. A r.e.t.a.r.ded man sat opposite him. A scared-looking man two seats over. A table for rejects and outcasts. Thirty-five minutes later, when the line got back to the block, there was free time. Some of the men sat in their cells with the doors open. Others hung out in the hallway or in the small rec room at the far end of the block. Josh flipped the mattress up and stared at the dead rat, wondering what the f.u.c.k to do about it. He found a piece of cardboard in the trash bin and used it to slide under the sodden, heavy body, fearful that it would roll into his hand and touch his skin.

He walked out of the cell with it and headed back to the trash bin in the middle of the range.

”Yo.”

He looked over at the sound, the voice of a young man standing next to one of the cells in the middle of the range.

”Don't you put that f.u.c.king rat in my f.u.c.king garbage can. That belongs in your drum.”

Josh stopped, sensing that everyone surrounding him was watching. He heard a few dark chuckles but knew it was no joke. Wordlessly, he turned and walked back to his cell, still carrying the rat.

”Yeah, just flush it down your toilet,” someone else said.

That night he threw his arm over his eyes and told himself not one f.u.c.king tear. He knew if he started, he might never stop.

In the morning he wrapped the rat in his worst T-s.h.i.+rt. When he walked out with everyone, hands shoved into his pockets, bleary-eyed, stomach in pain, aching to use the bathroom, he carried the rat under his clothes. He hunched over slightly so that no one would notice the bulge in his gut, feeling the weight of the rat against his skin like a thing that could still s.h.i.+mmy and move. He ate breakfast with the rat resting under his sweater on his lap, trying not to retch. When he got out into the yard, he let it drop to the ground, and he walked away, swallowing the saliva that ran freely in his mouth.

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