Guilty Wives

by James Patterson

  I made it inside and into the day area—the common area, the bottom floor of cell block D, where inmates played cards or watched the one television or socialized. We had three hours in the day area daily. They could try to kill me here, too, but there were a lot more cameras. This was much safer.

  I’d made it another day. But today’s work wasn’t done.

  Now I had a phone call to make.

  A call that might save my life.

  CHAPTER 90

  I SAT IN ONE of four booths at the end of the day area, where we could make our phone calls. Inmates were permitted phone privileges on a daily basis, provided that they had set up an account (mine was billed to Jeffrey) and that the numbers they dialed were preapproved. I had six approved phone numbers I could call. One was for my attorney; two were for Jeffrey, cell and home; and there was one each for the cell phones of my kids, Richie and Elena.

  My sixth number was that of Linette’s fiancé, Giorgio. I had added him two months ago as a favor to Linette, as she and Giorgio were struggling financially and I’d offered to put him on my account. I’d never called him. Linette had, using my account with my permission.

  Well, sometimes good deeds are rewarded.

  I dialed my personal code and then Giorgio’s cell phone number. He answered on the fourth ring, just as I’d begun to fear that I’d get his voice mail.

  “Allô?”

  “Giorgio? C’est Abbie.”

  “Bonjour,” he said.

  “Comment ça va?”

  “Ah, elle me manque.”

  Opening pleasantries: how are you, I miss Linette, etc. We had to keep up appearances. The prison reserved the right to record all phone calls, aside from those with your attorney. A lot of us around here thought that they recorded those, too. But my call to Giorgio was surely fair game, so we had to be careful.

  “I wrote a song about her,” he said in French.

  I took a breath. That was the cue.

  “Really?” I replied, also in French. “What’s the name of the song?”

  “‘Avec Amour,’” he said. “With Love.”

  “‘Avec Amour.’ C’est bon, c’est bon,” I said with approval.

  Avec Amour. Okay. That was easy to remember.

  Now it was my turn. We’d worked this part out in advance. I asked him if he’d had a good day today.

  Giorgio responded with a bitter laugh. In French, he laid it out for me. “Linette and I owned a safe with valuables and mementos. I tried to open it today but I couldn’t remember the combination. I spent hours trying to remember.”

  “C’est terrible,” I said into the phone, projecting sympathy for anyone who might have been listening. Then, in French, I asked the million-dollar question: Did he finally remember the combination?

  “Oui,” he answered with a bitter laugh. “Trois-quatre-deux.”

  Three-four-two : 3-4-2.

  Reverse it, which was part of our code: 2-4-3.

  Avec Amour, 243.

  “C’est bon,” I replied. We then spent some time discussing the funeral for Linette—the real one, outside these walls. He told me about the plot of land and the weather and the family in attendance. It had been a private funeral, to which only close family members had been invited—a tasteful affair in a cemetery surrounded by gently rolling hills. My eyes glistened with tears but I had to keep focused. We weren’t done yet.

  “You were going to read a poem at the funeral,” I said in French.

  “Yes, I did,” he responded in French. “I read that song that I wrote.”

  “‘Avec Amour?’” I asked.

  “Oui, ‘Avec Amour.’”

  Avec Amour, 243, Avec Amour.

  I repeated it silently in my head: Avec Amour, 243, Avec Amour.

  Thank you, Giorgio. We spent another ten minutes on the phone commiserating about Linette and briefly discussing my upcoming appeal. As the conversation petered out, I noted an edge to Giorgio’s voice. He knew as well as I that my life was in danger.

  He knew as well as I that we might never speak again.

  CHAPTER 91

  I FELT A WAVE of dread in my stomach as I stood outside the door of my cell with my mates, waiting for our hour outside today.

  Today could be the day, I thought. Today could be the day they made their move in the prison yard. Presumably, they’d want to put as much time as possible between Winnie’s death and mine, for appearance’s sake, but they also had my upcoming appeal on the other side. They were running out of days. And every day it didn’t happen made the next day more likely.

  We slowly marched down to the day area, out to the administration quarters in the center, and then down the corridor of H wing.

  I spotted her standing in the hallway, monitoring the inmates as they trudged forward. Lucy. As always, waiting for me on my way to the prison yard.

  I felt a spike of adrenaline. My heart battered my chest as though a prizefighter were using it as a punching bag.

  Votre belle-soeur laide, my cell mates called her, though not to her face. My ugly stepsister. I had plenty of reasons to hate Lucy. First, her attempt to make me submit to her sexually, which would have turned very nasty had it not been interrupted by Mona’s attempted helicopter escape. More to the point, she murdered Linette, bludgeoned her with a smile on her face, doing it for me, because of me.

  We made eye contact. She gave me a smile of smug superiority, of eminent satisfaction.

  In response, I winked at her.

  Lucy did a double take. She hadn’t expected that and she didn’t like it.

  “Elliot, le mur à l’attention!” she shouted. She was calling me out of the line, telling me to walk to the opposite wall and to stand at attention.

  I walked to the wall as instructed, stood as straight as a statue, eyes forward, arms down, as Lucy approached me. She stood at my side, looking at my profile. An inch or two taller than me, her mouth lined up neatly against my ear.

  In French, she said, “Is there something wrong with your eye?”

  “No,” I answered.

  “You don’t wink at me,” she said.

  I didn’t answer. But I smirked. That probably pissed her off even more.

  After a moment, she moved still closer to me. Still in French, and in a far quieter voice, she said, “What a shame about Linette. At least she died quickly.”

  I didn’t respond. I kept my eyes forward.

  “But Winnie?” she went on, still whispering. “Winnie didn’t die quickly. It was long and painful.”

  I did a slow burn. Lucy. I’d always suspected it. But hearing it, having it confirmed, filled me with venom. Lucy had poisoned Winnie and watched her die.

  In French, she whispered, “Have you ever seen someone struggle to breathe? It can be very difficult to watch. But in Winnie’s case, it was fun.”

  I forced my mouth to stay shut, no matter how much I wanted to respond.

  “Nothing to say, Elliot? You’re not feeling so funny anymore?”

  My eyes moved toward the top corner of the hallway, the security camera, the red glowing light reminding us that they were watching our every move.

  “That’s all,” Lucy said in French. “We’re done.”

  The signal for me to return to the line of prisoners. I turned back toward the long row of inmates.

  But Lucy was wrong. That wasn’t all. We weren’t done.

  Instead of getting back into line, I pivoted and lunged at Lucy.

  CHAPTER 92

  LUCY WAS FAR superior to me in strength and fighting ability, but she hadn’t expected me to advance on her like that. She managed to throw up an arm in defense but not before my hand reached the left side of her face, just below the eye. I dug in my nails and clawed downward with all my might, cutting skin, drawing blood, getting a good inch or two of epidermis before she shifted her weight and pushed me back violently.

  Lucy shrieked in pain. A siren went off and it was only a couple of beats before several guards were on top of
me. It didn’t matter. I dropped to the floor and covered my face. I didn’t want any bruises to my face. I took a couple of hits with the baton to the midsection, but I didn’t care. Lucy got some retribution as well, with her hard boots, kicking my legs and then getting me in the ribs a couple of times before the guards, cognizant of the all-seeing security camera, restrained her. The last thing they needed was a Rodney King video.

  “Chatte!” Lucy screamed at me, the left side of her face torn and bloody. “Salope!” These were not words of flattery.

  They turned me over on my stomach and cuffed me. I offered no resistance. I had no need to resist.

  “I want to die!” I shouted. “I want to die! I can’t take this anymore!”

  I kept up like that, screaming almost incoherently, as the corridor filled with prison guards. A small fight can lead to a bigger one, a riot, and the guards had to make sure nobody was getting any ideas.

  I was glad for that. I didn’t want a riot. I hadn’t wanted to overpower Lucy, either.

  I just didn’t want to go to the prison yard, where some prisoner—whether today or sometime soon—would await me with a shank or a razor. There was no way that the guards, after such a brutal encounter had been caught on camera, could justify dusting me off and sending me outside for an hour of recreation. You lost fresh-air privileges just for mouthing off to a guard. I’d viciously attacked one.

  And I have to say, it sure was an added bonus to put that scar on Lucy’s face.

  CHAPTER 93

  BOULEZ SLAMMED HIS fist on his desk in anger. Abbie Elliot should have been dead by now. An attack in the prison yard. But things had obviously changed.

  “Where is she now?” he asked, in French, of the two guards standing before him—the head guard, Sabine, and the enforcer, Lucy.

  “Solitary, of course,” Sabine answered in French.

  “No, no, no!” Boulez pounded the desk again. He raised his hands. “How do we get to her in there? Think, Sabine, think! How do we get to her in solitary and pretend that it wasn’t the guards who did it? Solitary is the safest place in this prison for her!”

  Sabine bowed her head.

  “And we won’t be sending her out to the prison yard any time soon,” Boulez added. “Someone who attacks a guard? She wouldn’t see fresh air for a month. And we don’t have a goddamn month! This was supposed to happen today!”

  Boulez swept a pile of papers off his desk onto the floor. He took a couple of breaths and tried to calm himself. A temper tantrum wouldn’t help matters.

  He looked at Lucy, who was wearing a large piece of gauze on her face, fastened with long pieces of medical tape. She looked awful, of course, but more than anything she was full of rage. She’d received more than a dozen stitches on her face. Lucy had been, objectively speaking, a moderately attractive woman—albeit hard and nasty—but she wouldn’t be attractive any longer. The scar would fade with time, but it would be permanent.

  “The infirmary,” said Lucy.

  Boulez drew a couple more breaths and did some thinking. “The infirmary…”

  “She suffered some injuries today,” said Sabine.

  “She also said she wanted to die,” Lucy said, a smile creeping over her damaged face. “More than a hundred people heard her say that today.”

  Boulez nodded. “So we make it a suicide.” He frowned. They’d used that ruse with Winnie Brookes. A second suicide by one of the Monte Carlo Mistresses, within the space of three weeks? It wasn’t ideal. But he was running out of options.

  Sabine said, “We’ll put her in the secured room. We’ll make sure there’s a bed strap or something in that room. We’ll hang her.”

  Boulez sank into his chair. “You’re on until—when?”

  “My shift ends at 2:00 a.m.,” Lucy answered.

  “Mine, too,” said Sabine.

  “Wait.” Boulez snapped his fingers and shot forward. “The security cameras.”

  The room went quiet for a time. Everyone stewed on that.

  “We have paperwork going back months on those lousy cameras,” said Sabine.

  “They went out last week,” Lucy recalled. “Remember?”

  “Right. That’s right,” Sabine agreed.

  Boulez groaned. They were right. There was a history with those cameras in the infirmary. Budget cuts had prevented the purchase of new ones, so they had just made temporary repairs to the existing ones. No, it wasn’t ideal. But it could sell. Given Abbie’s suddenly erratic behavior—her suicidal comments today and her uncharacteristic outburst in H wing—it would pass the smell test.

  “Then the cameras have to go out for a while,” Boulez said. “We can’t have them going out just between 1:45 and 2:00 a.m., though. That would be too coincidental. You understand?”

  Both guards nodded.

  “All right, then.” Boulez slapped his hands down on the table and released a breath. “We keep this between us, as always,” said Boulez. He pointed at each of them. “Nobody else is involved. Especially this time. Are we clear? Nobody else.”

  “I’ll assign myself to G station two tonight,” said Sabine, referring to the guard booth outside the infirmary. “I’ll clear out solitary so that booth stays empty, too. I won’t assign anyone to G station three, either,” she added, referring to the guard booth at the door leading downstairs to the parking garage. “It will just be me tonight on G wing.”

  “Fine. You call my private cell when it’s over. And ladies?” Boulez called to them as they walked toward the door. “Make damn sure it’s over tonight.”

  CHAPTER 94

  SABINE KEPT A close watch on Abbie Elliot for the remainder of the day. From time to time she would peer into Abbie’s cell in solitary through the hatch. From what she could tell, and from all other reports she received, Abbie Elliot had done nothing but moan and sob and babble incoherently on the floor of the cell.

  After the shift change at 8:00 p.m., Sabine had Abbie transferred. There was simply no way Sabine could stage a suicide in solitary. There was no way to kill yourself in there. The suicides, when they happened, almost always occurred in a regular prison cell or the infirmary. And there was no way Sabine could justify putting a prisoner who had just violently attacked a guard in a standard cell.

  Thus the infirmary was the only option. When the guards came for Abbie, she was limp as a wet noodle. It took four guards, each taking a limb, to carry her out. It was as if she’d just had a lobotomy.

  From G-2, the guard booth just outside the infirmary, Sabine watched on the security camera as the guards placed Abbie in the secured room. They put her in the first bed on the right, nearest the security camera—standard regulation, always filling the beds from right to left. One of a thousand regulations in this place.

  The guards watched Abbie for a moment. She appeared to be borderline catatonic, devoid of any life whatsoever. Then they left, locking the door behind them.

  Abbie was all alone inside the secured room, staring up near the ceiling, her aimless gaze somewhere between the clock and the security camera.

  Sabine checked her watch. It was 9:42 p.m. She took a breath to settle her nerves. And she waited.

  Ten p.m.

  Ten fifteen.

  As the warden said, they couldn’t just shut off the security camera five minutes before attacking Abbie. There had to be a record of problems with it tonight.

  Ten thirty.

  Ten forty-five.

  Eleven p.m.

  It was probably about time now. They weren’t going to pull this off until a bit before the shift change at 2:00 a.m., so now would be a good time to start with the “camera trouble.”

  At 11:06 p.m., Sabine shut off the security camera.

  CHAPTER 95

  LUCY USED A key to open the primary door to the infirmary. None of the loud buzzing of the automated system. The noise might alert Abbie.

  Abbie would probably be asleep. She was asleep twenty minutes ago—at 1:00 a.m.—when Lucy had used the key to sneak in, ti
ptoe toward the secured room, and check on her through the window. There had been no movement from Abbie. Her eyes had appeared to be closed. She was either asleep or she was in the same catatonic state she was in when they’d dragged her from Le Mitard into the infirmary earlier this evening.

  Lucy looked up at one of the security cameras in the corner of the main room. The red light was off, of course. The clock on the wall said 1:20 a.m. She would probably not need more than fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, but still there was plenty of cushion built in. She could take all the way until 2:00 a.m. if necessary, then hustle out of the infirmary and head downstairs to her car in the garage. The shift would change but it would probably be some time before a guard would check on the patient in the secured room. When all was said and done, it would be impossible to say for certain that Abbie Elliot had hanged herself before or after the shift change at 2:00 a.m.

  Her gun drawn, Lucy tiptoed up to the secured room. She looked through the glass window—glass that was bulletproof and, more important, soundproof. She saw the same thing she saw twenty minutes ago. Abbie was perfectly still. Lying on her back. Sheet and blanket up to her chest. Left arm hanging out over the blanket. Right arm underneath. Eyes appeared to be closed.

  Lucy put the key in the lock and turned it slowly, watching Abbie the whole time. She entered the room and raised her gun. She shuffled toward Abbie’s bed.

  Still no movement.

  Lucy kicked at the bed. “Wake up,” she said in English.

  Abbie didn’t move.

  Lucy grabbed Abbie’s leg through the bedcovers and shook it.

  Abbie moaned and her eyes blinked open. She squinted and finally focused on Lucy. She looked at Lucy’s gun. But her face didn’t register fear. Her face didn’t register anything.