by Sarah Lovett
Rosie Sánchez adjusted the cassette recorder. She kept her eye on the small red light as it flickered sporadically.
Lucas said, "I already told you."
Rosie patted one of the chairs invitingly. "You know how these things go, Lucas. It's a slow process. It can drive you crazy sometimes, it takes so long to get things sorted out."
Silence.
England reached into his pocket and pulled out the baggie. He let its contents—the empty leather pouch—slide out on the bare table. They expected a response from Lucas, but not the one they got.
He reacted so suddenly, rushing forward, handcuffs slamming the table, that a gasp escaped from Rosie's mouth.
Aware of the C.O. just outside the door, Matt snatched the pouch from Watson's reach.
Lucas growled, paced a tight half circle, and turned. He faced Matt England. "It's mine."
Rosie said, "We talked to the lab, Lucas. We know the pouch is a stomach. Everything will go easier if you tell us about it."
Watson's eyelids lowered to half-mast, and his lips curled into a slow smile.
They continued their questions for another twenty minutes, but they got little out of Lucas. He became increasingly withdrawn and furtive, and eventually he began an eerie, almost inaudible chant.
Matt and Rosie silently agreed to conclude the interview.
Rosie was the first to leave the room. She stepped into the hall and almost plowed into Sylvia Strange. "What are you doing here?" she asked in puzzlement. She noticed the C.O. who stood beside the door and motioned him inside the attorneys' room.
When they were alone Sylvia said, "Lucas asked me to come."
Rosie grabbed her friend by the arm. "Are you crazy?"
Sylvia's mouth was a resolute line. After the phone call from Lucas the night before, she'd been left with two choices: allow the fear to take root or regain control of her life. She'd dealt with dangerous men before—it was part of the job—but this was the first time since the early days of her internship that she'd doubted her ability to get past her own anger and fear.
Lucas kept reaching out to her, and instinct told her there might be something more to his messages than delusional ideation and transference. She had a nagging dread that perhaps she had dismissed his fears too soon. She also had an unpleasant and melodramatic sense of foreboding.
"What's going on?" Matt England's voice snapped Sylvia from her racing thoughts.
Rosie ignored Matt "But Sylvia, one of my boys warned me that you could be in danger from the jackal—"
Sylvia interrupted, "Lucas isn't the jackal." She moved past Rosie impatiently. "I'll explain later." "Explain what?" Matt demanded.
Rosie said, "She needs to talk to Lucas."
"Forget it."
Sylvia set her jaw. "He asked for this meeting, and I'm willing to go in, but I damn well want some backup by this door in case something happens."
England exploded, "You're ordering backup? We're here to conduct an investigation, not an encounter therapy session where you get your head torn off!"
"Matt," Rosie warned. She sensed in Sylvia the urgent need to put demons to rest. She touched Matt's arm and said, "It's my ass on the line if something goes wrong. Do it for me . . . as a favor."
After a beat, Matt said, "What if he goes for your throat?"
Sylvia met his gaze. "I'll scream."
WHEN THE C.O. left the room, Sylvia found herself alone with Lucas Watson.
"Hello, Lucas," she said softly. She noticed the red light on the tape recorder. She clicked off the machine. "I got your message."
Lucas slammed his manacled fists against the wall. Sylvia forced herself to stay seated, apparently calm; the table separated them. There was a distance of less than eight feet between her and the door.
He inhaled unevenly, extended his fingers, gazed at his palm. She was surprised to see that there were tears in his eyes.
He said, "I could tear you apart." But he sounded like a defeated man.
Sylvia was aware of Matt England's face behind the mesh window. She ignored him, kept all her energy focused on Lucas.
"You left me here to die," he hissed. "You were supposed to get me out."
She said, "I'm going to do that, Lucas. I understand that you're angry, but a transfer takes time—"
He began to move again, shaking his head, mumbling, He didn't look at her when he said, "I chose you. You're supposed to understand . . . about them."
Sylvia inched forward on her chair and said, "Them. Who are they?"
He lifted his chin, aware of her every movement. She could almost hear him sniff the air for her scent. It was eerie the way he gazed at her from the corners of his cloudy eyes as if full sight would overwhelm his senses. She waited.
Finally he spoke. "You took away my pouch. It protects me in here."
"Protects you from what?"
"My father wants me dead."
Sylvia stopped breathing in anticipation of what Watson would say next, but almost instantly she was startled by the loud voices outside the door. Lucas turned to stare intently, and Sylvia followed his cue. A C.O.'s face filled the small window, and he mouthed something to Sylvia.
When she brought her eyes back to Lucas, she saw that he was gazing at her accusingly. He opened his mouth, then managed a half nod before his eyes went dead. Nobody home.
Sylvia tried to bring him back. "Lucas, you said your father wants you dead?"
Nothing but silence. All circuits shut down.
"You left a message for me, and I came. Lucas?"
Sylvia exploded internally; the goddamned C.O. had broken her connection with Lucas. In one instant, the paranoia had again encased him like an airtight shell.
She didn't let her anger reach the surface; her expression remained neutral as she said, "I'll get you out of here as soon as I can."
It was urgent that Lucas Watson get psychiatric care.
He spoke in a lifeless voice. "I'm tired."
Sylvia stood and watched him follow the C.O. out the door. He walked like a condemned man. My father wants me dead.
Rosie entered the room and Sylvia spoke abruptly, "What the hell was that about? I had Lucas talking, then all that noise—"
Rosie picked up the tape recorder and said, "Bad timing."
Instantly, Sylvia recognized Herb Burnett's loud voice outside the attorneys' room. He and Matt England were involved in a heated conversation. Both women joined them in the hall.
Herb said, "What is this? Nobody bothers to tell me when they're interrogating my client?"
Rosie said, "Herb, we—"
Burnett cut her off, "What are you doing here, Sylvia?" His eyes shifted to Matt England and back to Sylvia. He was trying to gauge the situation. "Is this another evaluation? Haven't you done enough damage?"
Rosie ignored two C.O.s who were escorting an inmate past the room, and said, "Let's go outside, Herb."
Herb, followed by Sylvia and both investigators, marched through North's lobby, past C.O. Buyers, and out two sets of glass doors. Blowing dirt and snow immediately blinded them. Sylvia could barely make out Herb's shape. His overcoat slapped his thighs in the wind, and she heard his shouted words, "What were you doing with Lucas?"
Matt England guided Rosie by the sleeve to confer at a distance from Sylvia and Herb. Rosie kept her hands cupped around her face to ward off the stinging snow.
Sylvia had to yell to make herself heard. "I wasn't evaluating anyone. Lucas asked me to come. What he told me was confidential."
"You expect me to buy that? What about them?" He pointed at Matt and Rosie. "Goddamn it, Sylvia. I'm his lawyer. I need to know what he's telling you!"
"I'll talk to you tomorrow, Herb. After I get my thoughts together." She poked at the third button on his coat. "But I'll tell you this much: he thinks his father wants him dead."
Herb's cowboy hat blew up from his head, but he jammed it down with one gloved hand. He stood, mouth open, for several seconds before he said, "Bullshit! Y
ou told me yourself, he's paranoid."
"But you know the saying," Sylvia said. "Even paranoids have enemies."
ROSIE WAS STILL mulling over the aborted interview with Lucas Watson and the strange run-in with Burnett when she returned to her office. A new incident report quickly monopolized her thoughts. It was lying on the floor directly below the mail slot. She scanned the contents as she opened blinds and shifted directional heating vents.
Due to high winds, a power outage at the pen and surrounding areas had occurred at approximately 4:10 A.M. Backup generators had switched on according to the penitentiary's emergency contingency plan, but only after a 190-second delay.
In the middle of the night—last night!—all prison security systems had been without electricity for more than three minutes, allowing ample opportunity for a catastrophic breach of security. Rosie picked up the phone. The warden was not in his office. His secretary said he couldn't be disturbed from a meeting with representatives from Techtronics—the company that handled the pen's security—and New Mexico Property Control. Rosie hung up and bit her red nail thoughtfully. She wished she could talk to security wizard Pat O'Riley, but he'd left Techtronics last spring. His former employer had manufactured and replaced 90 percent of the penitentiary's current security system after the 1980 riot. Since installation, the new security system had failed repeatedly. Infrared barriers, locking systems, roof hatch alarms, fence rattlers, and the "hot" line were often or always dysfunctional. Techtronics was rumored to be one lawsuit away from bankruptcy. They might be out of business before they could fix everything that was wrong with prison security.
Her other line buzzed and a voice boomed from North Facility. Rosie said, "Hello, Colonel Gonzales."
"Rosie, we've got a sewage overflow in Two-A and -B. Physical services says the pipes are jammed, can't swallow all the rubber the inmates are flushing. I also got half my shift out with vehicular trouble. I just wanted to warn you it's a mess over here. I already got the word from one inmate. Don't be coming to work tomorrow."
IN CELL BLOCK one, adjacent to the administration wing on the ground floor, the jackal frowned when the lights dimmed. He had capped his day poring over his most recent issues of Omni and Scientific American. There was an absorbing article on the moral dilemmas of gene-splicing, a long piece on DNA reconstruction, but most interesting of all was the story on autotomy in spiders. The jackal read and reread the paragraphs on limb regeneration and metamorphosis. He marveled at the arachnid's ability to tear off its own leg, take sustenance from its own juices, and (with luck) replace the limb. When he closed his eyes, his head filled with thoughts of biogenesis, and the scenes from last night's dream finally began to surface.
A great laboratory, lights so bright they were blinding, a black-and-white diamond pattern marking the giant chessboard floor. In his dream, the jackal saw himself enter the room and stand in front of the operating table. He wore a surgeon's smock and mask.
There was an oversize book mounted on a pedestal. A nurse appeared with a tray of instruments. Another wheeled in a tank with tubes protruding like a mechanical Medusa. "Do we have his head yet, doctor?" she asked.
The jackal was about to answer when the lights flickered, died, and flared again in CB-1.
A HALF MILE away, as the crow flies, C.O. Anderson slammed the thick metal door behind himself and swallowed hard. It was better if he didn't look up at the vertical tunnel of the sixty-foot tower before he approached the first row of pale orange rungs. His vertigo would kick into gear if he didn't follow his routine to the letter, and there were six sets of rungs ahead of him.
The tough leather soles of his boots clanged against metal as he climbed, and the wind yowled like a trapped beast inside the narrow tunnel. He was breathing hard by the time he reached the top and pulled himself up onto the ten-foot-square tower platform. C.O. Anderson shivered as a concrete wall of air blasted tempered glass, slid through cracks, and blew the calendar, roster sheet, and daily log from a small table.
There was no room for a door in front of the lone, freestanding toilet. Loose sheets of paper had blown up against its porcelain base.
The C.O. had to stoop down or stand on his toes to peer through the scratched windows that overlooked North Facility. The original architects must have had a sixty-inch officer in mind when they designed tower visibility levels. If a C.O. was over five feet, he or she had better be at least six feet three to see above the solid panel that separated window bands. Anderson grunted at the sharp twinge in his back, a chronic pain when he was working the tower. Blowing snow obscured his 360-degree pan of North administration's roof, the gym and main yard, psych units, housing units 3-A and 3-B, as well as the medical sally port. The grounds were deserted.
When he squinted through the white glare of electric lights, he could see the roof of 3-B and a double stretch of live alarm wire shivering against the wind. There was equipment on the roof of the gym—left over from work the construction crew was doing before they got stormed out. If they didn't reopen the rec facilities soon, they'd have a friggin' riot on their hands. C.O. Anderson smiled.
He felt a strong vibration as wind ripped at the tower. In the distance, the giant perimeter isolation zone lights flickered off, then back on, bare yellow circles against the snow.
ONE HUNDRED YARDS north of the tower, Lucas Watson paced his narrow cell. He did five sets of one hundred sit-ups each, and seventy push-ups on the concrete floor.
The heater wasn't working. The stench of sewage leaked through the walls. Watson forced himself to sit on the concrete bunk. He stared down at a half-written letter. After a few minutes, he stuffed it into an envelope and quickly scratched an address on the front.
The unnatural silence in the housing unit made an awful contrast to the storm outside. Too still, too quiet, too dead. He'd heard the rumor just like everyone else in North Facility. The nervous animal energy seeped from every man's skin; it even seeped from the walls. The riot was about to go down.
CHAPTER TWELVE
ON THURSDAY MORNING, the jackal kept his hand over his eyes as the truck negotiated snow and ice on the mile-long stretch of road between Main and North Facility. His first day of duty at North was not off to an auspicious beginning. The storm had done anything but abate as yesterday's weather report had forecast. The jackal sighed. His teeth were chattering and his fingers had a bluish cast. The faces of the two other porters working North settled into grim masks as ice thickened on their eyelashes.
When the truck pulled up in front of the concrete fortress, his blood quickened. He felt a thrill the moment he entered North's outer doors. He stood next to the porters in front of the glass that separated them from C.O. Elaine Buyers. Rage and frustration was about to erupt. The sparse hair on his arms stood up.
"Take off your shoes," C.O. Buyers demanded. Her voice was tight, whittled down to size by the tiny speaker set in glass. She waited while the inmate removed his shoes.
"Okay, try it now." Her face revealed irritation clamped over fear.
As the porter shuffled through the open doorway, the metal detector went off. On the third try, the whining alarm was silent. It had gone dead after a power surge.
"Shit, not again!" C.O. Buyers admitted all three porters and ran the battery-operated hand detector over the outline of their bodies about three inches from the surface of their suits.
While they waited, she used her phone to report the breakdown. "It's not just the metal detector. My radio is out, too. I don't know if it's batteries, or what!" She chopped her chin up and down as she spoke. "I did! I reported that three hours ago! They said they won't have another 'til lunch."
Dumbly, the jackal followed the other two men through the door and into the hallway that accessed offices, C.O. lounge, and the shift briefing room. The other inmates began the job of cleaning the men's toilets. The jackal would not go near the bathroom mirrors so he claimed a vacuum from the supply room.
Deafened by the harsh industrial drone, the
jackal steered the cumbersome machine over the carpet. Two secretaries disappeared behind office doors. Methodically, he made his way down the hall toward the lounge where a haggard-looking C.O. slammed his fist against the pop machine. A Pepsi banged into the metal gutter. The C.O. left the room without looking at the jackal.
The jackal circled the pool table, sucked up a pile of plastic scraps behind the microwave, and then swung a left toward the vending machines. His eye caught motion outside the wall of windows covering the east end of the room. In the parking lot, a black garbage bag sped madly across ice, driven by a tempest. Other plastic bags had caught in the rolling razor ribbon that decorated the edge of Administration's roof. Shredded by wind and sleet, they waved like streamers on a used car lot. As the jackal stared open-mouthed at Siberia, the whine of the vacuum ceased, and he was surrounded by sudden silence. The stillness was so dense it was another barrier; the facility's power was dead.
WITHIN THE THREE pods of housing unit 3-B, in reaction to a second power surge and break, the cell doors rolled open and froze halfway. In their cells, the inmates stopped reading, pacing, eating; they waited. The C.O. making rounds inside the first pod stopped, also. For several moments, the tableau was set. Neither guard nor inmates stirred. Then, Bubba Akins peered out from his ground-floor cell into the pod's concrete gloom. Within ten seconds he had a shank at the guard's throat; he pushed his hostage through the pod door and down the hall to the locked entry of the unit's upper-level control center.
C.O. Rafael was in the bathroom when the second surge occurred. He stepped out into dim light, moved past the large L-shaped control panel, and peered through the angle of windows that provided a shadowy bird's-eye view of each two-tiered pod. All three pods were arranged around and below the control center like segments of a baseball diamond. Guards working control had at least a partial view of thirty-six cells. The windows also offered restricted sight lines of the hallway separating inmate living areas from control.
