Black Sheep

by CJ Lyons

  “I don’t know.” She stood. “Sorry I can’t be of more help.”

  He sat, finished his coffee, in no hurry. Finally got up and led the way to the door, pushed the call button. A rush of relief greeted her as it buzzed open and she crossed the threshold, free of confinement. She’d make a piss-poor prisoner.

  “I don’t suppose there’s any way I could take a look at his personal belongings?” she asked casually.

  “Funny thing,” he replied, matching her tone. Two cops bullshitting each other and both knowing it. “Before he left the infirmary he wrote a will. Naming you sole beneficiary of his personal documents. We already got them boxed up—confiscated and inspected everything in his cell after he tried to OD a few days ago. Almost like he knew he was gonna die. Got an explanation for that, Agent Tierney?”

  “I wish I did, Investigator Boone.”

  * * *

  Lena had no idea if it was day or night. The drugs they’d given her had finally worn off, leaving her feeling heavy-headed and bleary, as if her mind was seeing the world through a haze of Vaseline. She was afraid to sleep, afraid she’d miss a chance to escape, afraid of being alone in the dark, vulnerable.

  Not that she could sleep even if she wanted to. The thumping she’d heard earlier had returned, coming from different directions. First beyond the door, then overhead, then the side wall. Sometimes it sounded like footsteps, sometimes like fists.

  One thing the noise had done: It had oriented her. She’d thought the rear wall was the outside wall but the way the sound changed when it hit the side wall, that had to be an exterior wall. And it didn’t sound very thick, either.

  Which meant, God willing, there was a way out of this hell.

  She sent up a quick prayer of gratitude and went to work. The water bottles were too flimsy; the Ensure ones were made of sturdier plastic. She scraped the mouth of one bottle against the plywood subflooring, trying to sharpen it as much as possible. Then she positioned it against the base of the wall, lay down on the floor, braced her back against the opposite wall, and drove the bottle in with her foot. The bottle stuck, impaled to the drywall.

  She scrambled back onto her hands and knees, leveraging the bottle against the wall. A fist-sized chunk fell. It wasn’t drywall, she saw. Beneath a dozen coats of paint was some kind of plaster threaded with long, dark filaments. Horsehair. Which meant it was really old. Supporting it from behind was wire like you’d use for a chicken coop stretched between thin pieces of wood lathing.

  Repositioning the mouth of the bottle against the side of the hole, she gouged out more of the plaster. Behind the chicken wire and lathing was yellowed newspaper serving as insulation. She stretched two fingers between a wire loop and snagged a sheet, pulled it free. When she smoothed it open across the floor, she saw the date on it was 1932.

  It was slow going removing the paper but she didn’t have the strength or leverage to yank the wire out, so the best she could do was to stretch a few loops as wide as possible. Once she had the paper out she could see the outside wall: wood siding, unpainted on this side.

  She waved her hand over the hole and was delighted to see skinny rays of sunlight making their way in from the outside. A sense of hope surged through her. As she strained to pry the wire apart she began to sing one of her mom’s favorite hymns: “Praise to Thee, Thou Great Creator.”

  Her fingers were raw, stinging with tiny cuts from the wire, but finally she was able to make a gap large enough to put her entire hand through. She wanted to take a look while the hole inside her prison cell was still small enough to hide. Once she enlarged it, she was committed to escaping as quickly as possible, before the men returned, and that meant waiting until dark.

  Please, God, let this work, she prayed as she inserted one of the plastic bottles into the hole she’d so painfully created and wedged it between a gap in the overlapping siding. It was just long enough that the bottom of the bottle extended through the hole. She braced herself once more and kicked it as hard as she could.

  A hollow thud echoed through her body as the bottle smacked against the wood siding. Lena held her breath. Could anyone hear?

  No sounds came. She pulled the bottle free and checked the siding. The slit between the top edge of one piece and the bottom of another had widened slightly. Should she try again? Or work on making the interior hole large enough for her entire body and kick out a large chunk of siding all at once, knowing that would make a huge clatter?

  But who could resist a glimpse of sunlight? She told herself it was to survey the terrain in the daylight, to plan her escape route.

  Really, she was simply desperate for any contact with the outside world. She replaced the bottle, this time angling it over the corner of the bottom edge of siding. The gap was large enough that the bottle stuck there on its own. That was hopeful.

  She leaned back and kicked again. This time the thud was accompanied by a splintering noise.

  Quickly she slid the case of water over the fist-sized hole in the plaster. But no one came to investigate.

  Emboldened, she exposed the hole once more and pulled the bottle free. Its mouth was hopelessly cracked, the plastic folded in on itself. That was okay, she had plenty more where it came from. Prone on the floor, she shimmied as close as she could to the hole, pressing her face against the plaster wall.

  The bottom corner of siding had splintered. She reached in with her fingers, fought for purchase, ignoring the wire scraping her knuckles as she wiggled the corner free. Suddenly it came loose in her hand and a stream of sunlight hit her in the eye. She blinked, crying with pain and joy.

  Thank you, Lord! Thank you! She tilted her face one way and then another, trying to see more than the tiny patch of dirt the hole in the siding exposed. She put her fingers through it, trying to wiggle more of the siding free, but it stubbornly resisted.

  Pulling her hand back inside, she peered through the hole once more, inhaling the crisp air, smelling freedom.

  Then the sunlight vanished. Replaced by a large almond-shaped brown eye with no white showing at all and surrounded by heavy ridges of brown-gray skin.

  She gasped. The eye blinked. Then pulled back and was replaced by a snout with flattened nostrils flaring above short gray whiskers. Accompanied by the undeniable sound of a chimpanzee.

  Lena rolled away from the hole, so overwhelmed with terror that all she could do was press her back against the far wall and curl her body into a small ball. Goose bumps shivered across her flesh, and she hugged herself harder. Where was she? Locked up in some kind of zoo?

  “What do you want from me?” she cried out, tears garbling her words. Anger lanced through her. Anger at God, at the men who’d brought her here, at her father—if it weren’t for his deceit, she wouldn’t even be here. She screamed in fury and frustration and fear.

  Her only answer was the sound of fists drumming against the outside wall and more chimps chattering.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Boone led Caitlyn to a small office in the administration building. SPIRITUAL AFFAIRS, utilitarian lettering on the door labeled it. Inside was a scuffed wooden desk layered with folders, an office chair behind it and two wooden visitors’ chairs in front. Its most prominent feature was a box of generic facial tissues, economy-sized.

  The man behind the desk stood as Caitlyn and Boone entered. He was a short, balding white man in his fifties wearing a long-sleeved brown shirt with a clerical collar. “Agent Tierney? I’m Pastor Whitford. We spoke on the phone last night.”

  She shook his hand; his grip was firm but not antagonistic. Neutral, as was his expression when they sat down. Boone stood beside the door, watching. Waiting for some slip of information that would make sense of Hale’s murder. Caitlyn had the feeling he might be waiting a long time.

  Technically the investigator’s case was closed—he had the two men who killed Hale. Hell, the murder was caught on camera. But like any good detective, he wasn’t satisfied with just closing a case; he wanted to understand
why Hale had been targeted and if there were any further threats to Butner’s precarious tranquility.

  Whitford reached below his desk and brought up a carton of notebooks and loose papers. “Eli could have been an architect,” he said, unrolling a large detailed drawing across the jumble of folders. It was a rendering of the Sistine Chapel drawn on brown butcher’s paper, complete with architectural details. Somehow the beauty of the building increased with its skeleton exposed, enhanced by intricate breakout sketches of its most intimate details. “Gorgeous, isn’t it? He’s helped a bunch of the guards plan additions and renovations, even submitted a design for the new Butner Three facility. Not that they’d ever use an inmate’s design.”

  Boone chuckled. “Be like giving the other team your playbook before the Super Bowl.”

  “I honestly don’t think Eli ever imagined escape,” Whitford said thoughtfully. “I met him almost ten years ago, and from the very beginning he seemed, well, content. Working the grounds crew got him outside more days than not, visiting with his family every week, even teaching me to play chess. Compared with the other inmates I’ve counseled, he’s always been rather detached from it all. Like this was the life he was meant to have.”

  “So why’d he try to kill himself?” Boone asked the question foremost in Caitlyn’s mind. She wished he’d sit down. It was irritating having him behind her. She edged her chair sideways so she could keep both him and Whitford in view. “You don’t do that if you’re all content and Buddha-like.”

  “I wish I understood the answer to that, Investigator, I really do. But I’m not sure anyone here really understood Eli Hale.”

  Boone answered with a hrumph noise that said he was as tired of the holier-than-thou mumbo-jumbo as Caitlyn was. Whatever Eli Hale was, he was no saint.

  “So all this is mine?” she asked, gesturing to the box.

  Whitford rolled the drawings of the Sistine Chapel back into a neat cylinder. He tilted his head to meet her gaze. “Yes. It’s all yours.”

  She took the box. No larger than the milk crates she’d hauled all her earthly possessions in during college. “Okay, then. Guess I’ll head back home.”

  Boone scowled at her as she turned to the door. Not liking the unanswered questions. She didn’t blame him. After a beat, he opened the door for her.

  “You both have my numbers,” she said in parting—more for the chaplain’s sake than Boone’s. She had the feeling Whitford wanted to say more, but not in front of the SIS investigator.

  Boone walked her to the lockbox station out front, where she retrieved her service weapon. “Stay in touch, Agent Tierney,” he said as he escorted her to her car. “If there’s something more brewing here I need to know about it.”

  “I don’t think you have anything to worry about.” The danger wasn’t inside Butner; it was outside and aimed at Lena Hale.

  “Oh really? That’s funny coming from someone who says she doesn’t even know why the hell she was called down here to talk with Hale.” His glare said it was anything but funny; Boone’s professional pride had been wounded. “Real goddamn funny.”

  He turned his heel and left. Caitlyn placed the box of drawings and notebooks on the Subaru’s passenger seat and retrieved her phone from the trunk. She wasn’t surprised when it rang as soon as she sat down in the driver’s seat. Whitford.

  “I couldn’t talk with Boone here,” he said in a rushed voice. “But before Eli left the infirmary this morning we spoke. He feared something might happen to him—guess he was right.”

  “Why was he afraid?”

  “I didn’t tell you the entire truth last night. You see, Lena’s spent the past three years going through court transcripts, police reports, trying to prove her dad’s innocence. Eli kept asking her to quit. A few weeks ago they had a big blowup over it and she said she was through with him.”

  “I told you. Hale’s guilty. So maybe she did run away.” Except that didn’t explain why Hale was killed.

  “That’s just it. She did run away. Or at least stopped answering Eli’s calls. But she came back a week later. Told her dad she wasn’t going to keep working on his case, she was giving up. Said she was going to clear her family name, try to make up for all the harm Eli’d done.”

  “How the hell was she going to do that?”

  “I don’t know and I don’t think Eli did, either. But he was real worried. Kept talking about you and your dad. Said Lena must’ve stumbled into something and gotten the wrong people worried that he might have talked.”

  “Talked about what?” If the man thought he might be killed, why not give some specifics to help her? Or was this all some paranoid delusion spun out of control?

  “He wouldn’t say. I think it was something to do with the crime that got him here in the first place because he said something about her digging up the past.”

  “So why’d he try to kill himself? He couldn’t help Lena if he was dead.”

  “Eli told me that he didn’t try to kill himself. Said he’d sent a message that Lena knew nothing, that if they left her alone he’d stay quiet.” Again with the mysterious “they.” Frustrating. “The next night someone spiked his drink and he woke up in the infirmary half dead.”

  Shit. “We need to tell Boone the truth.”

  “No. I promised him. He said they’d kill her.”

  “With him dead, what’s to stop them from killing her anyway? If they haven’t already.” Hell, now she was beginning to sound just like Hale. Paranoid. Delusional.

  “You. He said you could save her. Said you were the only one.”

  Great. A self-confessed killer her number one fan. “I don’t even know where to start looking for her. Surely he gave you some specifics?”

  “He said she’d gone home to Evergreen. It’s a small town in the mountains, near Cherokee.”

  Evergreen. Caitlyn’s mom’s had left her entire family behind when she’d moved Caitlyn away from Evergreen, trying to distance Caitlyn from the memory of her dad. It hadn’t worked, but Caitlyn still felt a chill at the mention of the town. She’d been nine years old when she’d last seen Evergreen.

  “Yeah, I know the place,” she told Whitford.

  “Eli said everything you need is in that box.”

  A bunch of old drawings and notebooks that it’d take her a week to go through—and that Boone and his men had already examined. What did Hale think this was, the freaking Da Vinci Code? Twenty-five years being locked up had driven the man insane. Sending her on a wild goose chase after a girl they didn’t even know for certain was missing and a mysterious conspiracy that probably existed only in a convicted killer’s mind.

  Then she remembered the look of anguish in Hale’s eyes as he lay dying, using his final breath to call out his daughter’s name. He’d trusted her, believed she could save Lena.

  But Caitlyn was no miracle worker. She was already breaking every rule in the book just by being here. She might have even gotten Hale killed by coming to see him. The expression on Hale’s face as he lay there dying … the face of her father, blood everywhere. Too many memories, too much pain.

  All leading back to Evergreen. Didn’t mean she had to play the game, follow the bread crumbs. Caitlyn yanked the gearshift to put the Impreza in reverse. “If you think of anything else, call me. Anytime, day or night.”

  “What are you going to do about Lena?”

  “I can make some calls. I still have family in Evergreen. It’s a small enough place that if she’s there, someone will know.”

  “That’s it? Some calls?”

  “There’s not a whole lot I can do without an official case. And it’s out of my jurisdiction, anyway.”

  His exasperation broke through the airwaves. “So where are you going?”

  “Home. Back to Quantico. Where I belong.” She hung up, just as frustrated as the chaplain was but for different reasons. She’d done everything she could—more than she should. Hell, what more did he want from her?

  She’d been right
there when her father died and couldn’t save him. Ten feet away from Eli Hale and couldn’t save him. How could anyone expect her to be able to save Lena?

  CHAPTER TEN

  Hunger and a need for caffeine fueled Caitlyn’s exasperation as she drove east on Gate 2 Road back to I-85. There was a large truck stop at the interstate, and she pulled in there.

  Talk about a day not going as planned. Images of Hale’s killing replayed through her mind, over and over at different speeds; each time her frustration at being forced to watch, unable to help the man, etched the images deeper into her psyche. By the time she dragged Hale’s box into an empty booth and ordered a large serving of chicken and dumplings, coffee and a glass of milk, her frustration had morphed into anger.

  True, the killers were caught and already behind bars, but someone had been pulling the strings. If what Whitford said was true about Hale’s overdose being an initial attempt on his life, then there were others inside Butner responsible. While she waited for her food she sipped at her coffee, sorted through the papers lying loose in Hale’s box, and called Boone.

  “SIS, Boone speaking,” he answered in a clipped tone.

  “It’s Tierney. I was wondering. Could Hale’s overdose have been non-accidental?”

  “Of course it was non-accidental—he tried to kill himself. Oh, you mean someone else slipped him the drugs?” He paused. “He told the docs he took them himself, said he was”—there came the sound of papers being rustled—“despondent over not seeing his daughter because of an argument they’d had.”

  So Hale hadn’t told the doctors about Lena being missing. But someone had been worried that whatever Lena was doing would give Hale a reason to start talking … and as far as she knew the only thing Hale had to talk about was the murder he was convicted of twenty-five years ago.

  “Tierney, you there?” Boone’s voice interrupted her thoughts. “Doc’s note doesn’t say anything about the OD not being self-inflicted, but that doesn’t mean jack.”