by Joe Hart
“Please, guys. Call me Benny.”
Sullivan smiled. “Benny, I’m sure you’re aware of what happened last night?”
Benny’s face lit up and his eyes seemed to sparkle in the glare of the overhead fluorescents. “Yeah, that was really weird, huh? I heard the guy was torn apart. I mean, can you imagine? What do you guys think happened?”
Sullivan exhaled and licked his lips. “Well, we were hoping you’d be able to rerun the footage from last night for us.”
Benny spun the chair around to accept his egg-shaped body, and pulled himself tight to the console. “I already took a look, and I’m sorry to say that there’s not much to see, guys.” Benny’s hands flew over the keyboard, and with a last click of the mouse, a gray-tinged video began to play on four of the main screens sitting on the wall directly opposite the three men.
Sullivan glanced at the flickering white numerals of time in the upper right-hand corner: 0.1.12/6/2/12. A few minutes before Hunt found Alvarez. The picture itself Sullivan recognized as the solitary corridor. Although the video was nowhere near clear, he could make out the five doors on the left side and the row of lights lining the ceiling. The agents along with the guard watched the screens, and soon a soundless figure stepped into view. Sullivan knew the man at once as the guard that led them to the crime scene earlier. Hunt walked unsurely down the corridor like he was listening to something that puzzled him. His head was cocked at a strange angle, and Sullivan saw one of the guard’s hands stray to the handgun holstered on his belt. Hunt made his way closer and closer to the end cell, and Sullivan felt himself leaning forward and noticed Barry did the same. Hunt neared Alvarez’s door and looked through the porthole. He staggered back as if he’d been struck and nearly fell against the opposite wall.
“Oh! There it is!” Benny exclaimed, pointing at the TVs with a near-unrestrained glee. Both agents frowned at the back of the guard’s head as he laughed like a kid watching a Sunday matinee.
Sullivan’s gaze returned to the monitors and saw Hunt draw his weapon and then pull a small walkie-talkie to his mouth. Sullivan could almost see the terror on the young man’s face as he stood there in the quiet hallway, could almost feel the tension as he waited alone. A reply must have come back, because Hunt suddenly sprinted out of the picture the way he had come, one hand still clutching his gun and the other pumping at his side as he ran. The picture remained that way for another thirty seconds, and then flipped to a current feed of the massive holding area.
Benny spun around in his chair and shrugged at the two agents, who stood in front of him. “That’s all we’ve got, guys. Sorry we don’t have more. I watched from the time Alvarez was put into solitary to what you just watched, and there’s nothing.”
“Don’t you have a better angle? Closer to the door or actually within the cell?” Stevens asked.
Benny shook his head. “No. The cameras were installed almost ten years ago down there and no new ones have been added, so all we have is footage of the hallway.”
Sullivan glanced at Barry, and then back at the overweight guard. “Benny, we’ll need you to copy the portion of the video from when Alvarez is transferred into the cell until our crime-scene team arrived. You can do that?”
“Oh, no problem. I’ll do it digitally, and I’ll copy a file to a disk as well as email,” Benny said, his head twitching back and forth between the two men, as if he were a dog that had accomplished a trick.
After giving Benny their email addresses, Sullivan and Barry exited the surveillance room and stood in the empty hall. Barry ran a hand through his thinning hair and leaned against the wall. Sullivan stretched his back and stifled a yawn that crept up out of nowhere.
“Dead end,” Barry said, his voice echoing down the empty hallway.
“Yeah. Although I didn’t expect a solution delivered on high-res digital, all neat and wrapped up for us.”
Barry smiled. “No, I didn’t either.”
“I don’t know about you, but I’m starving. Want to get some food before we talk to Hunt?” Sullivan asked.
“Absolutely,” Barry said, slapping his stomach. “Gotta keep my strength up.”
“Is that what you’re calling it now?” Sullivan said over his shoulder as he started walking toward the stairway.
“You know, Sully, I always suspected, but now I know. You’re jealous of my physique.”
Sullivan chuckled and was about to throw another remark at his friend when Everett Mooring stepped onto the landing at the top of the stairs, blocking their path. The man’s pants were soaking wet from the knees down and droplets of water fell onto the floor around his feet. His eyes shifted between Sullivan and Barry, a silent rage thrumming just behind them. He stood with his body cocked toward them, one foot in front, the other braced behind. He looked like a man preparing for a fight.
“Officer Mooring, we were just looking for you. Could you—” Sullivan was cut off as the guard spoke in even tones of anger and distaste.
“You were supposed to wait until I escorted you up here.”
“You’re right, Warden Andrews mentioned it, but we thought we’d take initiative and find our way—”
“This isn’t some crime scene you can waltz into and take over. This is a prison. You’re out of your element here. Don’t go wandering off again.”
Mooring turned and disappeared down the stairs, his wet boots squeaking as he went. Sullivan waited until the footsteps faded altogether before he turned back to Barry, who looked as if he’d swallowed sandpaper followed by a lemon.
“Seriously, what the fuck is up with that guy?” Sullivan asked. He noticed his hands were balled into fists and he unclenched them, leaving little half-moons where his fingernails dug into his palms.
“Screw him,” Barry said and began heading for the stairs again. “Guy’s got a problem with us being on his turf. Fucking weird, if you ask me. I wouldn’t claim this place if I got the deed signed over to me in gold ink.”
The two agents turned toward the stairwell, and Sullivan paused at the top before descending. He stood stock-still until Barry noticed that he wasn’t following and looked imploringly at him from the stairwell landing.
“What?” Barry asked.
Sullivan shook his head and continued down the steps. “Nothing,” he replied. But in the back of his mind he kept replaying the sound he had heard in the hallway just as they were leaving it: the sound of a door quietly clicking shut.
==
The sausage and eggs from the prison kitchen were so greasy that Sullivan had to keep wiping his mouth on the stiff paper napkin the cook provided near the end of the chow line.
He and Barry sat at a low table that seemed to stretch the entire length of the prison’s commons. Two dozen multicolored round stools were attached to the table with steel bars, and a joint every so often in the table’s surface indicated that, if need be, it would fold up to a quarter of its original length. The room itself was half the size of the main holding area, but still maintained an impressive air. The ceiling matched those of the rest of the prison, and expanded above them to well beyond the second story. A walkway was positioned on either side of second-floor level for the guards to pace as prisoners ate below. A panel of steel doors lined the far side of the room; the doors were up revealing the kitchen beyond. Table after table sat in rows on the floor, designed to hold a quarter of the facility’s population at a time. A bank of windows rested high in the north wall, revealing a grimy sky that matched the walls perfectly. Rain still fell outside in silver streaks, and every so often lightning etched a pattern through the unmoving clouds.
Sullivan chewed his breakfast slowly, wondering if the scrambled eggs were actual eggs and what animal the sausage really came from.
“Okay, let’s outline this thing,” Barry said from across the table, as he sipped at a juice box displaying an orange on the front. “We have a dead guy alone in a cell, torn apart and supposedly shoved down a tiny heating vent. We have no witnesses and no vide
o, since this fucking place is still on Shawshank time. We have a warden who wants our help, a head officer who wants us out, an IT guy who wants to blow us, and no leads. Does that about sum it up?”
Sullivan laughed and pushed his spotless plate away across the table. “Yeah, that’s about it.”
“I thought so,” Barry said, dropping his fork onto his unfinished eggs. “I don’t know how you ate that shit,” he said, jabbing his finger at the remaining food.
“Gotta keep my strength up,” Sullivan said, smiling.
“Smart-ass.”
“This coming from a guy that devours gas-station burritos by the pound.”
Barry responded by flipping up his middle finger.
The commons was eerily quiet. Sullivan wondered if it was being in an empty space made for many people or if it was something more. The rain, the storms, the murder, Mooring, the incongruence of the prison, it all weighed on him. He had seen his share of horrors; there was no way of escaping them in this line of work. But something in the back of his mind kept setting off alarms. Something treaded there, disturbing the calm he normally felt while working cases.
“Okay,” Sullivan finally said. “Let’s talk to Hunt. I don’t care how tired he is, we need to get a statement out of him about what happened. Then we go to see this Fairbend. I’m still guessing this ties in to Alvarez’s upcoming trial date. We just have to figure out who got at him and who let them in the cell, agreed?”
“Agreed.”
“Let’s go.”
Both men stood and returned their plates to the proper station at the food windows. The cook solemnly watched them as he toiled beside the ticking ovens, cutting vegetables and opening cans big enough to fit a man’s head inside.
When they stepped into the main holding area, it was not Hunt’s young face that met them but a different guard wearing a well-trimmed goatee and blue baseball hat with the Singleton insignia on the front.
“We were wondering if Officer Hunt was available to answer a few questions,” Sullivan said to the new guard behind the desk. The guard gazed at the two agents, and then scanned the prison floor behind them in a nonchalant way that made Sullivan want to leap the desk and flip the other man out of his chair onto the hard cement.
“He just got off shift,” the guard said.
“Where can we catch up with him?” Sullivan asked, his voice rising with the anger that began to boil within his stomach.
The officer stretched and lazily laced his hands behind his head as he leaned back in his seat. “He’s going home, so he might already be gone. He was getting boated to the other side, far as I know.”
Sullivan turned and strode to the security door and was buzzed through with Barry trailing behind. The main entrance doors were opaque with rain, and thunder drowned out the last words of the guard in the main holding area. As the two men swept across the lobby and through the doors outside, a wave of heat ran over both of them. The storm hadn’t subsided a bit while they’d been within the building. If anything, it had increased. The grass around the prison walls was flat under the constant moisture, and the trees surrounding the facility swayed in the slow dance of the storm. Sullivan squinted through the slanting rain and spotted two figures past the perimeter fence, one sitting in the rear of a small boat and the other making its way toward the edge of the water, which looked closer than it was when he and Barry had arrived earlier.
Sullivan sprinted out from beneath the canopy and into the rain. He heard Barry yell something behind him, but he didn’t pause or turn. He needed to catch Hunt before he got away. He couldn’t let the young man leave his sight.
Somewhere deep inside he knew, if he did, he would never see Hunt again.
“Stop!” Sullivan yelled as he reached the fence and punched a red control button attached to the nearest post.
His voice must have carried, because the closest figure stopped at the edge of the water and turned toward him. Sullivan could just make out Hunt’s young, drawn face beneath the hood of the poncho he wore. The gate rolled back and Sullivan hurried past it, jogging the rest of the way to where the boat rested on the blacktop. Hunt’s eyes were red-rimmed and sagging, but there was also fear there. Sullivan saw it as he pulled up short and stopped a few feet from the guard.
“Officer Hunt, we need to speak with you before you go home. Are you able to do that?”
Hunt’s shoulders sagged with the agent’s words. Sullivan could see how tired the younger man was. Stress weighed on him and fatigue had settled in shortly thereafter. Sullivan knew he needed sleep and quiet, a chance to relax, but there was no time for that. There were questions to be asked and answered, and right now, Hunt was their best bet at finding out what had happened in that cell.
“He needs to go home and rest. Don’t you people have any concern for fellow officers, or are we just shit you step on while you wade through a case?” Officer Mooring raised his head enough for Sullivan to make out his features in the dim light. Everett’s eyes were shadowed further by his eyebrows, which were drawn down so far Sullivan wondered how the other man could see anything at the moment.
“I’m not going to argue with you,” Sullivan said, biting his tongue at the insults he wished to throw at the man in the back of the boat. “We have a murder investigation going on here, if you haven’t noticed, and Officer Hunt needs to be interviewed. Now, do I need to hold on to the goddamned boat until Warden Andrews comes down here and gives you an order to comply, or are you gonna play ball?”
Sullivan watched Mooring’s jaw tighten and strain beneath the hood. Mooring’s hand moved toward the starter button on the motor and Sullivan felt himself instinctually reaching for his HK45—muscle memory at its best. His fingers brushed the hard polymer and wet steel in the holster.
Hunt seemed to be caught in a churning riptide. His right hand rested on the bow of the boat, but his head was still turned toward Sullivan. His body swayed in time with the trees and he looked ready either to jump over the side of the boat or fall onto his ass; neither would have surprised Sullivan.
Hunt finally let go of the boat and began walking toward the prison. “I’ll go back inside. I’m super-tired, but I’ll tell you what I can.” His eyes searched Sullivan’s as he approached, and the agent felt his anger vanish at the sight of how distraught the young guard was. He looked like he was made of clay and was close to crumbling. “Then, can I go home? I’d just like to go home.”
Sullivan nodded and brushed back his soaking hair with one hand. “We just need to talk for a little while, then you can go get some rest.”
Hunt pulled his poncho around him tighter and set off up the hill, toward the prison. Sullivan watched him go, then glanced at Barry, who had caught up and looked at him questioningly. Sullivan turned and glared at Mooring, who was already starting the outboard.
“Fuck off,” Sullivan muttered as the boat scraped off the blacktop and churned backward until Mooring spun it in a tight circle and sped out of sight around a grouping of pine trees.
Without another look back, Sullivan followed Barry and Hunt up the rain-soaked road to the waiting mouth of Singleton.
Chapter 4
Hunt wrapped his fingers around the steaming cup of coffee when Sullivan placed it in front of him, his eyes peering down into the black liquid as if there might be something important there. Sullivan sat down on the opposite side of the table in the interview room, feeling the unpleasant squishing of his clothes, as they pressed close to his body, while a fresh patter of rainwater dripped onto the floor.
Barry shut the door and sat down beside Sullivan. “We’re very sorry to keep you, but you understand how important this is?” Barry said. Hunt nodded and tried to smile, but it fell flat and his mouth went back to its original half-open state. “You don’t mind if we record this, do you?” Barry asked, placing his phone onto the table near Hunt’s coffee cup.
“No, not at all,” the officer said.
“So, Nathan—can I call you Nathan?” Sulliva
n asked, looking imploringly at the younger man.
“Sure … Nate’s fine, actually.”
“Good. You can call me Sully. Nate, tell us about your time here so far. How’d you become a prison officer?”
Nate’s lips worked soundlessly for a moment. Perhaps he hadn’t expected such a friendly question to begin the interview. Sullivan smiled and wrinkled his brow, trying to get his left eye to open fully.
“My dad, I guess. He got me the job. He’s a prosecutor in AitkinCounty. He went to school with Warden Andrews. They play golf together sometimes. I did two years of law-enforcement training up north, and then started here last week.” Nate rolled his head on his neck and blinked several times.
“You okay, Nate?” Sullivan asked.
“Yeah, just really tired. I haven’t been sleeping well.”
“We’ll try to keep this short. How do you like it here?”
Nate chuckled. “So far, it sucks. I have the shittiest shifts available, which I expected, but the other thing is, it’s a little cliquey here.”
“‘Cliquey’?” Sullivan said.
“Yeah, you know. Nobody’s been real friendly, except the warden, and I’ve only seen him a few times, since my shifts are at night normally. I don’t know, maybe it’s just a hazing thing, but sometimes, I walk into a room and some of the other guards are at a table talking and they stop and look at me when I come in.”
Hunt shrugged. “And then last night.” The young officer shook his head and closed his eyes. “We saw a few films in school—car accidents and gunshot victims. I watched Faces of Death when I was younger.” Hunt’s eyes opened and he stared at the two agents in turn. “I’ve never seen anything like that before.”
“Let’s run through last night, okay?” Sullivan said. “How’d it start?”
Hunt breathed out and seemed to deflate an inch lower into the chair. His hands gripped the mug before him, but he made no attempt to drink. “I came on shift at eight in the evening. It’d been raining all day and Mooring boated me in. My car’s actually stuck here, so I got a lift from a friend to the edge of the water. I punched in, checked my report sheet for incidents during the last shift, and saw there’d been a fight between inmates.”
