Vicious Circle

by C. J. Box

  “Yup.”

  “It’s nothing like Rawlins,” Dooley said. “I was there for three years. This is a whole different ball game.”

  “What do I need to know?”

  Dooley paused and smiled. He apparently wanted to tell Joe the difference before they reached the warden’s office. Dooley spoke in a low, man-to-man tone, and Joe leaned in toward him to hear.

  “Each place has its challenges, as you can guess, but the challenges here have to do with personalities and obvious temptations, especially for a male CO. Some of these women know the only card they can play is, you know . . .”

  Joe nodded.

  Dooley said, “In Rawlins, you always had to have your head on a swivel in case some inmate wanted to shank you or stomp the hell out of another inmate. Those guys, a lot of them, are in Rawlins because they did something violent and hateful. Here, it’s all about bad relationships and bad families. Nearly every one of these ladies got tangled up with bad men somewhere along the line. In Rawlins, you’ve got predators. Here, for the most part, you’ve got victims.

  “In Rawlins, you always had to be ready to respond to a real fight where somebody could get killed. When we get the emergency call here it’s more likely a shouting match or a scratch fest. It’s the difference between a real fight and a catfight, if you know what I mean.”

  “I see.”

  He said, “The only truly vicious fight I’ve ever had to respond to where blood was shed was between two women who had children by the same low-rent gangbanger. Apparently, the guy didn’t tell either one of them about the other baby mama. Those two couldn’t even be in the cafeteria at the same time or they’d start trying to gouge the other’s eyes out or throw a tray at each other’s heads. But the fight wasn’t about status or power, like you see in the men’s prison. It was over a man and it involved kids.”

  Dooley flushed red. “I’m a happily married man,” he said, showing Joe his wedding ring. “I go to church every Sunday. They know it, all of them. But that doesn’t stop some of them from trying to get my attention and offering to do things, if you catch my drift. When you’re here day after day, you get to know them and they get to know you. They sense your weak spots, you know? And some of them can be as manipulative as hell. Here, you have to worry about the subtle and suggestive things. So just be on your guard.”

  “I will,” Joe said, although he wasn’t sure exactly what Dooley was saying. The man seemed to be battling through some demons of his own.

  “Some of ’em remind you of your mom or your grandma,” Dooley said. “Nicest people in the world. Some of the sweetest ladies I’ve ever met are in here. Sometimes, it’s hard to remember that they did something bad to wind up here. But there’s plenty of hard cases, too. It’s easy to see why they’re here. Are you married?”

  “Yup.”

  “Daughters?”

  “Yup.”

  “Some of them will remind you of your daughters,” Dooley said. “It’ll break your heart.”

  —

  OUTSIDE THE WARDEN’S CLOSED office door, Dooley said, “I’ll wait for you here and escort you to the interview room.” For whatever reason, he didn’t want to go with Joe to talk to the warden.

  Joe nodded and knocked on the door.

  “Come in,” a voice replied. It was female, confident, and strong. “I’m Martha Gray. I’m the warden of this fine institution.”

  “Joe Pickett.”

  Warden Martha Gray had a wide-open face, piercing eyes, and snow-white hair. She wore a dark business suit and pearls. She looked him over with discerning eyes and then gestured for him to have a chair.

  He sat. She waited for the door to close behind him.

  “I hope CO Dooley wasn’t telling you tales out of school,” she said. “He’s a talker, and some of the girls have figured out they can shake him up. It’s the reason we’ve reassigned him to administration from the general population.”

  “He was perfectly pleasant,” Joe said.

  “Good. I demand that my COs act professional in every aspect of their jobs.”

  He instantly liked Warden Gray. She came across as competent and no-nonsense. That wasn’t always the case with bureaucrats, as Joe had come to learn. Too many spent their careers keeping their heads down and counting the hours until retirement. The first impression Joe had of Warden Gray was that she seemed to take her job seriously and she wanted to do it well. She was also smart and demanding. That was probably the reason, Joe thought, that CO Dooley had chosen to remain outside in the hall. He wondered if Marybeth—whom he thought of as in his pocket at the moment—had gotten the same impression of her. She was better at reading people than Joe was.

  “My understanding is that you’re here to interview one of my girls,” she said.

  Joe nodded. “Brenda Cates.”

  Gray took a deep breath and slowly let it out. “Brenda,” she said with a wry smile. “Brenda is a special case, isn’t she?”

  He wasn’t sure how to respond.

  She said, “I house two hundred and seventy-three women here and they run the gamut. We’re a full-service institution and we have minimum- to maximum-security facilities throughout our three wings. The vast majority of my girls live in mimimum-security pods. We have our complications, but for the most part the atmosphere and behavior are calm and rational as long as everyone follows the rules and regulations. We reward good behavior and we punish bad behavior. If we’ve got a girl who’s really trying hard, we make it clear to her that if she keeps it up she might land one of the good jobs, like in the Aquaculture building.”

  “I meant to ask you about that,” Joe said.

  “We raise tilapia here,” she said with obvious pride. “Most of the tilapia served in the best restaurants in Denver come from here. It’s also a calm and enjoyable place to work. The smart girls aspire to that.”

  She sighed and said, “I like an awful lot of these women, but you can never completely trust them. It just works out better for everyone that way.”

  “Then there’s the East Wing,” Gray said. “That’s the maximum-security unit. We have eighteen women there right now, and half of them don’t belong.”

  “I don’t understand,” Joe said.

  “It can get intense when women live with each other without their kids or partners,” Gray said. “Cliques form and there are partnerships and alliances that harden. A percentage of them go what we call ‘gay for the stay.’ So there are lovers’ quarrels and nasty breakups. If you’ve got three women in a cell, you can pretty much count on two of them teaming up against the third. Sometimes my girls act out just so they can spend some time in the East Wing for peace and quiet. There’s no interaction with other inmates and they get their meals delivered. It’s a no-drama wing. If you’ve got daughters . . .”

  “Now I understand,” Joe said with a grin.

  “So you get the gist. But we have six girls in the East Wing who absolutely need to be there for the safety of the rest of the population, as well as my COs’.”

  “And Brenda is one of them,” Joe said.

  She nodded solemnly. “Brenda is the queen bee of the East Wing, I’m afraid.”

  “Doesn’t really surprise me,” Joe said.

  “You wouldn’t know it to look at her, would you?” Gray said. “I like to think of myself as a student of psychology. You have to be good at this job. I try to anticipate problems and head them off before they happen.

  “I’ll admit that at first I read her completely wrong. I remember meeting Brenda the first day in the intake unit. I thought: matronly old thing, quadriplegic, confined to a specialized wheelchair. She hasn’t changed her hairstyle since 1966, I’d guess. If you didn’t know her, you’d think she was your grandmother or your frumpy old aunt. She’d lost her husband and two of her sons and she didn’t have anyone left—or so we thought.”

/>   Gray said, “Despite the nature of her convictions, we placed her at first into the general population. We don’t automatically assign murderers to the East Wing—only those who are potentially violent to themselves or others. We thought: What harm could an elderly woman do who’d never been incarcerated before and who couldn’t use her limbs? Then we realized that beneath that Ma Kettle exterior is Ma Barker.”

  She laughed and said, “You’re probably too young to get that analogy.”

  “Not at all,” Joe said. “I’ve got some history with her family.”

  “I know about it,” Gray said. “I’ve heard your name spoken in vain by both Brenda and Cora Lee Cates.”

  He nodded.

  “They don’t like you.”

  “I know. Tell me about what Brenda did to get assigned to the East Wing.”

  “Right,” Gray said. “She has a chip on her shoulder, as you probably know. She thinks everyone in authority is out to get her, that we all look down on her and her family. As I’ve mentioned, running this place is a delicate balance at times. We try to find a happy medium and stay there.

  “But she’s a pot stirrer—an instigator. Brenda has a way of turning girls against each of the COs and each other and making the weak ones loyal to her. Brenda isn’t violent, because she can’t be. But she has a way of manipulating her followers into doing what she wants. She demands loyalty and punishes those who won’t give it to her. We had no choice but to remove her from the general population into isolation on the East Wing. After that, the problems stopped.”

  “Because that’s where she wanted to be, after all,” Joe said.

  “Yes, I believe that to be true.” Gray sighed. “But knowing her feelings toward you, should I be concerned about your visit?”

  “I’m not here to push her wheelchair down a flight of stairs, if that’s what you’re wondering,” he said.

  “Too bad,” Gray said. Then, flashing a smile: “I’m kidding, of course.”

  “Of course. Can I ask you a few questions about her before the interview?”

  Warden Gray glanced at her wristwatch. It was nearing five.

  She said, “My husband is planning to take me out to dinner for our thirty-fifth anniversary tonight.”

  “Congratulations,” Joe said. “I don’t want to keep you.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” she said, waving him off. “I had to remind him about it this morning. And he can’t take me out until I get home, right? So ask what you want to ask. But be warned that I might watch the interview on the monitor. I’m very interested to observe that exchange.”

  “Will you videotape it?” Joe asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Good.”

  At that, she arched her eyebrows. “You’re up to something, aren’t you?” she asked.

  “Yup.”

  —

  HE BRIEFED Warden Gray on his encounters with Dallas, Cora Lee, and both the banker and the insurance agent in Winchester.

  When he was done, she mused, “So that might explain how she came up with the money for her tongue-controlled wheelchair.”

  “Tongue-controlled wheelchair?”

  “Brenda arrived in a four-thousand-dollar electric wheelchair, courtesy of your tax dollars and the Department of Corrections,” Gray said. “It was equipped with a sip-and-puff system that allowed her to manipulate the chair through a plastic tube near her mouth. She could make the chair go forward or back and make left- and right-hand turns. But she didn’t like it because the tube had to be cleaned frequently, and she hated that it was always in front of her face.

  “This new chair is an experimental prototype designed by Georgia Tech that cost something like fifteen thousand dollars, if I remember correctly. It operates through a tongue stud that transmits to a headset. The headset is connected to some kind of computer in the chair itself. Rather than four functions, she can go anywhere she wants at whatever speed she thinks about, because the nerves in the tongue are connected directly to her central nervous system. It gives her much more mobility. All she has to do is think about where she wants to go and that chair goes there. All we have to do at night after we get her into her bed is plug in the chair to recharge the batteries inside the equipment. Every two weeks, a local certified nurse makes a house call on Brenda and makes sure the old girl is healthy and that her chair is working properly. That chair is really quite amazing, I must say. And now I know how she was able to afford it.”

  “Interesting,” Joe said.

  He explained that, in his theory, Brenda had figured out a way to communicate with Dallas, Cora Lee, and others from inside the prison.

  “No way,” Gray said, shaking her head. “That’s impossible.”

  She explained that there were no cell phones allowed within the general population and none had ever been discovered. Security in the East Wing was even tighter. She said that “phone withdrawal” was the most painful ordeal for younger prisoners when they entered the prison.

  “What about email?” Joe asked.

  “Not a chance,” she said. “Computers, iPads, any kind of electronic communication device, is prohibited. We don’t even allow Kindles or Nooks. If an inmate has to send an email, we allow them to send it via a DOC tablet, and the message is read by staff and archived before it is even sent. I’d have to approve it if Brenda made a request to send an email, and I can promise you she never has. I’m not sure she even used email or phone messaging in her real life.”

  Joe agreed. Then: “Phone calls?”

  Again, Gray shook her head. “There are designated hardwired phones available by appointment only. Every call they make is recorded and digitized. Any call made by an East Wing inmate is listened to as it happens. I’d be surprised if Brenda Cates made a single call the entire time she’s been here.”

  “Isn’t that unusual?” Joe asked.

  “Not in her case,” Gray said. “Who would she call?”

  “Her insurance agent and banker,” Joe said.

  “She’s made no calls.”

  “Does she get visitors? Maybe someone is acting as a messenger to the outside world?”

  “She hasn’t had a visitor. Not even one.”

  Joe was flummoxed.

  Then Gray had a recollection. “I take back what I just said. Cora Lee visited her about two months ago.”

  Joe filed that away in his mind and said, “Go on.”

  “As you know, Cora Lee was here for nine months. For the first ninety days, she was a total pain in the ass. She spent all her time getting tatted up, and she didn’t play well with others at all. After she got in a screaming match with a few of the sisters, we had to put her in the East Wing for a while. After that experience, she was a model prisoner. Her improvement apparently convinced the parole board that she’d cleaned up her act, but I had trouble actually believing that.”

  “When Cora Lee was in the East Wing,” Joe asked, “did she have access to Brenda?”

  “Inmates are denied interaction with each other. But I’m not naive. If something happens on one end of the building, they know about it immediately on the other. News travels so fast through whispers and rumors that it would astound you. We call it Inmate-Dot-Com, and it exists in every prison and it always has. So I have no doubt that if Brenda and Cora Lee wanted to communicate, they probably figured out a way to do it.”

  Joe nodded. “I wonder if Brenda had a few words with Cora Lee on what she wanted her to do after she got out on parole. I wonder if that’s why Cora Lee straightened out after she left the East Wing.”

  “I can see that happening,” Gray agreed with a nod. “Brenda has a way of pressing others into service. And if she had all that money to spread around . . .”

  Joe said, “Yup. But we still don’t know how she issued orders.”

  “I’m hoping you’ll ask her that que
stion.”

  “Oh, I’ll ask,” Joe assured her.

  “Wait here,” Gray said as she pushed her chair back. “I’ll go talk to my East Wing supervisor to get the interview room ready. And I’ll make sure the video system is working.”

  “Thank you,” Joe said.

  —

  AFTER SHE’D GONE, Joe removed his phone and asked Marybeth, “Did you get all that?”

  “I did. I think that Dooley guy is kind of creepy, but I really like the warden. I almost feel sorry I eavesdropped.”

  “I need your brain on this. So what do you think?”

  “I’m not sure, but hang up and give me a minute. I have a thought I need to check out.”

  “Regarding what?” he asked.

  “Tongue-operated wheelchairs,” she said, and disconnected.

  —

  JOE SAT BACK in the chair and closed his eyes. His stomach was in turmoil and he breathed deeply to try and settle it down.

  He recalled Brenda not from her trial, but from that moment when, on her back and helpless, she’d locked eyes with him and held her gaze until he’d finally broken it by looking away.

  She’d been a venal and twisted woman before that moment. Joe could only imagine what she was like now.

  He was about to find out.

  26

  “Male on unit!” Dooley called out as he led Joe down the hallway toward the interview room in the East Wing. The passage went from the administration wing through the heart of the prison. When Dooley called out the notice, women in their cells stopped what they were doing and looked out to catch a glimpse of him. The inmates were housed eight to a cell with their names and photos attached to the cinder-block wall around their doorframe.

  Joe had never been stared at like that before, and he hoped his face didn’t turn red.

  “Keep your eyes straight ahead and don’t look back at them,” Dooley advised, sotto voce. “You might not like what you see.”

  But of course Joe did. What he saw was an amalgamation of curious wide expressions, dead-eye stares, smirks, and in one instance a pair of large bulbous white breasts when an inmate hiked up her orange smock top to flash him. She laughed maniacally after he passed.