by Brenda Novak
“What?” She thought his mind had wandered into the past.
His faded eyes widened and he glanced over her shoulder. She involuntarily followed his gaze, but no one was there.
“You don’t know what you know, Frankie.” He never called her anything but “doc” or “girl,” and she was mildly surprised that he knew her first name. “You oughter get outta here.” He inhaled sharply, struggling for breath.
“Charlie, relax, you need to calm down. This talking isn’t good for you.”
“Never mind me!” he exclaimed with more ferocity than she’d thought he had left in him. “It’s you that needs to worry.” He sighed and closed his eyes briefly.
“I know you won’t leave,” he murmured at last, the words labored and halting, “but watch your back. There’s those would not like you meddling in prison affairs.” He gestured feebly with one hand. “Look around you, girl. They’re all murderers, rapists, thieves, liars – the lot of them.” He glowered darkly. “And I don’t mean just the inmates.”
Then he’d closed his eyes right before his poor ragged heart had seized, his body convulsing, and neither CPR, the paddles, or epinephrine injection had been sufficient to revive him.
And what the hell was she supposed to do with those last words from a dying inmate who’d been on his own personal death row for decades? He couldn’t possibly have known about the message Cole Hansen had slipped her in the examination room, he couldn’t understand what had really happened in the prison yard the day of the murder Cole had confessed to, and he absolutely couldn’t have figured out her personal stake in the whole affair.
Chapter 17
Cole Hansen spent his first night of freedom in a flea-bitten hotel off Washington Street, in downtown Rosedale. The kind of place that rented rooms by the hour, the dump was all he could afford. For a while, he amused himself watching the hookers come in and out, doing their business, briefly and efficiently.
After the long bus ride from Crescent City, he still had about sixty dollars left from the money he’d paroled with. When it ran out, he didn’t know what he’d do, but he’d be damned if he would spend his first night of freedom huddled against a building in a dark alley.
He’d gotten fast food and spent thirty bucks on this sorry excuse for a rented room. He lay on top of a worn bedspread, not wanting to think about what crap was crusted into the thin fabric. No matter, he’d had worse before, both inside and outside of prison or jail.
As long as he was alive, he could survive anything.
Staying alive, avoiding blowback from prison debriefing, was the important goal.
He had expected to serve out the last six months of his original sentence in special needs, but admin had fast-tracked him through the system, gotten him out of harm’s. He figured that move had saved his life.
Anson Stark would be wanting major retaliation.
Now he just had to stay alive long enough to finish parole or disappear.
People thought Cole was dumb, and he admitted he wasn’t very smart. He had trouble in school all his life and dropped out at the age of fifteen. He didn’t read well – the letters and figures on the page looked all twisted around and backwards, but teachers, and even his own parents, seemed to think he was just lazy, not trying hard enough.
He knew there was something wrong with him, in his head, but he wasn’t as stupid as people thought. If he was, he’d be dead already. Right now he knew enough to realize he was in deep shit with little chance of getting out of it no matter who reached out to him.
There were precious few giving a hand to a no-good ex-con like him.
No one around here, not even his parole officer, could help him. Some things just didn’t get fixed, no matter how good peoples’ intentions were.
He thought of Doc Jones and her pretty, but sad face. She’d tried to help him. She was one smart cookie, the way she’d scooped up that note he’d dropped in her hand during his medical exam. She’d be a helluva card player, he figured, smiling at the image.
He sighed deeply and then shivered as if someone had walked over his grave. He sure hoped he hadn’t put the doc in harm’s way. He didn’t want that on his conscience, along with all his other mistakes.
Opening the packet of materials his parole officer had given him, he started reading. It was a laborious task, his reading skills being only slightly better than his writing, but using the map provided, he realized he was right around the corner from the shelter Officer Cruz had referred him to.
Jesus Saves. Sounded hinky to him. He didn’t trust much in Jesus freaks. They were always wanting to convert you to something in exchange for a bite of food or a place to bunk for the night.
Still, Cruz had sounded sincere. Maybe he’d give it a once-over in the morning.
He dosed a bit, wakening up around midnight. Taking his backpack with him, he walked down the stairs and next door to a twenty-four-hour, old-fashioned drive-in where he got a black coffee and sat quietly in the corner, planning and thinking.
At last the manager, a pimply-faced teenager who’d been eyeing him for some time, walked over to his booth. “Uh, sorry, sir, but you can’t stay here, uh, any longer. That is, uh, unless you order something.”
Cole was pretty sure the kid was scared to death, but he didn’t want to start off his release with some kind of unnecessary altercation, so he simply nodded and rose, taking his coffee with him. He wandered around the area, silent and mostly empty except for the occasional street person settling down for the night in an alley or behind a secluded dumpster.
Even though it violated his parole, Cole knew he had to have something to defend himself with. You couldn’t live a life on the street without protection. A gun was out – too hard to get, too easy to get caught with, and too expensive.
Some kind of blade, maybe a hunting knife. Anything over three or four inches violated parole, too, but was easier to hide or ditch.
A steak or paring knife would provide some protection, although not much. He decided tomorrow he’d go to the Walmart store across town and see if he could shoplift a suitable weapon.
Returning to his room, he settled down for the night, having found a hefty, good-sized rock in the alley behind the hotel. The rock would have to do until he boosted a blade.
Chapter 18
Anson Stark wasn’t anything like Frankie had expected. How could the whole damned prison be terrified of such an ordinary-looking man? Stark was only a few inches taller than Frankie, who was five feet seven, and he had a slight, but wiry frame.
He didn’t look much of a threat, probably weighed about twenty-five pounds more than her. But she’d learned a lot about killers in the last year, and the look in Stark’s eyes and the expression on his face chilled her to the bone. He wasn’t someone you’d turn your back on.
He was heavily shackled. By law, inmates had to receive requested medical attention, but security was taking no chances with Stark. Wrists cuffed behind his back, with a chain extending to his feet and linking them together, he was forced to hunch over when he walked. The whole affair gave him an awkward, stilted gait.
When he saw Frankie, however, he pulled himself erect – at the cost of some pain, she imagined. The strain on his posture would be tremendous. Pride or control, she wondered?
Both guards remained inside the examination room, although protocol demanded that the inmate receive some attempt at confidentiality. Stark wouldn’t dare threaten her in front of the hefty correctional officers.
Still, Charlie Cox’s words rang in her ears. She was in danger, and who else but the leader of the most powerful prison gang could possibly be a threat to her? She’d never had even the slightest fear around her inmate patients. In fact, they were remarkably respectful to her.
She thought of Cole Hansen’s note, lying on her coffee table at home, paper clipped to the inside of the pilfered medical file. When she returned to work, she’d discovered Cole’s real medical file exactly where it was supposed to be – between
Haddock and Hobson in the H section, but when she opened it, the record was largely redacted, many of her marginal notations blackened out.
Why? What valuable information lay in an inmate’s medical record? She felt like she’d unwittingly stepped inside a CIA covert operations movie.
One guard waited by the door and the other stood behind Stark as he sat on the exam table. No one spoke for long moments.
Frankie took a step forward, Stark’s thin medical file in her left hand. He had been incarcerated for eight years, all but two of them in the SHU. Frankie had done her homework on the man and learned that he’d risen from obscurity in a level four ward – having been convicted of second-degree murder – to the SHU when admin realized he’d been running his white gang ruthlessly and efficiently.
Prison administration, not the courts, assigned inmates to the SHU. Strong gang activity had landed Stark there, where he’d subsequently murdered two cellmates. The medical record described Stark as a psychopath with no apparent affect toward others. Looking at his impassive face, Frankie believed the assessment.
She cleared her throat. “So, Mr. Stark, what’s troubling you?”
The eerie eyes, so pale blue they were almost albino, narrowed while he ran them contemplatively over her body from head to feet and back again, lingering on her breasts beneath the medical jacket. She struggled not to flinch.
She saw the door guard nod slightly and a second later the other guard smacked his baton down hard on Stark’s cuffed hands. The inmate blinked twice rapidly, but Frankie had the feeling that he’d braced himself for the blow because he smiled at her as if he’d just proved an important point. She felt her face lose color and her hands go numb. After nearly a year at Pelican Bay, she hadn’t gotten used to the casual brutality of prison life.
She addressed the guard who’d struck Stark. “Could you please lift up his shirt?” After a moment she began the exam, listening to his heart, lungs, feeling his throat for lumps or swollen glands. “Open wide and say ‘ah,’” she instructed. His throat and ears seemed clear of infection. She noticed Stark had remarkably little dental work done, but an amazingly sound set of teeth.
This close to his face she smelled the scent of peppermint on his breath. She shivered slightly, half expecting him to chew off her ear with those sturdy teeth.
“Cold, Dr. Jones?” Stark asked.
“Shut up, Stark.” The guard behind him prodded him in the back.
The whole domination thing suddenly irritated Frankie. “I can’t treat him if I don’t know his complaint,” she snapped.
The correctional officer by the door – his name badge said Mahoney – shrugged and nodded.
Frankie stepped back and crossed her arms. “What’s bothering you, Mr. Stark?”
Stark coughed, leaned his mouth into his shoulder, and eyed her darkly from under lowered brows. He was angled so that neither guard could see his face clearly.
“I’ve got this pain, Dr. Jones.” His voice was low and cultured. She remembered that he’d been a college teacher.
“Where?”
He coughed again, and she clearly saw him mouth the words: You. Here. Watch your back.
Not only the words implied a threat. The vicious look on Stark’s face was pure intimidation.
“Answer the doc,” Mahoney commanded.
“Here,” Stark said, jutting his chin toward his forehead. “In my head. A sharp pain. I can’t seem to get rid of it. What do you think I should do?”
The message was unmistakable.
Chapter 19
Santiago Cruz’s new parolee stopped by the county office just barely within the deadline of his release from Pelican Bay State Prison. He’d signed in and taken a seat, gotten jittery, and stepped outside for a smoke when Cruz called his name.
As Cruz shook his hand and offered Cole Hansen a chair in his office, he knew from the moment the man opened his mouth that he wasn’t going to make it. A wave of despondency gripped his gut.
Christ, it was like a revolving door. Inmate released. Inmate on parole for a month. Inmate violated and returned to jail or prison.
Bound by parole guidelines, Cruz only had so much latitude with parolees. If they attended AA or NA meetings – most of his cases were addicts – went to anger management classes, got a job, a place to live, they just might make it for a few months.
But the slightest setback moored them, often a girlfriend with the same negative history with cops, but just as often family who got sick of seeing the continual backslide. The road to recovery was two steps forward and one step back. And those were the lucky ones.
Recidivism rate for California parolees was sixty-one percent. Cruz took a deep breath and gave his normal spiel, ending with, “I won’t pee test you this time, but expect one every time you see me.”
He gave Hansen a hard stare. “Don’t let me find out you have a dirty pee test when I get the report,” he warned. “I don’t like surprises. If you hit a bump in the road, get out in front of it by telling me, okay?”
Hansen nodded, but had a distracted air that made Cruz think he wasn’t really listening.
“Hey, man.” Cruz raised his voice and rapped his knuckles on the desk. “This is important. You’ll end right back in jail real quick if you don’t listen up.”
“Yeah, man, I know. I’m gonna really try this time.”
Cruz read the man’s record. “You know the drill. You’ve done time before. Just in case – no weapons, no drugs, no association with known criminals, carry ID at all times.” He paused and eyed the man’s pasty face. “You got family? A place to stay?”
Hansen looked at his hands as if he’d find the answer there. “Uh, not really.”
Cruz sighed and reached for the packet of papers in the right desk drawer. “Here’s a list of shelters, places where you can get a free meal, coffee and a snack in the morning. Also a list of companies that hire ex-felons.”
He stapled his business card to the top of the packet and handed Hansen a few vouchers. “These are bus passes you can use to get up here for your weekly appointments. If you had a place to stay, I’d only need to see you monthly instead of weekly, so try to get a regular residence, okay?”
After a few more minutes of instructions, Cruz finished. An inmate is required to serve out his parole in the area where he committed his offense, a policy that made no sense to Cruz. How could a guy start over again when all he knew were the same crooks and petty thieves, drug addicts and pimps who’d gotten him started in crime in the first place?
He blew out a deep breath, having no faith that Cole Hansen would be different from all the other parolees who passed through his office. “That’s all for now. Keep my number. Call me if you need anything, okay?”
Hansen rose and picked up the papers, looking stunned and overwhelmed. His shoulders slumped and he sort of shuffled toward the door, turning back when he reached it. “What – what about protection?”
“Protection? From what?”
Hansen looked quickly over his shoulder into the lobby. “You know. From them.”
Cruz shrugged, looking out at the three other waiting parolees. “Hey, man, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Those guys are in the same boat as you.”
Hansen waited a long time, stepping from one foot to another in an odd little two-step.
“Has someone threatened you?” Cruz asked. “Are you afraid of something? We’ve got lots of resources to help you, but you gotta reach out, man.”
Hansen stared blankly and finally whispered. “Oh, okay.”
He opened the door and started out, but Cruz stopped him. “Look, go to Jesus Saves in Rosedale. There’s a bus route and map in the packet.” He pointed to the pile of papers clutched in Hansen’s fist. “Talk to Angie. Tell her Santiago Cruz sent you. She’s good people. She’ll help you get around, find a job.”
“Uh, okay.” The man looked dazed, and when he reached the outer door to the building, he turned back again. “You can contact th
e doc at Pelican Bay, can’t you?”
“The doctor at the prison? I could,” Cruz said slowly, “but why should I?”
“The doc – she’ll – she’s good people, too – she – she’ll tell you – ”
“Tell me what?” Cruz interrupted impatiently.
“About me ... and what I know.”
Cruz stood and watched the man stumble awkwardly out of the parole office. Did Hansen really know something or was he paranoid, caught up in his own delusional world?
Damn, dude wasn’t going to make it. He looked defeated before he’d even started.
Chapter 20
Frankie sank shakily into her office desk chair after the guards escorted Anson Stark from the infirmary. After prescribing a mild pain reliever for Stark’s “headaches,” she’d needed a moment alone.
She lowered her head onto her folded arms, her insides coiling with panic and shock. She’d only needed to look into his eyes – those freaky translucent eyes – to know that Anson Stark was a cold-blooded murderer.
Maybe he’d been convicted of second-degree murder in the death of his wife, as the rumors went, but the deaths of two SHU inmates had been deliberate, and planned like a military commander initiating a well-executed campaign.
She’d certainly gotten the message he intended. He perceived her as a threat, one to eliminate coolly and ruthlessly. But why? How? Did it all tie back to the note Cole Hansen had given her?
Ten minutes later her heart still raced like a metronome on speed, but she stifled her fear, took deep breaths – in slowly, out slowly – and assessed the situation.
She would not let this monster get the better of her.
The primary emotion, she realized after a moment’s reflection, wasn’t fear but anger, coupled with helplessness. Sure, she was shaken up – who wouldn’t be when confronted with a calculated killer? – but Stark had stirred up a painful and primitive emotion, a fierce need to retaliate.
