by E. Z. Rinsky
I push forward, having to really muscle the brambles out of my way, and once I’m pretty sure I’m at least a few body lengths deep, I release the bag.
It’s going to be nearly impossible to rotate and go back headfirst. Equally implausible is standing: The branches are so thick over my head that I don’t think I could push through. They’re just thin enough close to the ground to maneuver through.
“Courtney?” I yell.
No response. I guess the sound in here is really muffled by the foliage.
I push backwards, going feet first through the path in the bush I cleared on the way in, and am deeply relieved when I feel my feet break out. I scurry out backwards and pant for breath. I’m sweating very heavily and can feel scratches all over my face and arms.
I glare at Courtney as I stand up and try to brush the dirt off my shirt, pants and arms.
“These neuroses of yours sure do come in handy, don’t they?”
We lope back down to the car, me not even bothering to avoid the stick burrs. My lower back is killing me from the crawl.
When we get back to the car, Courtney spray paints a crude X on the gravel shoulder. I climb into the passenger seat and close the door.
Courtney walks around the front of the car and sidles into the driver’s seat, turns the key and cranks the AC.
“We’re going to get fucked, you know,” I say, panting. “We keep thinking we’ve figured everything out. But at every turn we get fucked.”
“I disagree.” He frowns. “At no point during this have I thought we had anything figured out.”
Before pulling the car back onto the highway, Courtney rips open his red acrylic purse and riffles through it with trembling fingers. Finally removes two plastic tubes, each a little narrower than a drinking straw, sealed at both ends. He holds one up to the sun, squints.
“What the hell is that?” I ask.
“Blowgun,” he says. “Loaded with a poison dart.”
He peels off a layer from the outside, and I see the whole outside is sticky like tape.
“It goes between your gum and your cheeks,” he explains, and hands one to me.
I take the lethal instrument from him with the pads of my fingers. I frown at the little tube.
“What if it pricks my gums? What if I swallow it!?”
“It’s sealed. When you’re ready you roll it with your tongue until it’s just sticking out from between your lips. Then blow, and it will pierce the seal and fire.”
I peel the tape off the tube and use the rearview mirror to slide it into my cheek. He tapes in his own, and then jerks the Hummer into gear and takes us back onto the highway. A blue vein is pulsing in his slender neck.
“How hard is it to aim?” I ask. “Easier or harder than blowing kisses?”
“Not hard,” he says. “Aim for the chest, just like you’re shooting a gun, but anywhere it pierces the skin will do the trick. There’s enough Tetrodotoxin in here to kill a horse. A person, even a large man, should be paralyzed in under a minute. Death in three.”
“Christ.”
“If it’s all the same to you,” he says, “if it comes to it, I’d like to be the one to kill him.”
Courtney’s grip on the wheel is so tight, his shoulders so tense, that his sinewy biceps are quivering like frightened kittens. This man is vegan—doesn’t even eat eggs because he thinks it’s cruel. Oliver Vicks has filled my gentle friend with all-consuming bloodlust. In this sense, Oliver has already won.
As we approach Saddleback Correctional Facility, the highway straightens, and the earth flattens, like we’re on Satan’s private boulevard.
The vein in Courtney’s slender neck bulges rhythmically with his pulse. It’s just past six. The sun is closer to dipping behind the mountains than it is to hanging over our heads.
“Listen,” I say. “Again. I appreciate the irony of me saying this to you, but try to stay calm and patient. You’re more riled up than me. Let me talk.”
Courtney doesn’t respond. He’s hunched forward against the wheel like he’s urging the Hummer to gallop even faster. Watching Courtney, I have the fleeting sensation that the car is being propelled by his sheer willpower.
The prison walls rise in the horizon like they’re growing from the earth in fast-motion. I realize my hands are shaking in my lap, and the chest of my T-shirt is soaked in sweat.
“Courtney,” I repeat. “I’ll do most of the talking, okay? And I’m not blowing this thing until we’re sure we have an escape route.”
“If he . . .”
Courtney trails off limply. I suspect I know what he’s thinking: If he’s done the same to Mindy he did to Rico . . . cooler heads will not be prevailing.
We grind to a halt at the front gate to the prison. The first checkpoint. A dozen khaki-clad guards mill around a gate, a few sitting in booths behind bulletproof glass. I glance up at the guard towers resting along the tops of the walls garnished with barbed wire.
One of the COs, a slender man, approaches the car.
“Let him talk first,” I mutter to Courtney.
Courtney has our phony IDs out before the officer sticks his head in the window. The CO’s cheeks are thin and creased with worry, but his polarized sunglasses betray little else.
“Help you?” he says, disregarding the IDs. “Visiting hours are Monday, ten to two.”
So how was Sampson supposed to get in?
“Warden Heald is expecting us.”
The guard blinks.
“Just a sec,” he says.
He walks a few meters away—out of earshot—and speaks into his walkie-talkie. Nods. All the other guards blankly assess us, as if we’re just part of the dull landscape. My throat is suddenly terribly dry . . . can’t remember the last time I drank anything. The guard returns.
“You two were here a few days ago right?”
Courtney nods.
We run through the same deal as we did a few days ago. Car search, vigorous pat down . . . I don’t recognize any of the guards from last time, but they all run through the procedures in almost identical, mechanical fashion. This time though, it’s infinitely more discomfiting giving up our tools, knowing Oliver Vicks is somewhere in here.
Would I even know him if I saw him? Our photos of him are so old.
They don’t search our mouths, and the blowguns don’t set off the metal detector—that dart probably has less metal content than a filling. The only holdup is the iPhone.
“No phones or cameras,” says the CO drearily.
Courtney narrows his eyes.
We might need this to call Oliver. Tell him we’re here . . .
“We keep the phone,” I say. “If you have a problem with that, call the warden.”
The wormy guy conducting the search, who doesn’t look accustomed to making tough calls, wilts, and hands the phone back.
“Keep it in your pocket,” he says. “No pictures.”
Sergeant Don is waiting again at the end of the tunnel. His slight hunch makes him look like a dog excited to see us. He’s standing beside three big-chested COs, who all dwarf him.
“I knew you’d be back.” He smiles, eyes shining. I can almost see my reflection on his sweaty head. Looks like polished obsidian. “Nobody can resist this place!”
“That’s right,” I say.
He leans forward and peers into my face.
“What have you seen since you were last here,” he says, not as a question. And then he promptly turns and walks the same way we did last time, toward the admin building.
We don’t even try to make small talk this time, as they lead us through the same door in a chain link fence as tall as three men, one of several nested interior barriers.
We walk along another chain link fence, toward the admin building. On the other side is the big dusty yard. This time it’s filled with hundreds of prisoners in identical grey onesies. Weeds spring up through cracks in the basketball court cement. There’s some cheap plastic lawn furniture in one corner,
beside a bench press and smattering of dumbbells. At the edge of the yard, the tall white brick buildings that house the cell blocks seem to be taunting me with their innocence. They could just as easily be college dorms or low-income apartment buildings.
The inmates glare at us as we walk past, with some kind of revulsion.
To the west of the yard, behind another fence, the construction on the new tower looks to be done for the day, and the white tarps have been removed.
The bottom ten floors are fully finished, the others are partially outlined in scaffolding, I-beams, metal, and strange, colorful shapes that glimmer in the dying sunlight and are impossible to discern from down here on the ground. The exterior of the tower though does not look normal. From our distance, still two chain link fences away, the outside reminds me of the scales of a sand-colored crocodile.
Apart from the glimmering glass top, each windowless floor is demarcated by horizontal stripes. There’s something horribly organic about the color and texture of the tower’s exterior—like it’s the finger of a subterranean giant pointing toward heaven, or a distended, dried-out earthworm.
As we continue on the dirt path toward the admin building, nearing the tower, I see that there’s a raised wooden platform at its base. Last time we were here it was covered in tools and construction equipment, but now it’s totally cleared off. And on three stools sit three forms, all burdened by glinting chains. Two in khaki CO uniforms.
The third is Mindy.
Courtney falls out of line, and presses his face into the chain link fence, stares in disbelief at the tower, the hundreds of unruly looking inmates milling around its shadow, and Mindy. The hot sun beats down on them mercilessly. It’s hard to see from this distance, but it looks like Mindy is wearing some kind of sackcloth and tied up so tightly she can’t move.
He turns to our escorts, eyes wide.
“Do you see this?” he gasps. “There’s a woman there—what the fuck. Go get her!”
Two of the big COs manage to keep stiff poker faces. The third can’t contain a grimace at the prospect of entering the yard.
Sergeant Don exhales slowly and rubs a palm over his slick head, like to make sure it’s still well lubricated. Then he walks to Courtney and places the same palm on his shoulder.
“It’s a delicate situation,” he says. “We can’t go in there. All will become clear.”
Courtney rears up to his full height.
“Delicate?” He gestures helplessly. “You’re corrections officers! You’re the ones with the guns! Go unlock her!”
Sergeant Don nods patiently. He seems totally unperturbed by the scene on the other side of the yard.
“The warden will explain. Come on.”
Don and the officers gesture for us to keep following them. Courtney stares at me in shock, mouth half agape.
“What . . .” he tries to muster.
“I don’t know,” I say, grab him around the waist to fall back in line. “I know. Something’s fucked. Keep your head.”
Courtney’s eyes are glued on her as we near the admin building. She and the two chained officers are sitting totally still beside what must be the entrance to the tower: a yawning black hole as tall as two men.
The guards lead us to the same entrance of the administration building as last time. I have to grab Courtney by the elbow and pull him inside, so reluctant is he to let Mindy out of his sight.
We lock eyes for a moment in the white plastered hallway as we follow the officers through the lobby. His distraught face belongs in some black-and-white documentary about war atrocities.
“What’s going on here?” he whispers.
“I don’t know.”
I subtly tap the cheek holding the dart.
We just have to get in to see Oliver. Then we can end this.
Courtney’s eyelids are twitching real bad and his hands are bright pink. I’ve seen this before—on guys withdrawing from a serious substance, just before they snap and do something they regret.
The lobby is a loud buzz of inefficient, decades-old air conditioners, dispassionate employees in stiff short-sleeved white button-downs—all men. I shudder. They all know a woman is in the stocks a few hundred meters away, but seem to be going about their business as usual.
Oliver Vicks is close. I try not to believe in chakra or “vibes,” but whether he’s sitting in an office somewhere in this building, or in a cell across the yard from here, I’m suddenly positive he’s somewhere inside of this facility. I feel it—a kind of vibrating in my chest, or tingling in my temples, like wherever he is, he’s emitting a sort of awful electricity.
Like last time, only Sergeant Don squeezes into the old elevator with us. I force a smile as the elevator begins its creaky ascent. The withered man smiles back.
“When I’m scared,” he says, “I like to pray.”
“Why don’t you just do something about it?” I ask. “Go into the yard and get her.”
Sergeant Don laughs.
“I was making a suggestion for you two. I fear nothing. I walk in the footsteps of the Lord.”
I taste bile in my throat.
Have we just walked into a trap?
I force myself to smile.
“Yes.” I swallow. “Maybe we’ll pray.”
Courtney’s arms are crossed across his shallow chest, and he’s staring at the dirty elevator floor, trying to contain his shock and rage.
I rub my tongue over the sheath containing the dart, confirming I haven’t swallowed it. Just have to convince the warden to get us in to see Oliver . . .
The elevator doors open into the drab waiting room. The warden’s assistant—Allen?—looks up briefly from his computer when we walk in and says, “Take a seat.”
Sergeant Don again takes a seat across from the two of us and sits gripping his veiny biceps. The AC is loud in here, as is Allen’s percussive typing. I check my watch: a quarter to seven.
“It’s late,” I say to Sergeant Don. “When do you head home?”
He smiles like this is a joke.
“I’ll rest when my work is done,” he says.
I turn to Courtney, sitting with his knees together, hands clinched into fists on his lap, thin eyebrows knitted in anguish. He tugs nervously on the bristles of his burgeoning mustache. I want to talk to Courtney, but don’t want Don to overhear. Want to talk it through with him:
So the warden is just letting these prisoners, and Oliver Vicks, do whatever the hell they want?
Courtney is doing something weird with his hands. Trying to signal me. He has two fingers outstretched on his left hand, four on his right.
He looks at me, then to his hands, his pupils are oscillating from side to side ever so slightly, like his eyes are marbles floating in a glass of unsteady water. His complexion is green.
I give him a look: What?
Look at my hands.
Two and four? Six?
Sergeant Don looks away for a moment, and Courtney mouths: twenty-four, and nods with his head in the direction of the elevator.
I look at him confused. Twenty-four what?
He mouths: floors.
Floors? He must be talking about the tower outside. The one Mindy is chained in front of. My stomach does a little somersault as I realize what Courtney is trying to convey. Twenty-four floors. Twenty-four books.
That is Oliver Vicks’s tower. And the inmates are building it for him.
“You two can go in,” says Allen.
He buzzes us through the first door, into the closet-sized hallway. I’m about to ask Courtney to clarify if I understood what he was saying correctly, when Nathan Heald pulls open the interior door to his office.
“Welcome back, detectives.”
He’s wearing a different, but equally unflattering Hawaiian shirt. Thick horizontal stripes of alternating hues of bright purples, set against silhouetted palm trees. The shirt seems purposely designed to display his paunch, like it’s some kind of trophy.
“Come on in,”
he says.
Thanks to the western exposure, and translucent lime-green curtains, his office feels a little like we’re on the inside of a kiwi. But maybe due to our collective mood the air feels dark and heavy in here. He sits down behind his desk with a little hiss of relief. Picks at his salt-and-pepper beard with agitation. Courtney glares at him with withering contempt.
“There’s a woman chained up in your prison yard,” he says as calmly as he can. “And you aren’t doing anything about it. I think you better start explaining. We know you lied to us. Oliver Vicks is still here. And by the looks of it, you’ve lost control of this facility.”
Heald remains remarkably poised.
“And what would you like me to do?” he asks.
Courtney leans forward in his seat.
“We’re going to need to speak to Oliver directly,” Courtney says.
Heald shakes his head.
“No chance. None of my men will set foot in the yard.”
“You lied to us.” Courtney’s face turns crimson. “You said he wasn’t here. He’s been coming and going for years, hasn’t he?” Courtney shoots to his feet and points to the lime-colored window. “Do you know what is going on out there? What your prisoners are building?”
Heald stays completely still.
Courtney strides to the window and pulls back the curtain to reveal the tower.
“Do you understand what the books are?” he half yells at Heald.
The warden is silent for a moment, then gives the slightest nod of his balding head.
“Yes.”
“They’re blueprints, aren’t they?” demands Courtney, who then jabs a finger out the window. “For that thing. And you’re letting them build it!”
Heald lowers his forehead into his palms, then sits back up straight, his thick bifocals filled with pain.
“That’s just how things work around here. Oliver has run things inside of that fence for a decade. There’s nothing I can do about it.”
