Down the Brink

by Lisa von Biela

  One horrible thought after another bombarded her in the silence of her empty house. Would his company fire him because of his conviction? Would it make it harder for him to get work? Would the experience change him, tear them apart? Once he was back, would they be able to go on with their lives as if nothing happened, or would their relationship bear some kind of scar forever?

  Overwhelmed, Aggie put her face in her hands and sobbed.

  CHAPTER 5

  Later that day

  On the way to Elias, Texas

  “What’d you get?”

  The fetid stench of rotting teeth and gums assaulted Gil as he wished he were somewhere, anywhere but sitting shackled in a rattling bus full of prisoners and diesel fumes on the way to the Elias prison. He slumped against the window and stared out, hoping if he ignored the question, the prisoner next to him would shut up and leave him alone.

  “You too good to talk, is that it?”

  He didn’t like the aura of menace in the other guy’s voice. And he sure as hell didn’t need to make an enemy before they even got there. He turned, trying to avoid direct eye contact.

  “Sorry, I was somewhere else. What’d you say?”

  “Huh. We’d all like to be somewhere else. I asked what’d you get, how long?” A sardonic smile spread across his seatmate’s pock-marked face.

  “Six months.”

  The other man laughed with the grisly wet sound of someone who’d smoked far too many unfiltered cigarettes over his lifetime. “Six months. That’s nothin’.” He stopped laughing as abruptly as if someone killed a switch. “I got thirty years this time.” He gave Gil a look as if expecting some sort of reaction to this revelation.

  Gil hesitated, unsure of how to respond to a remark like that. The guy must have murdered his mother to get that much time. He glanced around the bus and wondered at the sum total of crimes committed by the rest of the passengers. He was in way over his head here. And this was just the bus ride.

  “Don’tcha want to know what I did?” The guy fixed him with a bloodshot stare.

  “Um, sure.”

  “Got caught with a lid of grass. Grass! Used to be that was a misdemeanor, no big deal. But now. You have a prior—no matter how piss-ass—and they send you away for a long, long time.” He leaned back in his seat and shook his head. “Ain’t right. So, tell me. What’d you do to get only six months?”

  Gil stared down in his lap and muttered, “Got caught without my papers on me.”

  “Oh, are you—”

  “No, I was born here. So were my parents. I was minding my own business and Border Patrol came up and asked me for my papers. Had ’em on my smartphone, but I left it at home.”

  “Tough break. Never been in before, have you?”

  “No.”

  “I could tell. You got that deer-in-the-headlights look, like you don’t have a clue what to expect. Well, enjoy your ignorance while you can, because it’s worse in there than you can even imagine.”

  “Great, thanks.”

  Gil turned away and gazed out the window. They’d left the interstate maybe an hour ago, and the landscape was the bleakest he’d ever seen in his life. Desert so parched it was devoid of all plant life—even cactus. Just dry, hot sand as far as the eye could see. And trash. Food wrappers, plastic grocery bags that rode the wind like ghosts. Shards of glass from smashed beer and liquor bottles.

  Even at that, being out there in the elements had to be better than being in a bus on its way to the prison. He glanced at a billboard as it came into view and swallowed, his throat suddenly parched.

  It was an ad for the prison, featuring the picture of a uniformed and heavily armed prison guard, smiling from ear to ear like he’d just heard the best joke ever.

  GSI, Texas Unit. Cost-effective incarceration. Flexible capacity and maximum security for your penal needs. A smart investment for your tax dollars. Good for Elias, good for all of Texas!

  Gil stared out the grimy bus window at his new reality: menacing razor wire and imposing watchtowers surrounding a concrete compound that shimmered in the desert heat like a mirage from hell. He’d read articles here and there about the Elias prison, never dreaming he’d ever lay eyes on it, let alone wind up in it.

  They’d plunked it on this hideous patch of wasteland so prime Texas real estate could remain unblemished. And so whatever went on inside could stay out of sight, out of mind. Despite persistent, horrific rumors, Governor LaRoux was always talking about how great this prison—and others like it—were for the safety of Texas citizens. And for the Texas economy. He never talked about what these places looked like, or what really went on behind their walls.

  The bus stopped at the barbed-wire gate, waited for it to roll open, then drove up to what looked like a one-story annex to the main facility. Windowless.

  “End of the road, gentlemen!” The driver laughed as he pulled to a stop and opened the front door of the bus. “Your escorts will take it from here.”

  “Yeah, fuck you, too,” Gil’s seatmate muttered under his breath as he fingered the chains on his shackles like rosary beads. His face lost all expression, except for his eyes. They gleamed, dark and hard with hate.

  Gil looked away. Better to keep quiet and not risk provoking the guy. Besides, he wanted to savor these last few moments of relative freedom before he faced whatever awaited in there. Privacy and dignity would no doubt be in short enough supply in this place. And he had no idea how he was going to cope with that.

  Two uniformed guards stepped up to the bus. One of them stationed himself right by the door and shouted, “Everyone out, single file! Unload starting from the front of the bus.”

  Row by row, shackled men rose with their heads bowed, stepped into the aisle, and exited the bus like they knew the drill well. As they filed out onto the prison grounds, the second guard motioned them toward an open door at the end of the annex.

  The bus heated up fast once the driver turned off the air conditioning. Gil trembled in his seat, sweat soaking his jumpsuit, as he waited his turn. The men who went before him seemed resigned to their fates, at least on the outside. Were any of them here for the first time, like him? Was it scarier to know—or not to know—what awaited him in there? He hoped his seatmate was exaggerating when he said it was worse than he could imagine, because if it was, he’d never survive the six months.

  Time for his row. He stood and waited for his seatmate to file into the aisle ahead of him. His feet and legs felt numb, yet they moved as if they were taking orders from the guard outside without his conscious assent. He moved on down the aisle and stepped out of the bus.

  A blast of Texas desert heat punched him in the face like some sort of hellish initiation rite. Gil blinked his eyes against the glare and the grit and followed the man in front of him. Single file. Get used to it.

  No one spoke as the line of men shuffled down a long, featureless corridor inside the annex. The jangling of all those shackle chains reverberated off the walls, building into an intrusive, nerve-shattering wall of sound that made Gil want to clap his hands to his ears. But the shackles wouldn’t let him. And the harsh overhead lighting and merciless glare of the sterile white walls created a vertiginous effect. Gil tried to fight off the sensory overload by keeping his eyes on the man in front of him while they moved along.

  As he neared the front of the line, Gil got a better look at the setup. Two guards stood watch, each wearing a beltful of equipment: pistol, club, Taser, pepper spray, and plastic zip cuffs. Another guard manned a counter to the left. A glass booth, presumably fortified, surrounded him. The wall at the end of the corridor featured four thick metal doors—and nothing more.

  The guard in the booth called for the next man in line, exchanged a few words with him, and then waited for an armed guard to emerge from one of the four doors and direct the prisoner to follow him. The metal door then slammed shut with a sound of terrible finality, and the booth guard repeated the cycle.

  “Next!”

 
Gil made his way to the counter, the heavy shackles cutting into his wrists and ankles. The guard fussed with his computer for a moment before even acknowledging his presence.

  “Name?”

  “Gilbert Balderas.”

  The guard tapped the keys, scowled at his screen, then studied Gil’s face. “Birth date?”

  “March tenth, nineteen eighty-nine.”

  He clicked another key and gave a brief nod. “Okay, they’re ready for you. Door One.”

  A moment later, Door One opened with a reluctant metallic screech. A guard stepped out and beckoned. Heart pounding, Gil forced himself to do as he was told.

  “Balderas?” The guard’s pale blue eyes revealed no emotion; his mouth was thin and cruel.

  “Yes.”

  “This way.”

  The guard motioned him into the room and the door swung shut behind them of its own volition. The clang of it and the whir of the locking mechanism sounded like death. The room was only about ten by ten, with a counter and some locking cabinets along the right side. All gleaming stainless steel. A small touch-screen, displaying Gil’s name, birthdate, home address, and driver’s license picture, was mounted on the opposite wall. Another door awaited at the opposite end of the room.

  “Your cell’s ready. Come with me.”

  “What happened to my stuff?”

  “Your effects? They’ll be shipped here for safekeeping until your release.”

  “But what about my inhaler? I have asthma.”

  “You’ll get it back when you’re released. Nothing that can be made into a weapon is allowed in the cells.”

  “But what if I need to use it?”

  “There’s a call button in your cell. Use that if you have a problem.” The guard pressed a button on the wall next to the inner door. “This way.” The door swung open, and he motioned for Gil to exit ahead of him.

  Gil glanced at the array of weapons on the guard’s belt and decided not to argue about his inhaler, at least not now. He started to feel panicky, unsure how much of it had to do with losing the inhaler and how much with the view of the cell block that lay before him.

  “Go on. Yours is the third on the right.”

  He stepped through the door, stunned by the magnitude of the place. The corridor seemed to stretch on to eternity. Three stories of cells loomed over him. He didn’t even try to do the math to calculate how many men the place held. Too many, judging by the low-grade din that surrounded him.

  The guard unlocked his cell and opened the narrow, barred door. “This is one of the newer cells. We’ve had to subdivide them to increase capacity. It’s small, but at least you don’t have to share. For now, anyway. Now get in and stand right up close to the bars so I can take off your cuffs.”

  A tingle of fear chased down Gil’s spine as he stepped inside the cell and stood as the guard instructed. So many fears and questions filled his mind that he couldn’t sort them out, let alone speak.

  The guard closed and locked the cell door with a terrifying clang, then removed Gil’s wrist and ankle shackles through the bars. He pointed. “Your uniform is on the bed. I need you to change into it now, underwear and all. County jail’s gonna want theirs back.”

  Gil glanced at the orange prison jumpsuit on the bed. He turned away from the guard and unzipped his county jail jumpsuit while the guard droned on with instructions as if he were reciting them from a memorized script for the hundredth time that day. Perhaps he was.

  “Staff levels are too low to oversee communal activities in a prison this size. That means you’ll get your meals right in your cell. Means any exercise you want to do, you find a way to do in here. If you have an emergency, the call button is right there on the wall next to your bed. Might take a while for someone to get to you, though, depending how busy they are.”

  Gil stepped into the prison underwear and pulled them up, grateful to no longer be completely naked in front of the guard. He had enough of that when they cavity-searched him before putting him on the bus earlier. He stepped into the orange jumpsuit, zipped it up, then handed his discarded clothes to the guard.

  “Thanks. And good luck.” The guard gave a half-assed smile, then turned away and headed back down the corridor, Gil’s shackle chains swinging and jangling as he went.

  Gil sank down onto the thin, stained mattress. The cell looked to be about six feet wide by eight feet deep, furnished with just the narrow bed, a toilet, and a battered steel sink at the far end. Peeling nausea-green paint on the concrete ceiling and walls. Cracked cement floor. No window, just an overhead light with no accessible switch that he could see.

  Even grimmer than he’d imagined.

  He glanced through the bars at the row of identical narrow cells on the other side of the corridor. A dark-haired man stood in the one right across from him, hands wrapped around the bars, silently staring at him like he was a new exhibit in a zoo. Gil turned away to avoid making eye contact, then curled up on his side and closed his eyes.

  How the hell was he going to survive six months in this place? At least he might be safer stuck in his cell the whole time—no other prisoner could attack him. But how would he handle living in this cramped box with nothing to do day after day but stare at those sickening green walls—or at that convict across from him?

  And being away from Aggie. How would she cope with being alone in the house at night, after what she’d been through? Every so often—especially when she was under stress—the nightmares returned, bringing back memories of that horrible night. She depended on him to soothe her, to tell her everything was okay and that she was safe. Now she might even be more susceptible to the nightmares, without him there to help her.

  Gil slammed his fist into the mattress and choked back a sob.

  CHAPTER 6

  Second Monday in May, 2021

  Austin, Texas

  What would Lyndon do? Bill LaRoux glanced at the portrait of Lyndon Johnson he kept on his desk. A Texas politician all his life, he’d always admired Lyndon’s ability to work just about any situation to his favor. Call it skill, call it manipulation. Didn’t matter, as long as it got the job done. If he finished his political career with half of Lyndon’s skills, he’d retire happy.

  That Ed Walters was a tough son of a bitch. You’d think he was governor of Texas, the way he cut deals. You had to admire him, though, the way he’d worked his way to CEO and taken GSI from some little Podunk prison outfit in the middle of nowhere to the top-grossing for-profit prison operation in the entire U.S., with subsidized prisons in nearly every state. That was one helluva piece of work.

  “So what do you say?” Walters looked like a coiled rattler ready to strike, his calf crossed over his knee and hands clasped casually, while his back and shoulders remained military-straight. His gaze, direct and intense, was nearly palpable.

  “Well, I’m just not sure, Ed. Of course we want to renew the contract. No question. But that increase in the target occupancy rates.” He shook his head and sighed. “I’m not positive we can deliver on that, and the penalties are awfully steep.”

  Walters raised his hands, palms up. “We have to cover our costs, you know. That’s just business. Those occupancy targets cover projected cost increases—and the penalties cover us if you don’t deliver the necessary inmates.” He shrugged and started to rise from his chair. “Well, if we can’t make a profit in Texas with our business model, then we need to redeploy those assets. After all, we have our shareholders to consider.”

  Bill held up his hand. “Hold on now, Ed. Don’t get hasty. Let’s just talk this thing out.”

  Walters sat back down, folded his arms, and smiled. “All right. Let’s do that.”

  Sweet Jesus. He knows perfectly well what would happen to the entire Texas economy if GSI pulled out. And where would we put all the prisoners they currently house? He knows I can’t let GSI pull out—and stay in office. Bastard.

  “So you’re saying you want to negotiate a fourteen-percent increase in occupancy r
ates for the next contract period?”

  Walters nodded. “That’s right.” He leaned forward. “And it’s doable. You know how? Of course you do. You make sure law enforcement at all levels rigorously enforces the laws you already have on the books. You make sure your criminal statutes dictate the sentences. Take the discretion out of the hands of any judges who might be swayed by some sad story or a pushy defense lawyer.”

  “It’s not like I haven’t already done that. I can certainly keep pushing, do more, but I’m not sure that’ll get us to your target.”

  “Then criminalize some other unpopular behaviors. I’m sure you can figure something out.” Walters leaned back in his chair, tilted his head, and smiled with one side of his mouth. “Especially if you have the funding to back you.”

  Walters had him coming and going. Not only were state pension funds heavily invested in GSI stock, but countless local businesses relied on commerce related to the prison operations. He himself constantly touted the beneficial relationship between GSI and the great State of Texas. He couldn’t do anything to jeopardize that relationship now. And he couldn’t do without the campaign funding that GSI so generously granted him each year.

  But on the other hand, if he agreed to the contract extension knowing he couldn’t satisfy the new occupancy requirements, he faced a dilemma: either plan to pony up the penalty money, or figure out a way to criminalize some other currently legal activities. That might not go over so well with his constituents. There had to be a way to play it.

  Bill flipped through the pages of the proposed contract, finally spotting the term he was looking for. “Says here this agreement would extend the master contract by five years.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Make it three years and we have a deal.”

  “That puts us right back into negotiations two years sooner. Occupancy requirements could rise by then. Take it as it stands, and you lock this in for five years.”