Clare took her time getting dressed. Outside, it drizzled off and on, and she dreaded even her short commute. She wanted to play hooky, but that would only make it worse. By the time she forced herself out of the house, it was ten past nine o’clock.
“I thought you were avoiding me.” Neal leaned up against her car, holding an umbrella in one hand and a coffee in the other. The sky kept spitting, but she stood her ground, letting the drops dot her striped button-down. For a boring old tree, Neal looked handsome, dignified. And being close to him always made her feel safe—but under the umbrella was too close, close enough for him to read her mind.
“I’ve just been really busy. I was going to call you tonight.” She averted her eyes from his obvious disbelief.
“Right. I’m sure.” He extended his hand, putting the warm cup into hers. “This is for you. Black. Two sugars. Just the way you like it.”
“Thanks, Neal. That’s really kind of you. I’m really late, though. I’ve got to go. Really.”
“Wow. That’s a lot of reallys.” She hated him then for not letting her off easy like he always did. “What’s going on, Clare?” She steeled herself. Neal could be mean when he wanted to be. “You don’t call me back. You told Lizzie I took your mother’s urn. And you’ve got a hickey on your neck.” Of all the things, that one nearly dropped her. How had she missed it? And when? Who else had seen it?
She reached into her purse and fished out the scarf she kept for cold days like this one, looping it around herself as Neal frowned. He would never be so careless to leave a mark on her. “I’m seeing someone.” Because she knew that would shut him up, make him forget about the urn and all of his unreturned phone calls.
“Who?”
“Nobody you know. It’s someone at work.” In her mind, she thought Briggs but saw Cullen’s face, desperate and burning for her.
“An officer? Or … ”
“Yes, an officer. Who else? A patient?” Her laughter sounded more like an escaped scream she’d been holding in for years. “It’s not really your business though, is it?”
“I guess not.” She’d exhausted him. Hell, she exhausted herself. “Just keep your neck covered. It’s not very professional.”
“Thank you, Dr. Barrington. I’ll be sure to report to the decorum police for my demerits.”
Neal opened the door for her. That’s how sturdy he was. Even her sharp tongue couldn’t budge him. “Goodbye, Clare.” And for once, it sounded like he meant it.
****
Fitzpatrick’s office was closed—lights off—when Clare arrived. Maybe he’d called in sick. Wherever he was, she felt glad he wasn’t there waiting for her. She never came in this late. And she certainly didn’t need his beady eyes judging her. The hallway looked empty. It gave Clare the sinking feeling she’d forgotten something. A meeting. A training. Just in case, she kept the scarf around her neck.
She rushed to get inside, dropping her keys twice. And her lungs fluttered like butterfly wings until she felt breathless. What’s the big deal, Clare? Finally, she managed to open the door, but her key stuck in the lock. It refused to budge no matter how forcefully she jiggled it. “Forget it,” she muttered, leaving it there and cracking the door with her hip.
Clare realized something right then as the door swung open. She caught a glimpse of muddy prison boots propped on her desk. She’d only been surprised—really surprised—once in her life. The first time Rodney Taylor touched her under the table. It shattered something precious and fragile inside her, something she’d taken for granted until then, even with all her mother’s failures. The deep-down belief in the goodness of the world. Every bad thing after that was sort of expected. But not this one.
“Buenos días, Dr. Keely.”
Clare fingered the alarm in her hand. “Mr. Ramirez.” The only two words she could think to say. The way she’d said excuse me when Mr. Taylor’s arm had brushed against her in the swimming pool. She’d actually apologized. But she couldn’t wrap her mind around this. Ramirez. Here. She assumed he’d been hauled off to a supermax a month ago.
“Cierra la puerta,” he told her, gesturing to the door. “Close it.” And she obeyed. Clare studied his arms. The light brown hair on them still wet from the rain. A large drop rolled down the M on his bicep, and he wiped it away. That’s when she noticed the gloves on his hands. Thick work gloves, gray and stained with dirt.
“Someone told me you’d transferred to Pelican Bay.” Act normal, she thought. She turned on the lights and set her purse beside her desk.
His lips curled, hinted at a smile. Under the fluorescent glow, she noticed another tattoo on his face she hadn’t seen before. A teardrop just under his right eye. Clare remembered that symbol from one of Fitzpatrick’s trainings. Usually, it means the inmate committed murder, he’d said, pausing for their shock and awe. “Nah. My old lady can’t drive that far. And I don’t like the cold.”
“Oh. I see.” She didn’t see anything. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, I think you can. And I know you will.”
His voice sounded different than she remembered. Steady. In control. Almost business-like. She held up the alarm to him like a talisman, wishing it had the power to strike him dead. “You should leave before I press this.”
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you, puta. Unless you want everybody in Quentin to know what you’ve been doing. Or should I say, who?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I betcha that hothead Briggs wouldn’t be too keen on you banging a rat.”
“I said I don’t know what you’re—”
“Alright, alright. We’ll do it your way. Lieutenant Bonner will hear what Tony has to say. You see, after he walked in on you straddling your boyfriend, you offered him some favors for his silence. You started to take off your blouse, but he stopped you. Poor Tony felt muy, muy uncomfortable.”
“That’s ridiculous. No one will believe him.” But Clare believed it, even knowing it hadn’t happened.
“Will they believe him when I tell them what you said to me on the yard last month?” Slow and deliberate, he set his boots back onto the floor and stood up, crossing the floor in two steps leaving mud tracks behind him. His spider-leg fingers scrambled up her arm and traced the side of her face. “Maybe you offered me some favors too. I can think of a few things that might shut me up.”
“No.” Such a small word and smaller still when she squeezed it out of her throat.
“I thought you might say that.” He tugged on the edges of his gloves, pulling them tighter. “That’s why I came prepared. ‘Estar preparado, Arturo.’ That’s what my mom used to tell me. So you can press your alarm if you’d like, but by the time anybody gets here, I’ll have snapped your neck like a chicken bone. And who do you think will get the blame? Me or your puto boyfriend whose prints are everywhere? He likes to leave his mark, eh?” He tapped the soft spot under his jaw, smirking at her, and she knew her scarf had come undone.
“Please leave.” The walls closed in tighter, and Clare fought for air. Her panic went straight to her hands—like it always did. The shaking started, and she dropped the alarm. The clink of it against the tile sounded a million miles away.
“Pobrecita. Relax. I won’t touch you. You don’t ever have to see me again. If you do this one little thing.”
The M on his bicep seemed to writhe. Like his snake heart was right there under it, pulsing. If her hands weren’t useless at her sides, the pen on her desk would’ve done nicely, sliced through his skin as easily as Rodney Taylor’s tire. “What do you want me to do?”
december 18, 1996
Feeling better, Dr. Keely?” Fitzpatrick poked his head in through the crack in her office door, and she jumped, her heart off to the races before it could register she was safe for now. “I think there’s a bug going around.”
She kept her head
down so he couldn’t see the lie cross her face. “Probably the flu or something.” That something being Arturo Ramirez. Even with her eyes wide open all night and staring at the television, those muddy boots wouldn’t go away. Neither would the gloves with their dark-brown fingertips. It was dirt. Of course it was. He’d probably stolen the gloves when he’d been assigned to landscaping. But, in her mind, those stains were blood. Hers soon enough, if she didn’t do what he’d asked.
“I brought you some information from the safety training.” He dropped a stapled packet of paper on her chair. “The one you missed yesterday morning,” he added when she failed to properly disguise her confusion.
“Oh, right. The training. Was it … interesting?”
“Riveting.” Fitzpatrick chuckled at his own joke. “By the way, did you want to make up our supervision session?”
No, no, and no. “Sure.”
“Are you busy now?”
Very. Clare gazed at her barren desk. Not a single file folder to speak of. “I guess not.”
Fitzpatrick made himself comfortable in the chair opposite her, before she’d even invited him. He unwrapped a peppermint and popped it into his mouth. She watched him shift the candy with his tongue, right then left, until he pocketed it in his cheek and grinned. A squirrel with a nut. “Well, then, how was your new client?”
She wasn’t ready to dive into the deep end, but he pushed her. “Actually, I’m hoping he could be reassigned.”
“Why?”
“Did you know he was in the Mexican Mafia?”
Fitzpatrick made a noise of understanding. When he spoke, his tongue was Christmas red. “A dropout. He’s not an active member anymore. It shouldn’t be a problem.”
“It makes me uncomfortable. I don’t feel safe.”
“Perhaps he reminds you of someone from your past? Someone you didn’t feel safe with?”
Here we go, Clare thought. Sigmund Fitzpatrick, rearing his pompous head. “It’s not that at all. I don’t think he’s done with the EME, and I don’t trust him. ”
Fitzpatrick laughed again, that condescending little twitter that made her want to rip his throat out. “You do realize you work in a prison, Dr. Keely. I trust my clients about as far as I could throw them. And even that might be an overstatement.”
“I … I ran into Ramirez … on the yard. You told me he’d been transferred.”
“I thought he would be, but his cellie confessed to the whole thing. They charged him with drug smuggling and possession of a weapon. Shipped him off to Crescent City. They had to let Ramirez go. Yesterday, I think. I should’ve told you sooner. Is that what this is about? Ramirez?”
Clare shrugged, but she wanted to throttle him. “Does it really matter?” she asked, trying to control her voice. “You wanted to reassign Cullen, so reassign Tony Perez instead.”
“I feel you getting angry with me. I’m not saying no. I’m just asking for a little self-reflection from a psychologist. Don’t you think your distaste toward him might be worth exploring further? When I first started, my supervisor told me something. He said, ‘Fitz, to make it in the pen, you have to get comfortable with being uncomfortable.’ Can you do that, Clare?”
She felt tears coming—hot and insistent—like water from a hose left in the sun, but she squashed them fast. Didn’t he realize she’d been doing that her whole life? “Of course.”
****
Briggs worked late that night. Clare didn’t know how, but Ramirez made sure of it. “Just this one thing?” she’d asked him, her voice still quivering. He’d held up one gloved finger, pressed it to his lips and nodded.
At seven o’clock she dotted perfume on the back of her neck and left her office. She headed for the control booth, passing through the dark courtyard where the only pool of light came from a tall lamppost. It was so quiet, she swore she could hear the ocean butting up against the rocks. She’d never been here this late, never at night. The place seemed haunted. And why wouldn’t it be? Did you know they used to hang people at Quentin? Fitzpatrick had asked her once, probably trying to impress her with his historical knowledge. And every chance he got, he couldn’t help but mention the execution last May. Like he’d been there when they’d injected Keith Daniel Williams with a lethal dose of bittersweet revenge, the kind that never feels as good as you thought it would, as good as you needed it to. Clare’s eyes strained, searching beyond the shadows. But if there were ghosts, they’d long since scattered.
She stopped before she reached the booth and leaned against the wall to get her breath under control. It came in short, forceful bursts like she’d been running. She wound her hair around her hand and lifted it from her neck, somehow moist with perspiration in the frigid December air.
Don’t be a baby, Clare. That’s what Rodney Taylor told her the first time he made her put her mouth on him. Don’t be a baby. That was the same day he took her picture with one of those old-fashioned Polaroid cameras. Something to tide me over for when we can’t see each other, he’d said. Pose for me. And he laughed when she stuck out her tongue. Do something sexy. Clare had no clue how to be sexy, so she copied the thing she’d seen her mother do in the mirror, pursing her lips together. The way Mr. Taylor stared at her with his mouth open, she knew she’d done something right.
At the edge of the courtyard, something moved, casting a long, wide shadow. The door to the past smacked shut, and there was only the right here, right now. “Y el paquete?” And the package?
Then, Clare heard a voice she recognized. “We’re on, Torres. Santa’s coming a little late this year. December 28. The kitchen. Now get out of here.” Lieutenant Bonner stepped into the light, shifty-eyed, and hightailed it back toward the prison exit. A heartbeat later, a man—an inmate—dressed in prison blues headed in the opposite direction. When he passed beneath the lamppost, she noticed his hands, each one tattooed with a different letter: N and F. That one she remembered. Fitzpatrick would be proud. Nuestra Familia. The EME’s mortal enemy.
Clare pressed herself flat to the cold brick like a lizard, a chameleon, and held her breath until her lungs hurt. From here, she could see Briggs through the small window in the control booth, thumbing through a magazine and looking bored. He waved Torres through and she sucked in a gulp of air.
She willed herself to go inside. To do what she came here to do. Her life depended on it, after all. Putting her hand to her neck—brittle as a chicken bone, apparently—she recited Ramirez’s warning under her breath and approached the entrance to the control booth, ID in her hand. When Briggs spotted her, his dour frown brightened. This was going to be easier than she thought. And that made it worse.
“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” He winked at her, and his partner groaned. “Shouldn’t you be snuggled up in front of a fire somewhere?”
“I wish,” she said, releasing her smile like a fishing line, slowly to tease him a little. “Could I talk to you for a sec? Alone.”
“You don’t mind, do you, Watkins?” His partner rolled his eyes, as if to say—yes, I do mind, asshole—but grabbed his jacket and shrugged it on. “It’ll have to be quick though, Clare. There’s supposed to be two of us in here at all times or some procedural mumbo jumbo.”
“Oh, it’ll be quick.” She giggled at Briggs’ raised eyebrows. With Watkins halfway out the door, Briggs started to exit the booth, but Clare stopped him. “I want to come inside,” she said, lingering in the doorway.
“Clare … ” She kissed his neck. “God, you’re hot. But you know that’s not allowed.”
“Oh, come on. I thought you liked it when I pretend to be a bad girl.” It wasn’t pretend, and Clare knew it. She grabbed him by the belt and pulled him to her, before he caught on.
“I do, but … oh, screw it.”
“Exactly,” she whispered.
“Wait right there. Don’t move.” Watching him move with purpose—a
man on a mission—Clare felt sorry for him. This is what men do, she thought. This is what moves them. Ramirez had all but told her the same, though he’d put it more crudely. Briggs will do anything for a piece, he’d said. She didn’t argue with him, but she wondered how he knew. How he seemed to know everything.
Briggs spoke into the phone. “Hey, T-Bone, could you do me a solid?” Laughter, and then, “Can you go dark over here for a sec?” He kept his eyes on Clare the whole time, mentally undressing her no doubt. After hanging up, he beckoned her inside, his face already flushed.
“What was that all about?” she asked. She needed to be sure. Ramirez warned her to be careful. Actually, it was less of a warning and more of a threat. You get caught, the deal is off, he’d said, running a hand across his neck.
“Damn cameras everywhere. But I negotiated a little privacy.”
He picked her up and sat her on the table just in front of the large metal panel, where the keys dangled like ornaments from a tree. She leaned back and hoisted her skirt around her upper thighs. Briggs wasted no time, stanchioning himself between her legs, his mouth already covering hers.
Two minutes later, three if she was generous, Briggs stuffed his shirt back into his uniform and grinned ear to ear. And she had the keys Ramirez wanted tucked inside her jacket pocket. “When can I see you again?” he asked.
“Friday. Dinner?”
He nodded and cupped her face in his hand. “Hey, what’s that?” His thumb traced the bruise on her neck. “Is that my handiwork?” Clare’s stomach lurched at his satisfied leer.
Doctors of Darkness Boxed Set Page 24
