Dana Stabenow - A Taint in the Blood

“Are they selling?”

Caroline nodded. “Oh yeah, check out the gift shop the next time you’re there. And then there’s the greenhouse. They make a lot of hanging baskets and start a lot of vegetables, and sell them, too. Victoria’s working on some of the master gardeners in town to start a master gardener’s program at the prison.”

“And you were bringing GED workbooks in.”

“Yeah. We’ve got so many inmates wanting to make up for time lost in their real lives that we’ve pretty much got a class going nonstop. It’s hard for some of them to finish because they’re not in for long enough.” She realized the humor of that last observation at the same time Kate did, and this time they both laughed. Lunch arrived, and Kate inhaled the aroma of charred beef with vast satisfaction.

When she’d gotten on the right side of most of it, she said, “Who’s She‘?” When Caroline gave her a blank look, she said, “You said ”we’ve pretty much got a class going nonstop.“ You and who else?”

“I thought I said,” Caroline said with some surprise. “It’s all Victoria. None of this would be happening without her.”

According to Caroline Landry, Victoria Muravieff had been committed to Hiland Mountain Correctional Facility the day the verdict had been returned in her trial, some thirty years before, with a B.A. in education already in her pocket. “She was a bookkeeper before…” Caroline hesitated. “Well, she was a bookkeeper. She enrolled in a correspondence course for her BA practically the day she arrived, and after that she went for her master’s. I think she got the first in eighteen months and the second a year later.” She smiled. “I’ve read her thesis. ”Teaching on the Inside: Why Prisons Need Schools.“”

“Yeah?” Kate said, suspending her construction of the perfect fajita for a moment. “How bad was it?”

“It wasn’t bad at all,” Caroline said sharply. “It was even published, and I understand it’s a reference work for prisons across the nation.”

“My mistake,” Kate said, and went back to building her fajita. She’d read a lot of dissertations turned into books, enough to know that most academics can’t write worth shit, but she wasn’t being paid to interrupt the flow of information with literary criticism.

Mollified by Kate’s compliance, Caroline said, “After that, she got the head of the education department out here at that time to take her on as her assistant. Trustee, in prisonspeak. She’s…” Caroline hesitated again. “Do you know who she is? Her family?”

Kate nodded.

“Well, she’s managed to bribe, seduce, or coerce all of them and all of their friends into donating something in the way of money or books over the past thirty years. The education program here is privately funded; it wouldn’t exist without her. And the people she has helped-my God, you wouldn’t believe some of the stories, women who have never had any decent role models or positive reinforcement in their lives.” She paused. “One time, Victoria was reading some student essays out loud. Some of these essays were so bad they’d make a first grader blush, but Victoria has this way of making even the most hopeless people believe they can achieve something. After class, one of the women came forward and said to Victoria, ”Nobody ever told me I could do anything before.“ I wanted to cry. That woman”-Caroline pointed her fork at Kate-“that woman went on to get her GED, and when she got out, she had twelve college credits. She went on to complete a degree in accounting.”

“What’d she do to put her in jail in the first place?”

A brief pause. “Check kiting,” Caroline said a little reluctantly. She met Kate’s eyes and they both laughed again.

“You like her,” Kate said. “Victoria.”

“I revere her,” Caroline said.

“Ah, but would you want her to move in next door to you when she gets out?”

Caroline flushed and she played with her food. “Do you think there’s a chance that you’ll get her out?”

“You think she should be out?”

There was a brief silence while Caroline stared out the window that looked out on the parking lot. “Her crime was horrific. I have a son. I can’t imagine-”

“You think she did it, then?” Kate said, surprised.

Caroline met her eyes. “She’s never denied it. She pled not guilty at her trial, but that’s the last time she said she didn’t do it to anyone, so far as I know.”

Kate raised an eyebrow.

“Okay,” Caroline said, “I looked up the trial after I started working with her. I wanted to know who I was dealing with. She’s never denied doing it to me,” she repeated.

“Did you ask?”

“Once, yes, when I was new to the program, when I didn’t know who she was. I learned afterward that it’s best not to know what they’ve done. It’s easier to work with them when you don’t know.” She hesitated. “It was hard,” she said in a low voice, “hard to come back to work with her after I’d read the newspaper accounts of the trial.”

I’ll bet, Kate thought, remembering some of the women she’d been responsible for putting away. She wouldn’t have worked with any of them at gunpoint, starting with Myra Hartsock. “What did she say? When you asked if she’d done it?”

“She said, ”The jury thought so.“”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.”

Kate contemplated this for a moment. “Do you think she did it? Do you think she killed her son for the insurance money?”

“Everybody in prison is innocent,” Caroline said, “to hear them tell it.”

Kate nodded. “I know. I’ve spent a fair amount of time putting people in them. They’re all as pure as the driven snow.”

Caroline turned the now-empty margarita glass between her fingers. “But Victoria…”

“Yes?”

Caroline shoved her glass to one side and leaned forward. “Listen, Kate, Victoria Muravieff has been a phenomenal force at that prison. It’s practically an adjunct institution for the University of Alaska. I’m the liaison between the two, my job is predicated on there being an education department at Hiland, and the education department is there only because Victoria is.”

“You’ll lose your job if I get her out, is that what you’re saying?”

Caroline flushed again. “No, of course not.” She sat back. “Well, yes, but that’s not what I meant. I’m just saying-look, if I’d met Victoria on the outside, I would have been proud to call her my friend. Guilty, innocent, I don’t know. She’s made a real difference every day she’s been in that place. It’s not too much to say that she has literally changed lives. She has given hope to people who never knew before what that word meant. Much less how to spell it.”

“You make her sound like some kind of saint.”

“That’s nothing,” Caroline said a little sadly. “The inmates? They think she’s a god.”

Kate walked into Brendan’s office to be scooped off her feet, tossed in the air, and roundly kissed. She heard cheering from the hallway. “Put me down, you lummox,” she said.

Brendan sighed and let her slip to the floor. “ Twas ever thus,” he said sadly. “I require large amounts of food to get over the lack of self-esteem your rejection has forced upon me.”

Kate handed him a take-out carton. He opened it and pursed his lips in a long, reverent whistle. “Steak and shrimp fajitas, my favorite. I’m kissing you again, Shugak, I swear.”

“Shut up and eat your lunch.”

He settled behind his desk and tucked in. She sat in a chair opposite and regarded him with affection.

He was a big man with sandy hair, blue eyes, and a face as chronically red as his grin was wide. He was an assistant district attorney for the state, and while it was true he had no chance of ever becoming DA, due to an undiplomatic endorsement of the sitting governor’s opponent in the last election with a television camera pointed his way, it was also true he had no ambition to do or be anything other than what he was. “I like putting the bad guys away,” he’d told Kate once. “Gives me the warm fuzzies.