Lisa Scottoline - Daddy's Girl

"What for?" Angus called back.

"I bet you wouldn't get out in one piece, and you did." He laughed, and so did Angus and the other men-everybody but Nat. She could feel her heartbeat speed up the closer she got to the prison.

"I know, right? Who woulda thought?" Angus caught Nat's eye, and his grin vanished. "Gentlemen, this is Natalie Greco, my colleague."

"Good to meet you, Natalie. I'm Edward Sparer." The marshal shook her hand heartily, and then his gaze fell to her Band-Aid. His expression darkened instantly, and she knew he was thinking the same thing as the guard at the gate.

"Where were you guys yesterday when I needed you?" Nat asked lightly, and they laughed, the tension broken.

"Just glad you're okay," Edward said, smiling. "All's well that ends well, huh? Now, Holt, we don't care about."

"Thanks, honey," Angus said. "So what's the deal? How long they gonna be in lockdown, you know?"

"They're not saying but I think just today. We're already standing down."

"You're always standing down."

"Your tax dollars at work."

Angus snorted. "How much am I paying you to babysit that thug?"

Ha! You mean to freeze my ass off sittin' in a car in the middle of East Jippip?" Sparer shot back, and they laughed. "Not nearly enough, I'm dyin' for a decent cheesesteak."

"When's his trial?"

“February 8. Hey, Williams was a good boy yesterday. Bided his time by himself, nowhere near the RHU."

"You must be very proud." Angus clapped him on the back, they all exchanged goodbyes, and Nat and Angus continued on their way through the parked cars. Angus took her arm and led her up the steps to the metal door with the cheery red paint, hit a buzzer, and showed his face through the window. The door was opened by a plump, middle-aged woman with a lipsticked smile. She was majorly made up, and her ersatz red hair was coiled in old-fashioned pin curls.

"Angus! How are you?" she said, eyeing his bandage. The pancaked foundation on her forehead almost cracked with concern. "You poor thing! What did they do to you? Come in, come in!"

"Thanks, Joanie." Angus gave her a brief hug, then introduced Nat to her. Her name was Joan Wilson. "I understand that Kurt is in. Can I talk to him for a few minutes? It's important."

"I'll check and see, but don't get your hopes up. It's busy here today." Joan clucked and waddled off like a mother hen. Nat looked around the office area, which she hadn't been in yesterday. An entrance hallway led into a wider, paneled hall lined with wooden office chairs. One end table held a cheap lamp and some wrinkled magazines. An American flag stood in a holder next to an Employee of the Month plaque, and a softball trophy on a side table made the place look more like a dry cleaner's than a prison.

"Angus?" Nat was trying to suss out where she'd found Saunders. "This hall looks as wide as the one that runs through the prison. Is it?"

"Yes. Same hall, only we're on the unsecured side." Angus pointed to the right. "Conference room there." Then, to the left. "There're offices over there. The warden's office is behind us, then the deputy warden's. Then Kurt Machik's office, down the hall where Joan went. He's the assistant deputy warden."

"Thanks." Nat visualized the layout. They were at the bottom of the prison's T shape, and the stem of the T was the long hall that ran the length of the prison. She tried to imagine where the room was in which Saunders had died. Close to here, somewhere near the bottom of the T. That was where the bodies should have been. Not near the RHU, which was all the way down the hall, at the top of the T. How could anybody mix that up?

"Angus!" a voice boomed, and Nat turned to see a tall, thin man with a gaunt face and brown eyes behind rimless glasses emerging from his office and closing a door behind him.

"Hey, Kurt. Thanks for seeing us." Angus introduced Nat for the fortieth time that day. "Ms. Greco is the woman who was attacked by Kyle Buford yesterday, during my class."

"Goodness! I'm very sorry." Kurt Machik frowned so deeply, his forehead pinched in the middle, as if his thin skin didn't fit his cranium. His hair was brown with grayish temples, cut short as a bristle brush, and he wore a dark suit, a white oxford shirt, and a dark blue tie with a tie tack in the shape of a musical clef.

"Can we talk in your office, Kurt? I think this should be private."

"I was just about to get lunch. Would you two like to join me?" Machik turned to Nat stiffly, swiveling from the hip like a robot. "I know it sounds early, but we start at six in the morning here, so lunch is at ten thirty."

"I'd rather not," Angus interjected, but Machik shook his head.

"I have no other free time. My day is wall-to-wall, given the unfortunate events of yesterday. Follow me, please, and watch your step. The construction makes life a little difficult."

They followed him past a box of tiles and went around a corner into a homey dining room. A long table occupied the middle of the room, covered with a tablecloth of red-checked plastic. White cabinets and white countertops surrounded the room. A microwave sat on its own stand, and a white refrigerator bore a sign reading: Hands Off my Slim-Fast, George! Hot chicken soup bubbled up from a large pot on a sterno rack, its aroma filling the room and steaming the windows. Sunlight filtered through lacy curtains, and the view was of the construction trailer and, behind that, a grove of towering, snow-covered evergreens.

"May I get you some soup, Ms. Greco?" Machik asked, holding up a paper bowl.

"Please, call me Nat. Thanks, sure."

"Good. There's a garden salad over there and some hamburgers."

"Who does the cooking?"

"The inmates." Machik handed Nat a paper bowl of soup.

Yikes. "Thanks." Nat took the soup, sat down at the table, and grabbed a white plastic spoon from a coffee can covered with red contact paper. She took the first sip of soup, which tasted salty but delicious, at least for felons' fare.

"What's the verdict?" Machik asked.

Guilty, what else? "Great, thanks," Nat answered, while Angus pulled up a chair and sat down heavily, tucking a stray blond strand behind his ear.

"Kurt, I'm angry about what happened yesterday in my class. Did you approve Buford and Donnell getting in? Nobody is supposed to get in unless I approve them."

"I don't recall approving them." Machik chewed his hamburger. "You know you have a waiting list, and I usually take whoever's next on the list and send you the inmate's file, for your approval."

"That's my point. I looked through my files last night, and I have a file on each inmate and a letter, mailed to me at the law school, telling me who would like to enter the class. Those letters are signed by you. I didn't get any letter for Buford or Donnell."

"An actual signature or a stamped signature?"

"I think stamped. But what, are you blaming Joan now? Whether it's signed or stamped, I got no letter."

"As I said, I don't recall approving those two."

"Somebody had to, and you're the only one who processes the approvals. How can you not recall?" Angus's tone hovered at barely civil. "It couldn't have been that long ago. Norris and Bolder, the inmates they replaced, were released a month ago. So if you approved it, you approved it this past month."

"Not necessarily. I line up the approvals before the openings occur. It could have been a long time ago, and lots of paper crosses my desk in a month or two." Machik didn't sound rattled, but he did set down his prisonburger. "I am not certain how it happened, but I will check into that for you."

"For me?" Angus raised his voice. "How about for you? How about for Natalie? How about you're concerned that she could have been killed, or I could have? How about that you care about a legal aid program that's now jeopardized? How about you care about these inmates, for God's sake?"