Lisa Scottoline - Daddy's Girl

"It's something, isn't it?" Angus asked. His breath made a cloud in the cold air. "Lovely setting for a place with no windows."

"It's crime and punishment."

"So they say."

Didn't you bring a coat? It's freezing out."

Too manly. Let's go." Angus touched her back, and they walked UP a long plowed road, their shoes crunching in the salt and ice patches. They reached the circular driveway, which was lined with black prison vans and a grimy Chevy pickup loaded with lumber and covered with a blue tarp that flapped in the wind. Behind the truck sat a construction trailer with a plastic sign that read, phoenix construction, some white propane tanks, and a pallet of cinderblocks. Ahead lay the prison entrance.

Nat tried to shake off her nerves, and Angus slowed their pace as they passed a dark blue sedan with its engine running. Two men in dark suits and ties sat in the front seat. Angus pointed. "Look, federates."

"What?" Nat asked, but he was already walking up to the car and knocking on the driver's window.

"We don't need no stinking badges," Angus said as the window slid down, and the driver laughed. He wore Ray-Ban sunglasses and held a slim can of Red Bull.

"The original army of one!" the driver said, and Angus flashed a peace sign.

"Ha! I prefer the loyal opposition."

"Who're you suing today, Holt? Somebody miss yoga?"

"Don't give me any ideas," Angus shot back, and they laughed as the window slid back up. Angus touched Nat's elbow, and they resumed walking. "Those poor guys, they're federal marshals, bored to tears. That's the truest thing about this place. This prison, any prison, whether it's a supermax or a playpen. The inmates, the C.O.s, the staff-they're just so damned bored. Everybody who's ever been inside will tell you. Every day, it's the same as the last."

"Why are marshals here?"

"The prison takes in federal prisoners on a courtesy hold. They got one guy here, all by himself in maximum security. The marshals maintain an official presence until he goes to trial in Philly."

"What'd he do?" Nat asked, as they reached the entrance, a windowless metal door painted red, a strangely cheery color against the industrial brown of the facility. "I mean, allegedly."

"Oh, he did it." Angus smiled wryly. "It's Richard Williams. Distribution, murder, the whole enchilada." He pulled open the door and waved her inside.

"Thanks." Nat stepped into a tiny room with bars all around, like the elevator to hell. She told herself not to be afraid.

Or, at least, not to let it show.

Once inside the prison, Nat and Angus produced ID, left her coat in a locker, and were ushered through three sets of locked, barred doors, called sally ports. Bulletproof glass covered the bars, which were painted the same cherry red as the entrance. They checked in at the command center and were funneled together through a metal detector and cattle chute to a final set of locked doors, which a female CO. unlocked and pulled open, greeting Angus with an attitudinal smirk.

"Yo, Holt. Nice suit." The CO., an African American, had large brown eyes and looked fit and trim in her navy blue uniform. A strand of dark hair curled like a shiny fishhook in front of her ears. "News flash. Jerry Garcia's dead."

"That never gets old." Angus grinned. "Tanisa Shields, meet my colleague, Natalie Greco."

"Hiya." Tanisa shook Nat's hand, but her gaze didn't leave Angus. "Take a lesson, Holt. This girl knows how to dress."

"But I'm wearing my lucky sweater," Angus said, and Tanisa snorted.

"Yeah. Lucky I don't set it on fire."

Nat stayed happily out of the fray. She'd changed her clothes five times this morning, mentally going from nun's habit to pup tent to down comforter. She'd finally settled on a brown tweed pantsuit, white tailored shirt, and a Hermes scarf in granny pastels. Hank would have approved of the outfit, but he'd left for work early and never got to see it, or to hear that she'd be at a prison today. That, he might not have approved.

"You gotta lose that beard, too." Tanisa clucked. "Looks like you got a damn dog stuck to your chin." She slammed the bars shut behind the three of them with a ringing clang, then locked the door with a large, crude key.

"I love a woman in uniform," Angus said, but Nat wasn't laughing.

I'm locked inside.

Tanisa turned on the rubber heel of her patent work shoe and led them into a wide hallway that appeared to run the length of the building, presumably the body of the T. A black male CO. stood against the wall and he acknowledged Angus with a nod. The lower half of the wall was mint-green cinderblock, and the top half bulletproof glass, which exposed the inside of the rooms that lined the hallway. A floor of polished concrete shone dully, and the air felt hot and dry, overheated.

"Stop right there." Tanisa stiffened her arm, holding them back, and Nat felt herself tense. A line of red lightbulbs protruding from the ceiling flashed on suddenly.

"What's going on?" Nat asked, and Angus turned.

"At the end of the hall are the residential pods, and whenever the C.O.s move the inmates across the hallway, the red lights go on. Wait a sec."

"Okay." Nat exchanged looks with the male CO., who gave her a reassuring wink. In the next minute, inmates in white T-shirts and loose blue pants shuffled as a group from one side of the hall to the other, talking and laughing. Even though they were far away, a few spotted Angus and waved to him, and he waved back.

"My kids," he said softly.

Tanisa chuckled. "Then you need a new family."

Angus said to Nat, "It's only in the movies that a prison eats and exercises together. Inmates live, eat, and exercise in the same pod, which is corrections-speak for cellblock. That's why they're remodeling this facility, to build new pods."

Nat nodded. The inmates kept crossing the hall, the red warning lights flashing.

Angus continued, "They keep movement between pods to an absolute minimum and break up gang members among the pods. Here it's mostly Hispanic gangs, then Aryans and African Americans."

"I didn't know there were that many Hispanics in Chester County." Nat had always thought it was whiter than white out here, but she could see from the moving stream of inmates that her demographics had been wrong.

"They come up from Mexico to work on the mushroom farms and fancy horse farms. Some are gangbangers. It's East L.A. come to Chester County." Angus patted her shoulder. "Don't worry. The gangbangers live in RHU, the rehabilitation unit farther down the hall, far from our classroom."

Good.

"That's the processing room, where they handle intake and paperwork for the inmates." Angus pointed to the left, near them. "Here's our classroom, next to it is the infirmary, and behind that extra pods, temporarily converted to infirmary space. They're short some beds."

"This gonna be on the test?" Tanisa asked, and Angus smiled.

"How's your son, by the way?"

"Better, thanks." Tanisa turned away, lowering her arm as the stream of inmates ceased and the bars were locked behind them. The red lights blinked off. "Okay, time to make the doughnuts."

"This way, Natalie," Angus said, and they walked a few steps and entered an empty room off the hallway, its bottom half cinderblock painted white and its top the bulletproof glass. Bucket chairs in white plastic sat scattered around a white Formica table, and on the wall hung a greaseboard. On the board, ACTIONS was scribbled in black Sharpie, with an arrow leading to CONSEQUENCES. It seemed so cliched that if Nat hadn't seen it, she never would have believed it.

"I'll go get em." Tanisa turned, leaving the door open. "Be right back."

"The heat's good, at least," Nat said after the CO. was gone, just for something to say. The air in the room was hotter than the hallway, bringing up the smell of institutional disinfectant and body odor. She understood now why the inmates wore only undershirts and she instantly regretted her wool suit. Tweed was so supermax.