Karin Slaughter - The Silent Wife

“His own finger or someone else’s?”

“Someone else’s,” Faith said. “Surprisingly, there are no reliable witness statements, but plenty of snitches offered up bullshit conspiracy theories. Did you know the Deep State is running a pedophile ring through the prison library system?”

“Yes.” Will asked, “Does this murder feel personal to you?”

“Absolutely. We’re looking for two Hispanic males, roughly Vasquez’s age group, on the inner ring of his social circle?”

Will nodded. “When was the last time Vasquez’s cell was tossed?”

“There was a prison-wide search sixteen days ago. The warden brought in eight CERT teams to toss the cells. The sheriff’s office provided twelve deputies. Shock and awe. No one saw it coming. Over four hundred phones were confiscated, maybe two hundred chargers, the usual narcotics and weapons, but the phones were the obvious problem.”

Will knew what she was talking about. Cell phones inside a prison could be very dangerous, though not all prisoners used them for nefarious purposes. The state took a cut off the top of all landline calls, charging a $50 minimum to open a phone card, then around five bucks for a fifteen-minute call and almost another five bucks every time you added more funds. On the other hand, you could rent a flip phone from another inmate for roughly $25 an hour.

Then there were the nefarious purposes. Smartphones could be used to find personal information on COs, oversee criminal organizations through encrypted texts, run protection rackets on inmates’ families, and most importantly, collect money. Apps like Venmo and PayPal had replaced cigarettes and Shebangs as prison currency. The more sophisticated gangs used Bitcoin. The Aryan Brotherhood, the Irish Mob Gang and the United Blood Nation were raking in millions through the state prison system.

Jamming cell phone signals was illegal in the United States.

Will held open the door for Faith as they walked outside. The sun was beating down on the empty recreation yard. He saw shadows behind the narrow windows in the cells. More than one man was screaming. The oppression of the lockdown was almost tangible, like a screw slowly drilling into the top of your head.

“Administration.” Faith pointed in the distance to a one-story building with a flat roof. They took the long way, using the sidewalks instead of walking across the packed red clay that passed for the recreation yard.

They passed three COs leaning against the fence, each sporting a thousand-yard stare. There was nothing to guard. They were just as bored as the inmates. Or maybe they were biding their time. Six of their fellow guards had been injured in the riot. As a group, COs weren’t known for their ability to forgive and forget.

Faith kept her voice low, saying, “The warden went apeshit over the phones. Segregation was already at full occupancy. He suspended all yard time, shut down the commissary, stopped visitation, turned off the computers and TVs, even closed the library. For two weeks, all these guys could do was wind each other up.”

“Sounds like a smart way to start a riot.” Will opened another door. They walked past offices with plate-glass windows overlooking the hallway. All of the chairs were empty. Instead of desks, there were folding tables to make sure no one could hide anything. Inmates filled most of the administrative jobs. It was hard to beat their three-cents-an-hour wage.

The warden’s office didn’t have a hall window, but Will recognized Amanda’s deceptively calm tone coming from the other side of the closed door. He imagined the man was fuming. Wardens didn’t like being scrutinized. Another reason the man had gone apeshit over all of those confiscated phones. There was nothing more humiliating than hearing one of your inmates talking live to a television station from inside your own facility.

Will asked Faith, “How many calls got out during the riot?”

“One to CNN and one to 11-Alive, but there was an election-scandal-thingy, so no one paid attention.”

They’d reached a long, wide hallway with an even longer line of inmates. Their eighteen murder suspects, Will assumed. The men had been posed like miserable isosceles triangles. The upper halves of their bodies were tilted forward, legs straight, ankles bent, their weight resting on their foreheads against the wall, because the two COs in charge of them were apparently raging assholes.

Lockdown protocol dictated that any inmate outside their cell be restrained in what was called a four-piece suit. Wrists handcuffed, handcuffs attached in front to a belly chain. Ankle irons attached to a twelve-inch length of chain that kept them doing the two-step. Being bound this way, then forced to press your forehead against a cinder-block wall, put a hell of a lot of pressure on your neck and shoulders. The belly chain would add extra stress to the small of your back as your hands were pulled forward by gravity. Apparently, the inmates had been posed this way for a while. Sweat streaked down the walls. Will saw limbs shaking. Chains rattled like nickels in a dryer.

“Jesus Christ,” Faith muttered.

As Will followed her down the line, he saw an array of tattoos rendered in familiar shaky-lined prison ink. All of the inmates appeared to be over thirty, which made sense. Speaking from experience, Will knew that men under thirty did a lot of stupid things. If a guy was still in prison past the third decade of his life, it was because he had either really fucked up, been really fucked over, or was actively making the kind of bad decisions that kept him in the system.

Faith didn’t bother to knock on the closed door to the interrogation room. Special Agents Nick Shelton and Rasheed Littrell were sitting at the table with a stack of folders in front of them.

“… telling you this gal had an ass like a centaur.” Rasheed stopped telling his story when Faith walked in. “Sorry, Mitchell.”

Faith scowled as she shut the door. “I’m not half horse.”

“Shit, is that what that means?” Rasheed laughed good-naturedly. “’Sup, Trent?”

Will lifted his chin by way of greeting.

Faith paged through the files on the table. “These all the jackets?”

An inmate’s jacket was basically a diary of his life—arrest reports, sentencing guidelines, transportation details, medical charts, mental health classification, threat assessment, education level, treatment programs, visitation records, disciplinary history, religious preference, sexual orientation.

She asked, “Anyone look good?”

Rasheed gave them the lowdown on the eighteen suspects in the hallway. Will kept his head turned toward the special agent the way you would if you were paying close attention, but he was actually taking a moment to figure out what to say to Nick Shelton.

Years ago, when Nick was assigned to the GBI’s southeastern field office, he had worked very closely with Sara’s dead husband. Jeffrey Tolliver had been the chief of police for Grant County. He was an ex-college football player and, from all accounts, an ass-kicker. Some of Nick’s summations on their cases read like movie scripts. Jeffrey Tolliver had been the Lone Ranger to Nick’s Tonto, if Tonto had talked like Foghorn Leghorn and dressed like a casual-day Bee Gee in gold chains and way-too-tight skinny jeans. The two cops had taken down pedophile rings and drug traffickers and murderers. Jeffrey could’ve parlayed his wins into a much bigger paycheck in a larger city, but he’d bypassed the fame and glory in order to serve Grant County.

Sara probably would’ve married him a third time if he hadn’t died during the second go-round.

“That’s something to work with,” Faith said. Unlike Will, she had been paying actual attention to Rasheed’s rundown. She asked, “Anything else?”