Tumbledown (21 page)

“I guess you won’t know if Scott’s around,” Alex said, pretending to hesitate at the elevator.

“I’m sorry, who?”

“Scott Emerson. He lives at twenty-seven.” She went over to the mailboxes, intending to indicate Emerson’s name, but there was a blank tag in the “27” slot. “I should’ve called first, but I wanted to surprise him.”

The woman frowned at her. “I don’t think the guy in twenty-seven is called Scott.”

“No?” Alex switched her target, feigning confusion. “You sure? He’s about a foot taller than me, blue eyes, tattoos. Oh, and he has a scar just beneath his eye, here.” She traced a line under her right eye, gauging the woman’s reaction, but nothing like recognition showed on her face.

“I’m sorry. I think you must have the wrong address.”

“Damn. I was sure I’d written it down right. Maybe I should just try the buzzer, see who answers.”

“You could,” the woman said, still frowning, “but that really doesn’t sound like him. I think the guy in twenty-seven is called Rob.”

“Definitely not Scott, then,” Alex said lightly, not wanting to make her suspicious.

“No, definitely not Scott.” The woman clutched her mail to her chest. “The door opens automatically from this side,” she said, leaving no doubt as to what she thought Alex should do.

“Sure. Thanks.”

Alex waited until the sound of the woman’s heels faded on the stairs, leaving her alone in the lobby. A quick look outside told her that no one was approaching the entrance. She took out her pocketknife and used it to lever the uppermost piece of mail from the over-full box that should have belonged to Emerson. The thick white envelope had a New York postmark and the addressee was a Mr. R. Hollis. She scribbled the name on her hand and slid the envelope back into the box just as the entrance door swung open again. An Asian man hustled past her without making eye contact or stopping to check his mailbox. Unwilling to risk lingering any further, she caught hold of the door and walked back out into the lot.

The heat immediately closed around her, making her clothes cling to her skin and the air catch like cotton in her throat. She looked up to find the sky boiling with thunderclouds; the first drops of rain began to splatter on the asphalt as she jogged across to the Silverado. She climbed inside and shook water from her hair, watching the storm obliterate her view of the apartment entrance. It felt deliberate, as if something out there was sabotaging everything she tried to do, forcing her to take two steps backward for each one forward. The thought was absurd but it still made her feel wretched. Realistically, she didn’t think she would get any further information about the apartment. Emerson probably was leasing it out, but now that she’d seen the complex she knew that someone like Caleb Deakin would stand out a mile there and she doubted he was the current occupant. Even so, she didn’t want to leave, didn’t want to have to tell Sarah that she had given up because it rained, and because she was heartsick, and hungry, and needed to pee. She started the engine and flicked on the wipers, increasing their speed until she could see clearly enough to monitor the building. Chewing on a piece of gum salvaged from the fluff in her pocket, she put her feet up on the dash and settled down to wait.

*

Lyssa had been murdered, Sarah reminded herself. Lyssa was dead because of something Sarah had done. It wasn’t perhaps the most logical of arguments but, as she waited naked and shivering in the small communal washroom, she wondered whether she was just getting what she deserved.

She tried to ignore the catcalls and whistles from the three women already searched and sent to the showers. They couldn’t see her—Officer Kendall, the female guard in charge of their intake, had made sure of that—but they knew exactly what was happening, having just been through the process.

“Now the other one, honey.”

Staring at the white tiles covering the washroom walls, Sarah followed Kendall’s instructions. The steam from the water smelled harsh and chemical, the shampoo obviously designed not only to clean but also to disinfect and delouse. She blinked as it brought tears to her eyes and then she staggered back when Kendall touched her shoulder.

“We’re all done. You can get a shower.” She handed Sarah a plastic wallet containing basic toiletries. “You’re a remand prisoner, so you can wear your own clothes…” Her instructions trailed away; Sarah was already shaking her head. “Don’t want to stand out, huh?”

“Not especially.” Sarah took the neatly folded pile of beige uniform from her. “Thanks.”

“Soon as you’re through, I’m gonna ask the doc to take a look at you.”

“I’m okay.” She pushed her wrists beneath the clothing, but the bandages had been removed for the search and Kendall had already seen the swollen and seeping collection of wounds.

“Sure you are.” Kendall gestured for Sarah to move ahead of her into the shower stall. “But I’ll feel happier when the doc tells me that.”

She closed the door to Sarah’s stall and rapped on the other doors to hurry the women along. Sarah hugged her arms across her breasts and inched beneath the spray as it slowly warmed. She squeezed pungent green gel from the shampoo bottle and winced when it ran into the raw slices on her arms. She washed quickly, not knowing the jail’s routine and not wanting anyone to come in and see her.

The prison uniform—beige sweatpants, white T-shirt, and beige shirt—wasn’t going to win any prizes for style, but it was comfortable enough. The women she had traveled in with were obviously seasoned offenders, who had entered the jail wearing several layers of underwear. Having been allowed to keep the spare sets, they had mocked Sarah for her ignorance of the trick. She made a mental note to ask Alex for supplies. She might be able to tolerate prison-issue clothing, but prison-issue underwear was something else entirely.

“All set?” Kendall nodded at her. “Doc’s ready for you, c’mon.”

They walked side by side into a large cellblock. At regular intervals, single doors were set into the corridor, each with a narrow central viewing window. Through the reinforced glass panels, Sarah caught glimpses of the inmates, some on their bunks reading or writing, a few already asleep or lying with their eyes open as if waiting for something to take them away. It was the first time she had gotten a proper look at the jail’s interior. The van had delivered them directly into a secure, shuttered loading bay, and from there Kendall had taken them straight into the washroom, a relatively quiet area. Here in the main residential section of the jail, noise echoed off the high walls: screams and shouts, the clang of metal on metal, yelled conversations. A door marked “Rec Room” was ajar, and beyond it several voices were raised, arguing about which television channel to watch. From her research on Alex’s phone, Sarah knew that most of the women here would be serving sentences of less than two years, but she also knew that that didn’t make them any less dangerous. With such short sentences, there was no “good-time credit,” and the lack of early release for good behavior meant there was little incentive for offenders to behave.

At the end of the block, a guard behind a protective Lucite screen buzzed Kendall and Sarah through the connecting door. He nodded to Kendall and looked Sarah up and down before returning his attention to his bank of monitors. The brightly lit area beyond the door was silent, and its strong medicinal odor started to make Sarah’s nose itch. She sneezed as Kendall stopped and knocked at the infirmary. The smell became even more pronounced as Sarah stepped over the threshold, but it still wasn’t enough to mask an underlying reek of feces.

“Sarah Hayes for you, doc,” Kendall said through a grimace. “The one I called about.”

The doctor had his back to them as he scrubbed his hands at the sink. “How the fuck do they know to put sugar in it?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“Kelly Harrison, about an hour since. Two women pinned her down while another poured boiling sugar water over her back.” When he turned to face them, his expression was more puzzled than saddened. “How the fuck do they know that sugar makes burns so much worse? Google? Wiki-fucking-pedia?” He shook his head. “She shit herself, hence the smell.”

Sarah had spent hours chatting to Lyssa and other medics, so she wasn’t shocked by his lack of sentimentality. He looked to be in his late fifties, with thin graying hair and tired lines creasing his face. When he noticed her attention, he gave her a tight smile and reached for a clean pair of gloves.

“Not sure the Avery PD has been doing my new prisoner any favors,” Kendall said by way of introduction.

“No, I think you might be right there.” The doctor ushered Sarah to the examination bed, flicked on the overhead light, and took both of her hands in his. He turned them over carefully and pressed his finger against the most tender laceration. “That one needs reopening and cleaning out. Couple need new sutures.” He pulled a sterile pack from one of the drawers. “Course of antibiotics, clean dressings, and a few days away from overly zealous police officers should do the trick.”

His manner was brusque but non-judgmental, and he waited for Sarah to nod her consent before injecting local anesthetic around the wounds. Resting her head against the back of the bed, she ignored the drug’s vicious sting and allowed her eyes to close as the doctor worked. For the first time since her arrest, she felt safe.

The sandwich consisted of stale, tasteless white bread enclosing something that might have been bologna. Sitting in the dark, trying not to disturb the woman sleeping on the bunk below, Sarah persevered with her first mouthful but couldn’t face a second.

It had been after “lights out” by the time the doctor released her. Despite Bridie’s assurance that remand prisoners were kept segregated from the jail’s general population, Sarah had been escorted to a shared cell in the main block. Kendall had made a non-committal reference to a transfer once a single cell became available, before locking her in for the night.

The metal frame of the bunk bed swayed and creaked as Sarah’s cellmate turned over. Sarah froze, halfway through placing the sandwich back in its packaging, but any noise she might have made was drowned out by a door slamming somewhere down the corridor and a high-pitched yelling that drew progressively closer. A fist or a boot suddenly collided with her cell door, startling her into knocking the plastic pack over the side of the bed. She held her breath as it dropped onto the tiles. For a second, she thought she had gotten away with it, but then she heard a yawn and a low, drowsy voice.

“If you’re through with that, can I have it?”

Peering toward the floor, Sarah could just distinguish a pale hand reaching for the sandwich. “Sorry I woke you,” she whispered.

The woman managed to laugh and chew at the same time. “Reckon Lou-Anne had more to do with that. That girl’s been like clockwork, every night for a week now. She’s comin’ off crack,” she added, as if that was explanation enough.

“Where will they take her? The infirmary?” Sarah had long contemplated what her first prisoner-to-prisoner encounter would be, but this scenario—a hushed conversation over a midnight snack—had never featured.

“Naw, probably down to solitary. Let her bounce off the walls there and sweat it out.” Plastic crinkled as the woman took the second half of the sandwich. “No one told me I was gettin’ a fish. You done your time in the tank, then?”

The woman’s lips smacked together wetly as Sarah tried to decipher what she had just been asked. Prison dialect was as mysterious to her as her own slang was to Alex. She smiled, imagining getting home and holding a conversation in fluent jail-speak just when Alex thought she had all her colloquialisms figured out.

“I don’t know what the tank is,” she admitted. “I don’t think I went there.”

The woman chuckled. “Oh, you’re definitely a fish,” she said without malice. “That just means brand new in here, honey.”

“Right.” Sarah vaguely remembered hearing the term on a television show. “And the tank?”

“Fish should go in the fish tank. Stay there for a few weeks to get used to how things are. Get a cell and work duties assigned.”

“They put me straight in here. I think the jail might be full.”

“Probably. Had three of us to a cell not a month back.”

“Bloody hell, how’d they manage that?” Now that Sarah’s vision had adjusted to the dim light, she could see the cell more clearly. It was barely eight feet by six, with a small desk, one chair, and a metal toilet-sink combined unit that seemed intended as much for humiliation as practicality.

“Coulda been worse,” the woman said, sounding remarkably sanguine. “Coulda ended up with Lou-Anne.” Her hand tapped on the underside of Sarah’s bed. “I’m Camille.”

Sarah wiped the sweat off her own palm before shaking hands. “Sarah.”

“Got six months left before I get back to my babies,” Camille said as she settled back on the bed. “You?”

“I don’t know.” A shadow fell across the window in the door, then an anonymous face peered in, and Sarah closed her eyes tightly, like a child tormented by the monsters in the closet. “I’m on remand.”

Camille snorted once. “Be here longer than me, then,” she said, and within seconds began to snore.

When Sarah opened her eyes minutes later, nothing had changed. The cell was still bathed in a thin, bluish light, the door remained locked, her wrists still throbbed, and the toilet smelled fetid and unpleasantly sweet. The thought of being trapped here for six hours, let alone six months, made her want to claw her fingernails into the wall, just to see if she could break through to the other side and fresh air.

The shadow passed slowly by the window again. She turned her back to it and curled herself into a ball. She didn’t know which was worse, the night stretching out in front of her or the prospect of the day that would follow.

*

The kitchen table was strewn with sheets of paper. In trying to get organized, Alex seemed merely to have created more chaos. She rummaged through the printouts and hand-scribbled notes, looking for her “to do” list.

“Of all the places to park your furry little butt,” she said, lifting Bandit from the table and dumping him on the floor. Her list was warm when she retrieved it. “Go earn your keep. Catch a mouse or something.”