Bad Moon On The Rise (23 page)

He did not smile. “I can make it
easier on you. And give you a way to make it easier on yourself
once you get out.”

I was quiet for a moment, gauging how
best to take a step closer to the truth. “I’m not big on giving it
up to men I don’t know,” I finally said.

His laugh was more like a bark. “I’m
not interested in sex.”

“
Than what?” I asked.
“What do you want me to do?”

He sensed something in my tone and
backed off. “Just think about it,” he said, taking a step back into
the darkness. “Think about what you’d be prepared to do to get out
of here early and what you want for yourself once you get out of
here. Think about it, and I’ll be back.” He turned on his heels and
moved down the hall until he reached the end. He leaned against the
wall, not a care in the world, whistling tunelessly.

I felt as if the devil himself had
come to me in the night and brushed me with his tail.

“
Don’t go there, my
friend,” a familiar voice whispered from the other side of my cell
wall.

“
Peppa?” I asked. “You
heard all that?”

“
I heard all
that.”

I stepped back so the guard would not
see us talking and lowered my voice. “Did you understand what he
was talking about?” I asked.

I sensed her knowledge in her silence.
She knew exactly what he’d been talking about. She just wasn’t sure
she wanted to tell me.

“
You knew Tonya Blackburn
well when she was inside here, didn’t you?” I guessed. “You know
what’s going on.”

“
You’re not in here for
trying to kill your husband,” Peppa said. “If you had tried to kill
him, he’d be dead. Who are you and what are you doing in
here?”

I hesitated, knowing I was taking a
chance. But I also knew I had no other choice. “Come closer,” I
said. “Act like, well, you know.” We huddled at the edge of the
bars, as close as we could get, given the metal and concrete
between us. “Don’t even go there,” I whispered when her hand
fluttered closer to my breasts in the darkness.

“
Can’t hurt to try,” she
whispered back.

“
I’m putting my life in
your hands,” I said softly. “And that’s going to have to be
enough.”

Her hand grew instantly still. “Tell
me,” she whispered back.

I told her who I was and why I was
inside. She listened without comment.

“
Do you really think one
woman can stop what’s happening?” she asked when I was
done.

“
I don’t know. But I know
I can try.”

“
The guards are using the
girls as distribution points,” she said. “They’re running drugs
through them when the women get out. If they try to stop or say no,
the guards say they’ve got a deal going with the parole officers.
They’ll claim they broke parole and the girls will end up back in
here. Or they threaten their families.”

I was silent for a moment. It all fit.
“Where do they get the drugs?”

“
That I don’t know. But I
know they got plenty. Meth, mostly, but coke and Oxy and heroin,
too. You know how all the guards look alike?”

“
I’d noticed,” I
said.

“
A lot of them got that
tattoo, the one curved kind of funny?”

“
It’s a ploughshare,” I
explained. “Like a farmer uses, only it’s linked to a sword, like
they want to turn one into the other.”

“
Whatever. If they’ve got
the tattoo and they’ve got short hair and they look muscled enough
to kick your ass, they’re in on it, okay? They’re some kind of
group. I think they bring in the drugs from somewhere else, and
then they force the women who get out of here to sell the drugs for
them across the state. The guards send them off with the drugs,
then the women come back and meet with them, or they go find them,
and the women give them the money they got from selling the drugs,
get more drugs, and go back home again. In exchange, the women get
a cut of the money and they get out of here early, thanks to good
behavior notations in their files.”

“
And that’s what Tonya was
involved in?” I asked.

“
Yes,” Peppa said. “I knew
her pretty well.”

“
Why didn’t you tell me
that to begin with?”

“
I didn’t know you,” she
explained.

“
Tonya had a son,” I told
Peppa. “He’s missing. That’s why I’m here. I’m trying to find him.
Tonya was killed and her son is missing. I think these guards might
be behind it.”

“
I thought she must be
dead,” Peppa said. “She always put money into my canteen account,
you know? I got no one on the outside and she knew it. But the
money stopped coming a couple weeks ago.”

“
That’s when she was
murdered,” I explained. “I’m sorry.”

“
Tonya never said she had
a son. Not even to me and we talked a lot, like this, in the middle
of the night. She was just a couple of cells down and she had
trouble sleeping, too.”

“
Maybe she was trying to
protect him,” I suggested.

“
That makes sense. If you
try to back out of their arrange-ment, they threaten your family.
Tonya might have had to sell their drugs for the money, but she was
smart enough to hide her son from them so they couldn’t hurt
him.”

“
Who do the guards
represent? What do they want?”

“
I don’t know,” Peppa
said. “My guess is they want to blow something up. White men sure
do like their explosions.”

I was silent, trying to piece it
together.

“
Yo, Debbie,” Peppa called
out softly.

“
Yeah?” I said.

“
What’s your real
name?”

“
Casey.”

“
Casey? I like it.” She
waved a hand in my direction and it fluttered like a bird finding
its way through the dark. “Casey—don’t tell anyone else what you
just told me,” she said. “It’s not safe. You shouldn’t even have
let me know who you really are.”

The next morning, I rose early,
anxious to leave the confines of my cell. I needed to think about
what to do next. I had learned from Peppa that it was possible to
slip outside the back door of the kitchen and stand, unnoticed, in
a small, enclosed area behind the main building. It didn’t offer
much in the way of ambience. It was basically a concrete stoop
surrounded by a patch of ragged grass bordered by a gravel driveway
that ended at a door to the storage room. The driveway began at a
locked gate a few dozen feet away. Each time a truck delivered
cartons of canned goods and other supplies, the gate had to be
unlocked, even though it only opened onto the internal roadway that
snaked through the prison complex. It was a gate within a gate
within two more gates. Kind of like the outer circles of hell,
minus most of the sulfur.

Still, the air was fresh and the sky
stretched overhead, giving me a good look at the clouds I had
glimpsed the night before. They blanketed the sky in heavy gray
waves and the air smelled like steel, a sure sign snow was coming.
I breathed in deeply, savoring fresh oxygen untainted by sweat or
cheap perfume.

“
Hey L.D., better wrap it
up.” Peppa stood in the doorway, a stirring spoon in her hand, and
looked up at the sky with me. “Gonna snow for sure. But not until
later. I know my mountain. She’s waiting for the afternoon.” She
waved the spoon at me. “Get on in. One of the guards is looking for
you. You got a visitor.”

“
This early?” I asked. It
wasn’t even time for breakfast and, around these parts, that meant
the rooster was still dreaming of the hen house.

“
It’s gotta be law
enforcement,” Peppa explained. “They don’t bend the rules for
anyone else.”

It had to be Shep. It had been days
since we spoke. My stomach started to bubble and I was sorry I’d
had a third cup of coffee. I was walking into a lot of unknowns
here: had Bill Butler told him I was a suspect in Tonya Blackburn’s
murder? Had Shep believed him? Was there any vestige left of the
bond we’d had earlier or had I imagined it all? And then I asked
myself the most important question—could Shep get me out of here? I
hated that my mind had seized on the tiniest seed of doubt about
him. I had no reason to doubt him. But I had no reason to trust
him, either. Not really. I didn’t know him at all.

“
Why so worried?” Peppa
asked as we stepped back into the noisy confines of the kitchen:
clanging pots, steam hissing, women laughing, hot grits bubbling.
“You look like someone just ran over your dog.”

“
I got a bad feeling,” I
explained.

“
I was born with one,”
Peppa answered. “And there’s only one way to deal with it—go see
what you’re up against.”

Peppa pretended like she didn’t care
about anyone but herself, but I noticed she came to the edge of the
dining room and watched as I followed a guard out the door. I don’t
know why, but knowing she was keeping watch made me feel better. If
I never returned, at least one person would wonder where I had
gone.

Shep was waiting for me in full
uniform. He rose when I entered the meeting room. I hoped it was a
good sign. But he said nothing until the guard had left and locked
the door behind him.

“
What is it?” I asked. I
felt like I might throw up. “Why are you looking at me that
way?”

He glanced toward the windows where
the guard lingered outside.

“
He can’t hear you,” I
said.

“
Don’t be naive,” Shep
whispered. He placed his hands on the table, inches from mine. I
longed to touch his fingers, just to establish contact. I’d settle
for anything to bridge the chasm that seemed to divide
us.

“
What’s happened?” I asked
quietly. “What did Bill Butler say?”

Shep looked up at me but said
nothing.

“
I had nothing to do with
Tonya Blackburn’s death,” I whispered furiously. “How can you even
think that?”

Shep looked startled. “I don’t think
that,” he said. “That’s not why I’m here. Butler told me Perry
County was trying to bring you in because they’re hoping you can
give them something to go on. They’ve got no leads.”

“
But if they find out I’m
here,” I said. “They could take me into custody.”

“
You’re in under a
different name, remember?” Shep spoke as if distracted. This was
not what he had come to discuss. “They don’t know you’re
here.”

“
Oh, yeah.” I was losing
it. I was silent for a moment. I took a deep breath. “Please get me
out of here, Shep. I can’t stay any longer. I found out what I need
to know. You have to get me out of here today.”

His amazing blue eyes slid away from
mine and I knew I was in trouble. Deep, deep trouble. “I can’t,” he
said. “I’ve been suspended from duty. If you look closely, you’ll
see I’m not wearing my badge. I only got in here because word isn’t
out yet and the guys at the gate know me. I wore my best uniform
hoping to distract them. It worked, but I need to get out quick
before someone makes a call and lets them know.”

“
What happened?” My heart
started beating like a tom-tom.  If Shep had no power, than
who in the everlovin’ hell was going to get me out of
here?

“
I don’t know,” he said.
“The feds pulled me in for questioning yesterday. That’s when they
took my badge. Officially, I’m on paid leave. Unofficially, I’m in
deep shit.”

“
About the inmate and
guard thing?”

Shep nodded. “They know there’s
something going on, and they think I’m behind it.”

“
You?” I asked.
“Why?”

“
I think I’m being set
up,” Shep explained. “Someone found out I was looking into it and
is setting me up. If I go down for this, they won’t have
to.”

“
Did you tell them the
truth?” I asked. “Did you tell them about me?”

“
I told them I wasn’t
involved,” he said. “But they didn’t believe me. I couldn’t tell
them about you.”

“
Why not?” I
demanded.

“
Because you’re my only
hope, Casey. If you don’t find out who really is behind this,
they’re not going to let up. I’ll go down for it. You’re my only
hope.”

“
But you’re my only hope,”
I pointed out.

“
Then we’re both in
trouble,” he said. He leaned in closer as he spoke. I caught a
whiff of soap and aftershave. It made my heart ache.

“
I did find something
out,” I said. “Give them this.” I told him all I knew about the
arrangement between the guards and short-term inmates, about the
drugs being brought in from out of state and distributed by newly
released inmates, about all the guards involved being linked by the
ploughshare and sword tattoo. “Does that help?” I asked when I was
done.

“
Maybe,” he said. “If it’s
true. But, Casey, that’s basically the word of one inmate, someone
you barely know. Do you know what that woman is in here for? What
she did to her father?”

“
I don’t want to know,” I
said quickly. “And I believe Peppa. Yes, she’s locked up in here
for life. Yes, she’s hard on the outside. But she’s not hard on the
inside. She’s not. And in this place? With the life she’s had?
That’s a miracle in itself. She was telling me the truth,
Shep.”