They left in Michelle’s car and Frank directed her to a West End red-brick apartment block. They parked near a playground where kids were shooting hoops. Michelle grabbed her purse and locked the car. She felt the kids staring as they crossed over to the apartment building, she wondered whether her car would still be there when they got back. The apartment was on the fifth floor and the elevator was out of order. They arrived at the right door and Frank knocked, there was no answer. He turned to Michelle. ‘They’re probably asleep,’ he said. ‘They tend to work the night shift.’
‘Knock again,’ said Michelle.
After a few minutes, they heard sounds from inside the apartment and the sound of bolts being drawn back. A face appeared at the door, a Hispanic woman in her fifties, she looked tired, her eyes droopy as though she’d just been woken up but her eyes opened wide when she recognized Frank. ‘
Hola Se
ñ
or
Myers,’ she said with a look of panic. ‘
¿Qué pasa, está todo bien?
’
Frank looked to Michelle with a pleading expression. ‘It’s OK Frank,’ she said, ‘she just wants to know why you’re here, she’s worried there’s something wrong. I’ll talk to her, just smile and say it’s OK.’
Frank and Michelle were invited in and, Juanita Perez introduced herself to Michelle and offered them tea. Her husband, who also worked as a cleaner, was still asleep. She asked whether Frank needed her to wake him. Michelle declined the tea and said they’d only need a few moments. Even though Frank couldn’t follow the conversation, the tone of Michelle’s voice told him she had found what she was looking for. As they left the apartment building, he couldn’t contain his curiosity.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘it’s clearly good news, what do you know?’
Michelle smiled and in that instant, Frank knew without a doubt that there was no way Chris was fooling around with some girl in his class. Michelle was a beautiful woman and she was clearly still in love with Chris. Michelle said, ‘She didn’t know about Chris being accused of murder, she was very upset. It turns out they got on well and Chris always made a point of stopping work and chatting if they turned up when he was working, which he frequently was. On Sunday night, she spoke to Chris and he said he’d probably be working all night and for her not to worry about tidying. He’d said he would sort things out himself, but he had a lot of work to finish. Mrs. Perez, bless her, said she wanted to make sure before she left so at around 6:00AM she and her husband stopped by Chris’s office. She said she saw him fast asleep on the sofa. They both did.’
‘That’s fantastic news,’ said Frank, ‘so what now?’
Michelle’s phone rang and she looked at the screen. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘I talk to my dad, he’ll know what to do. This could be him now.’
She answered the phone and Frank watched as the joy left her face along with her color. She ended the call and didn’t look up.
‘Is everything OK?’ Frank said.
‘That was the hospital calling about my dad,’ she said. She looked up and Frank could see the starts of tears in her eyes. ‘He’s had a heart attack.’
Chris was taken from the holding area and led to the prison bus; handcuffs and shackles bound his wrists and legs making it difficult to walk without tripping. He’d spent time in a cell before and had even been tortured, so how bad could this be? But that was when he was serving his country and his captors were the enemy. Now
he
was the enemy and he was being shut away to protect the public. He expected he’d soon be given a prison-issue jump suit and become just another number in the system.
The bus was dark like a stormy day and had metal grids welded to the outside of the windows. The vehicle was not meant to be attractive, and it wasn’t. He was walked to the door by a uniformed officer with a clipboard whilst another officer with a shotgun walked three feet behind him on his left flank. He wasn’t running anywhere; he had cuffs on his wrists and around his ankles with a tempered steel chain running between them. They stopped at the door to the bus where a man in a prison officer’s uniform stood with his head bowed, seemingly studying a list attached to his clipboard. The cop took the lead. ‘I’ve got one Chris Sanders for you. Charged with murder one, refused bail,’ he said.
The guard ticked his sheet and looked up. He was clean shaven, but his face had a disheveled look of a man who needed to shave more than once a day. He looked at Chris and smiled, not a friendly smile, but a smile that said,
you’re in a whole heap of shit now boy
. The cop handed a sheet to the guard, who looked it over, signed it and handed it back.
‘He’s all yours,’ said the cop. ‘Enjoy.’
The guard just grunted and stepped to one side leaving the doorway to the bus open. He looked at Chris, still wearing his smile. ‘Well come on professor,’ he said, ‘we haven’t got all day.’
Chris climbed the steps and found his way blocked by another guard who also carried a shotgun. Chris recognized it as a Remmington 870. Nice weapon, but if it was discharged in this enclosed space, it was going to make one hell of a mess. The holder of the gun looked to be about forty, and probably carried forty pounds of excess weight. Droplets of sweat had created a sheen on his shaven head. He looked at Chris and waved the barrel of the gun towards the back of the bus. Chris got the message loud and clear:
Keep moving and there’ll be no trouble. Give me a hard time, and you’ll feel a shotgun barrel between your ribs
. Chris didn’t want any trouble. The bus had two other prisoners, evenly spaced between the middle and back of the bus on either side of the aisle. One of the guys was short with his head tilted down so Chris couldn’t see his face. He looked to be Mexican, or maybe Puerto Rican, his greasy hair hung down his back in a ponytail. The other guy was too far back for Chris to see clearly, and he really didn’t want to stare. He figured his seat was at the front. He understood the logic. Keep the prisoners separated to avoid fights, to avoid trouble, and if you needed to shoot, to avoid mess. A third guard was standing by a seat at the front with a bunch of keys. Chris shuffled to the seat and dutifully sat. The guard threaded Chris’s chain through a metal loop on the floor and re-attached to his wrists and ankles. Chris was not getting out of this seat without permission.
Clipboard guy was now seated in the driver’s seat and he started the bus. The large diesel engine juddered into life and immediately filled the bus with a stink of fuel. With all prisoners locked down, the guy with the keys returned to the front and locked the caged door, separating the three guards from the prisoners. Chris tried to look out of the window but the grid and the grime made it impossible. He closed his eyes and thought about Jasmine as he felt the bus pull away. She was just a student, she had no enemies. This was one crazy world. The bus stopped with jolt and Chris swung forward and smacked his head against the metal bar in front. Either this asshole couldn’t drive, or he liked to shake the prisoners up a bit. The bald guard wore a big fat grin and Chris figured it was their only form of entertainment. He sat back in his seat and braced himself ready for the next jolt. Chris hated riding the bus in the city but at least here there were no idiots with earbuds bleeding music. He hated that, kids making themselves deaf and annoying the hell out of everyone else in the world, like they didn’t give a damn. Maybe they didn’t.
Twenty minutes of hot, bumpy, jostling bus ride later, they pulled up to the gates of the prison. The bus was looked over on the outside whilst another guard came in to inspect the inside and check the prisoners sheet. It was just a formality but it was the kind of formality that kept prisoners on the inside and the guards alive. The bus edged slowly into a caged area and the outer gate slid shut along the rail, the metal wheels on the metal tracks screeching as the gate ground along the track. Once the outer gate was closed the inner gate slowly dragged along its rail until it was barely wide enough for the bus. The bus continued through the gates and pulled up by the side of a large steel door. The prison yard was empty, Chris figured it was probably chow time.
The men were led from the bus and lined up outside for another handover and Chris got a good look at the other prisoners for the first time. The man from the back was enormous, six feet nine, or maybe seven feet tall and he was built like an offensive lineman, Chris figured him for maybe three hundred pounds. He made a mental note to stay well out of this guy’s way. The other man appeared to be trying to hide in his boots. He kept his head bowed the whole time, but Chris noticed he had a scar that ran the length of his face and cut through one eye that was white.
The names were checked and ticked from another sheet and Chris was led with the other men through the steel door into what looked like a large reception area. Whoever picked the paint for the prison system sure liked gray. The fluorescent tube lights cast a brilliant white light that did little to help the drab room. There were three piles of clothes on the desk; orange jump suits, white boxers, white T-shirts, socks, and sneakers. Chris thought at least he wouldn’t need to figure out what to put on in the morning. There was one guard sat behind the desk. He had black hair that was slicked back and wore dark-rimmed glasses. Two guards with shotguns stood by the door. The guard with the glasses stood and read a note from a clipboard which Chris figured could have been summarized as
Welcome to hell, keep your nose clean and you might just get out in one piece. Make trouble for us and we’ll bust your balls
. He stripped and put on his jump suit. It itched like hell, but the shoes were comfy, maybe a little large. He wasn’t going to ask for a better fit. His survival plan was to keep his head down and wait for Michelle or Bob to get him out. There had to be something that would clear him, it was just a matter of time. If he stayed out of trouble he was pretty sure he’d get through this, and if he couldn’t stay out of trouble, then he’d just have to look after himself.
Chris didn’t look much like a fighter, but he had more experience and training than most men. He’d spent many years learning and practicing Krav Maga, an eclectic hand-to-hand combat system developed in Israel and taught to elite Special Forces around the world. He’d mastered the wrestling, grappling, and striking techniques and had used the brutal counter attacks on more than one occasion when he’d needed to, but his first technique for self-defense in this place was to not piss people off.
The prisoners were bunked two to a cell and Chris was told he would be sharing with the black giant.
Great
, he thought,
Let’s hope he’s on my side
. The scar-faced Puerto Rican guy was going in with another prisoner. Chris felt that just because they’d arrived together didn’t make the three of them friends. He kept his mouth shut and carried what was left of his kit in front of him. The big black guy dumped his things on the top bunk and then lay on the bottom one. He didn’t say a word. He was one big son-of-a-bitch.
‘I’ll take the top bunk,’ said Chris. The big guy just lay there. He tried again. ‘My name’s Chris.’
The voice from the bunk below was like an earthquake. ‘I don’t give a shit,’ he said. ‘Stay out of my way.’
A guard walked up to the door. ‘You fellers are too late for food,’ he said. ‘Get some sleep. Lights out at ten. Lights on at six.’ The heavy steel door slid and banged shut. The locks clicked shut with an electric buzzing sound.
Chris kicked off his shoes and took off the jump suit, then, wearing his boxers and T-shirt, he climbed under the blanket. The bed was hard, but he’d slept on worse. He fell asleep thinking of Michelle.
Chris heard a creaking noise and he was instantly awake but his instincts told him to keep his eyes shut. The bed was swaying like big boy was climbing the ladder.
Shit
, thought Chris,
that’s all I need.
He figured his roommate wasn’t coming up to give him a good night kiss. He felt the weight shift on the bed and he moved his right leg out from under the covers slightly. He didn’t want to get pinned and he needed to use his legs against a man of this size. Tonight one of them was going to the hospital wing and he wanted to make sure it wasn’t him. He opened his eyes just in time to see a pillow coming down over his face. He tried to stay calm, he’d need all of his strength to get out of this and he couldn’t afford to burn precious energy and oxygen panicking. He brought his arms up over the pillow and hooked his fingers on the inside of his attacker’s wrists. He used the strong muscles in his back to wrench the hands apart and at the same time swept his leg out from under the cover with a wide arc that sent his assailant crashing to the ground. Chris jumped from the bunk and stomped down hard on whatever was beneath him. As he landed, his heel crunched down hard on the man’s shoulder. Chris stayed on his feet and kept his distance, this was no time for a wrestling match.
Chris thought about his next move. He didn’t want to kill this man so a stomp to the face was out. Instead, he brought his heel down hard with an axe kick centered on the big guy’s nose. He heard a sickening crack as the bone splintered away from the cartilage. The man cried out in pain, more of a roar than a scream, and he instinctively brought his hands up to his face.