Inmate 1577 (24 page)

MacNally chewed on that.

“If you want a shot at this, you gotta be smart about it. Keep your ears open, your eyes open. Learn prison life, who’s who. If you’re gonna do this, you gotta know what you’re talking about, you gotta know that what you’re seeing is what you think it is. We can’t move on a guy for some bullshit thing. Because you give us shit, you get shit from us in return. And that for sure will get you killed.”

“Sounds like a long-term proposition. I don’t have long term. I’ve gotta end this now.”

Voorhees shrugged a shoulder. “Fine. Bottom line, then. You don’t wanna be fucked like that again, stand up for yourself. Today, before your rep is permanently thrown under the truck.”

MacNally nodded.

Voorhees leaned in closer. “The cons, they talk. I hear shit when we shake guys down, pressure ’em. You want advice, you want a taste of con law, here it goes. Every inmate has three choices.” He counted them off his thick fingers. “He can fight—meaning make the guy pay who gets in his face. Hard—so he doesn’t even think again about hurting you.”

Second finger went up. “He can hit the fence—escape.” Third finger. “Or he can submit and get fucked. Now, I gave you a fourth choice, help us out. Doesn’t look like it’s gonna solve your problem. So you’re left with three. But I didn’t tell you any of that. I find out you repeated it, and I hear you said it came from me, you and me will undergo some thump therapy in a dark cell. You get me?”

MacNally had an idea: he’d be beaten.

“I were you,” Voorhees said with a tug on his belt, “I’d grow a set of balls. Fast. As in five minutes after you walk outta here.”

MacNally shifted his feet. Now? Take care of this now?

“Don’t let yourself be a victim. Even if it doesn’t work out, you’ll feel better about yourself in the morning. Just be careful—guys make alliances, they look out for each other. You may think you’re taking on one guy, but suddenly you’re lookin’ at three.”

MacNally tried not to let the building anxiety register on his face. He squared his shoulders, nodded confidently, and said, “Okay.”

“You’re gonna need a weapon. A shank—a homemade knife. Be smart about it. And be efficient. Show no mercy, because they ain’t gonna show you any.”

Voorhees grabbed the doorknob. “Wait ten minutes, then get outta here.”

He left MacNally alone with his thoughts. That wasn’t the type of advice he’d been hoping for. Actually, he didn’t know what he was expecting. He was looking for a solution. Voorhees had no doubt gone the extra mile, probably with some risk, to give him an honest view of his situation.

But as he was now learning, the only true solutions to his problem—this one and those that would undoubtedly surface in the future—could not be found by talking to, or relying on, others.

The answers had to come from within.

Vail whipped out her Glock and threw it up in front of her, her forearms taut and her pupils dilated, taking in everything and anything. She swung the weapon left and right, looking at the room, her eyes scanning systematically from right to left.
Clear.

Vail moved into the angled bathroom, grabbed the pocket door to the water closet and shoved it hard to the right, more forcefully than she should’ve because it bounced with a deep thud and started to close. She toed it back and, with her Glock in her right hand, grabbed the tall shower curtain and swung it to the side. Nothing—no one—in the bathtub.

She swung back around, then pulled her BlackBerry with her left hand and dialed Dixon. “Get back to the room. Someone’s been here. The offender.”

It was noisy in the background. Vail remembered she was in a bar.

“How do you know?” Dixon shouted into the phone.

“He left something. A key.”

“Did you clear the place?”

Vail’s eyes kept scouring the room. The bed. She hadn’t checked under the bed. “Working on it.”

“Be right there. Hang tight.”

Vail shoved the BlackBerry into her holster, then knelt down to inspect the king mattress. It was a platform bed, so no way could anyone be underneath it.

She moved to the closet and pulled open the door. Just her clothing.

Fuck. How did he find out where I was staying?
She walked back toward the desk.
Not impossible. But this asshole’s smart.

She wiped a layer of sweat from her face with a sleeve, and after one more glance around the room, double-locked the door and then settled into the web-backed office chair. She reholstered her weapon. Looked at the key. It was the same wide, unusual shape as most of the others they had found.
He wants me to know, without a doubt, that he’s been in my room. Power. Definitely fucking with my head. Anything missing?

As she turned away to check her suitcase, she noticed something on the Hyatt pad beside the phone. A typed note, in large caps.

I KNOW WHAT YOU DID IN NY

A new wave of perspiration pimpled her forehead, scalp, and chest.
New York. Not just New York. What I did in New York. How could he know about New York? There are only three people who know about that. Me, my confidential informant, and my former partner.

Vail hadn’t seen either one in years. Six or seven. Last she knew, Mike Hartman was still a special agent somewhere on the east coast. She thought it was New Jersey, but she wasn’t sure.

How is he connected to this? How’s he connected to the offender?

The informant...Eugenia Zachry... She had thought of her from time to time over the years, but had never initiated contact. Once she left the woman’s life, it was better to maintain distance.

Vail sat there staring at the note.
Think, Karen. What should I do about this? Bring it to the office. Show it to Burden—no. I can’t. Tell Roxx? How can I do that? She’s a friend...but...shit.

How does this asshole know about it?

Minutes passed as she tried to clear her head and think this through. Just then there was a rapid series of knocks on the door.

Roxxann
.

Vail’s heart jumped a beat as she looked at the note.

“Karen. Open up!”

MacNally looked around the ladder room. He wondered if Voorhees had chosen this place for a particular reason. Or was he reading into it?

He doubted inmates were permitted to be in here unsupervised. If caught, he could not disclose that Voorhees had suggested they meet for a counseling session. Per the officer’s orders, he had a few minutes before he could leave, so he set out to locate something he could use as a weapon.

There was nothing overtly obvious—no knives, no ice picks or awls, hammers—no tools of any sort, for that matter.

MacNally crouched down, then pressed his stomach flat against the floor and brought his eyes from the furthest left wall across to the— Wait... In the corner, something thin, oblong, and brown. He knelt in front of a tall, wooden ladder, reached under the bottom rung, and wiggled his fingers. He caught the item with a fingernail and flicked it toward him.

A rusted 3/8-inch bolt, roughly five or six inches in length.

It wasn’t sharp, but it definitely could serve as a weapon. He shoved it into his pocket, then gave one more look around the room. There were no other devices, utensils or hardware he could find. The bolt would have to do.

MacNally pulled the door open and walked out, then headed for A-Cellhouse to find Gormack and Wharton. He did not have to go far: both were in the yard having a smoke.

MacNally walked into the hot sunshine, then stopped. He needed to think this through. He had never attacked anyone—had never even had a bar fight—but he had seen a few. His observations told him that the victor wasn’t always the best brawler, but the one who hit hard and fast, aggressively, and unrelenting... The man who was possessed and who did not stop until forcibly yanked away.

He reached into his pocket and felt the ribbed threads of the thick screw, then approached his adversaries. Gormack was the bigger threat: the one to neutralize first.

MacNally took five steps—and stopped. Two men were approaching his targets. They laughed and started jawing at one another. The odds were no longer in MacNally’s favor. Despite the need to act fast, it would be foolish to force his hand. Acting prematurely could—likely would—get him killed—in which case, his damaged reputation would be moot. As problematic as being labeled a lop would be, he had to exercise restraint. At this point, an hour or two’s delay would not matter—and might, in fact, be time well spent.

He had to channel his anger and use it effectively. Given what he had been through the first night in his new cell, summoning up his rage was not difficult. If there was any doubt that he could raise a weapon and drive it through another man’s skin, it vanished each time he flashed on what his cellmates had done to him. The anal soreness would likely not subside for weeks.

But the emotional scar would remain long after his torn rectal skin had healed.

“Be right there,” Vail called to Dixon. She grabbed a couple tissues from the bathroom vanity, wrapped up the note, and slipped it into her jacket pocket.

When she pulled open the door, Dixon was standing there, her blonde hair disheveled and concern evident in fisted hands that were wrapped around her SIG Sauer handgun. She glanced around and behind Vail, into the room.

“Everything okay?”

Vail stepped aside. “It’s clear. He’s—he’s gone. Key’s on the desk.”

Dixon squinted at Vail, then moved into the room. Convinced all was okay, she holstered her sidearm, then walked over to the far end of the room and placed both hands on her hips. “Jesus Christ. He was in our room.”

“Yeah, Roxx, I know that.”

“That’s it?” she said, her eyes scanning the room. “Nothing else—just a key?”

The key and an incriminating note that relates to information he somehow got about my past.
“What do you think it means?” Vail asked, skirting Dixon’s question. She hated lying to her friend. Omission of information was as much of a lie as answering her with a fictional response. But it didn’t feel quite as dirty.

“I think it’s pretty goddamn obvious, don’t you?” Dixon looked around the room, moving things aside with her shoe. “Did you call Rex Jackson? What did Burden say?”

Vail jutted her chin back.
Shit. I’ve totally blown this. Where the fuck is my head? I know where it is. Where it was.

“No, I—I didn’t,” she stammered. She pulled out her BlackBerry and started punching numbers. “It kind of rattled me. I wasn’t thinking.”

“It took me fifteen minutes to get here. You just sat here the whole time? What the hell were you doing?”

“I don’t know, Roxx. I— It—” Burden answered. “Yeah, Burden, listen. I’ve got a situation here.”
A situation?
She mentally slapped herself. “I got back to my room, and I found—there’s a brass key on the desk. Just like the ones we found before.”

“In your hotel room? The scumbag was in your room?”

“That’s what I’m saying. He— It’s all clear. Roxxann’s here now. You want to get Jackson over here? Dust the place?”

“I’ll call him. Meantime, get out of there, wait in the hall.”

“Yeah. Right.”
Of course. What the hell’s wrong with me?

Vail hung up and shoved the phone in her pocket. “He wants us to—”

“Get out of here. What you should’ve done,” she said, walking toward the door. “Get your head screwed on, Karen. I’ve never seen you like this.”

That makes two of us.

MacNally wished he had access to tools like the ones he had used on the Flaherty construction job. His momentary reflection on his time in Alabama only set him back to thinking about Henry. Although the First National robbery had gone as horribly sour as a glass of turned milk, he realized he had enjoyed working with his son—as perverse as it now seemed—while planning the heist and then executing it.

MacNally had no one... With Doris dead, his parents long gone and no siblings he kept in touch with, his existence was unusually solitary. It was not something he thought about when he and Doris had gotten married at such a young age—they had known each other since grammar school and had always assumed they were going to spend a lifetime together—the dreams of young lovers, with everything ahead of them, a future full of optimism and hope, plans for travel and a family.

With nothing left but Henry, he yearned to somehow reunite with him. Legally or illegally, he intended to find a way back to him. That his previous unlawful tactics were responsible for separating them in the first place was not lost on him.

Still, the bank heists were things they had done together, experiences they would always share. He wondered if Henry looked back on the events that landed them in their current predicament. How did he see them? Was he was able to claw through the negatives to reflect positively on his father?

Since the moment Henry ran off as the police cruisers descended on them, MacNally could not stop thinking—and worrying—about him. He had been informed that his son had been made a ward of the state and placed in an orphanage, a thought that bothered him as much as the concept of getting into bed across from Wharton and Gormack. He didn’t know much about such institutions, but he was certain they weren’t desirable places in which to grow up. And it would only get more depressing as a boy matured into a young teen.

MacNally shoved his new weapon in his pocket, in case he needed it when he least expected it. Rapes did not only occur in your cell; he imagined the community showers were also a likely place for such transgressions because of the number of inmates in one room, in close proximity, without immediate access—and direct supervision—by guards.

As MacNally pondered that, he realized that the very reasons that made the showers dangerous for him would also make it a reasonably favorable place for him to launch his attack. Other inmates would see what he had done, accomplishing the goal of establishing his reputation and—hopefully—reversing any damage caused by the stories Wharton and Gormack had undoubtedly unleashed in the cellhouse.