My Soul to Keep (38 page)

“The word is, I’d like to meet and talk.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow? I’m free in the evening if you are.”

“Wow. A nighttime meeting. I must be out of the basement.”

“Not yet, sugar pea.”

“Ooh. A nickname. Working my way up.”

“I’d better get off the phone before you make up my mind for me.”

“What time tomorrow?”

“Eight o’clock?”

“Great. See you at eight thirty.”

“Right.”

I got off the phone determined to think positive, happy thoughts. David had called. He wanted to talk. Surely he wouldn’t banter with me like that if he’d decided to cut me loose. To celebrate my anticipated good fortune, I got up from the table and made myself a peanut butter and honey sandwich, savoring it with a second cup of tea. It was the first encouragement I’d had in a while, and I intended to enjoy it.

I went back to my computer and stared again at the list of threads on Gordon Pryne’s blog, the words blurring together. I was reaching for the phone to dial G. Perry Eschenbrenner’s service again when my hand froze in midair, my eyes locked on a message from Piper posted a week ago today.

“Gordie says to pick up the package ASAP!”

I scrolled down, looking for the response. There wasn’t one. I combed backward through the messages again until I found what I was looking for.

There it was, in black and white.

“Gordie says the package isn’t safe.”

I
MADE MORE FRANTIC
phone calls to Ybarra, who was clearly determined to ignore me, and to Martinez, who was on an airplane with no access to his cell phone. I couldn’t think what else to do, so I threw on some clothes, got in my truck, and pointed it toward Lew Sterrett.

I’d been there once before—to visit Gordon Pryne, as a matter of fact. But I’d been escorted by a detective that time, so I’d been whisked through security without any problems. This time, I’d brought along some props. I would have to con my way in. With a little luck, some help from the Almighty, and the assistance of my recently polished lying skills, I just might cross the Rubicon and gain an audience with the devil.

I knew the drill. I handed my bag to the guard, walked through the metal detectors, and allowed myself to be wanded by a young guard who looked as though he had orders to shoot on sight. I did as I was told, for once, and passed through step one without incident. Step two is to show your ID to the guard at the desk, who then checks your name against the prisoner’s allowed-visitors list.

“Name of prisoner?” the guard said.

“Gordon Pryne.”

The woman thumbed through a list, going back and forth between pages. My heart stopped. If his name wasn’t on the list, he was still in Huntsville and hadn’t been transferred up for his hearing.

Her pen stopped on a name and put a little red check by it. My heartbeat resumed.

She squinted at the page. “Says here he’s got a hearing on Tuesday.”

“That’s right. First thing.” I handed the woman my ID and pulled a file out of my bag.

She studied the picture, matched it to my face, wrote down my name, and began thumbing through the visitors list.

“I may not be on there,” I said, trying to sound helpful.

She looked up. “You can’t go in unless you’re on the list.”

“I know. I’m with his attorney’s office.”

“Which one?”

Once again, my weak preparation skills were inhibiting my already meager prospects for success. I cast about for the name but drew a complete, black-hole blank.

She kept her pen poised over the page, bored and impatient. “Eschenbrenner or Vittato?”

A little gift from Joe Riley. I breathed a quick sigh of relief.

“Eschenbrenner. I just need ten minutes. I promise.”

She held her hand out for the file, which I had stuffed with some random mail I’d had on my desk at home. I pulled it back and held it to my chest.

“I’m sorry. It’s privileged.”

She looked at me over her glasses, her eyes landing on the hole in my jeans. “You don’t look like you work for a law firm.”

“I’m technically off today. Everyone else is out of town for the holiday. You know how it is.”

She didn’t seem sympathetic.

“Look, I just need to take care of this and get back to Ms. Eschenbrenner. Ten minutes.” I smiled, pasting on a look of apologetic sincerity. “I promise.”

She gave me a disapproving look, wrote my name down on the allowed list, and waved me through. I completed the rest of the security-check obstacle course—another flash of my ID, a verbal review of the procedures for prisoner visitation, and another guard, who wrote my name down again.

“Name of prisoner?”

“Gordon Pryne.” I repeated my explanation, smiled innocently, and was eventually led to a seat. I waited almost half an hour before someone
came and got me and escorted me into the visitors’ area—a grimy room with a thick wall of glass down the middle, divided by little booths with phones on both sides of the glass. Prisoners were hunched on one side, huddled over the phone, talking to attorneys or relatives through the phone lines. One woman had brought her children with her. The littlest girl—she looked to be about three and was wearing a pink ballerina tutu—had pressed herself up against the glass and was trying to kiss her father, who was crying on the inmate side of the window.

I sat where I was told to sit and waited by the phone. The Formica was filthy. I couldn’t even contemplate what was on that phone. I kept my hands in my lap and lambasted myself mentally for arriving without a bottle of hand sanitizer gel and a fresh pack of Handi Wipes.

A few minutes later, Gordon Pryne sauntered in, wearing his prison whites and a pair of bright orange Keds loafers.

When I’d seen him last, he’d been shackled at the hands and feet and was three days into detox from a wicked meth addiction. He’d also just been arrested for murder and had a recent run-in with Peter Terry. Not surprisingly, he had looked like death on toast. Old, dry, cracked toast. With an extra helping of sour mayonnaise.

Today, though, he was clear eyed and rested. The rage was still there, but five months without drugs had brought some color back to his face and straightened his back. He didn’t look broken anymore. He looked arrogant and mean.

He picked up the phone and sneered at me. “Lookee who’s here,” he said in a flat redneck drawl.

“Mr. Pryne. Do you remember me?”

“He said you’d come.”

I furrowed my brow. “Who said I’d come?”

He glared at me with those muddy green eyes. “You take me for a fool?”

“Pardon?”

“You think you can walk in here and lie to me like I don’t know who you are?” He leaned toward the window and whispered. “I know who you are.”

I leaned back from the window reflexively. “I’m not sure what you mean about knowing who I am, Mr. Pryne. I’m just here to ask you a few questions.”

I shot a nervous glance at the security camera in the corner. I was living on borrowed time. The second they figured out I wasn’t who I said I was, I’d be kicked out on my rear end into the bright May sunshine without the answers I’d come for.

“We’ve only got a few minutes,” I said. “Do you mind, Mr. Pryne, if I ask you a few questions?”

“Mr. Pryne? Ain’t we formal, now?” He sat back and crossed his arms tightly across his chest. “I got some questions for you too.” He spat out a foul epithet, one he’d used repeatedly the last time I saw him.

“You won’t get any answers out of me using language like that, Mr. Pryne,” I said firmly.

He shot the word at me again.

I took the phone away from my ear and was preparing to slam it onto its hook when I heard his voice, tinny and distant through the phone line: “I got what you want.”

I eased the receiver slowly back to my ear, Martinez’s advice ringing
in my ears. “These people are not on our side. You can’t trust anything they say.”

“Give it to me, then,” I said. “If you’ve got what I want.”

“I’ll give you what you want.” He looked me up and down hungrily. “But you gotta pay.”

I thought of my two-hundred-nineteen-dollar investment, which had yet to fully pay off. I hoped Pryne didn’t have anything more graphic in mind.

“What’s the price?” I asked warily.

“You give me what I want,” he said through gritted teeth. “What I asked you for last time.”

“What do you want, Mr. Pryne?”

“I told you to get ’em to stop.”

“Get who to stop what?”

He growled at me. “You know what I mean, you lyin’—”

I flinched. There was that word again. I wasn’t about to leave, though, until I found out what he knew.

“They got their eyes on me,” he was saying, his voice raspy now. “In my head.” He jerked his head around wildly as though he was chasing a fly, then calmed himself and looked again at me. “You said you’d get rid of ’em.”

“I don’t know about any eyes in your head.”

He glared at me, still twitching. “You know ’em. You know who they are.”

“I don’t. I swear, I don’t.”

“You’re a liar,” he said quietly, his jaw tight.

“I’m sorry you feel that way, Mr. Pryne.”

He leaned in. “He told me you’d lie.”

I pushed back from the glass again.

Pryne was still talking, almost to himself. “I said, ‘No sir, she wouldn’t lie. Not a citizen like her with her fancy life. She wouldn’t do nothing like that. Not when I got what she wants.’ ” He shook his head, his eyes locking on mine, a look of disappointed condescension on his face. “But he was right. You’re a liar. A lyin’ piece of trash. Just like he said.”

I felt my skin prickle. My hands felt like I’d plunged them into a bucket of ice water. “Who said I would lie?”

“Who do you think?” He sat back and narrowed his eyes at me, daring me to say it.

“Tell me. Who are you talking about?”

He waited a moment, then said quietly, “Peter Terry.” He said it like he was spitting out a broken tooth, wiping his mouth after the words came out. “That’s who I’m talking about.”

I blinked. Peter Terry knew Gordon Pryne. I was certain of that. But I hadn’t known until this moment that Gordon Pryne knew Peter Terry. Not by name, anyway.

“How do you know Peter Terry?” I asked, the cold creeping from my hands into my arms.

“How does Peter Terry know me?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Honestly. I don’t.”

“Make him stop.” Pryne’s eyes darted around the room again.

“What’s he doing?”

“Watching me!” he shouted. Then more quietly, looking around suspiciously, “He’s always watching me.”

The cold had taken over my whole body. I shivered, feeling suddenly faint and tired. “Is he watching you now?”

He leaned into the window again and sneered, showing me his brown teeth. “What do you think?”

He began to laugh. Insane, cackling laughter, bursting out of him and hitting the glass like gunfire. I looked around nervously. The last thing I wanted was to draw attention to myself. But everyone was just going about their business. Even the guards seemed uninterested.

I needed to pull myself together. I shook my head and warmed up one hand on my jeans. The other, still holding the phone, stayed cold as a stone.

“Mr. Pryne …”

The laughter slowed.

“Mr. Pryne …”

He sing-songed, “Mr. Pryne, Mr. Pryne.”

Only a chuckle now.

“Mr. Pryne. Can you hear me?”

I glared at him silently.

He put the phone to his ear again. “What?”

“Listen to me.”

The manic laughter drained from his expression, leaving the raw hate and the impenetrable mistrust from years of a hard, bottom-scraping life.

I was the one who leaned in this time. “Are you listening?”

His eyes locked on mine.

I stared right back at him. “If I knew how to get rid of Peter Terry, I would tell you. I swear I would. He won’t leave me alone either.”

“We got something in common, then,” he said, a look of angry lust on his face. He ran his eyes over me again.

I shifted uncomfortably. “You’re right. We do.”

“You got something for me, then? Since we got so much in common?”

I considered my answer for a long minute before I spoke. “Do you know Joe Riley?” I said finally.

His look was blank.

“You don’t, do you?”

He shook his head, a quick no.

“I think he might be able to help you get rid of the … eyes in your head.”

“He a priest or something?”

I shook my head. “Just put him on your visitors list.”

“Ain’t got no room, what with all my friends and relatives,” he said sarcastically.

“I don’t know if he will help you. But if you listen to him, he might.” I swallowed. The feeling was coming back to my hands. “I would if I were you.”

The argument was already raging in my head. What are the rules pertaining to angel management? Is it even possible to loan out your angel? Surely even losers like Gordon Pryne have angels of their own. Maybe his was an apprentice or something. It was a theory, given the lousy job he was doing.

What was I thinking, offering up help to a scumbag like Gordon Pryne? But who more than he needed the help? Wasn’t that the point, after all—to offer the help to the ones who need it the most?