A Bad Day for Pretty (19 page)

THIRTEEN

It was a damn good thing Stella was a woman of the cloth.

She’d almost forgotten that little fact about herself. It was only after the Fayette County Jail corrections officer manning the desk had patiently explained that visiting hours were over for the day—and then explained it a second time with considerably less patience when Stella pressed the point—that she noticed a small hand-lettered sign tacked to the wall behind the officer’s desk.

CLERGY PRESENT IDENTIFICATION FOR ADMITTANCE DURING NON-VISITING HOURS

“Well, I declare,” Stella said softly.

“You still here?” Officer Halpern—identified by the little plastic tag askew on a uniform that needed a good pressing—managed to glare and sneer at the same time. Stella couldn’t blame him too much, as he probably had to deal with unhappy folks all the time, folks who’d made the trip to see their incarcerated loved ones outside the appointed hours and didn’t care to be turned away.

“I believe I forgot to mention that I am an ordained minister,” Stella said in as reverent a tone as she could muster. She folded her hands piously in front of her and added a benevolent smile.

Halpern snorted. Stella wondered how you had to screw up at prison guard school to land not just the weekend, but second shift, a time when all the other guards presumably had dates or family obligations or even just a cold brew and some Saturday-night television lined up. Well, she’d drawn the short end of the stick enough times herself to have some sympathy for the guy.

“Let me just get my ID,” she said, and rummaged through her purse for the worn case in which she kept all the cards that wouldn’t fit in her wallet: the buy-eleven-bagels-get-one free cards with only a punch or two, the worn Serenity Prayer card, an OfficeMax Rewards card. Near the back she found it—
Universal Life Everlasting Church
was emblazoned in fancy gold lettering across the top, and her name—reverend stella jean hardesty—printed below. It was even signed by a Mortimer Blaise Cunningham, Vice President and Coordinating Minister.

And—best of all—it featured a photo of Stella that had been snapped after Thanksgiving dinner at Jelloman’s a year ago, late in the day after everyone had got into the eggnog. Stella thought her slack expression and rosy glow—courtesy of the Bacardi folks—could easily be mistaken for devout piety. Jelloman had taken pictures of his guests and then lined up mail-order ordination for all his best friends for Christmas, and Stella had been a card-carrying member of the clergy ever since.

Apparently Halpern thought she looked plenty holy, too, because after squinting at the ID for a few moments, he scrambled to his feet and picked up the phone’s handset. “I’m sorry, Reverend,” he said as he dialed a few numbers. “You just wouldn’t believe all the folks trying to get in here after hours. Next time you just show that card right off and we’ll get you in quick.”

“Thank you, son,” Stella said gravely, and assumed her most beatific expression.

“Kinhara?” Halpern barked into the phone. “Need an escort to Nebah. … Nebah…”

“Nebuchadnezzar Donovan,” Stella stage-whispered. “It’s a
biblical
name.”

Halpern nodded smartly. “To Mr. Donovan. A member of the clergy is here to see him.”

Kinhara seemed less impressed with Stella’s credentials. In fact, Kinhara, a gangly gal with an abbreviated nose and bangs in her eyes, didn’t seem too impressed with much of anything, including the contents of Stella’s purse and the results of the wanding she delivered with a lackluster “stand on that line there.”

“I got to take you to the cell,” she said over her shoulder as she led Stella down a hall with painted cinder block walls and waxed linoleum floors. It was clean enough, but a fly buzzed by Stella’s ear and the air was stale and overwarm. “Phones in the visitor booths ain’t workin’ right.”

“How long have they been broken?” Stella asked, curious. Given the slightly run-down state of the place, she figured maybe the old Hardee’s wasn’t such a bad deal for the Prosper team after all.

Kinhara snorted. “Oh, they work fine—when they want to. Maintenance’ll come around and wouldn’t you know that’s the day there ain’t a thing wrong with them. Then the next day nothin’. Put the phone to your ear and all’s you hear is like a buzz or some such. And getting those maintenance guys to come—mmm-mmm.”

She shook her head sorrowfully as they came to a heavy metal door with a small glass window. She unlocked it with a keypad and they entered a vestibule with an identical door on the other side. Once the first door clanged shut, she tapped in the code for the second one and they went through.

But in the brief moment they were in the small space between the doors, Stella experienced a little heart-quickening note of panic. The closeness of the walls, the silence of the room, the view down the halls in either direction, not a window in sight—this, Stella figured, was what it must feel like to be locked up.

She didn’t like it.

Not one bit.

In all the times Stella had imagined the day when the law caught up with her, when the string of bashed and intimidated husbands she left in her wake somehow engineered her ruin, she’d never allowed herself to think about the reality of prison.

She didn’t like to be closed in. All those years ago, shut into the little basement storm cellar, the thundering and howling of the twister audible even as her mama sang and clapped her hands to distract her—the memory of that day came back with a ferocity that pounded at her temples and left her hands clammy and her stomach churning. She’d waited along with her mother and her sister, eyes on the bolted door, thinking about Daddy and Uncle Horace as Patches whined and pawed helplessly at the floor.

Mama kept saying everything would be fine. But Mama had been wrong.

“Getting the maintenance guys to come,” she mumbled, repeating the last thing Kinhara had said, stumbling after her and touching the wall for support as they approached the long row of cells, white metal grids forming the wall between them and the prisoners.

“Yeah, you know state budgets. Governor couldn’t fund the paper to wipe his own ass, you ask me. We ain’t had a raise in two years. And them maintenance guys, they got them covering all the admin buildings and impound and the garage, cut their staff in half, they can’t hardly keep up. … Here we go.”

They stopped in front of the white grid, and Stella peered through. There, in a narrow rectangular cell, sat Neb, looking much diminished on his plastic-covered cot. The small space was crammed with a tiny sink and steel toilet and shelf and abbreviated desk, but somehow Neb still managed to look lost, his hands clasped in front of him, his head bowed.

“Hello, Mr. Donovan,” Stella said, clearing her throat. “I’m here for my
clergy
visit.”

Neb leapt to his feet, appearing both startled and relieved. He approached the bars and wrapped his rough, callused hands around them. “Stella! What clergy? Who all’d you bring with you?”

“Nobody,” Stella said, winking and furtively giving him a cut-throat gesture. “Seein’ as I’m an ordained reverend and all. I’m here to pray with you. In
private
. ”

She turned to Kinhara. “I’ll let you know when I’m through,” she said. “Thanks for the escort.”

Kinhara hooked a thumb over her shoulder. “I’ll fetch us a couple a chairs, but won’t hardly be private, ’cause I got to stay here with you. I got a magazine, though, and I won’t pay you no mind.”

She dragged a couple of metal chairs from the end of the cells. They made a screeching sound on the floor. Stella accepted one, and Neb fetched his own matching chair from under the little desk. They sat down, their knees inches apart but separated by the bars. Stella reached through for a squeeze and Neb squeezed back with surprising strength. Stella tried not to wince.

“I’ll be right in here,” Kinhara said, dragging her own chair down the row a ways. Voices from the other cells greeted her, but she ignored them and pulled out her magazine. “You got fifteen minutes, just like if you was at the booth.”

“What was that clergy thing about?” Neb asked quietly once Kinhara turned her attention to her
True Romance
, scratching at a spot below his left ear. Stella took it for a nervous gesture, one he’d apparently been employing all afternoon, as the skin was rubbed raw. He was not going to make a very sturdy prisoner, Stella decided.

“I just had to say I was a reverend to get in here.”

“Oh. I guess that’s okay.”

“You doing all right?”

“I suppose.” More scratching. “The food sucks. You know how they always say that, in prison movies? That the food sucks? Well, it really does. This thing they brought in here, Idon’t know if it was supposed to be some sorta tofu or somethin’—man, you do
not
want to know what it did to my digestive system.”

Stella darted a glance at the dull-finished steel toilet in the corner and figured he was probably right—she didn’t much want to know.

“Course, one good thing was, I guess they’ll finally believe I’m off the OxyContin, seein’ as I had to pee in a cup. Twice.”

“Gave you a medical exam, huh?”

“Medical, mental, searched—well, pretty much everywhere they could think of, I guess. Hey, Stella,
you
know I didn’t do it, right? That I didn’t kill nobody?”

Stella couldn’t quite meet Neb’s eyes. She wanted to tell him she believed him—but after her visit to Dr. Herman, she couldn’t be sure. Oh, she believed he
thought
he was innocent, all right.

“They told you who that gal was?” she asked, avoiding his question.

“Yeah, some woman named Laura.”

“Laura Cassel.”

“If you say so.”

“Neb … I got to know. You swear you never had anything to do with this gal? Never met her, even just in passing, nothing like that?”

Neb’s lips quivered as he spoke, his voice hollow with exhaustion. “Stella, on my life. On
Donna’s
life. I never even heard that name ’fore today.”

Stella, watching closely, figured there was no way he was lying. If he
had
killed her, it was without even knowing who she was.

“What do they got on you, anyway?” Stella asked, darting a glance over at Kinhara, who held her magazine a few inches from her nose and appeared to be absorbed in the small print, evidently uninterested in their conversation.

“That’s the craziest thing,” Neb said, shaking his head. “They got a letter I wrote, sayin’ to come and meet me at the track. It was on that dead gal they dug up, in her pocket or something. It’s got my signature and everything.”

“You sure it’s your signature?”

“Well, I don’t know,” Neb said. “I only got a quick look. It sure looked like mine. The rest of it was typed. Or printed on a computer or something. They got some handwriting expert going over it now—I guess after he gets done looking at it, I’ll know if I wrote it or not.”

“Well … that letter could have been faked.”

“It gets kind of worse, though,” Neb went on. “There was, uh, blood on the body? They’re doing all that DNA testing on it, and they took swabs from me. I guess they’ll know before long if it’s a match or not. But already they’re sayin’ it’s type B negative and how only two percent of folks got that type. And Stella … I’m B negative.”

Dang. That
was
bad.

“Look, Neb, you haven’t been talking, have you? I mean, not without Priscilla here … right?”

Neb toed the tiled floor dejectedly. “Aw, maybe one or two things,” he mumbled. “Priscilla couldn’t get away early. You know, she’s low man on the totem pole at that law firm and all. But she’s gonna come up first thing tomorrow if her boss lets her.”

Stella’s heart sank. “What have you told them, Neb?”

He shrugged, but try as Stella might, she couldn’t get anything further out of him. She could only hope that the questioning hadn’t gone too far—she could just imagine Simmons with her pinched face, staring Neb down in an interrogation room, looking for angles to make him incriminate himself.

“Look,” he finally said, “I’m kinda tired. I’m thinkin’ I ought to hit the hay. It was really nice of you to come, Stella, but I reckon I ought to be fresh for tomorrow. Donna’s gonna…” He paused as a little hitch stuttered through his voice, cleared his throat, and tried again. “Donna’s gonna be here soon’s visiting hours start, plus Priscilla and all. But I sure do appreciate it.…”

If ever there was a man who needed a hug, Neb was that fellow, but as Stella stuck her hands through the bars to try to grasp his hands, he shrank away from her and retreated back to his cot.

Stella could tell that he was ashamed. And not just because he wasn’t sure if he was a cold-blooded murderer or not, but because Stella had to see him here, stripped of his dignity, his pride—even his shoelaces. Stella read his misery and nodded briskly.

“All right, then,” she said. “I’ll be back soon’s I can. Meantime you just—just—hang in there, and keep the faith, hear?”

The fact that she was pretty sure he hadn’t heard, not through his layers of misery and humiliation, did not quite make up for her embarrassment at having uttered a platitude so inadequate that even a minister of the Universal Life Everlasting Church ought to have been able to do better.