Bad Moon On The Rise (18 page)

“
I’ll take her up to
Silver Top,” Shep told his men when we reached the cars.

“
You sure?” one of the
deputies asked, eyeing me dubiously. “She looks like a hellcat to
me.”

I hissed at the deputy and his hand
inched toward his gun. What a pussy.

“
I can handle her.” Shep
said and the other deputy smirked, making it obvious that he, too,
had heard about our Dew Drop Inn encounter. Shep put his hand on
top of my head and pushed me into the backseat—why, oh why, do cops
always do that? And why did Shep have to do it with such
zeal?

“
Suspicion of murder?” I
complained once we were alone. “You couldn’t come up with anything
with a little less kick?”

“
Look,” he said grimly.
“I’m trying to protect you. You’re not exactly going to be inside
with a bunch of angels. You might need a reputation to proceed
you.”

“
Then you should have
arrested me for girlfriend bashing.”

“
You can joke at a time
like this?” He looked glum.

“
What is it?” I asked.
“What’s wrong?”

He shook his head. “I don’t know yet.
But something is. I got a call from Doris down at the bank. The
feds are poking around in my bank accounts. I’m not supposed to
know, but we went to high school together so she told me. I don’t
know what they’re looking for, but it’s a bad sign.”

“
What’s bad about it?” I
asked. “It probably means they’re looking into what’s going on at
Silver Top, right?”

Shep shrugged. “But they didn’t come
to me about it. That can’t be good.”

“
Well, at least you’re not
the one going inside today,” I joked.

His eyes met mine in the mirror and he
smiled. That smile lifted a lot of my anxiety. Going inside was
starting to feel a little too real for my tastes.

 “
What am I getting
into?” I asked. “How long can you stay with me once we get
there?”

“
I have to hand you over
to the guards immediately. I transfer custody to them and then I’m
gone. But I’ll be back to interrogate you, of course, and you can
let me know what you find out then.”

“
If I find out anything,”
I said.

“
You will,” he predicted.
“I have faith in you.”

 
An absurd degree of
pride filled me and I felt vaguely ashamed I needed his validation.
“I hope this is worth it,” I told him. “Did I mention I was
claustrophobic?”

He glanced at me in the mirror like he
thought I was kidding, saw my face and knew I wasn’t. But I had
agreed and that was it. There would be no backing out
now.

“
I owe you one,” was all
he said.

“
That you do,” I
agreed.

The prison guards started my intake by
stripping me of my individuality and more than a little of my
dignity. I had to hand over my clothes, receiving a denim work
shirt and high-waisted jeans in return. Great, the Appalachian nerd
look. “This is going to do nothing for my figure,” I complained.
But the guard—who looked like a career Marine, so ramrod straight
was he in both posture and personality—did not crack so much as a
hint of a smile. The other guard looked equally humorless and
equally paramilitary. In fact, both looked like they ought to be
invading Paraquay instead of guarding liquor store robbers and
domestic abusers. They were as white as genetics can get you,
sported whitewall haircuts, wore spotless uniforms and didn’t seem
to have an ounce of extra fat between them. For a privately-run
prison, Silver Top sure had high standards. There were no
big-gutted prison guards with bowl haircuts here.

It didn’t make me feel very
optimistic. It only made my processing in seem very, very real. I
was playacting, but those two? They were as serious as a heart
attack.

After the guards finished my paperwork
and took away everything I had that might remind me who I was, they
turned me over to a businesslike black woman who gave me a
full-body search—and I do mean full body, the kind involving rubber
gloves. I gritted my teeth while she performed personal maneuvers
that I usually required people to buy me a drink before even
considering.

“
Is this necessary?” I
asked.

“
Yes,” the guard replied
indifferently. She was neither mean nor friendly. She just seemed
bored.  “And you’ll know why once you’re inside.”

“
What’s that supposed to
mean?” I asked, illogically hoping she’d spill the beans on some
illegal scheme right then and there so I could back out of this
hare-brained plan and go home.

“
It means you need to keep
your head down, mind your own damn business and tell your lawyer to
get you the fuck out of here as soon as you can.”

 
She didn’t have much
personality, but I decided I liked her nonetheless. Her nameplate
read Officer Alldread. I thought that was funny.

“
Great name for a prison
guard,” I pointed out.

She grunted.

One day, I’d be sure to write her and
thank her for her kindness, even if her version of kindness came at
you colder then a pair of penguin balls.

“
What happens now?” I
asked, once I was dressed in my official “Ellie Mae Clampett rides
the short bus” outfit. I was standing in an otherwise empty
concrete-floored room while she ran a comb through my hair,
collecting the contents onto a sheet of black construction paper. I
didn’t ask her what she was doing. That part I remembered. She was
making sure I wasn’t bringing a couple thousand little friends in
with me.

“
You gonna check for
crabs, too?” I suggested.

She paused, comb in hand, and took a
long time evaluating me. Then she shook her head and kept combing.
“Didn’t anyone ever tell you black roots look cheap?” she
asked.

“
I’ll be sure to take care
of them now that I have plenty of time on my
hands.” 

“
You better watch that
mouth in here,” she advised me. “You’re not going to find too many
women with a sense of humor in this place. If they had a sense of
humor, they would not be in here. Know what I’m saying?”

“
Not really,” I
admitted.

“
What are you in for?” she
asked. “Not that I give a rat’s ass.”

“
They think I killed my
husband,” I said.

“
Of course they do.” She
sounded more cheerful. “You and the three hundred and ninety eight
other women in here.”

“
How many women does this
place hold?” I asked. It was bigger than it looked from the
outside.

“
Four hundred in all,” the
guard told me. “Every single one of them a widow. What are the
odds?” She smiled ominously. “You’ll fit in just fine.”

“
That’s what I’m afraid
of,” I told her.

“
That means you’re smarter
than you look.”

The jeers came from right and left as
I walked to my cell. Man, some of the women had filthy minds and
even filthier mouths. I am all for women’s equality, mind you, but
adopting the least attractive traits of the male sex was not my
idea of progress.

I ignored them all, resolved to wash
any and all vegetables that might have even gotten near one
particular woman in Cell Block C with a very green-friendly sexual
persuasion, and gritted my teeth as a new pair of guards walked me
further and further down a gray linoleum hallway. Each step seemed
to take me a little more out of my body, out of my life and into
some unknown hell.

What had I been thinking?

“
Here you go,” one guard
announced as we neared the end of a long row of double cells. My
escorts were as buttoned down as their earlier counterparts. They
ran a tight ship in here.

The second guard tapped the bars of a
cell close to the end of the row and nodded. The lights were off
inside. In the shadows, I could make out a metal bunk bed and the
back of a woman huddled in the lower bunk, her face turned away
from us toward the wall. “Home, sweet home,” he said. “Your
roommate for the duration will be Chatty Cathy.”

“
Why you got to call her
that?” a voice yelled from next door. “It’s not like there aren’t
enough people running their mouths in this place. You ought to be
encouraging people to be quiet, not making fun of them for
it.”

 “
Yeah, yeah, yeah,”
the second guard said mechanically, making it clear he didn’t give
a crap. “We want your opinion, Peppa, we’ll ask for it.”

The unseen inmate’s voice was
scathing. “Like you’d ask me for anything seeing as how I’m never
getting out of here.”

“
Now, now,” the second
guard said. “There’s always the women’s prison in Raleigh. You
could get out of here… and go to there.”

As the guards laughed, I caught an
undercurrent of something more than simply bad-natured teasing.
They were close to taunting her and I didn’t like it.

One of the jerks swung the
metal-barred door open for me with mock courtesy. Just the sound of
metal scraping on metal terrified me with an intensity that took me
back fifteen years, when I’d been deep inside a Florida prison, my
husband’s hollow promises still ringing in my ears as I did time
for his crime. Worse, back then as now, I had done it willingly. A
least for the first month, until his lack of visits revealed his
betrayal. I finally realized that every woman in the place was
there because of a man in one way or the other. I was no different
than the rest of the fools.

I could not afford to be different
here.

“
Step inside,” one of the
guards said, prodding me slightly.

I took a deep breath and, with one
simple step forward, just like that, I went from freedom to
imprisonment, from purgatory to hell.

“
You’ve got a new
roommate, Foster,” one of the guards announced into the darkness.
“Try to get along with this one. We’re running out of
options.”

Oh, great. They’d probably put me in
with a bad-tempered killer. Things had gone from bad to worse. I
wanted to ask what had happened to her last roommate but was afraid
I’d just be inviting her to show me.  I sat on my bunk, stared
ahead and tried not to notice where I was.

The cell was clean enough, what there
was of it, but I can’t say that a ten-foot square cell is a lot of
room for anyone, much less two people. The floors were a smooth
white concrete, the walls painted an anemic green. A machine
designed to suck your soul from you could not have done a better
job.

My cellmate was still huddled on the
bottom bunk, her back turned to me. She had not so much as twitched
when I stepped inside. All I could tell about her was that she was
on the plump side and either terribly tired or terribly unhappy. I
couldn’t even tell what color she was. Probably anemic
green.

That green was getting to
me.

So were the walls. They started to
close in on me. Less than a minute in the damn cell and the walls
started to close in on me.

I needed to think of something
else.

“
My name’s Debbie,” I said
to the silent figure huddled in the bottom bunk. I got no response.
Fine. Conversation was no requirement with me. Yet my mouth moved
of its own accord, nervous and needing an outlet. “Nice we have our
own sink and toilet.”

Still no reply.

I could take a hint. I’d just sit here
in the dark and feel claustrophobic. Or better yet, I’d check out
the only saving grace in my cell: a small barred window that looked
out over a beautiful mountain vista. You could even slide the pane
to one side to let in fresh air. Was it cruel or kind to give
prisoners a taste of such freedom? I couldn’t decide.

“
Pssst.”

At first I thought it was the pipes
hissing, but then I heard it again: “Pssst.” It was as forceful as
a rattlesnake hissing.

“
Pssst yourself,” I said
back.

“
I’m your neighbor,” said
a voice from the other side of the wall. I recognized it. The woman
who’d been sassing the guards.

“
Howdy neighbor,” I said
brightly.

She did not laugh. Instead, a thick
brown arm snaked around the edge of the wall dividing my cell from
hers and poked its way into my cell. “Come here,” she said. “Let me
get a look at you.”

I stared at the hand dangling there,
trying to feel its way through my bars, and I didn’t really think
it was a look she wanted to get so much as a grope. “I don’t think
so,” I said. “I’m not in a meeting-new-people mood.”

“
Yeah,” she said
unexpectedly, her voice softening. “I know what you mean. But the
first week is the worst. You’ll get used to it. I’ve been here six
years and I’ve got eighty more to go.” Her laugh was a booming
sound and brought immediate catcalls to shut up from the rest of
the residents on our row. 

“
My name’s Peppa,” the
voice said. “What’s yours?”

Some undercover investigator I was. I
came this close to saying “Casey” before I caught myself. “Debbie,”
I said. “Debbie Little.”