Chapter 1
Somebody was going to get hurt. I could feel it.
The night was blanketed by an uncomfortable calm, the kind of silence that makes a correctional officer uneasy. Because it almost always means something bad is going to happen very soon. There were too many eyes shifting, too many unhappy glances floating to the surface of that sea of orange jumpsuits. The day just felt wrong and pregnant with the promise of random violence.
And this prelude to a nightmare couldn't have come at a worse time. The kittens had just been herded in.
'Kittens' were the new arrivals, sometimes new to that particular prison, but usually new to prison life. They were the wide-eyed ingénue, the sweethearts who hadn't yet learned their way around the jungle. They were prime cattle on their way to the butcher's table.
Marisol was a Kitten. Just days past her eighteenth birthday and a hair over ninety pounds, she looked like somebody who would scamper away at the hint of lawlessness – not like a drug runner's girlfriend who had hid pot in her panties on her way back from visits to her native Guatemala.
And Daniqua didn't look like a car thief and crack addict. But there she was being ushered through the doors like a million other kittens with the same story.
These girls skulked through the check-in process – fingerprints, pictures, confiscating of personal effects – with the frightened glare of trapped squirrels. But they'd ease into the stream after a while. They'd learn how things worked in a maximum-security prison, and they'd take care of themselves just fine, you could tell.
But Pepper was a different story. Her you worried about from day one.
There was a sweetness alive in her, a charm untainted by that place that made me almost forget that she was there because she pled guilty to the stabbing death of two innocent people. She didn't belong in that place and she knew it. But she wouldn't have guessed in a dozen lifetimes that somebody would try to take her head off before the day was done.
A scuffle breaking out was always the easiest way for things to get scary. A harmless fistfight could become a mess. And a mess could melt into a full-tilt riot.
Something ugly had erupted in quad four, needed to be stamped out. Two inmates trading jabs, nothing serious – yet. Sergeant Forster stumbled onto the storm first, barked out orders that nobody obeyed, then knifed herself between the warring bodies. Foster was like that. Built like an upright bulldog with a disposition to match, she got what she wanted no matter how many bruises she had to take to get it.
But scuffles could be tricky and the bulldog needed help slowing that one down.
So I dove in shortly after, yanking limbs apart and adding my voice to a chorus of mayhem. In minutes the combatants were separated to the mock applause of the audience. Nightmare averted.
But something didn't feel right about the way those fists were flying – too wild, too undisciplined. Like kids on a playground mimicking Hollywood heavyweights. The punches never seemed to land, never found a soft target. Not once.
The whole thing smelled like a 10-4, a distraction orchestrated by another inmate, somebody long gone from the scene, taking advantage of the occupied eyes and slipping into the shadows for five minutes of sex or maybe drugs. Foster wordlessly agreed with me, began sniffing around for strays.
Work in that place long enough and you grow a second set of eyes, an ability to scan everything, even what can't be seen.
I'd only been there about a year, not long enough to have a finely developed sense of telepathy. But somehow when I heard the scream I knew whose it was. And I was almost certain that it was too late.
I scrambled from the catwalk, down an empty hallway, calling "Man in the building!" – prison policy for a male CO entering the dorms. I followed the shrieks and found Pepper alone on the floor, shaking. I'd never seen eyes wider.
"What's happened?" I asked, head swiveling, checking corners for surprises.
But the words wouldn't come. Her mouth was open but releasing only choppy breaths.
I stooped, brushed the hair from her face to reveal a fresh scar – not pretty, but not too deep. It looked like a near miss. Somebody took a swipe, hoping to take her out, but didn't quite connect. That was my guess.
And I had to guess because she still wasn't talking.
I stood, followed what sounded like footsteps in the hallway, gave chase. I checked a few quiet spots and heard a stirring in a closet. I yanked the door open and the culprit was there, steely-eyed, crow bar at her feet. Too tired to run – and where would she go anyway?
"Dekker?" I asked. She nodded.
I was getting good at recognizing faces, a skill that came in handy. I also knew a little of her rap sheet: Taniqua Dekker, third degree murder. Shot an abusive pimp twice in the chest, might have gotten it down to manslaughter if she hadn't told a story on the witness stand that conflicted with earlier testimony. A lifer, quiet, mostly minded her own damn business. Which is why the sudden flair-up with Pepper was such a puzzle.
And like Pepper she wasn't talking. So I took her for a little walk to my supervisor's office. But we might as well have been questioning a fire hydrant for all the info we got from her. She grunted a few times, shrugged her shoulders when asked what this newcomer could have done to deserve a crow bar to the head.
Sergeant Jennings was an ex-army crew cut who worked too many hours for not enough pay. His day was too cluttered to play detective, so this was going to have to be somebody else's mystery to solve. Besides, skirmishes like that happened on a daily basis. Who had time to waste on them? Not him.
"So you understand, Miss Dekker, that this type of behavior will not be tolerated under any circumstances, correct? That we are a maximum-security unit and will be respected as such. That we will hold any and all inmates fully accountable for behavior that falls outside of the acceptable range. Correct?"
She mumbled something resembling "Yes."
"Please escort Miss Dekker to the single cell unit," he sighed in my general direction.
"Yes, sir."
Decker was escorted to her locker to gather her things and was promptly assigned to a week in single cell. And that was that.
But things weren't adding up and we both knew it.
"I would say is something to do with hair, this incident was."
This was Yanko, a big Russian bear of a man with a smile that threatened to swallow you whole. How this gentle giant wound up in a CO's uniform was a story he hadn't yet told. He was on his third beer, which meant he would soon be cutting lose with volcanic laughter and uncomfortable sharing.
Such behavior would not be unusual at The Full Boar. It was a biker bar forever trapped in the loudest, tackiest day of 1977. Cheap leather seats, the occasional knife fight, a juke box that offered only an assortment of Doobie Brothers tunes. But when the COs needed a drink after work, the tiny town of Crimson Lake, Minnesota gave us no other options.
"You know how are girls with hair," Yanko went on. "Could've been anything. A comb borrowed and not returned. Jealousy over how long is bangs. Anything. Girls are weird with hair."
Foster's unsmiling face turned away. With a headshake, she was on her feet and off to the ladies room.
"I'll be back after a piss," she groaned.
We made a strange trio. But Foster may have been the strangest of us. She almost never spoke. And if anything in life gave her the smallest amount of pleasure, she kept it well hidden. Spookily stoic, but reliable as a sunrise. Like a correctional officer robot whose maker forgot to program in a sense of humor.
With Foster walking away, I pointed at her with my chin and tossed a question Yanko's way:
"Have you ever seen Foster laugh? Seriously. Or even crack a smile?"
"Nope," he answered, leaning in for the punch line:
"But then only have I known her for nine years."
After several booth-shaking seconds of laughter he somehow landed in this somber place:
"God, I am so sick of my wife."
This was Yanko's way, volunteering information nobody asked for. It was always temping to ease the conversation into neutral territory: the weather, work, even politics. Anything but the ongoing horror show of his unhappy marriage. But somehow these talks reminded me of the way I felt about car wrecks: They horrified me – but damned if I could ever look away.
"I'm sorry to hear that, Yanko."
"She is talking always. Every minute of every day. About this, about that, about everything, about nothing. Even she cannot sleep without talking."
"Well, she sounds… talkative. I guess."
"Plus also is this: No more erections from me are possible. The lion is forever asleep."
With flawless timing Foster came to the rescue:
"So what happened to Dekker?"
I gave her the rundown. The robotic speech from Jennings, the week in single cell, the unanswered questions.
"I'm wondering what happens if the beef between the two of them is still there after Dekker comes out of single cell," I said.
They stared at me like I was a child posing questions about Santa Claus.
"Here's what you do," Yanko said. "You do nothing, is what you do. You do your job and nothing more."
"Nothing more," Foster echoed, forever playing pip to Yanko's Gladys Knight.
"Isn't my job to maintain order among the inmates?"
"No, your job, my friend, is to keep disorder from getting out of control," Yanko said. "There is no order in that place."
"None," said Foster.
"I just want to protect – " I stopped myself before adding "her." "I want to protect any inmate that needs help."
Yanko tilted his face at me. Foster looked away. I was pathetic in their eyes, beyond help.
"Look, you are new, yes? Haven't been around for long time. This movie you have not seen yet. So let me fast forward to the end: nobody gets saved," Yanko said. "Some of inmates will die there, some will get out and do something stupid enough to get back in. A few of them will get out and live lives that are slightly less crappy than the ones they had inside. You will not change them. You will not save them. You will not matter. You will do your job and stop trying to matter."
I had no reply. It was late and I'd had too many Rum and Cokes to put up a defense. Foster – our designated driver – checked her watch, then gestured toward the parking lot. And with that, the evening was over.
On the way home my mind was flooded with too many questions, but really just one: How did I wind up here?
None of this made any sense. The nightmare of a new job. This weird desire to matter, to save somebody.
Just a few years earlier I was an FBI agent, climbing my way up the bureau ladder, full of promise. How did I wind up here?
It was nearly two in the morning and I was eager to get back home. But I wasn't ready for bed just yet. With all this on my mind I had some more drinking to do.
The night was blanketed by an uncomfortable calm, the kind of silence that makes a correctional officer uneasy. Because it almost always means something bad is going to happen very soon. There were too many eyes shifting, too many unhappy glances floating to the surface of that sea of orange jumpsuits. The day just felt wrong and pregnant with the promise of random violence.
And this prelude to a nightmare couldn't have come at a worse time. The kittens had just been herded in.
'Kittens' were the new arrivals, sometimes new to that particular prison, but usually new to prison life. They were the wide-eyed ingénue, the sweethearts who hadn't yet learned their way around the jungle. They were prime cattle on their way to the butcher's table.
Marisol was a Kitten. Just days past her eighteenth birthday and a hair over ninety pounds, she looked like somebody who would scamper away at the hint of lawlessness – not like a drug runner's girlfriend who had hid pot in her panties on her way back from visits to her native Guatemala.
And Daniqua didn't look like a car thief and crack addict. But there she was being ushered through the doors like a million other kittens with the same story.
These girls skulked through the check-in process – fingerprints, pictures, confiscating of personal effects – with the frightened glare of trapped squirrels. But they'd ease into the stream after a while. They'd learn how things worked in a maximum-security prison, and they'd take care of themselves just fine, you could tell.
But Pepper was a different story. Her you worried about from day one.
There was a sweetness alive in her, a charm untainted by that place that made me almost forget that she was there because she pled guilty to the stabbing death of two innocent people. She didn't belong in that place and she knew it. But she wouldn't have guessed in a dozen lifetimes that somebody would try to take her head off before the day was done.
***
A scuffle breaking out was always the easiest way for things to get scary. A harmless fistfight could become a mess. And a mess could melt into a full-tilt riot.
Something ugly had erupted in quad four, needed to be stamped out. Two inmates trading jabs, nothing serious – yet. Sergeant Forster stumbled onto the storm first, barked out orders that nobody obeyed, then knifed herself between the warring bodies. Foster was like that. Built like an upright bulldog with a disposition to match, she got what she wanted no matter how many bruises she had to take to get it.
But scuffles could be tricky and the bulldog needed help slowing that one down.
So I dove in shortly after, yanking limbs apart and adding my voice to a chorus of mayhem. In minutes the combatants were separated to the mock applause of the audience. Nightmare averted.
But something didn't feel right about the way those fists were flying – too wild, too undisciplined. Like kids on a playground mimicking Hollywood heavyweights. The punches never seemed to land, never found a soft target. Not once.
The whole thing smelled like a 10-4, a distraction orchestrated by another inmate, somebody long gone from the scene, taking advantage of the occupied eyes and slipping into the shadows for five minutes of sex or maybe drugs. Foster wordlessly agreed with me, began sniffing around for strays.
Work in that place long enough and you grow a second set of eyes, an ability to scan everything, even what can't be seen.
I'd only been there about a year, not long enough to have a finely developed sense of telepathy. But somehow when I heard the scream I knew whose it was. And I was almost certain that it was too late.
I scrambled from the catwalk, down an empty hallway, calling "Man in the building!" – prison policy for a male CO entering the dorms. I followed the shrieks and found Pepper alone on the floor, shaking. I'd never seen eyes wider.
"What's happened?" I asked, head swiveling, checking corners for surprises.
But the words wouldn't come. Her mouth was open but releasing only choppy breaths.
I stooped, brushed the hair from her face to reveal a fresh scar – not pretty, but not too deep. It looked like a near miss. Somebody took a swipe, hoping to take her out, but didn't quite connect. That was my guess.
And I had to guess because she still wasn't talking.
I stood, followed what sounded like footsteps in the hallway, gave chase. I checked a few quiet spots and heard a stirring in a closet. I yanked the door open and the culprit was there, steely-eyed, crow bar at her feet. Too tired to run – and where would she go anyway?
"Dekker?" I asked. She nodded.
I was getting good at recognizing faces, a skill that came in handy. I also knew a little of her rap sheet: Taniqua Dekker, third degree murder. Shot an abusive pimp twice in the chest, might have gotten it down to manslaughter if she hadn't told a story on the witness stand that conflicted with earlier testimony. A lifer, quiet, mostly minded her own damn business. Which is why the sudden flair-up with Pepper was such a puzzle.
And like Pepper she wasn't talking. So I took her for a little walk to my supervisor's office. But we might as well have been questioning a fire hydrant for all the info we got from her. She grunted a few times, shrugged her shoulders when asked what this newcomer could have done to deserve a crow bar to the head.
Sergeant Jennings was an ex-army crew cut who worked too many hours for not enough pay. His day was too cluttered to play detective, so this was going to have to be somebody else's mystery to solve. Besides, skirmishes like that happened on a daily basis. Who had time to waste on them? Not him.
"So you understand, Miss Dekker, that this type of behavior will not be tolerated under any circumstances, correct? That we are a maximum-security unit and will be respected as such. That we will hold any and all inmates fully accountable for behavior that falls outside of the acceptable range. Correct?"
She mumbled something resembling "Yes."
"Please escort Miss Dekker to the single cell unit," he sighed in my general direction.
"Yes, sir."
Decker was escorted to her locker to gather her things and was promptly assigned to a week in single cell. And that was that.
But things weren't adding up and we both knew it.
***
"I would say is something to do with hair, this incident was."
This was Yanko, a big Russian bear of a man with a smile that threatened to swallow you whole. How this gentle giant wound up in a CO's uniform was a story he hadn't yet told. He was on his third beer, which meant he would soon be cutting lose with volcanic laughter and uncomfortable sharing.
Such behavior would not be unusual at The Full Boar. It was a biker bar forever trapped in the loudest, tackiest day of 1977. Cheap leather seats, the occasional knife fight, a juke box that offered only an assortment of Doobie Brothers tunes. But when the COs needed a drink after work, the tiny town of Crimson Lake, Minnesota gave us no other options.
"You know how are girls with hair," Yanko went on. "Could've been anything. A comb borrowed and not returned. Jealousy over how long is bangs. Anything. Girls are weird with hair."
Foster's unsmiling face turned away. With a headshake, she was on her feet and off to the ladies room.
"I'll be back after a piss," she groaned.
We made a strange trio. But Foster may have been the strangest of us. She almost never spoke. And if anything in life gave her the smallest amount of pleasure, she kept it well hidden. Spookily stoic, but reliable as a sunrise. Like a correctional officer robot whose maker forgot to program in a sense of humor.
With Foster walking away, I pointed at her with my chin and tossed a question Yanko's way:
"Have you ever seen Foster laugh? Seriously. Or even crack a smile?"
"Nope," he answered, leaning in for the punch line:
"But then only have I known her for nine years."
After several booth-shaking seconds of laughter he somehow landed in this somber place:
"God, I am so sick of my wife."
This was Yanko's way, volunteering information nobody asked for. It was always temping to ease the conversation into neutral territory: the weather, work, even politics. Anything but the ongoing horror show of his unhappy marriage. But somehow these talks reminded me of the way I felt about car wrecks: They horrified me – but damned if I could ever look away.
"I'm sorry to hear that, Yanko."
"She is talking always. Every minute of every day. About this, about that, about everything, about nothing. Even she cannot sleep without talking."
"Well, she sounds… talkative. I guess."
"Plus also is this: No more erections from me are possible. The lion is forever asleep."
With flawless timing Foster came to the rescue:
"So what happened to Dekker?"
I gave her the rundown. The robotic speech from Jennings, the week in single cell, the unanswered questions.
"I'm wondering what happens if the beef between the two of them is still there after Dekker comes out of single cell," I said.
They stared at me like I was a child posing questions about Santa Claus.
"Here's what you do," Yanko said. "You do nothing, is what you do. You do your job and nothing more."
"Nothing more," Foster echoed, forever playing pip to Yanko's Gladys Knight.
"Isn't my job to maintain order among the inmates?"
"No, your job, my friend, is to keep disorder from getting out of control," Yanko said. "There is no order in that place."
"None," said Foster.
"I just want to protect – " I stopped myself before adding "her." "I want to protect any inmate that needs help."
Yanko tilted his face at me. Foster looked away. I was pathetic in their eyes, beyond help.
"Look, you are new, yes? Haven't been around for long time. This movie you have not seen yet. So let me fast forward to the end: nobody gets saved," Yanko said. "Some of inmates will die there, some will get out and do something stupid enough to get back in. A few of them will get out and live lives that are slightly less crappy than the ones they had inside. You will not change them. You will not save them. You will not matter. You will do your job and stop trying to matter."
I had no reply. It was late and I'd had too many Rum and Cokes to put up a defense. Foster – our designated driver – checked her watch, then gestured toward the parking lot. And with that, the evening was over.
On the way home my mind was flooded with too many questions, but really just one: How did I wind up here?
None of this made any sense. The nightmare of a new job. This weird desire to matter, to save somebody.
Just a few years earlier I was an FBI agent, climbing my way up the bureau ladder, full of promise. How did I wind up here?
It was nearly two in the morning and I was eager to get back home. But I wasn't ready for bed just yet. With all this on my mind I had some more drinking to do.
