A Knife in the Heart

by William W. Johnstone; J. A. Johnstone

  “Well, Janice might need some help.”

  The bacon in Fallon’s mouth lost its flavor, and he swallowed, washed it down with coffee, and set the cup on the saucer. “I don’t believe I was privy to that conversation.”

  “You were outside with Rachel Renee and Elliott,” she told him. “Janice and I were doing the dishes.”

  “I see.” He patted his mouth with his napkin.

  “Janice is also a seamstress,” Christina said. “She wants a day to work on the dresses she makes for Mrs. Peterson’s shop, and do the hemming and things, sew buttons on shirts, and do some work for herself.”

  “She’d have Saturday and Sunday off,” Fallon said.

  “Saturday, she works in Mrs. Peterson’s shop. Sunday, as you might recall, is a day of rest.”

  Fallon made himself drink more coffee. “So, we could hold school Monday through Thursday.”

  “You could. But Janice and I decided that wouldn’t be good for the prisoners. So I would teach on Fridays.”

  “The budget Monty Berrien managed to finesse gave us only one teacher.”

  “Which is what you’d have. One teacher. Just filled by two highly talented women. Janice would be paid for four days’ work. I would collect for just one. At a salary of five hundred dollars a year, the week of Christmas off, along with Thanksgiving, Independence Day, New Year’s Eve, and New Year’s Day, and the Monday after Easter, that would be ten dollars a week. Janice would take home eight dollars, and I would take home two.”

  “That doesn’t seem worth the trouble,” Fallon said.

  “It’s not. Especially when you take into account that had you hired a man to teach, he would be earning a hundred dollars more a year than a woman.”

  Fallon began to regret he had ever listened to Ben Lawless’s dream.

  He forked some eggs into his mouth. Too much salt. Not enough pepper. Should have used more bacon grease to get better flavor. Swallowed. Found the coffee cup again. Sipped. Scratched his head.

  “Well,” he said. “We’ll have to see if this actually happens.” He realized his wife could take that the wrong way, so he quickly added, “Having a school. For the prisoners. I have to find a place . . .”

  “That should not be hard,” Christina said. “There has to be a spot in the old prison. This new one won’t be ready for some time.”

  “And then I’d have to figure out how to schedule the guards.” That idea came to Fallon just then.

  “What do the guards have to do with a school for prisoners?” Christina asked.

  Fallon said, “Well, we’d need to have a guard in the school.”

  She set her knife on her plate and folded her arms. “You think we need a guard . . . to protect us from . . . embezzlers . . . counterfeiters . . . forgers?” Her eyes did her patented roll. “You said yourself, darling, that the violent men would not be attending class, with the exception of, I’m guessing, Ben Lawless.”

  “Ben’s not a threat to anyone,” Fallon said softly.

  “Not anymore.”

  “So why would we need a guard?”

  “Yes, Papa,” Rachel Renee said, “since only the gooder prisoners would be learning to write and read.”

  They have joined forces against me, Fallon thought. Women!

  “For the protection of the teachers,” Fallon said, and let his eyes bore into his wife’s. “Whomever we may hire for that job.”

  A smile rose across Christina’s face. “My love, do you remember a man named Justice?”

  Sighing, Fallon wished he had not been feeling so noble this morning, that he had left cooking to Christina and had taken his meal either in one of the cafés on his way to work or even at the prison dining hall.

  “Yes, sweetheart, I do.”

  Justice. The insane Southern plantation owner from Louisiana and Texas who had tried to relaunch the Civil War—before Fallon and other agents had thwarted that conspiracy. One of those agents, he knew, had been Christina.

  “Well, now, if I could handle that renegade and butcher, I think I can take care of myself against an artist who makes fake money or an old butcher like Ben Lawless. Before we ever met, my love, I’ll have you know that I worked right alongside a bunch of anarchists who planned to bomb Union Station. And the Elton gang, operating along the Ohio–Pennsylvania border . . . do you remember them?”

  “Yes.”

  “They haven’t robbed any federal paymasters in ten years, my love, because I arrested all three of them, testified at their trial, and saw them off to prison.”

  “You did all those things, Mommy?” Rachel Renee asked.

  “She did,” Fallon answered, “and more than that.”

  “Wow.” The five-year-old jumped down from her chair, and ran to her mother to give her a hug. “You’re the bravest mommy who ever lived. I’m so proud of you.”

  “So am I,” Fallon said.

  Rachel Renee looked over the tabletop at her father. “What did you do, Papa?”

  “Not a whole lot, honey.”

  “He’s fibbing, Rachel Renee,” Christina said. “Your father is the bravest man I’ve ever known. When you’re old enough, I’ll show you some of the men he brought to justice. They should be writing dime novels about him, not Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill, and Jesse James.”

  “Is that true, Papa?”

  “It’s true,” Christina answered for him. “It’s hard to believe, seeing what a sweetheart he is around the house.”

  “All right,” Fallon said. “Let’s finish eating. I have to get to work.”

  “What will you be doing today?” his daughter asked.

  “Finding a school?” Christina inquired. “Since you’ve already, obviously, found your two teachers.”

  “No,” Fallon said. “I have to figure out something else today. But the school will happen. And, yeah, I know two perfectly capable women who will get that job.”

  Christina grinned. “Without guards, right?”

  “Wrong.” He raised his cup of coffee, drank, and smiled. “Honey,” he said, “some of those guards need teaching worse than many of the prisoners.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  He tapped on the door, and Montgomery Berrien looked up over his spectacles and immediately turned whiter than one of Fallon’s mother’s sheets after she’d done her spring cleaning. “Bring your notepad, the ledger, and some pencils,” Fallon said, beckoning him with a crooked finger. “To my office.” Stepping back into the hallway, he roamed down to the hall, where most of the guards were finishing their chuck. Unlike prisoners, guards could talk when they ate, and Fallon’s ears hurt from the boisterous laughter, farts, and profanity until he found Big Tim O’Connor, who wasn’t talking, just drinking coffee and tapping a new plug of tobacco against his empty plate.

  “Before you head to the new prison,” Fallon said, “stop by my office.”

  O’Connor’s big head nodded, and Fallon walked back out.

  Berrien was already seated in his chair across from Fallon’s desk, which Fallon began cleaning off. He turned, nodded politely at the timid number pusher, and happened to see Elliott Jefferson walking down the hall, on his way outside to start another shift. That triggered another idea, so Fallon moved back out and called the young man’s name.

  “I need you in my office for about ten minutes,” Fallon told him. He looked at the big guard who had been walking out with Jefferson. “Can you handle things without Elliott for a bit, Hans?” The German’s eyes shone with glee, and he muttered an answer that sounded musical for the big Hun.

  Fallon was stretching another blueprint of the new prison when O’Connor came inside.

  “All right, gentlemen,” Fallon said. “Gather around.”

  The four men stood close to the desk, and Fallon tapped on the blueprint.

  “I think I’ve come up with a way that can cut down on the number of guards we use—and the hours they work,” he said and picked up a pencil and tapped the map. “Barbed wire,” he said.


  “What?” O’Connor asked.

  “Barbed wire. Thirty-some-odd years ago this farmer named Glidden got a patent—”

  “I know what bob wire is,” the big man said, mispronouncing the name of the invention as many people were prone to do. “But we don’t have the money . . .”

  “Mr. Berrien assures me that we do,” Fallon said.

  “You mean to tell me that you’re gonna put up a strand of . . .”

  “A fence,” Fallon said. “Not just one strand. A fence of barbed wire.”

  “How high?” Elliott Jefferson asked.

  A good question. Fallon said, “Seven feet. Six strands tight at the top, in case some hooligan climbs up that far without ripping his palms to shreds or tearing his striped britches off.”

  “Bob wire won’t keep a jackrabbit out,” O’Connor protested.

  “I don’t care how many jackrabbits get out, or in,” Fallon said. “As long as no convicts make it out.”

  “They’ll just cut the wire,” O’Connor said. “You need a stone wall.”

  “The stone wall’s going up. Along with the first cell block,” Fallon said, shaking his head. “I know a barbed wire fence won’t stop any determined man from getting out, but it will slow him down enough that guards will be able to stop him. I didn’t say we’d be eliminating any of the fifty guards we have on the payroll, Tim. We’ll still need men, lots of them, but not working them to death the way we have been doing.”

  O’Connor and Jefferson stared at the blueprint. O’Connor pulled the new plug from his trouser pocket and tore off a big chunk with his tobacco-stained teeth. As his mouth worked on the hunk, he turned to stare at the bookkeeper. “You think this is a good idea?”

  “Well . . .” the little man said and started sweating.

  Then O’Connor found the trash can and spit, wiped his mouth, and faced Fallon again. “This place is gonna be seven hundred acres, Hank. That’s bigger than a section, more than one square mile. You can’t fence all that . . .”

  “We won’t fence all seven hundred acres, Tim,” Fallon said. “We don’t guard all seven hundred acres now.” He tapped on the blueprint. “That’s the shoe factory, proposed shoe factory I should say, and this is the maintenance facility. Foundations haven’t even been dug yet for those—and by my reckoning, they won’t even be started before you and I are sitting in our rocking chairs, with wooden teeth, and nothing to do but tell our grandkids stories about what it was like in our youth.” Now he turned the pencil around, and drew a line, eventually making a rectangle box.

  “This is where we’re working right now. Mostly on the first cell block. That’s all we really have to enclose. Guards will be posted outside and inside the fence.” Fallon marked places for the best positioning, then pointed out a place with easy access. “The gate will be here. The only gate. That’s where prisoners march in and out, and we can also deliver supplies as needed. Extra guards will be put at the gate.” He looked into the faces of O’Connor and Jefferson, liking their reaction. So Fallon continued. “We’ll construct a temporary guard tower here.” He drew a circle. “Twelve feet high. The guard will have a clear view of the whole zone where we’ll be working.” He made another circle on the other side, catty-corner from the first. “Another here. When we move locations, start work on say . . . here . . .” He tapped the spot where the hospital would be built. “All we have to do is move the fence.” And Fallon showed where the next fence would be put.

  “We just keep this up,” Fallon said. “Till we’re done. And then we can move the barbed wire to help cover those seven hundred acres that will be fenced in according to the blueprint. Just with fences much higher than what we’ll have here.”

  Stepping back, he waited. O’Connor looked up, glanced at young Elliott Jefferson, and spit again into the trash can. He quickly spun to the bookkeeper and asked, “Well, how much will it cost to get all this stuff?”

  Fallon already had the paper on his desk. He grabbed it and stepped around, showing it to the captain of guards, but letting Jefferson see the figures and budget, too.

  “Here’s what we need, and the prices from the merchant in town who got me the best deal. John Halleck, at Halleck’s Mercantile, Hardware, and Sundries. Mr. Berrien says if we buy this many spools of this brand of wire, we should be good.” He ran his finger under the name of the wire. “This brand. Don’t get any other. This wire has enough barbs to strike fear into the heart of even Ben Lawless, and it’s cheaper than other brands.”

  He tapped at another line entry. “This is the wood we’ll need.” He moved up and down the other materials that would be required—kegs of nails, mortar to secure the foundation of the guard towers, hammers, saws, and lumber. And at last, he showed both O’Connor and Jefferson the cost of the project.

  O’Connor swallowed and looked grimly at Fallon. “That’s still a lot of money.” He turned to the paling bookkeeper. “Mr. Berrien, are you sure we can afford the cost of this?”

  “Well . . .” The man appeared to be about to wet his pants.

  Fallon spoke up. “Mr. Berrien has found us a generous donor. The donor, who asks for anonymity, has agreed to foot the whole bill.”

  After shifting the tobacco to his other cheek, O’Connor slowly started moving his head up and down and finally grinned. “Well, if we could do that, it would make all us guards a whole lot less ornery.” He lifted his right hand and clamped down hard on Fallon’s shoulder. “Boss, Hank, by golly, you’re not only a hell of a fighter, you got brains, too. Brains no other warden I ever worked for had.”

  “I’m glad you think so.” Fallon faced Montgomery Berrien. “Do you think our donor could fund this project immediately?”

  The crook nodded in a hurry, and stuttered, sweating even more profusely, “I’m . . . c-c-c-certain . . . h-h-h-he . . . Y-y-yes.” The speech impediment stopped. “In fact, I shall go . . . call . . . yes . . . call upon him . . . and I’ll be back . . . in forty minutes.”

  “Good,” Fallon said. “Forty minutes. And there’s no need for you to go to the railroad station or the stagecoach station or the livery stables, Monty. We’ll see you back here in forty minutes. Forty.”

  Montgomery Berrien hurried through the door.

  “What was that about?” young Jefferson asked. “Railroads and liveries and all that?”

  “A private joke.” Fallon laughed, and began rolling up the blueprint. “Well, gentlemen, I’ve kept you from your work long enough.”

  “Yeah,” the big Irishman said. He spit, wiped his mouth, and headed for the door.

  “But,” Fallon called out, “there’s just one more thing I’d like you two to think on.”

  They stared at him.

  “Where can we open up a school inside the old prison?”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  “You still thinking school?” O’Connor asked. “For them sons of strumpets serving time here?”

  “Yes,” Fallon said. “Teaching those who are illiterate how to read and write. How to do arithmetic. Preparing them for a chance at a normal life when they have finished their sentences. So they might not come back here or another prison.”

  O’Connor looked at Fallon as if questioning the sanity of the new warden.

  “I told you before, Tim, not the Bowen Hardins, men like that,” Fallon said. “The ones who have shown good behavior, are minimal risk for trying to escape or cause any sort of disturbance.”

  “Like a . . . counterfeiter?”

  Fallon smiled. “Well, I would assume that a man with the brains to make plates that can duplicate federal currency is probably fairly well-educated.”

  “If he was that smart,” O’Connor counted, “he wouldn’t be incarcerated at Leavenworth.”

  With a smile, Fallon nodded his acceptance of the captain’s counterpoint.

  “How many inmates would you be teaching?” O’ Connor asked.

  Fallon thought back to the subscription school at Gads Hill, Missouri, and of the various scho
ols he had been forced to give talks to in Cheyenne and other towns and cities in Wyoming. “Fifteen,” he guessed. “To start off with. Maybe twenty.” He turned to Elliott Jefferson for confirmation.

  “That’d be about right,” the young guard said.

  “If they’re minimum risks,” O’Connor said, “I’d guess two guards.” He grinned. “Maybe some boys who need a little reminder of how to cross their t’s and do long division.”

  “That’s what we were thinking, too.” Fallon liked how this was going, and he hated to bring up the next fact. “One of the inmates who’ll be going to our school will be Ben Lawless.”

  The guard’s face turned to stone. He let that sink in for almost a full minute before he said, “You said minimum security.”

  “I did.”

  “You bring Lawless into that classroom, you’ll need thirty guards.”

  “I don’t think so, Tim.”

  The big man shook his head. “You willing to bet on that, Hank?”

  “I’m not a gambling man, Tim. Ben’s an old man. Remember: He’s the one who actually gave me the idea.”

  “Likely so he can figure out a way to escape. Who’s gonna be foolish enough to teach these ignorant brigands? Someone from one of the crazy houses. Something like that?”

  “Our wives,” Elliott Jefferson said. “My Janice.” He nodded at Fallon. “His wife, Christina.”

  “They’d make fine hostages,” O’Connor said when he realized they were serious.

  “That’s why you’ll have two guards in the room with them,” Fallon told him.

  “You two boys hate your women so much you want to put them in the same room with the scum of our United States?” O’Connor practically shouted.

  “I’m not putting them in with Indianola Anderson, Tim.”

  “Ben Lawless is just as bad.”

  “Twenty years ago, maybe. Today, I don’t think so.”

  O’Connor opened his mouth to start another attack, but Fallon raised his hand to stop that. “We’re doing this, Tim. We’re going to start a school for the prisoners who want to learn, who don’t want to return to prison when they walk out of the gates. Twenty prisoners. Two guards. One teacher. Christina will only be doing this on Fridays or if Janice has something come up. Five days a week. Say six hours a day. So where can we find a classroom that will work?”