by Tom Barber
‘Hoffmeier and Kattar.’ He lowered the radio. ‘Lighting this thing off didn’t do them much good,’ he commented to his fellow CO.
The sergeant had left Marquez outside to return to Gatlin’s central control center, and after hearing the transmission, took a pen and then crossed the two men’s names off a list pinned to a board, showing C Block’s cell layout and which ones the prisoners had been assigned to. Their deaths would have to be investigated, but were deserved as far as he was concerned; not only had the pair been convicted of first degree murder almost fifteen years ago, getting put away for life for blasting a family of five apart with two sawn-off shotguns during a home invasion, they’d also killed two of his colleagues and started the riot.
‘Williams, how you doin’?’ he asked over the radio, while updating the tally of the injured and dead.
‘Almost done with checking upper deck in C Block.’
‘Gonna need a bag for Mendevev,’ another voice said over the radio as Williams continued with his cell checks on C Block’s upper tier, ensuring every man was accounted for before the two day lockdown punishment started. He wasn’t carrying out the task alone, another CO checking cells below while some of the riot officers were positioned around the debris-littered block in case of more trouble, waiting for checks to be completed. The housing was a mess of debris, strewn toilet paper and blood on the floor, the smell of burning lingering in the air.
Williams stopped at the next cell on his list, seeing the large biker from Georgia standing by the closed bars. ‘You’re bleeding, Prez,’ Williams said, looking through the grille at the man’s arm, the blood evident in the low light of the cell block.
‘I’m good, boss.’
‘Need to get it looked at,’ he said, going to his radio.
‘I said I’m good. I’m not going to sickbay with a scratch. It’s fine.’
The CO held onto his radio for a moment, then let go. He liked ‘Prez’ Rainey; the man had never caused them any trouble and he’d also heard that the biker had intervened to prevent his fellow CO Andrea from being raped before the NYPD pair took over. Instead, Williams glanced at the big man’s cellmate, who was lying on his bunk facing the wall with his thin top-sheet halfway up his back, his arm tucked under his head as he slept. ‘Reyes, you alright?’
No reply came, just quiet rhythmic snoring. ‘Ice in his veins, I guess,’ Prez said. ‘Trying to stay out of trouble until release.’
Williams nodded; Reyes wasn’t a troublemaker either. He ticked them both off his list and continued down the tier.
‘Prez and Reyes present,’ he said over the radio, moving on, but then another voice cut in over the channel.
‘Sarge, it’s Anderson. I’m checking lower tier. We could have a problem.’
‘What is it?’
‘Can you list off the dead and injured again?’
In the control center, the sergeant read from his most up-to-date tally.
Inside C Block, the officer called Anderson stared at a two-man cell with a pair of empty bunks, bloodstains from where his fellow CO Pena had been killed still pooled on the lino twenty feet to his right.
‘Oh Jesus,’ he whispered, hearing the list while looking at the cell in front of him.
‘What’s wrong?
‘It’s the Loughlin brothers, Sarge. They’re not here.’
SIX
Around eleven miles from the prison, the laundry truck which had driven out of the facility shortly after the riot had started was on its way back to the company depot when the driver got a call from his supervisor. He answered using the hands-free system, keeping his eyes on the road. ‘Hello?’
‘I heard a riot broke out in Gatlin. You make it out in one piece?’
‘Yeah. Left after the alarms started going. Didn’t hang around. Guards checked the truck at the gate.’
‘How thorough?’
The driver paused. ‘They had a good look inside. No extra passengers.’
‘So where are you? What’s taken so long?‘
‘Got held up at an accident, but on my way.’
‘Get straight back here, keep the truck locked and we’ll check again. Gatlin just called saying they’ve got a pair of inmates unaccounted for. These two don’t sound like anyone you’d want as extra cargo.’
The driver ended the call and allowed himself to swallow. ‘Good,’ a voice from behind him said softly. A clump of the man’s hair was being gripped in one thick hand, a crudely-fashioned shiv held to his neck with the other. There was a sliding panel connecting the front cab to the back and the truck had just got through the traffic build-up caused by the accident when the panel had slid open and the driver found a razor blade held to his throat.
Around them on either side of the highway were banks of trees with their leaves just starting to turn for fall, the nearest town a couple of miles away. The driver saw a car coming towards them and prayed the occupants inside would see what was happening, but the man holding the shiv to his neck slunk down out of sight while keeping a tight grip of the back of the driver’s hair, the blade resting against his carotid artery. The car sped past, the laundry truck driver’s hopes fading with it as he watched the vehicle disappear into the distance in his rearview mirror.
‘Turn off here,’ the voice instructed, the driver seeing a track leading deeper into their rural surroundings coming up on the right. He turned.
‘Now go right.’
He did as he was told, until they ended up on a side track that cut a line between some fields of corn. The sun was shining and birds were chirping from somewhere. Everything normal.
‘Engine off. Gimme the keys.’
The driver did as ordered, handing them backwards with a trembling hand, and a second later his throat was cut.
‘What’s happened?’ Marquez asked a couple of COs, having picked up on a sudden stir of activity outside the prison’s control center. The remaining pair of US Marshals still on site appeared behind her, also catching on that there was some sort of new trouble.
‘Two of our most dangerous prisoners are missing,’ the sergeant told her.
‘-working the laundry this morning, sir,’ one of the COs in C Block was saying over the radio to the Gatlin staff captain, Marquez and the pair of Marshals listening in. ‘No sign of them down here. All we’ve got is Hoff and Kattar’s bodies.’
‘Who exactly are these escapees?’ the lead deputy Marshal asked.
‘They’re brothers,’ the captain told him. ‘Brooks and Billy Loughlin. Both four years into life sentences. Some of our worst and we’ve got a stacked roster.’
‘And they were tight with Hoff and Kattar,’ the sergeant added. ‘Or it looked like they were.’
‘What were the brothers sent down for?’ Marquez asked.
‘College student from Maine was driving back home for the Thanksgiving break,’ the sergeant explained. ‘Younger brother Billy saw her filling her tank outside Syracuse when he pulled in and decided to follow her. Rammed her off the road in his truck just over the Vermont State Line, kidnapped her. Kept the girl in his basement for almost two weeks, raped her repeatedly while a manhunt was underway.
‘Big brother Brooks found out Billy had her, felt only option left was to kill the girl and dump the body. They cut off her head, her arms and legs, then buried the separate parts around the area, thinking it’d be harder to identify the remains if only pieces were ever found, especially if animals finished her off. But a few days later a walker saw hair sticking out of some disturbed ground and sniffer dogs found some of the rest of the girl. Billy was already a prime suspect from the gas station video and having served time before. Both their DNA profiles came back a hit. Billy from the rape kit, Brooks from her clothing. And bite marks on her body.’
‘I remember this case,’ Marquez said. ‘It reached the major networks.’
‘The two of them had already served time down here at Gatlin, over ten years back. Billy was busted trying to set up a kiddie porn business up near where they
live. He used his brother’s computer, so they arrested and charged him on it too, but their lawyer got their sentences reduced to a nickel. After they killed the girl, their defense tried to claim the brothers were both insane. Jury didn’t buy it, though Brooks almost pulled it off. He’s smart but it wasn’t enough this time. Kidnap across State Lines, rape and murder, on top of the first conviction? They were sent down for life with no chance of parole.’
‘There was a laundry truck on pick-up this morning,’ Marquez said. ‘We saw it leave.’
‘The gate would’ve checked the inside,’ the sergeant said.
‘They did, but it seemed pretty quick.’
‘Call the depot and make sure the truck arrived,’ the captain ordered one of his COs. ‘You just said it yourself, Brooks is smart. If anyone could break out of this place, I’d put my money on that son of a bitch.’
‘Already called ahead, boss. Local PD are heading there ready for a search when it arrives.’
‘Cap, something’s coming over the wire from the labor camp,’ another CO said, holding a phone. ‘Three of their inmates made a run for it this morning too. Pair of them were just found dead, but the other’s still out there.’
‘Who is he?’
‘Craig Loughlin. The youngest brother.’
‘There are three of them here?’ Marquez said.
‘Craig’s not doing life like the other two, he’s only in for a couple years for drug offenses,’ the captain explained. ‘Why he was out at the satellite camp. There’s a lot of these Loughlins up there in New York State near Canada. Cousins, first cousins, second cousins, some marrying each other, all that weird shit. They’ve been responsible for a ton of crime in that area for years. Whole reason Brooks and Billy first got sent down to this place. Get them away from any family members pulling time in New York.’
‘You get many escape attempts here?’ Marquez asked, as behind her the two Marshals left to make some calls.
‘Only had one successful breakout that I can remember. That was from the minimum-security camp where Craig just took off from.’
‘How long til the guy was caught?’ Marquez asked.
The captain glanced at the warden who’d just re-entered the room looking as troubled as his staff after being told about the missing men. ‘Eight years.’
‘Back again?’ a nurse asked, inside a room at hospital’s emergency ward in the local town of Jonesville. ‘Didn’t we see you just last week?’
‘Wasn’t exactly planning a return visit,’ Lupinetti snapped, still in his bloodied orange prison jumps. ‘C’mon man, can’t you take these things off?’ he complained to two hospital guards who were standing watching him as another nurse treated the wound. He rattled his hands against the sets of cuffs locking him to the bed as he spoke. ‘I’m not gonna run.’
‘Orders.’
‘From who?’ The New Yorker ex-cop’s timing was impeccable; as the two words left his mouth, the door to the room opened and Archer walked in. ‘Wonderful,’ Lupinetti said. ‘Thought I was done with you for the day.’
‘All the thanks I get for saving you in there?’
‘I had it covered.’
‘What, the floor? You were kissing it when we showed up.’ Archer turned to the hospital guards. ‘Where are the Marshals who brought him here?’
‘They just left to go back to Gatlin. Told us to take over. Something urgent’s going on over there.’
‘You can’t get off my ass for ten minutes?’ Lupinetti complained to Archer before he could press the guards for more details. ‘I’m wounded, man. You saw what I got stuck with.’
‘I don’t care if you get struck by lightning, you’re going to Lewisburg today. Marquez and I are gonna make sure you get there.’
‘I can’t leave, I’m injured,’ he complained, both of his upper arms now bandaged.
‘Is he OK to travel?’ Archer asked the nurse, who nodded. ‘There you go. When Lisa gets here, you can thank her for saving you too, or you can spend the journey to PA riding in the trunk.’
‘You didn’t save me,’ Lupinetti replied, looking at his arm. ‘You just made things a whole lot worse.’
On Route 58 twelve miles from the prison, a woman in her early eighties was driving home from an end-of-week visit to her hairdresser when she frowned and leaned forward, seeing something ahead on the road.
A large man was lying on the asphalt, another beside him waving her down, the two of them directly in her way. The man on his feet looked to be just as big as the one on the tarmac, huge and bearded, and was wearing a white t-shirt and sand-colored pants. The man on the ground was in a white t-shirt too, but bizarrely was just wearing boxer shorts and no trousers.
For a moment, the strangeness of the scene made her consider deviating around them and keep driving past, but her conscience won out. Before retirement she’d spent part of her working life as a court stenographer in Richmond, so was nobody’s fool, but at that moment she was listening to the last thirty pages of an Agatha Christie audiobook so didn’t have the radio on, which was currently giving a breaking report warning locals of the dangerous escapees just discovered missing at USP Gatlin.
That unfortunate choice was about to have consequences.
‘What happened?’ she asked, lowering her window as she pulled up.
‘Dunno, I just found him out here,’ the big man said, walking towards her quickly. ‘Think he’s got heatstroke or something.‘
The woman looked at the man lying in the road and reached into her purse to get her phone to call 911. She hadn’t noticed the stolen pants Brooks Loughlin was wearing didn’t fit properly, and she also didn’t see his hand come from behind his back with the blood-stained razor that had cut the laundry truck driver’s throat.
Her fingers never made it to the nine button and she’d never find out how the Agatha Christie book ended.
It turned out the killer was caught just before he could murder again.
SEVEN
‘Three of these brothers were locked up here,’ Marquez told Archer on her cell phone. ‘Two in the main prison in C Block, the other at the minimum security camp. They all managed to get out somehow during the riot.’
Archer was standing outside the front entrance to the hospital in Jonesville, having left the two guards with Lupinetti to take Marquez’s call. ‘What were they in for?’
‘Older two are on their second term. First stint was over ten years ago. Judge gave them a nickel for conspiracy to sell and distribute kiddie porn. Served it at Gatlin then, too.’
‘Five years? That’s it?’
‘Their lawyer swung for the fences and connected, sounded like. But nothing any defense counsel could do their second time around. The middle brother Billy kidnapped and killed a college girl four years ago. Kept her in a basement for a couple weeks, evidence that he raped her repeatedly then dismembered and dumped her body under his older brother’s instructions. And with his help.’
‘Jesus. The youngest one?’
‘Name’s Craig. Doing two years for selling meth.’
‘All three have the entrepreneurial spirit, then.’
‘One way of putting it. Looks like he split from the work camp around the time we arrived at the prison this morning. The COs and riot officers are doing another sweep of the main facility right now to see if the older two are hiding somewhere or managed to get into another cell block. But it’s unlikely; these guys are big men, Arch. Huge. The sergeant here told me the oldest brother Brooks stands six six and weighs three bills, and the other two are only a touch smaller. Hard to hide in a broom closet when you’re that size.’
‘If all three of them did break free from two separate locations, this was no spontaneous riot.’
‘That’s for sure.’
‘And if they’re out there somewhere, from what you’ve just told me this county’s got a serious problem on its hands.’
‘Tell me about it. The staff here are quietly freaking out. They’re contacting local po
lice to call in more manpower and the Marshals just got ordered by their office to stick around and do whatever it takes to help find the fugitives. A couple of the COs think the two older brothers might’ve slipped out in a laundry truck.’
‘The one we saw?’
‘Yeah. Brooks and Billy were working in the laundry this morning and a pair of their friends were discovered with slashed throats a room away from where we found Lupinetti. Those two dead guys triggered the riot in C Block in the first place too, so I was told.’
Archer remembered the laundry truck passing them on their way into the prison this morning. He checked the time. ‘If they got out in that vehicle, they’ve had an almost two hour head-start.’
‘Company depot are trying to raise the driver. His supervisor said he spoke to him fifteen minutes ago, and the guy told him he was almost back.’
‘Trying?’
‘He’s not picking up.’
‘Jonesville, Pennington Gap PD and the Lee County Sheriff’s Office are setting up roadblocks,’ the USP Gatlin captain informed the warden, other prison officials and Marshals inside the facility’s control center. Everyone was on edge, waiting for news. Any escape of a lifer from a federal prison was a big deal but having these three brothers on the run was about as serious as it could get, with two of them being convicted sex offenders, rapists and murderers. The Marshals had authority to take over the manhunt, but were waiting to see if local law-enforcement could handle it first.
‘Tracking dogs?’ one of their deputies asked.
‘On their way,’ the Gatlin sergeant said. ‘We need to get something from the men’s cells for scent.’
‘Send two of your guys to get the Loughlins’ bed sheets and pillowcases,’ the warden ordered the leader of the riot response team, the squad having remained on site for the time being in case they were needed. The man nodded and left the room quickly, a CO going with him to provide access and show them which cell.