by M. A. Owens
Dan stood up straight, staring down at me along his snout. “Oh, right. I somehow knew you would say that. I’ll tell you the same thing I told you before. Think about your excuses clearly before you choose the one to let out of your mouth. Even the warden is losing his patience with our efforts, and he’s got outside pressure breathing down his neck too. They’re not happy, so the warden’s not happy, so I’m not happy… so guess who else is about to not be happy.”
“Me… Alright, you’ve made your point.”
Dan sighed, shrugging his shoulders, and walked away, sitting down at his desk. “Trigger, I’m pleading with you here. You came highly recommended. Can you please, for once, show me why that is?”
“I need a meeting with one of the female prisoners,” I said.
“Ah, that’s a relief, so we’ve ruled out Marty, Hans, and Fernando? We’re ready to zero in on Lady?”
“Not Lady,” I said, concentrating on how best to choose my next words carefully.
“Mildred?”
“If that’s her name, yes.”
He stared at me, leaning forward onto his desk, looking like he was about to boil over at any moment but was too fascinated by the absurdity of my request to do so.
“Why, Trigger? Come on, I need a good reason.”
“I need to confirm something,” I said. That’s right. Partially true.
“What? She’s been here longer than I have. She’s in protection, like Lady. Some floors can care for a few additional prisoners. Mildred is here to keep her from being identified by, I assume, other female prisoners. It’s not because she’s some big danger, and obviously she’s in no hurry to leave. In fact, I forgot she was even here until you mentioned her. I wish every prisoner here was like her, and I wouldn’t have to be sitting here talking to you right now.”
“Just a hunch is all. Need to explore it. Should be nothing, like you said. Obviously I won’t get into a fight with her, if she’s just some sweet old lady. What’s the harm?”
He tapped his paw on the desk. “I’m not supposed to do that, Trigger. She’s kept away from prying eyes for a reason. You’re asking me to break with protocol on this one. I can do it, but I don’t like to. You’re going to have to get me a better reason than that.”
Think fast, Trigger. What could I tell him that wasn’t a lie and also didn’t blow this entire operation apart?
“Fernando knew what she looked like. Unusual, right? I don’t know what she looks like. Marty didn’t either. Why does Fernando? Maybe nothing, but maybe not.”
Dan scratched his head furiously, weighing my suggestion. “Yeah, probably nothing. Someone could’ve told him, or he could’ve gotten a glance at her. Maybe they ran into each other at some point. It’s not like we keep her in a tiny box and never let her move around. But… maybe nothing. Probably nothing. But, maybe not. Alright, Trigger. If you’ve got a hunch and I ignore it, it might come back to bite me with the warden later. Do me a favor, though. At least don’t let me hear you beat up some old cat under identity protection, alright? Can you at least keep your paws to yourself on this one, huh? Pretty please.”
“Fine, Dan.”
He glared at me, pointing to the badge on this chest.
“Yes, Floor Supervisor Dan. I’ll try to control myself and not slap around old ladies. Sheesh. You throw me in with the worst of the worst and expect me to… what? Pillow fight with them and share stories about our crushes from back when we were in school?”
He shook his paw at me, his temper boiling up again. “I don’t care what you have to do, Trigger. Yes. If you must, cry like a scared pup, threaten to tell a guard, or throw a pillow at them, or I don’t care… but this was your last freebie. I don’t want to hear about you beating someone senseless again. I don’t care if they provoked you. Of course they provoked you. I know these prisoners better than you do. Maybe not each and all of them, but prisoners I know well. I know what they do to get each other into trouble. How the get under each other’s skin. Kind of like the effect you’re having on me. You got it?”
“I got it,” I said, feeling thankful that he was angry for this meeting, at least. He didn’t seem to think clearly and didn’t ask too many questions. Not yet.
“Now, or later?” he asked. “When do you want to have this meeting?”
My mind and body were both urging me to say later, but I couldn’t pass up the golden opportunity. If this cat was who I thought she was, I didn’t want Marty knowing it. Since he’d been by my side all day every day, I probably wouldn’t get another chance to do this alone. At least, not without having to explain it to Marty. Pulling the wool over one dog’s eyes was hard enough, and Marty was a little cleverer than I’d given him credit for. I didn’t want to risk underestimating him.
I’d never had so many things to keep track of at once before, and so many players in the game. I couldn’t afford to make even one more misstep now, but I was being tripped up from both sides. At least my mind was feeling the sharpest it ever had. Another effect of the mysterious injection? A thought for another day.
“Now,” I said.
“Why? What’s the hurry?” Dan asked, raising a brow.
Gah! No one was ever going to let any of this be easy, were they?
“Because I don’t know if I completely trust Marty, Dan, and I’d rather not try to explain everything to him without giving away what we’re trying to do. Make sense?”
Dan just nodded, pressing a button on his intercom box. “Eight Eight Nine needs a meeting with Two Zero Three. Please come and escort him.”
“Two Zero Three, sir?” the voice on the other end repeated back.
“I didn’t say ‘repeat after me’, officer,” Dan said, clenching his teeth.
“Yes, sir. Heading in.”
Before long, a guard came in, removing my shackles and grabbing my arm, helping me to my feet.
“Follow me, Eight Eight Nine,” he said.
I was again led out of this office, as I’d been several times before. Only this time it was different. I still had a clear picture of the layout on the floor below, and they must be the same up here. However, I never remembered seeing another section behind the floor supervisor’s office area. Did any of the other prisoners even know this was here?
We continued walking down an empty, almost eerily empty hallway. I was accustomed to seeing guards every twenty or thirty feet in the main area, but here? Nothing. It was like they abandoned it, only it clearly had been kept in good order. At the end of the hallway, we took a sharp right, putting us at the wooden desk of a female officer, a middle-aged calico cat. Right, we were definitely in the right place.
“What can I do for you?” she asked, trying to appear as though she hadn’t spent the past probably several hours with her face planted sleepily in the novel lying on her desk, still open, lying face down. A very muscular cat in a suit gripped a slender dame around her waist on the cover, and they appeared to be moving in for a kiss. The things that pass for books these days… Sheesh.
“I have a guest to see Two Zero Three,” he said.
She waggled her paw at him, shaking her head. “Tsk tsk. Please tell me our guest has a proper name.”
“Eight—” he stopped, noting her intensifying glare. “I mean, Trigger.”
“Well, I think she’ll be delighted to have two guests on the same day. That almost never happens. They’re playing chess right now. Oh, I know, maybe you can play the winner,” she said, reaching out and squeezing my arm. This cat was very unusual for a prison guard here, but for the right reasons.
“I’m not the best chess player, ma’am, but—”
“It’s alright, we’ll come back later,” the dog escorting me said, grabbing my arm roughly, turning me around. I couldn’t resist him, but this might be an even better opportunity than I thought. I couldn’t miss it. Too many things had gone wrong already. I needed a big win, and big wins required big bets. Big risks.
I continued, raising my voice. “But I love to wa
tch, and it’s a game I’ve always wanted to learn. Couldn’t possibly be a better time to stop by.”
“You see?” she said, poking her paw toward the dog escorting me again. “This is the perfect time. Please, do not be rude, officer. We’ve been asked to make her stay here pleasant. Are you not interested in doing that?”
He sighed. “Alright, but keep a close eye on this one. He’s caused problems.”
She eyed me up and down. “This dog? Well, surely there aren’t any problems he can cause with two sweet gals playing chess, is there?”
Bingo! This was everything I hoped for. I just hoped the gamble wasn’t too big. This was putting it all in. Win it all, or lose it all.
I smiled, raising my paw. “On my best behavior. Promise.”
Reluctantly, the officer let go of my arm, nodded, and walked back down the hallway alone.
“My name’s Daffodil, Trigger. I hope your stay here hasn’t been as awful as it probably has been.”
“Funny way to word that, Daffodil, but I’ve been getting by alright. Really, thank you for asking,” I said, forcing a smile.
“You wait right here. I’m going to trust you not to run off. I need to let them know I’m sending someone else in. It would be rude to send someone in unannounced.”
Frantically, I looked around for any windows. If they saw me, the other “guest” might not be very welcoming. I nodded to Daffodil. “Yes, ma’am. I’ll be in this exact spot. You have my word.”
Daffodil stepped away, going through the door behind her desk, only staying gone for a few minutes.
When she returned, she was smiling; a kind smile that was still hard to get used to after the faces I’d been seeing over the past weeks. “They’re just starting a new round. Come on in.”
She put her paw on my arm, gently leading me through the door and into a large room that looked… nothing like a jail cell. It looked more like an apartment, furnishing and all. The room was carpeted, and it wasn’t the only one. They weren’t even in this room. Was this the living room? There was a couch against the wall, and end tables on either side. On the opposite wall, there was a television. An honest to goodness television.
Daffodil put her paw on my shoulder. “Oh, they must’ve moved their game to the kitchen to be closer to the snacks. You would love Mildred’s cooking. I think I smelled the two of them baking earlier. You really have good timing.”
Daffodil led me through the living room, and around another corner into the kitchen area. Sure enough, the two of them were sitting at a tall, stone kitchen table, a newly set chessboard between them and a large plate of cookies beside it, steam still rising. She even got access to baking supplies, an oven. A television? What else? Clearly, they wanted to make Mildred comfortable, at first glance. My hunch? It’s more that they wanted to keep her pacified. Not thinking about what else was going on outside this luxury fake home.
Daffodil waved as we rounded the corner. “Hi girls. Great game earlier. This is Trigger. Trigger, this is Mildred and—”
“It’s alright. The two of us have already been introduced,” the Doberman said, staring at me coldly enough to make my bones ache. Her voice was a near-whisper of solid ice.
“Oh… well, that’s wonderful. Do you mind if I grab a cookie before I go? You two make great cookies.”
The old cat smiled so hard her eyes closed. “Please, dear, have two. Thank you so much.”
Daffodil grabbed two cookies, waved, and left the room. I heard the door close as she exited the area through the living room.
“Hello again, Trigger,” the Doberman said, with a hint of a smile.
“Hello, Lady,” I said, failing to hide the trembling in my voice.
14
Lady and I looked at one another, but why did I feel I was the only one who looked surprised? Why was that? This was what I expected. What I was counting on. But there was something about being closed up in a room with the most dangerous dog I’d ever met that made my blood go cold. Never mind the fact she tried to kill me… and probably still wanted to.
Mildred smiled and pushed the side chair out from beneath the table with her foot. “Please, dear, have a cookie. Oh, and mind your facial expressions and body language.”
Mind my what? “Uh, alright,” I said, sitting in the chair and grabbing a cookie, biting down. Didn’t have to fake anything here. These cookies were delicious. It’s a shame I felt as though I would hurl any moment from the knots in my stomach. This close to Lady, she could easily reach over and snap my neck before I even yelled for help.
Keep it together, Trigger. Play their game and win.
Mildred smiled and gestured to the cookies. “We are being monitored in this room, but only video monitoring now. Lady sabotaged the audio, and they’ve either assumed it’s unnecessary to fix it, or they just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Either way, we can talk, but only like this.”
Mildred was about the right age to be compatible with my suspicions. Not so elderly that she couldn’t get around, but definitely old. She was an Orange Tabby, though her orange, probably once vibrant, had faded into a yellowy dull hue.
Lady picked up a cookie and took a bite. “Make one wrong move, small one, and I will break you.”
“Shove it, Lady. You’re on video, remember? Insults are fair game, but let’s not blow poor Mildred’s cover, huh?” I said, holding up my half-eaten cookie, and gesturing at it with my paw, smiling widely.
Lady’s brow twitched, but she returned my smile with a nod and smile of her own, returning her attention to the chessboard. Always wished I could be a skilled chess player, but I wasn’t. Rick was the chess master, many moves ahead kind of dog. Boy, did I ever wish he was here with me, in this room, right now.
“Then you’d better behave,” she said, nearly whispering, as she always did.
“So,” Mildred said, looking at Lady but speaking to me. “What brings you here? I’ve heard of you, but only a little. Lady hasn’t told me a great deal about you in the past few weeks, as we’ve had more important things to discuss. Can I assume you’re here because she has information you seek?”
I shook my head, realizing quickly that I needed to focus more on disconnecting my body language from what I was thinking and saying. I pointed to one of the chess pieces.
“Actually, I’m here to see both of you equally,” I said.
Mildred hesitated, then moved one of her pawns forward. Looking to me, she picked up the pawn and began gesturing to the squares where they moved. She was clever, that’s for sure.
“Both of us, you say? That’s quite a twist. What would you want from an old cat like me? I’ve been down here a long time, and for a long time now they’ve tried to keep me completely isolated from the surface. And, you know what? Maybe I want to keep it that way. I have nothing up there that interests me in the slightest.”
I pointed at one of the other pieces. The knight. “So, it wasn’t always like that? When you first came here, they had you on the floor with the other female prisoners, but later they moved you somewhere isolated?”
She laughed, then picked up the knight, gesturing to the spaces it could move.
“When I was sent down here, this prison was a living nightmare. They beat us for anything and everything, and there was hardly a dog to be found. The prison was so stuffed with cats that we were sleeping outside the cells, in bunk beds everywhere they could stuff them. They even sectioned off part of the cafeterias to make room for inmates. They didn’t allow us to talk, and no one knew anyone’s name. Just prisoner numbers.”
Remarkably, her expression stayed all smiles, and her gestures matched up with someone explaining chess moves to a beginner. It must have taken a great power of will to stay stone-faced while talking about such a horrific experience. I struggled, just hearing her talk about it.
I pointed to a different piece again, still smiling. “I’m down here because I need to find those responsible for the escape attempts. From what I’m hearing, they’re quite soph
isticated, and only seem to get better.”
“I should have known you were a rat,” Lady said, gripping one piece tightly.
“Chihuahua, actually. Look, I know between the two of you, I’m guessing one of you is involved or has information for me. I need to contact those responsible, and if it’s one of you… or both, we have a lot to talk about.”
Lady smiled and reached over to grab another cookie. “Get lost. Does it look like we need your help?”
Looked like if I was going to get anywhere with these two, I was going to have to convince both. My leverage wasn’t exactly great and could make things worse for me. I had to make my next moves carefully.
I laughed, pointing to her side of the chessboard. “I met a friend of yours, recently,” I said. “Two, actually.”
“Oh, did you? How very nice for you. Did they clog your ears? I believe I said… Get. Lost.” She leaned forward, enunciating the words.
“Lady, could you please be a dear and make us some tea? I think I’d like a word with our new friend, just the two of us.”
Lady stood up, still smiling, even though her eyes told a different story. A story I did not want to be a character in. Any character I played in her story would wind up dead. She turned and walked over to the stove, still within hearing distance.
She scooted the plate closer to me. “If I’m correct, you intended to speak to both of us at once. What I don’t understand is… why? Lady has a long history with you, I see, though not a friendly one. You seem like a clever dog. If you wanted out of the prison, why not just avoid getting thrown in here in the first place? According to what Lady heard, you’d turned yourself in. You’re here intentionally. This is part of some plan of yours. What I want to know is… again, why?”