by John Farrow
‘How did your husband earn his living, Malka?’
Cinq-Mars sympathized with her situation. Hard to lose a husband; harder still to take his life when that was the only remedy to his suffering. Equally hard to be incarcerated for an act intended as mercy. He did not necessarily envision her as an ally, or as someone who could be conscripted to become one. Aloof, in his estimation, possibly an antagonist, in civilian life she held positions and had had standing in her communities. She’d known real local power, which even on a small scale meant deflecting the slings and arrows of others and imposing her will where it was both warranted and resisted. Yet the toughness she’d displayed and depended upon on the outside went only so far locked up in a penitentiary. Different rules applied. Her public service steeliness was outstripped by those with dark alley experience, by those who bent others to their will through violence and fear. She was savvy enough to know the difference. Cinq-Mars’s expectation, then, was to gently guide her into opening up about her life on the inside to see what glimpse that might provide into recent events. If she remained a closed shop, his interest would only perk up, and he’d find other ways to hone-in on what made her tick.
‘Roy split his working life between two separate careers. Twenty years in the military. Sounds rough and ready, doesn’t it? His title? Financial Services Administrator. A captain in the army. When he left, he taught high school math. He enjoyed both careers. He was good with others. Hard to believe I became the politician in the family when he could’ve excelled at it. At least, he’d excel at getting elected, which is not the same thing.’
‘What got you elected?’
‘I’m no-nonsense. I let people know. Sometimes they responded. Once they didn’t. If the citizens wanted an efficient administrator, I got their vote. If they preferred a mangled hubcap who’d fallen off a dump truck with shit for brains and grease in his ears, they went with that guy.’
‘Tough decision, those two choices.’
Malka managed a brief laugh. She showed a little sparkle. Time to ask a more penetrating question.
‘Who do you think killed Flo, Malka? Hold on.’ Cinq-Mars looked over at the guard, who took her cue and exited the room.
‘Impressive,’ she noted. ‘You don’t trust guards?’
‘I don’t expect you to. This way, whether you do, or don’t, doesn’t matter.’
‘I don’t know who did it.’
‘Hmm,’ Cinq-Mars murmured, and appeared to be mulling her reply. Then he asked, ‘How many women do you think will suggest to me that it was you?’
‘Oh, get off the pot. Nobody will say it’s me!’
‘Why not?’
‘Because I didn’t do it!’
‘They all say that.’
‘But I’m not a killer, not like some of them, you know that!’
‘I might, but they don’t.’
Malka was shocked into stillness a moment.
‘You see the problem,’ Cinq-Mars stated.
‘Yeah. I killed my husband to get rid of him. Did it slowly to watch him suffer. That’s what I let them think anyway.’
‘Makes you as badass as the rest, which was the idea behind that plan, no?’
‘Why would anybody say it was me?’
‘Did you use the toilet that day?’
What did other people remember? What had they said?
‘We’ve established that. A few times, I guess.’
‘Suspicious, no?’
Malka declined to treat the remark as a question.
Cinq-Mars had been developing a technique over the years where he’d continuously change the subject while conducting an interrogation. This interview was meant to feel cordial in Malka’s mind, even friendly and sympathetic, but in his own mind it was an interrogation, right from the get-go. He changed the subject frequently which made him appear to be disorganized but he never relinquished his objective to lay bare the truth.
He altered course once again. ‘How did it go, the laundry, with you and Temple?’
‘What do you mean? It was laundry. We watched the washer go around and around.’
‘Were you talking? Laughing? Having fun? Were you at each other’s throats?’
What had the others reported? What had they said to him?
‘Maybe there was some bickering, I don’t know.’
‘About what?’
‘I don’t know. Bickering. You know.’
‘I don’t. Tell me.’
‘I don’t know. Peeing. We bitched about peeing. I said she goes too often. She wanted to punch my lights out. I mean, she’s a violent person, right? She sold guns to fucking bikers, for God’s sake. I picture her walking around on the outside with a grenade in her purse and a bazooka up her butt.’
‘She probably did.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘You have every right to fear her, that’s all. She’s tough.’
‘Did she do it, do you think? Temple went to piss a lot.’
‘You didn’t?’
What had people said?
‘I might’ve. I guess I did.’
‘Does that mean you’re guilty?’
‘No. Of course not!’
‘Does it mean Temple’s guilty?’
‘I get your point. I was only answering the goddamn question.’
‘If you could talk to Flo right at this moment, and you asked her, “Who did it?”, what do you think Flo would say? Who would she name? This is only speculation. Nobody but me will ever hear your answer unless you repeat it yourself. What would Flo say?’
The query took away the imposition of asking a suspect to finger one of her fellow inmates. In absentia, Flo would be casting the aspersion, not Malka herself.
Malka introduced a wrinkle to his game. ‘Let’s say Flo never knew who did it. Somebody caught her from behind let’s say and she never saw who. So, if I’m talking to Florence and she’s still a dead person, her answer would still only be a guess.’
‘Fair enough. What does Flo guess?’
‘I think Flo would say Temple.’
Cinq-Mars rocked his head a little, skeptical. ‘I put that idea in your head. What’s really in Flo’s head? That’s what we’re after here.’
Shot down once, she was willing to try again.
‘Flo still thinks it was Temple. Strong enough. Tough enough. Taller than Flo, she had leverage over her. That’s important, I think. Flo thinks so, too. Also, they didn’t get along so well.’
‘OK,’ Cinq-Mars said and scribbled a few notes. His handwriting upside down gave Malka no clues, although not for a lack of trying to read it.
‘Temple’s tall enough that’s true. It’s also true for you, too.’
‘Oh God. I didn’t do it. I didn’t!’
‘We’ll find out, one way or the other. Depending upon your guilt or innocence, you can take that as a threat, or as reassurance. Up to you.’
‘I’m not all that reassured. Innocent people get found guilty, you know. A woman can be sent to prison because she loved her husband. Don’t talk to me about justice.’
‘We’ll both guard against mistakes. Let’s leave it at that.’
‘Nothing else?’ she asked him. To her mind, they’d run the gamut.
‘One small thing, Malka. Who do you get along with in your group? Who not? Who do you like? Who do you hate?’
‘No way is that a small thing,’ she said.
iv
‘I look at it this way if you want to know the truth,’ Malka interjected into the discussion. The other women were listening. Paying attention was required in Group Therapy, and GT was on the docket that day. ‘It’s not unlike being stuck in the army. The same. My husband was in the army. A soldier. Put in twenty years. His best buddies in his life were the ones he made in the army. The things they went through. Slogging through the mud and all that. He was in war zones. He shot people. I presume so anyhow. Aimed at them anyway. Not sure he pulled the trigger. He just didn’t talk about it much. That’s an army thing.
Then he taught school. He didn’t have buddies there. Acquaintances, that’s it. People he socialized with, just not people he shared his life with. In the army, you’re thrown together for weeks or months at a time. You get down to it. See people for who they really are, you know? Like in Group Therapy, like us here, only more intense. There’s good and bad. I see the good in people, even in you guys. I mean some of you, you’ve done bad stuff, but you’re OK, you know? You know? With me you’re all right.’
She seemed to expect an ovation. People didn’t disagree with her. Similar remarks were spoken in response. Yet Malka felt emotionally drained as she came down after her sermon-from-the-jailhouse speech. Part of her trepidation afterwards came from knowing that she’d lied – again. Her husband had not seen battle, not when his job was in Financial Services. No one had to know that. The greater fuel for her consternation though, her sense of having her grand speech rejected, came when other women said similar things in a casual, off-hand manner, as if it was no big deal. She felt that she’d been snooty. Her tone, she didn’t get that right.
The one thing she’d not want to be accused of inside a woman’s penitentiary was being snooty.
That would not help with anything.
Returning from GT, she remained grumpy. Others noticed but didn’t care. What she hated in the end, that little guttersnipe Jodi, who had shot up a convenience store for God’s sake like it was a video game, had finished up the meeting with a speech of her own and the others preferred the guttersnipe’s nutty spiel. Jodi said that you only made friends in prison for life if you were sentenced for life, otherwise no. ‘I got eight. Years. Out in six for super excellent behavior, right?’ Already the other ladies were chuckling away, repeating her words about super excellent behavior. ‘I love you all to death but only until parole sets us loose.’ More laughs. ‘Then it’s a clean break the hell out of here. If I know you after prison, that’s associating with felons. It won’t happen. Does nobody no good. In here, I love you to bits. Don’t take that the wrong way. Once I’m outta here, I don’t want to see your ugly pusses, pusses. Take that any way you want, just stay the hell away from me. Got it?’
Laughs.
That concluded their talk on friendship for the session.
Guttersnipe Jodi won the day. Malka was supposed to be the politician, an elected leader. Not the guttersnipe. But in here, Jodi’s sass trumped her wisdom. What a pathetic little bitch. To hell with jail anyway. She wanted out. Now. She’d do anything to get the hell out. Now.
When the detective asked, she didn’t say who she hated more than anyone else. She loved everybody, period. Liked them the same anyway. She never mentioned the guttersnipe. That was not really another lie. The guttersnipe did not deserve a mention.
Cinq-Mars pressed her on it, though, the bastard. Finally, she told him, ‘I’m not so keen on Jodi. There. I said it. But I don’t hate her.’
She could tell that he could tell that she was lying. That she absolutely loathed her. She wanted to lie about it some more but thought she’d better shut up while she was still ahead, if she was ahead in the slightest. Malka was expecting him to come down hard on her, to press his advantage, except that she was saved by the bell. By bells. Alarms resounded throughout the penitentiary.
A red light above the door throbbed like a heartbeat.
The guard burst in.
‘We’re in lockdown,’ she declared calmly.
‘What’s going on?’ Cinq-Mars demanded and shot up from his chair.
The guard didn’t answer and instead ordered Malka to put her arms on the table. She complied and accepted being handcuffed to the tabletop with the set already in place there.
‘What’s going on?’ Cinq-Mars asked more gently, relying upon a different tone to receive an answer.
‘Trouble. Red fucking alert.’
‘Which means?’
‘You got five options. A sixth, that would be the unknown.’
‘What five?’
‘In order of frequency? A catfight. An escape or attempted escape. A hostage-taking. A riot. Or …’
‘Or what? The fifth?’
‘What you’re here for. A murder, or an attempted. Usually a stabbing. Shit happens.’
‘Can I go see?’
‘You’re locked down, too.’
‘Come on—’
‘Sir, relax. You’re not going anywhere. I’ll cuff you, too, if you object.’
She was serious. Protocol, damn protocol. Cinq-Mars sat.
‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ the guard offered as a form of compensation.
Although the alarms went quiet, the red light continued to pulse. The guard said they’d have to wait for an all-clear siren. Cinq-Mars declined the coffee.
‘I’ll have one,’ Malka piped up.
‘Who asked you?’ the guard taunted her.
v
A siren did not resound but Cinq-Mars was summoned to the scene of the action. The warden sent for him. That left Malka alone with the guard, her wrists fastened to the tabletop.
‘Oh shit,’ she said.
‘You said it.’ The guard, a tall thin woman with a long skinny nose and a tiny mouth with her hair pulled up and bobby-pinned under her guard’s cap – she was one of the few who wore a uniform – loomed over her. She drew her baton from her belt.
‘Oh fuck,’ Malka said under her breath.
‘Something wrong? You don’t feel safe around me?’
Malka cast her eyes down, as if not looking up helped her be invisible.
‘Hold this. Like it’s a millionaire’s dick.’ She put the baton in Malka’s hands, not that the woman could swing it. She could barely balance it upright with her wrists cuffed. The guard went around the table and sat in the chair Cinq-Mars had occupied. ‘Suck on it,’ she directed.
‘Please. No. I didn’t say anything to him. Please.’
‘Butch bitch. Shut up. And suck away. Put your heart into it.’
Shaking, Malka put her mouth over the end of the baton.
‘Even a teen boy won’t come that way. Get busy.’
She performed reluctant fellatio on the baton.
‘Now take your head away.’
Malka was grateful to do so.
‘It’s a microphone. Talk to it.’
‘What?’
‘Tell me everything you said in here after I got booted. Don’t leave nothing out. Then tell me what anybody else said in here you overheard you found interesting.’
‘I didn’t say anything! I never heard much. Honest.’
The guard removed her Taser and put it down on the tabletop.
Malka quavered.
‘That’s another thing,’ the guard commanded her. ‘There’ll be no more fucking lies out of you. You know who killed Flo? Tell me. You think you know? Tell me. You did it? Tell me. From now on, anything you hear comes to me first. Not that guy. Now talk. Hold up the fucking microphone!’
The baton was drooping. She raised it. Malka had heard of good cop, bad cop. She didn’t know if this was that. She only knew that she wanted her good cop back. She’d tell him anything he wanted to hear now. She’d speak the truth to him now.
Instead, she arranged her lies and talked to the guard.
The red light above the door continued to pulse.
MARIE-PHILOMÉNE
i
Émile Cinq-Mars was briskly escorted to the yard. Doors buzzed open ahead of him, slammed shut behind, a cacophony of steel-on-steel and the echoey trammel of feet. Going outside to a level one story high, he stood next to the warden on a broad balcony. Below, rival combatants had been separated. Guards formed a line between two groups as if trying to decide which contingent to pummel first. The physical fracas had concluded, reduced to heated intermittent cursing, yet trouble remained volatile. Menace underscored the yard’s atmosphere. Not explosive in the Montreal cop’s estimation – the guards ruled – yet still dangerous.
Men and women with rifles rimmed the perimeter.
‘Your girls were involved,’ she said. ‘I thought you might want to see this.’
‘My girls,’ Cinq-Mars repeated. A surprise. That she had said girls, not women, was a note that caught his attention. Not a reference he could justify voicing himself, but he supposed that the warden was entitled. He was taken aback that any of ‘his’ inmates were involved. He had expected the women to be on their best behavior given the attention focused on them recently.
The melee had been a decent dustup. Abigail bled from her nose and lip and the frock she wore was seriously ripped. She needed to cover up to preserve her modesty but didn’t. A prisoner unknown to him displayed claw marks down one side of her face – deep fingernail cuts, Cinq-Mars assumed. Battles among women were commonly disparaged as ‘catfights’ – the guard by his door used the term and Cinq-Mars had disrupted a few such altercations in downtown bars as a beat cop. He had labelled them as exactly that. Brawling men, as a rule, punched, then kicked if they got a man down. Most women didn’t practice punching well enough to make the assault worthwhile. Their kicking lacked force if they’d never played soccer as kids or weren’t wearing boots. Instead, women who snapped who were also inexperienced in battle resorted to hair-pulling and scratching and biting – catfights – their fury a match for any legitimate feline joust.
This had been all of that.
A shiner blooming around the eye of one combatant indicated that at least one solid blow had landed. Among the scratch marks and bites, a few deep cuts were indicative of a makeshift or contraband weapon.
Isaure Dabrezil stood in a line that separated inmates barking intermittent verbal abuse. She’d exerted herself in the middle of the fray and was now taking a breather. When Cinq-Mars snagged her attention with a wave, he signaled her up to his landing. Given that he stood next to the warden, she obeyed.
She came through a locked gate topped with barbed wire, then up steep metal stairs. Her immense weight lumbered along. Her steps heavy. Through another locked gate, jangling her keys. Upon her arrival, the warden lauded her good work, then moved along to address matters with other guards and officials.