Middle of Nowhere

by Ridley Pearson

  “And they suggested you cooperate.”

  “They did.” The man had the annoying habit of wincing or grinning after every comment, expressions that somehow did not belong on his face, like those obscene reproductions of the Mona Lisa that change the smile.

  “You run pay-per-call numbers out of here,” Boldt said, indicating the flyer in his hand. “Area code nine hundred numbers.” He wanted the man on his heels, wanted him thinking in the wrong direction. “Stroke lines?”

  “Adult entertainment. All perfectly legal.”

  “I don’t see any phone banks.”

  “The beauty of technology, Lieutenant. Our sales representatives operate out of their own homes for the most part. Through a computerized switching terminal we receive and reroute all calls.”

  “College coeds?” Boldt asked.

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  “Housewives, mostly.” He waited for Boldt’s shock to register. “The woman moaning on the other end of the phone is doing her ironing in front of the television half the time. Cooking dinner. Playing solitaire on the computer. It’s all about role playing, Lieutenant. The men call to be turned on, and to hear what they don’t hear at home.”

  “At eight dollars a minute,” Boldt pointed out.

  “Supply and demand.”

  “And the Internet site?” a repulsed Boldt inquired.

  “Some soft porn shots,” he said, directing this at Daphne, “to get the juices going. Our nine hundred numbers are promoted there. Someone wants to hear a human voice. For a credit card number, the photos go video and get a hell of a lot hotter. We grossed sixty thousand last fiscal quarter off the site alone. Wave of the future.”

  “The Pantheon theater group?” Daphne asked.

  “We handle a wide range of telemarketing needs for our corporate customers. Special promotions, like the Consolidated/Pantheon campaign; travel reservations; catalog sales. Our rate sheet is typically about forty percent less than our competitors, and our service just as good if not better. Keeps business brisk.”

  “Lower labor costs?” she asked.

  “Look around. Low overhead translates to customer savings.”

  “Housewives again?”

  Rathborne affected that same grimace. “Telemarketing campaigns are much more difficult to facilitate M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  because of the need for networked computers and a shared database. If we used isolated individuals for the telemarketing, the technology requirements would kill us. No, we subcontract. In the case of Consolidated, they’re working strictly off demographics. The computers target households based on income and real estate value. The sales rep sees a name, phone number and address on his or her screen. It’s slick. Consolidated Insurance owns the Pantheon theater chain. They’ve installed these new electronic ticket kiosks nationally and wanted to use this campaign as a synergistic way to introduce their targeted insurance sales customers to their theater chain simultaneously. It was my idea, actually, and we’ve hit a home run, I’m happy to say.”

  “Subcontract?” Daphne pressed. “To whom?”

  “The justice department didn’t tell you?” Rathborne asked Boldt. “I assumed that was why you were here. You’re Washington State, right? I thought you were looking to model our system out there in Washington . . . something like that. The state benefits as much as we do.”

  Daphne said, “Nothing like that. We’re Crimes Against Persons. We’re working an assault investigation—”

  “Now wait a minute here!” the man objected, slipping out of his corporate image. “No one said anything about this. I was told you’d have some questions for me about the Consolidated Mutual campaign,” the man said. “I assumed—”

  “We have no intention of charging you,” Boldt said 204

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  quickly, “nor anyone else at Newmann Communications. It’s more than likely one or two of your employees—these subcontracted

  sales

  reps—that

  we’re

  interested in.”

  Daphne suggested, “You may have a bad apple.”

  Another waft of frankfurter-and-mustard invaded the space. Boldt felt sick to his stomach. He clarified,

  “We would like to speak to this subcontractor. You put us in touch with him and we’re out of here.”

  Daphne repeated, “We have no intention of involving your company in any of this, as long as you cooperate.”

  “It’s all about labor costs—this business. All about putting people on one end of a telephone. The automated programs suck. And Denver? In this boom? You try finding people willing to work on commission.”

  Daphne inquired, “What are you trying to tell us? All we need is the name of the subcontractor on the Consolidated Insurance campaign.”

  “I don’t understand why they didn’t tell you when you talked to them,” an irritated Rathborne said. “We’ve used them for three years now. Never once had a problem.”

  “When we talked to whom?” Daphne pressed. “Consolidated passed us on to you.”

  “No! Not Consolidated. The justice department should have told your guys. We use correctional facilities, state prisons, inmates.” Rathborne explained, “Our subcontractor for all our telemarketing campaigns is the Colorado Correctional Services.”

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  “Inmates,” Boldt mumbled, stunned by the announcement. Daphne clarified, “You have inmates making your phone solicitations.”

  Rathborne replied, not without some pride: “Technically, it’s part of their rehabilitation.”

  C H A P T E R

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  Asunset flaring red beyond the Continental Divide, Boldt drove the rental through the third guarded entrance to the privately owned prison, coils of razor wire sitting atop the twenty-five-foot chain-link fence. The facility’s outer wall rose thirty feet high, its masonry block connecting the four heavily armed guard towers. The middle fence, which was nearly invisible, carried High Voltage warnings on large red and yellow signs. The facility’s physical plant—owned and operated by the Etheredge Corporation—housed both maximum and medium detention units, with separate visitor entrances. One of a dozen such compounds nationally, all built and managed by private companies, the correctional services contracted back to the state and were paid for by tax dollars. Etheredge Corporation traded on the NASDAQ. “Prisoners for Profit,” Daphne read from a photocopy of a two-year-old article found in the downtown Denver library.

  “Keep reading,” Boldt said. He had timed their visit to the facility purposefully, knowing that the telemarketing would likely be under way in the evening when the callers could catch families at dinner or watching TV. M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  She read on. The public had been outraged, the politicians impressed by the prospect of reducing corrections costs. “Unsubstantiated charges” accused “unnamed” state representatives of taking bribes for pushing the private corrections concept through the state legislature. With three such private facilities operating in Colorado and two more under construction, the point seemed moot. Nevada had four, Idaho two. The federal government was getting into the act. Corrections had gone private. Boldt and Matthews intended to play on the fact that Washington State had a similar proposal on a referendum that was scheduled for the fall election.

  Boldt found a parking space reserved for visitors. A sign reminded them to lock the car and take the keys. Corrections, in private hands, had gone high tech. Electronically keyed gates requiring both a guard’s handprint and the swipe of a credit-card-size magnetic key permitted access to various areas of the mediumsecurity facility. The floor plan was an octagonal layout that placed the only guard station in a center hub allowing unobstructed views of every cell. Video surveillance, infrared sensors, and electronic “LoJacks”

  secured around the ankle of every prisoner rounded out the
cutting-edge security technology. Evidently Colorado could not afford to build such an elaborate facility, and yet could pay the forty thousand dollars per year to house each prisoner.

  Boldt had not approached Etheredge Corporation on his own, knowing full well that no privately held 208

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  company would appreciate law enforcement discovering a fault with their business plan. Instead, he had used a friend in Washington State Corrections to make the introductory call for them, alleging that a pair of detectives on a fact-finding mission to Colorado were interested in touring Etheredge’s Jefferson County Corrections Facility and citing in particular the medium security’s so-called private commerce program. Etheredge executives, aware of the impending referendum in Washington State, saw a potential client. Boldt and Daphne were greeted by the facility’s

  “managing director”—its warden—forty-five, with closecropped hair and a steely glint to his eye. Two administrative assistants, both men in their mid-thirties, reminded Boldt of Army or Marines. Corporations knew where to recruit.

  “Impressive,” Boldt said, indicating the security through which he and Daphne had just passed. The warden, a talker, a salesman, went against the stereotype. Boldt had difficulty fitting him in with the other wardens he’d known over the years.

  The private tour lasted forty minutes, all show-andtell of the facility’s high-tech security. The infrared gear was sensitive enough to detect “any mammal with a body temperature above a rat.”

  “Who else have you toured?” the warden inquired, competition in his blood. He led them down a long, plain corridor.

  Daphne pulled out a name from the article she’d been reading aloud only minutes earlier. M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  The warden nodded. “They came in behind us. Still trying to catch up,” he suggested immodestly. “We turned a profit after just four years of operation, don’t forget. Nationally, I’m talking about. We maintain ninety-seven percent occupancy. Best bed-to-inmate ratio in the business. Zero escapes in four years of operation. Zero,” he repeated. “Nationally!” he said again.

  “The private commerce program,” Boldt said, assuming this was where he was leading them. He asked,

  “Does the state share in any of that revenue?”

  “Absolutely!” The warden beamed. “I believe the state’s take is twenty percent.” He turned to one of the two sycophants and said, “We can verify that.” The young commando took off down the hall to a white wall phone.

  Boldt stabbed. “So Etheredge takes eighty percent of the private commerce profit for itself.”

  “Seventy computer workstations, wide-bandwidth data lines, over five dozen phone lines—we have expenses, Lieutenant.”

  “Telemarketing in a prison,” Daphne said. “Who would have thought?”

  “We didn’t invent it,” the warden reminded them defensively. “It has been around for years. Catalog sales, surveys, even airline reservations. And yet those early programs failed to take advantage of what they had. We use the computers in our alternative education program as well. It’s the multi-use concept. What you really come to appreciate about Etheredge is our designers. 210

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  Best in the business, swear to God.” Still defensive, he added, “Seven states currently use telemarketing as a revenue enhancer in corrections facilities.” He was back to his salesman attitude. “It’s an effective way to partially subsidize costs while simultaneously training for employment opportunity on the outside. Over sixty percent of inmates participating in our private commerce program will be offered similar work upon release. Recidivism in this portion of our population drops noticeably.”

  Boldt said, “It’s a fascinating use of prison labor.”

  The comment intrigued the warden, who stopped at a secure door and placed his palm into a reader. He swiped his card next, and the door unlocked. “You’re in luck,” he informed Boldt. “Appears we’re in session.”

  M

  Except for the jumpsuits with their wide, navy blue, horizontal stripes, one might have mistaken the seventy inmates and the enormous room for a university computer lab—gray office cubicles with soundproof baffling and bright ceiling lights. In many ways it reminded Boldt of Homicide’s fifth-floor offices but on an even grander scale, the irony not lost on him: The inmates had it better than the cops. The room hummed with sales pitches, computer fans, and keyboards clicking furiously. Daphne and Boldt exchanged knowing glances. Somewhere in this room a connection to the assaults M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  and burglaries existed: He wore a headset and manned a keyboard.

  “The Consolidated program?” Boldt asked, revealing information he shouldn’t have. “Newmann Communications?”

  The warden’s contempt rose in a cardinal display, inflaming his neck and ears. “What’s going on here?”

  he inquired.

  “Is it all Newmann in this room?” Boldt repeated.

  “All the Consolidated campaign?”

  One of the man’s assistants spoke up too quickly for the warden’s tastes. “Half Newmann, half Air Express electronic ticketing.”

  “How do you know about Newmann?” the concerned warden asked. Boldt replied, “Lieutenant Matthews and I need to see the phone logs, sorted by workstation. We have Newmann Communications’ cooperation in this.”

  “You lied to us!” the warden gasped. “You’re not part of any search committee.”

  “We’re searching all right,” Boldt confirmed, “but not for a new prison.”

  Always one to appeal to human nature, Daphne added, “Our state is in the market for a private correctional facility. If we take home a favorable impression—”

  “You’re wrong about this,” the warden told Boldt, realizing the trouble it might mean for him personally as well as the corporation.

  “The prosecuting attorney’s office has already con-212

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  tacted Colorado Corrections. Privately run or not, it’s still their show. This can end up a real mess for everyone,” Boldt suggested. “It’s all how we handle it.”

  “I’ll need to make some phone calls,” the warden suggested.

  “Understood,” Boldt said.

  “What exactly do you need?”

  “Access,” Boldt answered.

  “Perhaps we start with a place to talk,” Daphne suggested. The warden was clearly disgusted. “The home office is not going to like this,” he said.

  Boldt replied, “Neither does one of our police officers, who can’t feel her legs.”

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  Daphne used frequent flyer miles to upgrade her hotel room, which meant a few more square feet, a deep bathtub with jets, and a view of the Rockies. In his own, slightly smaller room, Boldt ordered a pot of Earl Grey tea from room service, drew himself an incredibly hot bath upon its delivery, and spent twenty wonderful minutes soaking away the stiffness still present from the assault. When the kids had been infants, Boldt had taken baths with them—glorious memories of splashing, laughing and soap in the eyes. He missed his family terribly. He wanted this case solved, the Flu over, and his family back intact.

  Daphne called to say she had made dinner reservations downstairs; coat and tie required. She sounded excited— the case, he thought. Boldt ironed a shirt that had suffered in the shoulder bag. Dinner. The two of them alone in a hotel a thousand miles from home. Maybe Sheila Hill should have assigned LaMoia to the trip, he was thinking.

  Feeling homesick, he called Liz. She had reinvented herself

  following

  her

  illness.

  She

  lived

  cleanly,

  spiritually minded, more centered, more collected than ever. An anchor. Her brush with death had invigorated 214

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  her pursuit of life. She made few
demands upon him, other than as the father of their children, and did her best to support him in a job she did not particularly care for him to have. Her work at the bank brought in a good salary, and she occasionally nudged Boldt to consider corporate security work for one of the giant multinationals in the area. But she didn’t push. He had nearly interviewed for Boeing once. Their conversation was good—she was thrilled to be home again with the kids. Boldt made absolutely no mention of his impending dinner with Daphne, despite a couple of perfect openings for him to do so. And when he hung up, he wondered why he hadn’t told her.

  He pulled his necktie tight, choking himself. A forty-page fax was delivered to his room. Etheredge’s attorneys had made the right decision—he was in possession of a portion of the Consolidated Mutual phone solicitation log for area code 206.

  M

  Daphne wore a cream-colored silk blouse with a Mao neck buttoned to hide her scar. A single strand of pearls swept gracefully across the ghost of a delicate lace bra, rising and falling behind her every word. She smelled earthy, a hint of sweet.

  One look at her and he experienced a systemic warmth, like after a stiff drink.

  She worked slowly on a glass of Pinot Noir; Boldt nursed a cranberry juice.

  She said, “Newmann and Consolidated give those M I D D L E O F N O W H E R E

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  inmates—convicted felons—access on their computer terminals to property tax assessments, full credit histories, number of dependents, number and value of registered motor vehicles. . . . What did they expect would happen?”

  Boldt had given her half the fax. Together, they combed the list for the phone numbers of any of the nine burglary victims. He wanted to tell her that she looked great. He kept his mouth shut and his eyes aimed at the fax.

  “And that survey! Did you get time to look that over? Estimated income. Value of residence. Personal property in the residence. Number of computers owned by the family. Number of CD players; number of VCRs. All these little demographic triggers that satiate an insurance company’s appetite for data, but in the wrong hands. . . .” She lifted her head. He felt it as a warm wind. “Are you listening?”