by Carter Chris
‘Relax, Tito. We’re not here to bust your balls, or spoil your little party,’ Garcia said, tilting his head in the bedroom’s direction. ‘So just secure that hard-on for five minutes. We really just want to talk.’
‘You must be tripping, homes. If I had a hard-on I’d tip this table over.’ He nodded, smiling. ‘That’s right, homes, I’ve got more game than a pheasant hunt.’
‘OK, whatever, King Ding-a-Ling,’ Hunter said, standing directly across the table from him. ‘We just need to ask you a few questions and then we’re out of here.’
‘Questions about what?’
‘About another inmate from CSP in Lancaster.’
‘Fuck, homes, do I look like information services?’
Garcia clapped his hands once, bringing Tito’s attention to him. ‘Pay attention, homes, ’cos I’m not saying this again. I said we’re not here to bust your balls, but I can easily change my mind. I’m sure your parole officer would love to hear about these little drug-fueled parties of yours. How would you like to spend the remaining three and a half years of your term back inside?’
‘More than that,’ Hunter said. ‘If you get busted for possession and possibly distribution of drugs, that’ll add at least a couple of years to your sentence.’
Tito bit his lip. He knew he was fighting a losing battle.
‘Look, Tito, we just need to know if you know where we can find a guy called Ken Sands.’
Tito’s eyes widened like a shark’s jaw. ‘You gotta be shitting me.’
‘I take it you know him then,’ Garcia said.
‘Yeah, I know him. Everybody in Facility A knew him. He was a bad mother, man. And I mean real bad, you dig? Did he escape?’
‘No, he was released six months ago,’ Hunter said. ‘He served his term.’
‘And he’s already got the cops after him again.’ Tito chuckled. ‘I’m not surprised.’
‘So you guys were friends inside?’
‘Screw that, man. I knew who he was, but I stayed the hell away from him. The guy had a temper like an atomic bomb. Hated the world. But he was smart. Every time the guards were around the guy acted like a pussycat. Real polite and respectful. He barely ever got into trouble in Lanc. And he was always surrounded by books. The guy read like a champion. Like a man with a mission, you get me? But he sort of had a reputation, and people just didn’t mess with him.’
‘Reputation?’ Garcia asked.
Tito’s head jerked again. ‘There was this guy who dissed him once. You know the type, big-muscle gorilla who thinks he’s king ass-kicker. Well, this guy dissed Ken right in front of everyone. Ken did nothing for a while. He just waited for the right time. He was patient like that, you know? Never rushed anything. Well, the right time came and he got to the guy in the showers. The guy never saw Ken coming.
‘No one saw it happening. So much time had passed between the initial dissing and the attack that it was hard to link the two things together, you know what I’m sayin’? Ken never got heat for it.’
Hunter and Garcia knew that stories like that were common inside prisons.
Tito shook his head and started fidgeting with the plastic lighter again. ‘That guy doesn’t ever forget, man. If he’s got a beef with you, you’re positively screwed in red, white and blue with fifty stars, you feel me? Because one day he’ll come for you.’ Tito coughed like a sick man. ‘I was in the yard on the day big gorilla-man dissed Ken. I saw the look in Ken’s eyes. A look that I’ll never forget. It made me scared, and I wasn’t even involved. It was like bottled hate, you get my meaning? Like he had a devil inside him, or something.
‘I haven’t heard his name since I left Lanc. And if I never hear it again, that’ll be too soon. That guy is bad news all the way, homey.’
‘Well, we need to find him.’
‘Why are you asking me for? You’re the detectives, aren’t you? So detect.’
‘That’s what we’re doing, genius.’ Garcia walked over to the open-plan kitchenette. The smell of pot mixed itself with that of rancid milk. The old-fashioned sink was piled high with dirty dishes. The counters awash in paper plates, takeout containers and empty beer cans. ‘I like what you’ve done with the place,’ Garcia said, pulling the fridge door open. ‘Do you wanna beer?’
‘You’re offering me my own beer?’
‘I’m trying to be nice here, but you’re spoiling it, big time.’ Garcia slammed the fridge door shut and stepped on the pedal for the flip-top trashcan. As the lid came up, so did the overpowering smell of cannabis. ‘Damn!’ Garcia took a step back and screwed up his face. ‘Are those joint butts? There must be over a hundred of them.’
‘Hey, what the hell, man?’
‘Tito,’ Hunter sat down in front of him – a much less intimidating position, and he wanted Tito to relax a little. ‘We really need to find Sands, do you understand?’
‘How the hell would I know where he is? We weren’t even friends.’
‘But you were friends with others who might know a thing or two.’ Hunter observed Tito’s eye movement. He was searching his memory. Seconds later the eye movement stopped and his stare became fixed and a little distant. Hunter knew he had thought of someone specific.
‘I don’t know who to ask, man.’
‘Yes you do,’ Hunter hit back.
Tito and Hunter locked eyes for an instant.
‘Listen, man.’ Garcia circled the table to the other side. ‘The only thing we want is some information. We need to know where we can find Sands, and that’s very important. In return, you get to avoid a visit from your parole officer and a few of our friends in vice squad in the next hour. I’m sure they’d love to search these premises, especially that room with your two young friends.’
‘Ah, this is bullshit, homey.’
‘Well, it’s the only deal we’re selling.’
‘Shit.’ One more nervous tic followed by a heavy sigh. ‘I’ll see what I can find out, but I need some time.’
‘You’ve got until tomorrow.’
‘You’ve gotta be kidding me.’
‘Does it look like we’re kidding?’ Garcia asked.
Tito hesitated.
Garcia reached for his cellphone.
‘OK, homey, I’ll see what I can find out, and I’ll get back to you tomorrow. Can you leave now?’
‘Not yet,’ Hunter said. ‘There’s someone else too.’
‘Oh, no way.’
‘Another inmate – Raul Escobedo. Heard of him?’
On their way to Tito’s house, Hunter had told Garcia all about his meeting with Detective Seb Stokes and his mention of Raul Escobedo.
‘Who?’ Tito’s eyes narrowed.
‘His name is Raul Escobedo,’ Hunter repeated. ‘He was a guest at Lancaster as well. A sex offender.’
‘A rapist?’ Tito cocked his head back.
‘That’s right.’
‘Nah, man, are you high or something? Are police donuts made of hash these days?’
‘I don’t like donuts.’
‘Me neither,’ Garcia added.
‘I was in Facility A, man, which houses real bad mothers and the Seg – the Segregation Unit. There’s no way in God’s creation they’d put a rapist with us, you feel me? Unless the police wanted him dead. He’d be gang-raped and dead within the hour.’
Tito wasn’t lying. That was the way prisons in California worked and Hunter knew it. Every inmate, no matter which crime they’d committed, hated rapists. In prison, rapists were viewed as something lower than scum – as cowards who didn’t have the guts to commit a real crime, and who weren’t good enough to get their own women without the use of force. Plus, every inmate in the country had a mother, a sister, a daughter, a wife, a girlfriend – someone who could easily have become a rapist’s victim. Rapists were usually placed in a separate prison ward or block, away from all other inmates, otherwise they’d surely be given a dose of their own medicine, before being brutally murdered. That had been proven many times over.
Fifty-Nine
Alice Beaumont was getting more and more frustrated. She had spent the entire day researching images on the Internet and waiting for the California State Prison in Lancaster to send her the information she was after. Despite the many phone calls and the urgent requests, they seemed to be in no hurry to oblige.
Her image research had hit a dead end every time. She’d spent hours poring over mythology and cult websites, but she’d found nothing new to add to what she’d found previously.
Alice wasn’t the kind of woman who’d sit on her hands and wait for things to get done around her. She needed to be involved, and she sure as hell was tired of waiting.
The drive from the Police Administration Building to the California State Prison in Lancaster took her just over two hours. She had called DA Bradley, explaining what she needed. Two phone calls and less than fifteen minutes later he had everything arranged. Warden Clayton Laver said that Alice was welcome to go over and gather together the records she needed herself. They could do it themselves, as the warden had said, but they were understaffed, underfunded and overworked, and it could still be a day or two, maybe more, before they got around to it.
Alice parked in the second of the two large visitors’ parking lots and made her way into the reception. She was greeted by Prison Officer Julian Healy, a black, six-foot-four mammoth of a man built like a water dam.
‘Warden Laver sends his apologies,’ Healy said in an unrecognizable southern accent. His vowels were long and drawn out, and there was a laziness about his voice, as if it was too much of an effort to talk quickly. ‘He’s tied up in something else at the moment and is unable to meet you. I was instructed to take you wherever you need to go.’ He smiled while slowly looking Alice over. She was wearing a navy-blue business suit, complemented by a light-gray silky blouse. Its top button was undone, exposing her neck and a delicate white gold chain with a diamond pendant. ‘You’ll have to button up your blouse. And I suggest you button up your suit jacket as well.’
‘It’s Africa-hot in here,’ Alice said, handing him her handbag for inspection.
‘That’s nothing compared to the kinda heat you’ll get if any inmates lay their eyes on you and that thin blouse of yours.’ He looked down at her shoes. ‘Good thing you’re not wearing open-toe shoes.’
‘What’s the problem with open-toe shoes?’
‘You’d be amazed at the number of inmates who have a thing for women’s feet, especially their toes. Double special if they are painted red or any shade of it. It drives them crazy. You might as well be naked. To avoid a libido explosion in general population, visitors aren’t allowed to wear open-toe shoes.’
Alice didn’t know what to say. She said nothing.
‘It says here you wanna check our library?’ Healy asked, reading from the sheet he had with him.
‘That’s right.’
‘Any particular reason?’
Alice regarded him for a heartbeat.
‘None of my business, right?’ Healy smiled. ‘OK. Follow me.’ He guided Alice out of the visitors’ reception area through the back door and across a three-lane road. They were inside the prison compound now. Behind them, the north wall stretched half a mile, with heavily armed guard towers every two hundred yards. The CSP in Lancaster had a design capacity of 2,300 inmates, but a total institution population of more than double that number. It housed both level-I and level-IV prisoners – level IV indicating maximum security, the highest level found in California institutions other than death row. Guarding the CSP in Lancaster was a very demanding job.
They reached the first building in the compound, a rectangular steel-and-concrete block two stories high. Healy swiped his security card at the front door and keyed in an eight-digit number. The heavy metal door buzzed loudly and clicked open. Inside, more armed guards. All of them looked like they were built to withstand a magnitude-8 earthquake. They moved through the building in silence, Healy gently nodding every time they came across another guard. They exited that first block and proceeded through an open-air walkway.
‘The library is in the basement of building F,’ Healy said. ‘There’s a much faster way of getting there, but that involves walking through the internal grounds, and there will be prisoners around. I’m just trying to make things easier for both of us.’
They walked for about three minutes. Healy repeated the process with his security card and keypad as they reached building F and the heavy door buzzed open. Inside, light came only from long florescent bulbs inside metal meshes that ran along the ceiling. They turned left into a long corridor. An inmate dressed in an orange jumpsuit was mopping the floor by the staircase. His tanned, muscular arms were covered in tattoos and scars. He paused and moved to one side, clearing the way for Healy and Alice. The whole corridor sparkled with such a shine that Alice couldn’t help but wonder if the inmate went back to the other end and started all over again as soon as he’d finished mopping the floor, repeating the process from sunrise to sunset.
‘Mind the floor, boss, it’s a bit slippery,’ he said with his head low, keeping his eyes on the floor.
The library was bigger than Alice expected, occupying the entire basement floor. Healy nodded at the armed guard at the front door and guided Alice into a small side room.
‘Please have a seat in here while I go get the librarian. He’ll help you with whatever it is that you need.’
Sixty
The room was a bland, ten-paces-by-six squared box – no windows, one heavy door. There was nothing there but a metal table bolted to the concrete floor, two plastic chairs that would have looked more at home on a patio, and the strong smell of thick bleach. Smell aside, the space reminded Alice of the interrogation rooms she’d seen at the PAB, minus the big two-way mirror mounted on one wall.
A full minute went by before Healy opened the door again. He was accompanied by a man half his size and twice his age. The little white hair he had left on his head was cropped short and neat. His face carried deep, sad wrinkles, testimony to a life spent mostly behind bars. Reading glasses balanced at the tip of a nose that had been broken several times. His eyes looked as though they had once carried a hard, mean look, but now were tired and resigned. He was wearing an inmate’s orange jumpsuit.
‘Our librarian called in sick today. This is Jay Devlin, our assistant librarian,’ Healy announced. ‘Has been so for nineteen years. He knows everything there is to know about this library. If he can’t help you find what you need in here, no one can.’
Devlin nodded politely but refrained from shaking Alice’s hand. He kept his arms by his side and his gaze low.
Healy turned and faced Devlin. ‘If she needs to go to the library floor, call Officer Toledo to escort her, you hear? I don’t want her out there by herself.’
‘No problem, boss.’ Devlin’s voice was a notch louder than a whisper.
‘If you need to use the john,’ Healy addressed Alice again, ‘Officer Toledo will accompany you and make sure it’s empty before you enter it. We don’t have women’s facilities in here, only in the visitors’ block. When you’re done down here, Jay will call up and I’ll come and get you.’
‘Yes, boss,’ she replied with a nod, almost giving him a salute.
Healy’s eyes narrowed and he gave her a look that could sour milk. ‘I hope you find our library to your liking,’ he finally said before exiting the room and allowing the door to slam behind him.
‘He’s not a man for jokes, is he?’ Alice said.
‘No, ma’am,’ Devlin replied, his posture timid. ‘Guards here don’t really care for jokes unless they involve us prisoners.’
‘I’m Alice.’ She offered her hand.
‘I’m Jay, ma’am.’ Again, he refrained from shaking it.
Alice took a step back. ‘What I need is quite simple. I just need a list of all the books an ex-inmate checked out from this library.’
‘All right.’ Devlin nodded, his gaze now moving back to her face. ‘Tha
t should be easy enough. Do you have the inmate’s number?’
‘I’ve got his name.’
‘No problem, we can work from that. What’s the name?’
‘Ken Sands.’
Devlin’s eyes fluttered for an instant.
‘I take it you know him.’
Devlin nodded and quickly ran a hand from his mouth to his chin twice. ‘I know every inmate that comes in here, ma’am. I’ve been here long enough. Since this library opened, really. Every different prison block here has an allocated day and time during the week when they can use the library. Not a good idea to mix inmates from different blocks, you know what I mean? But very few ever take advantage of what we have here. A pity, really. Ken, on the other hand, pretty much never missed an opportunity to sit and read. He loved his books. He loved studying. He visited this library more than any inmate I ever knew.’
‘That’s good. So we shouldn’t have much of a problem.’
‘Well, how long do you have, ma’am?’
Alice cocked a smile. ‘Did he read that much?’
‘He read a lot, but that’s not the problem. The problem is our system. It only started being updated and digitized at the beginning of the year. And that process is going real slow. Until its completion, we still have to use the old library-card system to catalogue our books. No computers.’ Devlin bobbed his head from side to side. ‘Which is a good thing for me. When the new system takes over, I’ll have to find something else to do. I’m not very good with them computers, ma’am.’
As part of the District Attorney’s office, Alice understood well why the digitization of prison libraries was moving at a snail’s pace. Everything the state’s government did was linked to a budget. That budget varied every year, and its allocation was supposedly directly related to prioritization. With so many reforms due to take place inside the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the prisoners’-library-system automation, Alice guessed, was pretty low on that priority list.
‘We use a library card for each inmate,’ Devlin continued after a brief pause. ‘Every time they check a book out, the book’s catalogue number gets added to the inmate’s library card together with the checkout date. The inmate’s number gets added to the book’s catalogue card. No names are used.’