by Kyanna Skye
They’re testing me, she thought, when her flight had been less than an hour away from landing and she finally closed her file folder. They want to see how good my academic theories hold up in the field. She looked at the sealed folder in her lap and lightly drummed the smooth leathery surface of it with her fingers. They want to determine if I’m worth everything that I say I am before they give me the really big jobs.
That seemed logical.
There was just one flaw. If this job was as big as Mr. Desoto had said it was, why had she gotten it? Why hadn’t they started her out on something small? Something that was not as important?
She took what she knew already. She was a budding lawyer, fresh out of law school with aspirations to be the confidant and representative to the wealthy, influential, and the guilty. She had no illusions about the latter. Law school had taught her that she would have to learn to defend people even if she knew that they were guilty. She had had little difficulty in accepting that fact and for one simple reason: guilty people paid better. But even like any seasoned lawyer, she had to show that she was the best at what she did.
Her academics had certainly proved that she was, as Mr. Desoto had said, an “out of the box” thinker. Even her theories had challenged some of the core principles that her professors had held to be true and unshakable. In some cases, at the very least, she had given them pause for reconsideration of some of them. Maybe her new employers wanted proof that her theories were right.
I’m a guinea pig, she realized. That made more sense than other thoughts that had crossed her mind. If they gave her a job that was as big as Mr. Desoto had claimed like this one, it was the equivalent of throwing a child into the deep end of the pool. Sink or swim, to use the cliché. If she was a success at this job, then they would welcome her in with open arms and a magical key card that opened golden elevator doors. But if she failed and her theories proved wrong, then she would remain, essentially, a nobody. Someone that they could toss aside as if she was nothing.
She was new, inexperienced, and expendable; an unholy trinity that caused enough for concern in the legal world. And to be handed a case that was as important as this for her first trial run?
She felt the cold tingle of sweat on the small of her back.
I can do this, she assured herself as the fasten seatbelt light came on overhead. I know that I’m right and I know that I can do this. It won’t be a problem, not at all.
The force of the plane landing crushed any last doubts that she had. She knew that her theories of certain legal practices would hold up in practical applications. Much of the legal system was dedicated to hard facts and intimidating words. Sometimes, a softer approach was what was required. Soft… but firm.
When the passengers disembarked from the plane she felt the heat of the Colorado air about her and she saw that Mr. Desoto had been right. It was plenty hot here. Despite that, she felt a cool confidence about her and a winning smile touched her face.
I won’t fail. She was certain of that.
After collecting her luggage she followed the itinerary provided for her in her travel plans. She was able to rent a car and drove the rest of the way from the airport to the hotel in which she would be staying. After checking in and getting her luggage squared away she checked where it was that she was to be going next.
According to the brief, it was simply a place called Hahn’s Peak. But there was no address. What was Hahn’s Peak? A mountain resort? Some kind of a restaurant? A meeting place of some sort?
She checked her phone and searched for it. A few seconds later the top result was something that both shocked and worried her. Her phone stared back at her with the list of answers for her simple inquest: Hahn’s Peak Correctional Facility.
“It’s a prison?” she asked the empty room as if hoping there was someone within earshot that could answer her question. She did several more checks, all with the same result, making sure that Hahn’s Peak was not a restaurant or some other public venue that she might be overlooking. But each result was the same; there was only Hahn’s Peak correctional facility. Unconvinced, she pulled out her trusty laptop and did several other internet searches and all of them turned up the same result. Hahn’s Peak was indeed a prison.
She leaned back in the uncomfortable motel room chair and gaped at the screen that seemed as taunting at her phone had been. She watched and waited, hoping that perhaps this was some kind of an elaborate joke. Colorado was the marijuana center of the nation; she hoped that some lackey – high on the local product – had made a massive clerical error. But as the seconds went by, she realized that it wasn’t going to be so easy.
“My first client is in prison?” she asked the empty space around her again. Something like that should have been left in the brief.
She felt a twinge of anger at Mr. Desoto. Attorney-Client privilege was something that didn’t always work well in prison and a man as experienced as Mr. Desoto in this kind of work would know that.
The first part of the test, she told herself.
She shook the feeling off. She’d seen the inside of prisons before and had been able to confer with people on the inside. Some prisons offered conference rooms where they could be monitored under minimal supervision and at least speak in person. Other prisons insisted upon a partition of unbreakable glass and telephones in order for people to speak to one another. Sometimes it was a combination of the two, where she would be sitting in a long line of open phone booths where anyone on either side of her could hear what she had to say.
And there was little information available on this prison, save for its location and a few details about contact information. That was typical fare for a prison, as overly cautious people did not want details leaking out that could help convicts to escape from within, or for people to help plot an escape from without.
All that was available, really, was what was in front of her. If she wanted more, she was going to have to go to the prison and try and meet her client firsthand. Isn’t that the way of it anyway?
She sighed and took a calming breath, then looked at her watch. From the itinerary, she knew that she would have to meet with her client firsthand anyway. Traveling from New York to Colorado had gained her two hours of time and she’d already adjusted her watch to match the local time. She had an hour and a half before she was to meet her client and from her searches, she knew that the prison was less than thirty minutes away by drive.
She sniffed at her clothes, unchanged since she had left home after her strange and brief first interview at work. She gave herself another look in the mirror. She definitely had the look of a traveled person; her new clothes were slightly wrinkled from travel, her hair had lost some of its bounce, her eyes were slightly red, and the quick whiff of her clothes told her that she smelled like the inside of a plane.
“First impressions,” she reminded herself as she began to undress and headed for the shower.
When she had bathed and dried her hair, she still had nearly fifty minutes before her meeting was to take place. She changed into another of her business suits. It wasn’t quite as striking as that which her father had bought her, but it had the comfort of familiarity about it. She combed her hair and tied her thick wavy locks into a single ponytail and settled her glasses upon the bridge of her nose.
Gathering up her briefcase and looking at herself in the mirror that hung on the back of the door she gave herself a second appraising nod. She looked business-like enough to pass muster for one of the legal profession. Her suit definitely gave her a no-nonsense look and it convinced her that she at least presented herself as someone that was not to be trifled with.
“Right,” she said with a sigh. “Let’s do this.”
***
The drive up to Hahn’s Peak was a pleasant one. She had seen only several prisons before and the location in which they were constructed reflected the kind of people that were held within. And from the drive, she was able to get a sense of what kind of prison Hahn’s Peak was
to be.
One prison she had seen was built at the edge of a small town, where there were, of course, the traditional high walls and guard towers. But even those were shorter, where even a man with a ten-foot ladder might be able to scale such obstacles if he so chose. Such facilities usually kept the mildly dangerous contained.
Another prison that she had seen was more akin to a college dorm than anything else. The facility itself was stacked five stories high and shaped like a large brick turned on its side with blackened and barred windows every six feet. In which she had seen no concrete walls, but row after row of high fences topped with razor wire that could reduce a man to slivers of flesh in seconds.
The worst of the worst were usually in some facility of stone and concrete walls so high that one would not be able to see in or out, and even those walls were behind several rings of high chain link fence capped in razor wire as well. And those too were usually punctuated by guard towers where men armed with rifles kept a diligent watch for escapees or anything out of the ordinary.
She looked at the terrain that she passed and saw only rugged mountains everywhere. Though the landscape was beautiful, it was rocky, steep, and looked like even the work crews that had carved the very road that she drove on had had a difficult time in building this paved path. The rocky slopes were so steep that a man on foot would need to keep to this road if he wished to travel faster without the need of any climbing gear.
She took that into account.
Adding to that, it had been nearly ten minutes since she had seen any sign of civilization, which meant that the nearest civilian populace was miles behind her. A far removed facility in the middle of high and rugged terrain.
It was a simple equation that added up to one fact: Hahn’s Peak was meant for the worst kind of inmates.
“Shit,” she mumbled.
She had no fear of dealing with difficult clients, men or women. Their behavior towards her was immaterial. But criminals that had a bone to pick for any reason usually grinded their teeth with the person nearest to them for the convenience of it all. In this case, it would be her. And when someone had an ax to grind, it made the work slow up all the more. And already she felt like there was little enough that she had to work with.
“Shit, shit, shit,” she mumbled again as she drove onward.
The swerving mountain road finally crested she saw Hahn’s Peak correctional facility come into sight. With the brilliance of the sun shining on it, she felt slightly impressed at what greeted her eyes.
The facility wasn’t the tallest prison that she had seen. It was three levels high, even the guard towers around it were about the same height. It was a shining white, making it look as though it had been crafted from snow that had refused to give way to the summer heat. The facility was surrounded by a single chain link fence, but this one was capped in traditional barbed wire rather than the more aggressive spirals of razor wire.
The inside of the facility looked as she had expected. Right off she could see that there was an exercise yard that was, at least for the moment, empty of any of the inmates. But dotting the inside of the fence she could see guards walking patrol dogs here and there, and the silhouette of but a single guard occupying the towers above.
The facility sat squat on the flattest part of this mountain, as though it were a temple built atop some mythical mountain and the beings within meant to be some kind of pagan gods. All around, she guessed, the population within had a panoramic view of the beautiful – but impossible – terrain all around them. Indeed, the only access road she could see was that which she had driven on to reach this place.
If this place was meant for the worst kind of criminals, then it was a joke to put them here. Jamie, with no real experience in attempting to break out of prison, thought that it would be quite easy for a person to find the means of escape in a place like this.
Something is very off about this, she thought.
She followed the road to its only end-point, the front gate of the prison where a security booth had been set. Though the term “security booth” was an overgenerous description for what she saw. It was nothing more than a small shack that looked lavish enough to combat the elements, equipped with what looked like it could function as either an indoor heater or an air conditioner, and a pair of guards sat within behind a sliding window. Facing her car was a simple gate that was held securely shut by nothing more than a lever handle that could be locked with nothing but a padlock. And that padlock, she observed, was presently missing.
A man intent on escape could almost literally just walk out of this facility. She wasn’t sure if she wanted to laugh or panic.
Bringing her car to a stop at the gate, one of the guards within the entry shack rose up from his seat inside and opened the sliding window. From within she could hear the sound of a television broadcasting some kind of a sporting event. Obviously, these guards were not given over to strict routines and intense watches with military fervor.
“Help you?” the guard, a pale and pock-marked faced man asked.
“Jamie Lombardo,” she said, introducing herself before she realized that she wasn’t sure what else to say about why she was here. “I have an appointment with one of your–”
“Come on in,” said the guard as he stepped away from the window, sounding slightly irritated that he had been taken away from his sporting event to open the gate for her. He pulled the gate wide, allowing her space to drive through.
Feeling a nervous chuckle within her, she drove forward. The road emptied into a large parking lot, in which she saw a number of vehicles sitting in the only parking lot in the whole of the prison. Among them were mostly SUV’s marked with correctional facility license plates, likely these were the personal conveyances of the guards. There were a few minivans, one or two coups, and a single Cadillac that she immediately registered as the warden’s vehicle as it sat in a marked parking space.
This is a new one, she thought, never having seen a prison layout like this before in the whole of her life.
She parked her car and as she stepped out she saw the entrance to the white building ahead. A set of glass double doors that looked like they could have been taken off of a department store entrance and placed here beckoned her forward. With her briefcase in tow, she entered into the facility proper and found a reception desk waiting for her.
Behind it was the first real resemblance to a secure prison that she had seen. A plate of glass, looking to be about an inch thick, stood between her and the small office space beyond. In which, she could see the flutter and flicker of numerous TV screens with a dull gray backwash on the wall behind them, on which she was certain that the feed from security cameras could be seen.
Sitting at the desk that controlled such devices was a short and elderly man of perhaps fifty or so. He was dressed in a short-sleeved gray shirt with rank tabs on his shoulders that Jamie could not read. Across his chest was the usual embroidered emblem of a badge marked with the prison’s name on his right breast. On his left was a name tag that read, “Simmons”.
“Excuse me,” she said.
The older man within the small office looked up and smiled warmly at her. When he spoke, his voice was lightly fuzzed as though filtered through a speaker, through which she was certain she too must have sounded to him. “Can I help you?”
“I’m Jamie Lombardo. I’m here to see one of your prisoners.”
The old man, like the guard outside, nodded as though she had been wearing a sign that told why she was here and that he’d been expecting her all day. “Yes, come in please.” He tapped a switch on his desk and to her right, a glass door buzzed with the sound of an electronic release and the door swung open less than an inch. “Follow the hall to the very end,” Simmons instructed. “Turn left at the fork, the receiving area is there. Your client will be down momentarily.”
“Thank you,” Jamie said, uncertain as to what else to say and for the third time today she followed the instructions that guided her t
o her next meeting place. She followed the hall, turned, and found herself in the most peculiar of receiving areas that she had ever seen.
In other prisons she had visited, she had learned what to expect from receiving rooms. She had anticipated seeing cold and unfeeling concrete floors with metal tables, chairs, and chain hooks bolted to the floor where inmates could be shackled to their seats to prevent any notion of escape. Additionally, she had thought to see armed guards standing stoically with their backs to the wall, ready to draw side arms and fire at unruly inmates at a moment’s notice.
It was not so with this place.
The room was as warm and inviting as the lounge in a winter ski retreat.
In the center of the room, there was a large fire pit, which now sat cold and unused. It was a handsome thing, carved from a single piece of white marble if she was to guess and large enough so that people could use it as a bench if they chose, sitting nearer a pleasant fire. Surrounding it, was a plush carpet that – like the building – looked as white as un-melted and untouched snow. Small tables brilliantly carved from oak, mahogany, cedar, and other fine woods dotted the room in no particular order. Accompanying those were plush chairs and couches that only the rich would be allowed to sit upon.
The room was flooded with light from a wide window that, she noticed, was without bars. Not even the doors she had passed through to get here save for that at the reception desk, had used any kind of security. No keypads, no thumbprint readers, not even a skeleton key. None of the technology meant to keep dangerous men caged had been employed here. This place, she suspected, was genuinely some kind of a joke.
Uncertain of what else to do she slipped into one of the nearest chairs. It was soft and comfortable and she easily felt relaxed just sitting in it. But the moment of comfort was not to last as on the far side of the room another glass door opened and in stepped a lone figure.
Jamie’s breath nearly caught in her throat at the sight of the figure that emerged.