Kzine Issue 6

by Graeme Hurry

  “I’m familiar with those details.”

  They went through two electronic gates into a small foyer. The cell stood opposite with the solid metal door open.

  “What’s the possible egress?”

  “What? This metal door you’re holding onto is the only way out, end of story. Straight into the hall. You see any other way? This cell was made to spec and lacks for nothing in the security department. Check the pipes, solid. The vent? She’d have crawled through that if she was the size of a rat, and she was a lot bigger than that, although there was a similarity in personality type, you ask me.” He glanced at the warden. “I heard she sent you a message.”

  “Keep that confidential. We can’t determine yet what it means.”

  “I’m guessing everybody already knows. Not much stays secret for long in a prison, now, does it? She’s slippery, but she loves letting you know she’s won. Sammy Peters is like the Roadrunner — remember him?”

  “Before my time.”

  “There was this Wile E. Coyote. Always messed up. He made really great plans, see, to catch the Roadrunner, using this Acme company. It was—”

  “I want to talk to someone who knows how this cell was built,” the warden said.

  “Not the guard?”

  “Later.”

  “Suit yourself. I’ll take you to Maintenance. They should know.”

  “No. Send them to me here.”

  Owens pulled out his cell phone and pushed a button. “If you say so. Not my job to tell a new warden what to do, is it?”

  “I’m open. Depends on what you have to say.”

  Owens spoke into the phone. “Send someone familiar with structural stuff over to Solitary. Excuse me, I mean to our Special Management Unit.” He paused, listening. “How the hell do I know, just get him here!”

  The warden went into the cell, studying it. There wasn’t much to see, a few possessions left behind. He stepped back into the foyer just as a buzzer sounded and a man came through the second gate. He looked to be in his forties, with a thin build but a strong, confident bearing, wearing overalls with the word “Maintenance” stamped on the back and his own name on the pocket.

  “I’m Bill Coyt. Glad to meet you, Warden. They said you want to know about this cell. It was built about seven years ago. Pretty much the latest modular type at the time for isolation. Good reputation. There are usually five to nine constructed together, but here there’s only the one.”

  “I’m more interested in how they’re put together.”

  Coyt smiled. “I used to sell the things before I got tired of being on the road. That’s why they sent me over just now. Want all of it?”

  “I’ll see. Just start and I’ll let you know if I want a fast forward.”

  Owens gave a bark of a laugh behind them.

  Coyt pointed to different areas as he spoke. It was obvious he knew what he was talking about, and after a minute or so the salesman in him came back in, his pitch shifting into enthusiasm.

  “Precast, prestressed concrete, 80-foot square, fully furnished.”

  “Furnished?”

  “That means pre-engineered, a safety feature, so you have it all welded together, with bed, cast-in door and window frames, and a stainless steel lavatory/water closet. That closet has an element to prevent overflow and a hydraulic flush valve. The shelf is molded to the wall, same as the stainless steel mirror. Then there are the supply and exhaust air grills, with a half-inch cube core. That’s it.”

  “I see. However, there’s no illumination in this one, no windows, no fluorescent.”

  “Usually there’s a security light outfitted in the ceiling, connected to a utility chase, but in the case of this unit, the inmate threatened to harm herself, given she has a life sentence and symptoms of depression.”

  “All pretend,” offered Owens. “Like the Roadrunner.” He shut up at a look from the warden.

  “You know a great deal about her state of mind, it would seem, Mr. Coyt. She’s been here just under a year. Why the sudden worry?”

  “Bill. Call me Bill. I’m just the one they inform if there have to be adjustments made. In this case, I had to install a light outside the cell that could be rotated to give enough light into the cell. I usually get to find out why. This is a prison, after all. Reasons and rumors all over the place. Right, Jim?”

  Owens looked up at the fixture above them and nodded. “Like I already told the warden.”

  “Do you see any way the prisoner could have gotten out of here?” the warden asked. He suppressed a sigh and kept his voice calm. The security in the prison was far less efficient than had been described to him, not that the escape of Sammy Peters hadn’t already made that clear.

  Bill smiled again. “That’s not something I even have to think about. The cells in this unit - in the whole complex - are made to withstand earthquakes. The only way out of this one is through this door and it’s not run by electrical anything. It’s manual, so power outages don’t affect security for it, and neither does battery failure, and only three people have access to a key - the two correctional officers assigned to this wing, and you.”

  “I’m well aware of that. There is no master key, another apparent security measure. What I’m asking is whether someone else in Maintenance could have a key.”

  “No. You see, the keys can’t be duplicated. They’re forged at the plant where the unit’s built. Two is the limit.”

  “That could be altered by a clever machinist,” the warden said.

  “I’d agree with you, except that in this case each key has a titanium filament that contains a code. It’s like a signature. Both keys for a cell like this one are forged at the same time in a two-key mold, same strip running horizontally through them. Anyone tries to make a third - won’t work in the lock.”

  “Maybe she floated out through the food slot, Warden,” said Owens, letting out another bark of a laugh. “One of her scams was being a psychic. Talk about playing for losers.”

  “Do you have any suggestions?” the warden asked Coyt.

  “She got out by normal means - someone unlocked the cell door and let her out. One of you loaned the key to someone else. It’s the only possible solution.”

  “That’s what occurred to me at first. I know my key is in the safe in my office and it’s there for emergencies. No one else knows the combination. Owens and the correctional officer wear their keys all the time they’re on duty, Owens in the daytime, the guard at night. They exchange the key with each other when their shift ends or starts. They don’t get out of the building without a body scan. Neither do I.”

  “Someone like her, you can’t be too cautious,” Coyt said.

  “She killed seven boyfriends by burying them alive. My brother was one of them.”

  “Makes you a prime suspect,” Owens offered. “Maybe you let her go and then did her in out of revenge.”

  “You’re a humorous man, Owens.” The warden looked inside the cell again.

  “I’m surprised she didn’t get death row,” Coyt said. “This prison is just medium security.”

  “A technicality and a good lawyer,” the warden said, “will cheat justice every time.”

  “We never had a killer here before,” Owens said. “It’s just a regular women’s prison, you know? The ones in here did mostly drugs. Nothing like Sammy.”

  “What’s to keep the guard or Owens here from letting her go?” Coyt asked.

  “I didn’t, I tell you!” Owens shook his fists in the air. “What’s the matter with you, Bill, talking like that!”

  The warden studied the blank wall before him, not saying anything for a moment. The other two men waited, Bill Coyt with patience and Owens with some agitation.

  “So let’s say we figure out how she got out of here, that still doesn’t explain how she could escape the prison,” the warden said, finally.

  Coyt gestured into the empty cell. “This SMU is built on a separate shell and foundation from the rest of the prison. She c
ould have exited by the roof - it isn’t electrified. But no one expected she - or anyone - could get out of the cell, much less past the gates.”

  “Never mind how, let’s assume she got to the roof, unlikely as it seems. She still has to get to the ground.”

  “Depends. If she had guts, and I’d say she did, she could have done a free fall from the roof.”

  “That’s got to be at least fifteen feet,” Owens said. “She’d bust a leg or two.”

  “The prisoner was a martial arts black belt. She could roll on impact is my guess. They learn how to break a fall that way,” Coyt said.

  “You’re very well informed,” the warden said, interested.

  “I didn’t just sell these units, I sold a whole complex sometimes, even including the warden’s office module. Depending on what the state wanted. Lots of flexibility.” Coyt was relaxed and self-assured. He knew his product.

  “I mean, about Sammy Peters.”

  “Oh. Well, people like her, people without a conscience, fascinate me. I like to study them, try to figure their motives.”

  “Not me,” Owens said. “I don’t care what makes them tick. I just want to see them put away.”

  “Motive isn’t difficult,” said the warden. “It’s usually greed, wanting something they don’t have. Thanks for your help.”

  “Anytime,” Coyt said. Owens spoke into his cell phone again. The gate opened and Bill Coyt left.

  “Now I’ll see the correctional officer,” the warden said.

  “Here?” asked Owens.

  “Yes. I’ll see her alone, if you don’t mind.”

  “No skin off mine, you know what I mean?” Owens said. “She stayed on after her shift. I’ll tell her.”

  After he left, the warden leaned against the wall, this time letting out a sigh of frustration. It made no sense, but the prisoner was gone, and by all accounts, she had a good head start.

  He heard the gate open and turned around. When they had first met, Li Hall’s petite form had worried him. She didn’t have the build of a typical guard. But he knew her file now. She’d laid out troublemakers who were taller and heavier and she’d been rated as the best shooter. No one carried guns inside for fear a prisoner would grab them, but each officer had to know how to use one. When he’d asked her in their first interview why she wanted a job like this, she’d been very clear. “I like knowing the bad ones can’t hurt people anymore.”

  She was calm and contained. “Warden, I’m not sure what I can say to put your mind at rest, but the key never left my sight until I gave it to Jim this morning, and I certainly didn’t use it to let out Sammy Peters.”

  “Someone had to.”

  “I suppose so, but I can vouch for him. Jim wouldn’t play a game like this. We handle twenty prisoners each, plus Solitary.”

  “And he’ll vouch for you, yes. It is a mystery, isn’t it. You talk to other officers, of course.”

  “Not all that often. Just on the fifteen-minute break. We don’t socialize much here, after all. There are over seven hundred prisoners. It keeps us pretty busy. We’re understaffed.”

  “Yes, so I’ve discovered. I’ve been conferring with the governor about that.”

  Li Hall glanced into cell through the open door. “I checked Solitary at 4:30. She was sleeping. Jim found the cell door open at 6:45 and he called me back in. I’d just gotten to the parking lot. That’s odd.”

  “What is?”

  “She left her Tarot deck. See, there on the shelf?”

  “I doubt she wanted to carry anything with her during her escape.”

  “Those she would. They were her secret weapon, she’d always say. ‘My lucky cards. You can fool anyone with these,’ she’d say.”

  “She could buy another deck later.”

  “These were special to her, I think. Sometimes, she said, she could make real predictions.”

  “I’ll bet she could.”

  Li studied him as if deciding whether to say more. “She made one about you.”

  He was interested and against his will asked what it had been.

  “I’m repeating her words. I wouldn’t mention it but with things as they are…”

  “Go ahead.”

  “For one thing, she said you’d figure out how she did it, after a while.”

  “How she did what?”

  “Escape, I suppose. She didn’t tell me what she meant and at the time I didn’t ask, I’m sorry to say. I thought she meant… her victims. She talked a lot about them.”

  “You said for one thing. What else?”

  Li looked concerned. “She said you’d be too late.”

  “Too late for what, I wonder,” he said, half to himself.

  “I thought it was just words. I didn’t take any of it seriously. It looks as if I should have.”

  The warden pointed to the electronic gate. “There are two of these between the main building and her cell. How would she get past them?”

  “She wouldn’t. I can guarantee that. Those each have emergency generator backup. Maintenance inspects the backup operation every three days to make sure it’s in working order. You can check with them.”

  “No one guards the gates?”

  “Not there, no. It’s a straight corridor so we rely on video cameras.”

  “I’ll want to speak to you later, but thank you. This has been helpful,” the warden said.

  “At your service, Warden,” and he knew she meant it.

  Alone again, he looked over the cell one more time. She’d have led a dull existence in there. Besides the Tarot deck, the only other things were a map of her home state, Georgia, over a thousand miles away, and a dictionary. He picked up the objects, studying them. They gave him no hints about where she’d gone. He’d have Owens place the items in lockup. It was where they should have gone at the outset.

  The warden went back to his office. He asked his secretary not to disturb him for the next twenty minutes unless it was the police commissioner or the federal marshal he’d spoken with after the escape had been discovered that morning. A most unpleasant and uncooperative man, but he could pull rank over a warden and that was that.

  He opened the safe. The key was there, as it had been when he’d arrived an hour ago. Sammy Peters was wanted in seven states. That she’d escaped from the prison on his watch was serious. It didn’t matter he’d only been on the job less than a month.

  She’d told Li he’d figure out how she did it. The warden looked around the office and out the window. From where he sat he could see the wing that held the SMU. Something had kept him from going to see her since he’d taken the job. Maybe if he had, he’d have sensed what she was planning. Three gates in all led to her cell, two of them electronically secured. The inner fence surrounding the prison was welded wire mesh, twelve feet and electrified. How the hell did she do it?

  He didn’t think the fax he’d received forty-five minutes before was a false lead. It was Sammy Peters crowing at her success and willing to share the fun. She’d faxed a photocopy of a Tarot card and after talking with Li Hall he knew it had to be from the deck she’d left behind in her cell. The image showed crumbling foundations, a man and a woman falling headfirst from the top of a high tower, apparently to their deaths. Wind and rain surrounded them. But it wasn’t just a death card. His brother had shown him the Tarot more than once, trying unsuccessfully to get him interested. This one wasn’t hard to remember. It had been Rick’s favorite, something Sammy Peters would know. He’d spent a lot of time explaining that it was a card that heralded change and renewal, and over time, truth. That’s what had brought Rick and Sammy together, after all, that unfortunate love of arcane things, something the warden couldn’t get his head around, but it was his brother’s life, his choice. Until Sammy Peters killed him. So now she was on her own again. Lucky Sammy.

  He sat back in the chair and reflected. She’d sent him a personal message, and no doubt enjoyed it. Her prediction to Li Hall would have to come true, because he wasn�
�t going to let go until he did figure it out and found her.

  The intercom buzzed.

  “Ann, I said no interruptions for-”

  “It’s Federal Marshal Havers, Warden.”

  He sighed. “All right. Put him through.”

  “Atherton, you have anything for us?” Havers still sounded as if he’d eaten gravel for breakfast.

  “I have specs on the cell. They might help us find out how she escaped.”

  “I don’t care. That’s for you and the governor to chat about. You know what I’m asking.”

  “Marshal Havers, I wish I could say there was. There’s just the fax.”

  “A Tarot card. It doesn’t help us.”

  “What have you found out so far?” he asked, fairly certain Havers wasn’t going to say, and he was right.

  “We’ll let you know when it’s something you need to know.” Federal Marshal Havers hung up.

  The phone buzzed again.

  “It’s the governor,” Ann said.

  The man must be psychic, Harry thought, and he almost laughed, but not quite.

  “Governor Morris, how are you, sir?”

  “Not damn well, Harry, not at all, as you might expect. FBI agents and that federal marshal are all crawling around and they aren’t getting anywhere. It’s been over an hour.”

  More than that, thought the warden. It had been an hour since the escape was discovered. They still didn’t know when she had actually gotten out.

  “That woman is a serial killer and now she’s free. It isn’t good, Harry.”

  “I know. I thought the system here was foolproof. I didn’t plan on…”

  “Your prison is medium security, Harry, but I expected you’d all take extra precautions. I want to know what happened.”

  “I’m investigating that, sir.”

  “I expect you are. Call me when you have anything. I want more than this to tell the press tonight.”

  Harry put down the receiver and sat a while, thinking. As warden he should stay where he was, but he needed to get away from the prison to think.

  His secretary Ann looked up when he opened the door.

  “I’m leaving the grounds, if anyone asks. Be back in a couple of hours.”