Singularity

by Joe Hart

  Sullivan turned in a circle and extended his arm, pointing at a large splash of blood on the wall above the bed. “Am I wrong, or does it look like he was bashed into the walls?”

  “It appears so. I think that’s the contact point for the first blow,” Anderson said, motioning to the spot Sullivan pointed out. “Then the wall behind you, and then perhaps off the floor several times.”

  “So you’re saying he was beaten to death against the walls? How strong would you have to be to do something like that?” Barry asked.

  “Or, how many guys would you need?” Sullivan said.

  “We won’t know for sure until we examine the tissue samples and extrapolate velocity, angle, that sort of thing,” Anderson replied. “We also might come up with an idea of a murder weapon that’s not currently obvious.”

  “Were you the first ones in, or was it open before you got here?” Sullivan asked.

  “From what the sheriff said, he took one look through the window and called the office, he wanted nothing to do with this. Other than him, no one’s said they went in before us,” Don replied.

  Sullivan looked down at the remains poking from the vent. “Why would they shove him down the vent in the first place? Why not just beat him to death and leave him here?”

  Both Anderson and Barry shrugged and stared at the blood coated floor.

  Footsteps echoed down the hallway outside of the room, and Sullivan stepped out of the cell and let the technician return to his position.

  Two men strode down the corridor toward the group. The man in the lead wore a charcoal suit and appeared to be in his late fifties or early sixties. He was well over six feet tall and wisp thin. Feathery gray hair that might have been blonde at one time was combed neatly to one side of the man’s head. His face was slightly horse-like, with large but even teeth that already were beginning to poke from beneath a pair of narrow lips in a polite smile. The second man, who strode a few paces behind, was a glowering Everett Mooring.

  The older man extended a hand to Stevens as he neared, the smile spreading warmly across his features. “Agents Stevens and Shale, I presume?” the man said.

  Barry shook the man’s hand. “Yes, sir. I’m Barry Stevens, and this is Sullivan Shale and our forensic pathologist, Don Anderson.”

  “David Andrews, I’m the warden. I believe you’ve already met my chief officer?” Andrews said, motioning over his shoulder at the impassive guard behind him.

  “He was kind enough to give us a lift earlier this morning,” Sullivan said congenially, hoping to crack Mooring’s stony façade. The guard only stared at him as if he were part of the wall.

  The warden nodded and smiled again. “Yes, I’m sorry that you’ve been called here on such grim circumstances, and with the current uncooperative weather conditions. I was just telling Everett that a possible evacuation might be needed if the rain doesn’t let up soon.”

  Silence fell over the group of men and Sullivan glanced at Barry before addressing the warden. “We were hoping we could have a word with you. Go over some basic information before we begin the investigation?”

  The warden closed his eyes and nodded. “Of course, gentlemen. Any help my staff and I can provide. We are at your service.”

  “Thank you,” Barry said, and turned back to Anderson, who placed a set of safety glasses on his round face and began pulling on a pair of latex gloves. “Don, you’ll let us know when you’re done and if you find anything significant?”

  “We’ll be right here for a while,” the team leader said.

  The warden motioned to the stairs leading back up to the main holding area. “Follow me, gentlemen.”

  Chapter 3

  Thunder grumbled outside the window of the warden’s office and rain clicked against the glass like a hundred metronomes.

  “Would either of you like a cup of coffee or tea?” Andrews asked as he shut the wooden door behind them and motioned to the two leather seats in front of a wide mahogany desk.

  “Coffee would be great,” Barry answered as he settled into the left chair.

  Sullivan nodded as the older man busied himself near a small coffee station in the corner of the room. As Sullivan dropped into the right chair, he took a moment to study the warden’s office.

  Andrews had led them back through the holding area and, wordlessly, Mooring split off from the group when they entered the lobby, disappearing behind a single door on the far side of the large room. Andrews brought them to the wooden door with the brass plate Sullivan had noticed on their way in, and ushered them inside. The interior of the room had high ceilings, mirroring the lobby, with ornate woodworking that extended from either wall and joined in the center with a low-hanging chandelier made of brass and stainless steel. The walls were rather bare, a single painting of the prison’s grounds hanging on the wall behind Andrew’s desk and half a dozen headshots of middle-aged men adorning the space to the right. A tall bookshelf beside the pictures held numerous volumes that would’ve looked at home in any lawyer’s office or judge’s chambers. The windows were reinforced with steel mesh and sat just out of reach of even the tallest man’s grasp.

  “Sugar? Cream?” the warden asked from the corner.

  “Cream in mine, please,” Barry said.

  “Black is fine for me,” Sullivan said.

  Andrews made his way back to where the agents sat and handed each their respective coffees. After retrieving a steaming cup of tea from the beverage tray in the corner, the older man sat behind the desk, with a sigh and a weary smile at the two agents.

  “So, where to begin?” the warden said, looking from Sullivan to Barry and then back again.

  Sullivan sat forward after sipping from the hot mug of coffee in his hand. “We’d like to start by just laying out what transpired prior to the call our office received last night. What can you tell us about the victim?”

  Andrews sighed and cupped his tea in both hands as if chilled. “Mr. Alvarez came to us just a short time ago—a little over a week, perhaps? Brought up on drug trafficking and selling to a minor. His stay here was only temporary, as he was scheduled to stand trial later this summer. Until yesterday, his record here was fairly uneventful.” The warden set his cup down and interlaced his fingers as he looked across the desk at the two agents. “Do you gentlemen know how many altercations between inmates we’ve had here at Singleton?”

  Both men shook their heads.

  “We’ve had five since I began here almost six years ago. Five.” The warden sat back in his chair and grasped his tea once again. “Alvarez was the first in a while to disturb our relative peace that we enjoy here. He was a difficult man to understand from the beginning.”

  “You speak as if you know almost everyone here, Warden,” Sullivan said, his eyes narrowing a bit as he spoke.

  “I try to be very hands-on in my position, gentlemen. I run a well-oiled machine here, but it doesn’t mean that I am without compassion.”

  “We understand, please go on,” Barry said.

  “Each and every man here has a story and is serving justice in his own right. Victor had a bad attitude, I could tell it from the day he came here, but up until last night he hadn’t caused any real trouble.”

  “What happened exactly?” Sullivan said, turning on his phone and opening his dictation application. Andrews stared at the phone for a moment before raising his eyes to Sullivan’s face. “Do you mind if I record the conversation for later reference?” Sullivan asked.

  The warden’s face softened and he smiled benignly once again. “Of course not. Mr. Alvarez shared a cell with another inmate, named Henry Fairbend. Yesterday evening the guard on duty heard yelling coming from their cell, and when he got there, Victor was on top of Henry yelling obscenities and choking the life out of him. He was tased after being warned, but as soon as he was able, he began to attack the guards who had come to attend to Henry’s injuries. We had no other choice than to detain him in solitary confinement, a rather unheard of occurrence here.”r />
  “Can you tell us what events led up to the deceased being discovered?” Sullivan asked as he adjusted his phone so that it lay closer to Andrews on the desk. The older man paid no attention to the agent’s passive tactic.

  “From what I understand, at around midnight the guard on duty heard sounds coming from the lower level. He went to investigate, and when he looked through the door to check on Alvarez … well, you yourselves saw what the inside of the room looked like.”

  Sullivan’s gaze didn’t waver as he scrutinized the warden. He hadn’t heard any inflections in the man’s narration. No pitch changes or backpedaling that would indicate a lie. He seemed to be telling the truth.

  “That’s it? The guards on duty saw nothing out of the ordinary? No other inmates heard or saw anything either?” Sullivan asked, dropping his hand away from the side of his face.

  The warden shrugged and his white eyebrows rose at the same time. “Nothing of use. Several of our officers were outside sandbagging at the time, since we had reports that the water level was quickly on the rise.”

  The warden stood from the chair and turned to look out of the high windows, which still drummed with raindrops. He sighed and turned back to the agents. “Gentlemen, it’s been a rough couple weeks. Since the flooding started, I’ve had little else on my mind other than the safety and security of this facility. Right now the runoff is flowing into Willow Creek. A mile or so to the east the IsleRiver takes it down to Lake Superior itself, but it hasn’t been keeping up. Our next option is to evacuate the prison to New Haven, across the compound.”

  “The mental facility?” Barry asked.

  “Yes. The flooding is really the only thing that could actually harm this place. We are very self-sufficient. We have our own well, rations to last a month, and a full arsenal. New Haven is on slightly higher ground and it might give us some more time.”

  The warden sighed again and slumped back into the chair behind the desk. His long form seemed to bow under the strain of worry, and Sullivan felt a twinge of pity for the old man.

  When he looked up, the warden’s eyes appeared tired but clear. “I’m telling you gentlemen this because, in all honesty, I don’t know how to deal with what happened last night in that cell, it goes beyond my understanding. My plate is already full, and although we would have been able to work with the local law enforcement on this matter, I think it’s a blessing the sheriff called you in.”

  Both Barry and Sullivan nodded. “We’ll work as hard as we can to bring this to a close,” Barry said, his voice low and soothing in the large office.

  A look of relief crossed the warden’s face. “What do you need from me?” he asked.

  “We’ll need to take a look at the surveillance tapes from the last twenty-four hours, as well as interview the guard who found the remains this morning,” Sullivan said. “Also, if Fairbend is well enough to speak to us, we’d like to talk to him.”

  Andrews nodded and began to scribble on a pad of paper before him. “I’ll have Everett take you to the control room shortly, and I’ll send a note to our medical staff to see if Henry is awake. The guard’s name who found Victor this morning is Nathan Hunt, but I’m not sure if he’ll be much help until he’s calmed down and gotten some rest. Poor boy, it’s his first week on the job, and to have this happen.” Andrews shook his head and blinked as if he himself were on the brink of exhaustion.

  Both agents stood and reached across the desk to shake the warden’s hand. “We’ll let you know if we come across anything else or if we need further assistance,” Barry said as they headed for the door. Andrews murmured his acknowledgement as they stepped back out into the lobby and closed the door behind them.

  Barry breathed out heavily and pinched the bridge of his nose. “So what do you think?”

  When he saw the female guard peering over the top of her monitor at them, Sullivan glanced around the area and motioned Barry to follow him closer to the entrance. When he was sure they were out of earshot, Sullivan leaned toward his friend so that their heads were only inches apart.

  “I think there’s something seriously fucked here. Did you not notice how quiet it was in the holding area? You ever been to a jail or lockdown that was that still? You could’ve heard a mouse fart in there. The other thing is, have you ever not been asked to leave your weapon at the front desk? Or how about most of the guards being armed? That’s not standard protocol anymore, is it?”

  Barry seemed to mull this over for a moment. “So what’s your theory?”

  Sullivan leaned against the wall and hissed air between his teeth as he thought. “Don’t have one yet. But I’ll tell you this, there’s no way one person pulled off what happened in that cell. It looked like a bunch of crack heads went to work on that guy with a dozen hammers after someone told them he was full of coke.”

  “Well, let’s hope there’s not an army of jonesing crack heads with hammers running rampant around here. That would make things go less smoothly,” Barry said.

  “Yes, it would. Let’s find that surveillance room, I don’t want to wait around for that asshole Mooring.”

  ==

  Sullivan rapped his knuckles against the steel door and the sound echoed down the hallway like a tomb sealing shut. Barry stood to his left and shivered in the cool air of the prison.

  “Can’t get warm after being out in the rain,” Barry said, rubbing his thick arms over the material of his shirt.

  “Don’t catch cold now and leave me here with all this fun,” Sullivan said as he reached out and knocked on the door again.

  The guard at the front desk had directed them to the door to their left and buzzed them through, into what Sullivan suspected was the interview/visitor area. Several rooms with plain tables and chairs were positioned to their left as they’d made their way along the first floor. A few doors led off to the right, no doubt traveling to the main holding area as a passage for inmates who needed to be brought out for visitors or interrogation. At the end of the hall an unmarked door stood by itself, ominously touting two separate deadbolts and no handle. A set of stairs shot up to the left and emptied into a matching hall a floor above. They’d stopped in front of a door marked “Surveillance,” and with no other means of announcement, began knocking.

  “Didn’t she say there was a guard stationed here at all times?” Sullivan asked as he listened for a sound from behind the door.

  “Yeah, she did. Maybe we should go back down and have her call up—”

  Sullivan kicked the door hard with the ball of his foot. The door rattled in its frame and then fell silent.

  “Jesus, Sully,” Barry said, but then the door flew open and both men stepped back slightly, surprised.

  A disheveled-looking overweight guard stood in the doorway. His dark hair hung down past his ears and a pair of modernly old eyeglasses sat skewed on his paunchy face. A silver hoop earring hung from his left earlobe and shook a little when the man began to speak.

  “Can I help you guys?”

  Sullivan stepped forward. “Special Agents Shale and Stevens from the BCA. We’re here for the homicide that occurred last night. We’d like to take a look at the footage, if you don’t mind.”

  The guard glanced back and forth between the two agents, and then a smile broke out on his wide face. “You guys are from the BCA?” Sullivan nodded, his eyebrows wrinkling despite his effort to keep his annoyance from surfacing completely. “That’s so cool!” the guard exclaimed.

  Sullivan and Barry exchanged looks as the guard continued. “I’ve always wanted to meet an actual BCA agent and I never have. Been here for four years now, and pretty much all I’ve seen is the inside of this box.” The guard’s face was alight with something like awe and Sullivan had the urge to laugh. Here, in the middle of one of the strangest crime scenes and the most inhospitable weather he’d ever experienced, they’d found a fanboy. Unreal.

  Sullivan smiled and nodded, and out of his peripheral vision he saw Barry doing the same. The guard kept g
rinning and looking at each of their faces, as if they were movie stars and had suddenly stepped off the silver screen into real life. The silence in the hall lengthened into something uncomfortable, and finally Sullivan motioned toward the small room behind the guard.

  “Could we come in?”

  Realization flooded the other man’s features and his cheeks reddened. “Yeah, sorry, of course. My name’s Benjamin Strous, but you can call me Benny, everyone does.”

  Sullivan grasped the man’s pudgy hand in his own and shook, not sure if he was bemused or irritated.

  Benny spun in place and waved them into the room after his considerable bulk cleared the doorway. “Come on in, guys. Make yourselves at home.”

  The room was windowless and perhaps twelve by twelve. The aroma of old coffee and stale chips hung in the air. After looking around the crowded space, Sullivan spotted several coffee cups with drying stains in their bottoms and errant Doritos wrappers on the floor beneath a cluttered desk. Computer equipment of all types sat at odd angles against the walls and invaded the floor with their wires. Towers, blinking servers, and data-storage racks hung from different areas, and video screens were mounted every foot or so at varying heights along the gray wall. A chair with a seat so flattened it looked one-dimensional sat in front of what looked like the main terminal. A keyboard and mouse lay on the desk before it.

  “Home sweet home,” Benny said as he stood behind the chair and swept an arm around the room. “This is the brainpan of Singleton. Everything that happens comes through here either in data entry or in video feed.”

  Sullivan stepped behind the chair and began to place his hands on its back but noticed some unsavory stains there, and instead put them in the pockets of his slacks. “Mr. Straus, I’m sure you’re—” Sullivan stopped as the guard held up a hand and pushed his black-framed glasses tightly onto his face with a fingertip.