by Joe Hart
“Alvarez and Fairbend,” Sullivan said.
“Yeah. I read the report. It was short. Just said Alvarez became irritated and started screaming something at Fairbend. Then he attacked him, and the guards on duty pulled him off and brought him down to solitary.”
“What time was that?” Sullivan asked.
“I think it said about six p.m. in the report. I didn’t think much of it. In fact, to be honest, I was a little disappointed that I’d missed some action. Nights are fucking boring around here, pardon my French.”
“Pardoned,” Sullivan said, smiling a little.
“So the shift went just like the last week had. I made rounds on the floor, checked in with the front desk, played with my phone for a while, until about midnight. That’s when I first started hearing the noises.” Hunt looked around the room and glanced over the agents’ shoulders, as if searching for an eavesdropper. His eyes took on the glint of fear that Sullivan had seen earlier.
Sullivan reached out to touch the young man’s hand. “Nate, we’re not going to tell anyone else what you heard. You can be honest. This is for the case, nothing else.”
Nate swallowed and nodded, but Sullivan still saw doubt in his face.
“You ever heard a shipyard at night?” Nate said.
“A shipyard?” Sullivan asked, tilting his head to one side.
“Yeah, like the docks over on Superior when some of the big ore boats come in and spend the night.” Sullivan shook his head and Stevens did the same. “The hulls of the ships groan with the change in weight and pressure when they’re unloaded, and it sounds like whales sometimes, deep underwater, talking to each other.” Nate paused, squinting at the memory he was, no doubt, examining. “That’s what it sounded like last night.”
“And you heard this from where? Your desk?” Sullivan asked.
“Yeah. At first I couldn’t tell where it was coming from, it sounded like it was all around me, but then it was farther away and I narrowed it down. It was coming from the solitary level.”
Sullivan nodded and rubbed the scar over his left eye. Perhaps the kid had cracked a little with the lack of sleep and the trauma of seeing what was left of Alvarez. Maybe he should have let him get a few hours of rest before asking him to recall details that might be a bit blurry at the moment.
“I’m not losing it, if that’s what you’re thinking,” Nate said, seemingly reading Sullivan’s thoughts.
“I know you’re not, Nate. Tell me what happened next.”
“I followed it. The sound. The prisoners either didn’t hear it or they were pretending not to. None of them even got up from their bunks. When I got to the top flight of the stairs, I heard something else. Screaming.” Nate stared down at the table, next to his coffee cup, and ran a fingernail along a crack in its surface. “You guys ever heard a man scream? I mean, really scream? Like he’s dying?”
Both agents shared a glance before looking back at the man across the table from them, who now didn’t look like a boy much past his teens. He had regressed before their eyes. “Yes, I have,” Sullivan finally said, and held Hunt’s stare when the younger man tried to see if he was lying.
Satisfied, Nate nodded and went back to scraping his thumbnail on the table. “It was horrible. I kept hearing it all day. I can still hear him. I shouldn’t have been surprised when I looked into the cell and saw what I did.”
“We saw the tape of the corridor when you found Alvarez. Where’d you go after that?”
“I ran. I ran up to the second level and right out to the front desk. I was radioing Shelly all the way, but she didn’t answer. I don’t know if it was the storm messing with the walkies or what. The rain had been coming down harder and most of the rest of the guards were outside stacking sandbags, so when I got to the lobby, I told Shelly what I’d seen. Then I called the local sheriff, told him we needed help. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but I was panicking.”
“Did you see anything else unusual down in the solitary hall? Anyone else?”
Nate jerked his head back and forth. “No, no one. When I got to the door of the cell, he’d stopped making noise and all that was left was his head on the floor.”
Sullivan shifted uncomfortably in his chair, trying to find a position in which his wet clothes didn’t pull at his skin so much, and then stopped and leaned forward. “Nate, where was his head when you looked through the window?”
The guard squirmed in his chair and swallowed. “It was on the fucking floor, in the middle of the room.”
“You mean, in the vent at the corner of the room, right?” Sullivan said, letting his right eyelid drop so that it matched his other one.
“No, not near the vent. In the middle of the floor. His fucking eyes were still open, for Christ’s sake. I won’t forget that till the day I die.” Nate was becoming unstable. His hands shook as he tried to grip the cold coffee cup. His shoulders hitched as if sobs were merely a few seconds away.
“Nate, did you see the crime scene after you initially discovered it?” Sullivan asked, willing the guard’s fragile state to hold for just a few more minutes.
“N-n-no,” Nate finally stammered. “I couldn’t fucking go back in there. The closest I got was when I brought you down there this morning. Can we be done? Please?” The young man’s voice began to quaver.
Sullivan nodded. “Yes, we can be done. You did great, Nate. Go get some rest.” Sullivan said.
Nate stood, nearly knocking the cup of coffee over in his haste. Barry rose and opened the door for him as he neared it, but Sullivan grasped the guard’s damp sleeve in a gentle grip, turning him back toward the table.
“You’re going to be just fine, Nate. You hear me? Just fine.”
Nate’s eyes finally teared up and a few drops slid down his sallow cheeks. He didn’t make a move to wipe them away. Instead, he swallowed and looked into Sullivan’s face, as if really seeing him for the first time.
“Not everybody freaks out like this, do they? There’s something wrong with me, isn’t there?”
The kid’s naked emotion and battered demeanor nearly broke Sullivan’s heart. He waited only a beat, and then shook his head. “There’s nothing wrong with you, Nate. Every one of us goes through something like this. You’re just fine.”
Nate waited for a moment on the threshold, and then seemed to accept Sullivan’s words. He slowly turned and gave a halfhearted smile to Barry, who still held the door. Sullivan listened to the fading footsteps of the guard, until Barry shut the door and sealed them in relative silence. The faint boom of thunder could be heard every so often, but it was muffled and somehow comforting. Perhaps it was knowing that the real world was still out there, carrying on as it always had despite what happened between the walls in which they now sat.
Barry leaned on the table and looked at Sullivan, his eyes like pinpoints. “Did you get what I did out of all that?” he finally asked and sat on the table’s edge, facing his friend.
Sullivan stared off through the glass walls of his mind, already debating the logic and probabilities of what the young guard’s testimony meant. After nearly a full minute of silence, he sat back, squeezing more water out of his shirt onto the floor, and gazed at Barry, his left eye barely visible beneath his sagging brow.
“Yeah. It means the killer was still in the cell when Nate looked through that window.”
==
Sullivan listened to the dull buzzing in the earpiece of his cell phone and was about to hang up when Hacking’s gravelly voice finally answered.
“Hacking.”
“Hey, boss. Just thought I’d touch base with you on what we’ve got so far,” Sullivan said, leaning against the lobby entrance. He glanced over his shoulder and watched Barry discussing what they’d decided in the interview room with the guard at the front desk. Barry leaned over the desk and pointed animatedly at something, and the female guard motioned to the warden’s door, across the room.
“Good, I was just about to call you anyway,” Hacking said. He so
unded better, Sullivan thought, happier. Although, in over two years of working with the man, he supposed he’d never really seen him happy. Not really. “Lee woke up this morning. I just got off the phone with his wife.”
Relief swam through Sullivan’s midsection, and for a moment he didn’t even feel the harsh pull and uncomfortable dampness of his clothes. “Good. Christ, I was still worried, even after what the doctor said.”
“He’s going to make a full recovery. He’ll be back in a few months, I’m sure. Now, what are we dealing with over there?”
Sullivan laid out the facts, or as much as he knew of them. Yes, Alvarez had been killed in the cell. No, there was nothing apparent yet. Yes, they’d already interviewed the first person on the scene. No, the crime-scene team hadn’t come up yet.
Sullivan listened to the low murmur of voices and the occasional phone ringing on Hacking’s end. The office sounded good right then. Warm, dry clothes, a cup of coffee, and some simple paperwork.
“So what do you think?” Hacking finally asked.
“I don’t know. I’m waiting on Don to finish up in there, and then maybe we’ll have something.”
“That kid wasn’t lying?”
“That kid was scared out of his mind, boss. He couldn’t have lied if his life depended on it.”
Hacking grunted. “Okay, keep me posted, and hopefully something’ll turn up. The weather looks like it’s not going to cooperate, so you’ll have to make due with limited resources for the time being.”
“Sounds good. We’ll have someone boat us across tonight if things run their course. Find a motel or something close by, maybe meet up with the sheriff in the morning.”
“Okay, be safe.”
“Thanks, sir.” Sullivan hung the phone up and mentally filed Hacking’s beef with him as over. Lee’s recovery had seen to that.
Barry finished speaking with the guard at the front desk and began walking toward him. When he was a few feet away, he held out a manila folder.
“Reports from yesterday’s disturbance between Alvarez and Fairbend. An Officer Bundy was working that shift, same asshole with the goatee who took over for Hunt. The whole thing’s there. After a little reluctance, she also agreed to have our friend Benny send us the footage of the fight via email.”
“Why’d she give you grief? You weren’t hitting on her, were you? You shouldn’t be doing that while we’re working, Jenny will not be impressed.” Sullivan cocked his head at his friend and moved deftly away when the other man threw a mock punch at him.
“No, I wasn’t hitting on her. I told her you wanted her number.”
“That’s not even a good comeback, my friend. Fail.”
Barry smiled and shook his head. “Not sure why she didn’t want to give up the footage. Maybe she just didn’t want to do the legwork. She kept saying the warden would have to approve it first. I politely informed her that this was our case now, and the warden was giving us full access to the prison information. Everyone here got up on the wrong side of the fucking bed this morning, if you ask me.”
“Especially Alvarez,” Sullivan quipped. “Maybe it’s the beautiful weather.”
“Either way, she’s having it sent to each of our emails, we can watch it on our phones.”
“Good. Did you find out which way the infirmary was?” Sullivan asked.
“Yeah, it’s off the main holding area to the right.”
Sullivan began walking in that direction and Barry followed. “Let’s go have a sit-down with Fairbend. See why his cellmate suddenly decided to try to kill him last night.”
==
The infirmary was behind a door that led off the main holding area prior to the commons. It was a square room with wide windows set high in one wall, the glass interlaced with steel mesh. Several humming fluorescents shone down on the immaculately white tile floor. A few locked cabinets stood against the right wall, and a desk, decorated with strewn papers, held a position beneath the windows across the room. A lone guard sat in a chair just inside the doorway, his head tilted back against the wall behind him, his mouth open to the world. Soft snores issued from his nose every few seconds. Sullivan narrowed his eyes at the guard as he stepped into the infirmary, and saw Barry motioning if he should wake him. Sullivan shook his head. Let him sleep, we’re not here to see him.
Instead, they proceeded across the tile to the two medical beds that hugged the left wall. The closer of the two was unoccupied, with blankets stacked neatly in its center. The other held a skinny dark-haired man with a sheet drawn up just below his scruffy chin. He had blue eyes and they followed the two agents as Sullivan and Barry made their way closer. Fairbend was slender, almost alarmingly thin, as if he were battling something worse than bruises and minor abrasions. Sullivan stopped beside the bed and smiled as he pulled out his wallet and flipped open his ID.
“I’m Special Agent Shale with the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and this is Agent Stevens. Are you Mr. Fairbend?”
The supine man’s eyes squinted at Sullivan, and after a moment Fairbend’s head nodded slightly.
“We’d like to speak with you about what happened concerning Mr. Alvarez, if that’s okay with you.” Sullivan watched the skinny man lick his lips and then strain to swallow.
“Choked the fuck outta me, that’s what happened.” Fairbend’s voice sounded like sandpaper on a concrete floor, and gradually the prisoner drew the sheet down below his neck, revealing a collection of mottled bruises ranging from purple to green.
Sullivan could make out individual finger marks on the edges of the mass. Fairbend had been accurate; Alvarez had choked the fuck out of him. “I see that. Looks really painful. Could you tell me what happened, maybe why Alvarez decided to do this to you?”
Fairbend shrugged, which caused the bruises in his neck to ripple like a black-and-purple pond in a breeze. “Crazy Mexican.”
Sullivan ran his tongue over his front teeth and turned to look at Barry who made a face that said, well, isn’t that something. Sullivan looked back at Fairbend and leaned in closer to the man. He noticed a scent as he neared him. Something organic. Not really human waste, but close to it. Sullivan grimaced but didn’t relinquish his hold on the edge of the bed as he closed the distance between his and Fairbend’s faces.
“Listen, bud, I’m not new to this and neither are you, so let’s just cut the shit, shall we? I want to know what happened in that cell. I want to know what Alvarez said and what you said in return to make him want to squeeze the life out of you. I don’t know if you’ve heard yet, being in the state that you’re in, but your cellmate got torn apart last night. There wasn’t much left of him. I’m guessing you already knew that, but what I want is a name.”
Fairbend remained unmoved by Sullivan’s speech, and his eyelids had even drifted closed while Sullivan spoke. The thin man shifted in the bed and steel clinked just below Sullivan’s grip. When he looked down, he saw that Fairbend’s hand was cuffed to the bed’s rail.
“Ain’t gonna get me to talk no matter what you throw at me, buddy. He was a crazy spic and no one’s gonna miss him. So just trot along and leave me to heal up.”
Sullivan resisted the urge to reach out and grasp the other man’s throat where Alvarez had less than a day ago. He was about to try another angle on the prisoner when he heard the door open and close behind them and a voice speak with authority that woke the sleeping guard.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
Sullivan turned and saw that the voice belonged to a woman striding across the floor toward the beds. Sullivan guessed her age to be within a year of his own and he noticed that she walked confidently; this room seemed to be her territory. She wore a white coat over blue scrubs and her auburn hair flowed out behind her, held up by a black band. The brown eyes, which normally would have been appealing, were half lidded in fury. Her face was angular, with high cheekbones, and as she came closer Sullivan couldn’t see any hint of lipstick. He quickly decided she would have been attractiv
e if the anger that currently contorted her face would have been absent. The resident doctor, he presumed.
Sullivan and Barry both smiled and Barry beat him to an introduction as the older agent stepped forward and stuck out his hand. “Hello, I’m Senior Special Agent Stevens, and this is Special Agent Shale. We’re here investigating the homicide.”
“I don’t care if the president was killed last night, you can’t come in here and question an injured patient. This man almost died, you need to give him some time to rest. And who told you it was okay to come barging in anyway?”
A revelation bloomed in her dark eyes and she turned to the guard, who hovered behind her, his face locked in an accusatory glare, but nowhere near the vehemence of the doctor’s.
A finger shot out toward the guard and suddenly the doctor’s rage was turned to him. “Did you let them in?”
“I … no … I was just over there and—” the guard stammered.
“You were sleeping, weren’t you?” she asked in awe. Her finger dropped to her side and she turned back to the agents. “Gentlemen, if I could ask you to exit the infirmary so that I can attend to my patient here, that would be great.” She smiled without warmth and pointed toward the door.
Sullivan rubbed his brow. “Doctor?” She nodded impatiently and resumed glaring at him. “A man was killed here last night. He won’t be able to sit in one of your cozy beds in this nice, sterile room. What’s left of him is going to be dissected and examined in a morgue of some kind. Our job right now is to find out who killed him, because whoever it was is running free, most likely somewhere nearby.”
The doctor’s face softened somewhat and she glanced over at Fairbend, who was watching the exchange with interest. Finally, her eyes blinked and she nodded. “I’m sorry, it’s just been crazy for the last twelve hours. I’ve been up for quite a while. I apologize. My name is Dr. Amanda Erling.” She reached out and Barry shook with her. When Sullivan grasped her hand, he felt how cold her flesh was. It was like shaking with a bag of ice.