Behind the Iron

by William W. Johnstone

  He made himself think of Jess Harper. After all, that was why he was here. To help out Sean and Daniel MacGregor and the American Detective Agency. She was pretty, too gentle to have been hooked up with Linc Harper. Of course, many citizens of Fort Smith and Van Buren would have said the same about Fallon’s wife. Which Jess Harper reminded him of. He made himself black out that memory. He focused on his job, on the young woman with child. He had taken a small step today. And he would be back in the doctor’s office in a couple of days, thanks to Thaddeus Gripewater.

  Charley Muldoon sucked in a deep breath, held it, and slowly let it out in an easy silence. Tom Worsnop ceased his snores. The cell became as quiet as it was dark, and Fallon heard the noise beyond the cell, too. He kept his breathing steady and quiet. He did not move.

  As thick as the iron doors were, and as solid as the walls, hearing the tiptoes of men on the third floor proved frustratingly hard. Yet cellblocks at night were eerily quiet. Fallon let one finger come out of his fist. One man. A half-minute later, the second finger extended. Two. Fallon kept listening, but, as far as he could tell, there were only two men outside.

  The footsteps stopped right past the door to Fallon’s cell. He tensed and considered removing the knife from his boot. Sending men in the middle of the night to beat Fallon half to death, or maybe even kill him, was not the kind of thing to cause Harold Underwood, Mr. Fowlson, or Captain Brandt to lose any sleep.

  In the thick blackness, Fallon looked down at his legs, seeing nothing, but knowing exactly where that knife in his boot was. He thought about reaching for it, slipping it from its leather sheath, but he had too much experience to make that kind of mistake. If he could hear the men outside, even just barely, they most likely would hear him.

  He strained to hear. Metal. Just slight and then a loud creak that caused Fallon to turn his head to his left. A key in the lock of the door. Only . . . not this door. It had to be the cell next to theirs. The cell that housed, for the time being, only Ford Wagner.

  There was no mistaking the next noise, and no matter how deftly the men outside worked, it was an impossible task to silently pull open an iron door on iron hinges that kept the worst men Missouri had to offer from committing more outrages.

  “Wagner.” The voice was muffled, barely audible, through the thick limestone walls.

  Something touched the floor. A grunt.

  Someone whispered. An even fainter reply came. Fallon did not think he could have heard whatever was said even had he been standing outside the door to Ford Wagner’s cell.

  “Here. Take it.” That Fallon heard, but he could not put a name to the voice. He tried to listen harder, but if anything else was said, Fallon had not managed to grasp even a syllable.

  Now, Fallon began to recall the conversation between the warden and Mr. Fowlson earlier this day when Fallon was being led to his cell.

  Underwood: Is Wagner alone?

  Fowlson: Yes, sir.

  And then something about Wagner saying that he felt good. No. Not felt. Wagner’s voice rolled across Fallon’s memories. He says he’s good. Not that Wagner felt or was feeling good, but that he was good. And despite Doctor Thaddeus Gripewater’s earlier conversation about isolating those people cursed with consumption, Fallon knew that Underwood was not considering turning a cell into a sanatorium when he had asked if Wagner were alone.

  There was something else going on here at the Missouri state pen.

  The door closed again, the lock was set, and the footsteps led away, toward the rear of A-Hall instead of the way the two men had come. Fallon put his ear against the wall, listening for anything that would tell him that Ford Wagner was still in his cell. No footsteps. No snores. No coughs of the hard sound of a man coughing up his lungs. Just silence. Nothing.

  They were gone now. Fallon heard nothing. Worsnop began snoring again. Frenchy swore and rolled over.

  And Charley Muldoon gave the fresh fish named Fallon another piece of advice. But this time, the arsonist was not talking just to hear himself talk or to let Fallon know all the rules for survival in The Walls. Although what Muldoon said was likely the first rule to keep yourself alive.

  “You didn’t hear a thing, Fallon. There wasn’t anything to hear. You best remember that. You was like Frenchy and Tom and especially me. You slept like a baby. Didn’t hear a damned thing.”

  Frenchy added: “Because there wasn’t nothing to hear.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  The thickness of the walls and the iron door did nothing to diminish the blaring of the whistles, the ringing of the bells, and the cursing of the guards.

  “All right, you manure-eatin’ swine, time to work, time to work! So yer goin’ to wash, yer goin’ to eat, and yer goin’ to work your arses off!

  Doors began being pulled open. Guards shouted. The prisoners remained silent.

  “Keep your head down,” Worsnop whispered. “And your mouth shut.”

  “Yeah,” said Muldoon. “You’ll likely come with us. Ever made a broom before, Fallon?”

  “Shut the hell up,” Frenchy whispered.

  The door opened. A burly guard Fallon had never noticed stood before them, with a heavier and longer line stick in his meaty right hand. “All right, you miserable turds. Out. Out and be damned quick.”

  Fallon pulled his cap on, lowered his head until it felt damned uncomfortable, and ducked to step out of the cramped cell and into the walkway.

  Immediately, he went down, seeing orange and dots and flashes and symbols in ten other colors as well, feeling a pounding in his head. His cap fell off. That movement stopped another line stick from slamming into his head or side or neck. He rolled over, squeezing his eyes shut to block out the pain, bending his knees, and drawing up his legs. He kept his mouth closed. He did not open his eyes. And he sure knew better than to yell or cry out in pain.

  “I said to keep your damned eyes on the ground, you piece of garbage!” The burly man spit, but Fallon knew he was not the one who had tried to tear his head off. Fallon also knew that he had not looked anywhere but at the floor.

  A boot kicked his foot. “Get up,” another guard said. “Come on, fish, unless you want to miss your breakfast.”

  Fallon opened his eyes. He saw his cellmates standing against the wall, their heads down. The door to the cell remained open. Frenchy, Muldoon, and Worsnop said nothing.

  “Get him off his arse.” The burly guard poked Muldoon and Worsnop with his long stick, and the prisoners hurried to Fallon. They said nothing, and Fallon knew to hold his tongue, but he let them lift him to his feet. Muldoon picked up the cap and held it toward Fallon. His vision was blurred, and the whole cellblock seemed to be spinning out of control. It took him two tries before he grabbed the hat, which he kept holding, tighter and tighter and tighter, trying to block out the pain.

  “Breakfast,” the burly guard said. “After the bathhouse. And show this fish how to make a broom. And that broom had better be good enough to sweep out my kitchen so that my mother can eat off the damned floor.”

  Fallon blinked back the tears from the pain. He wanted to check on one thing, and he saw it clearly, if just briefly. All of the doors on this side of the third floor of A-Hall were open as prisoners filed out to be escorted by the guards, all except one.

  The door to Ford Wagner’s cell remained closed and locked.

  * * *

  Breakfast was boiled potatoes, mush, and coffee. The coffee was cold, and likely two or three days old. You had to make yourself eat that garbage and drink that filth, but it was food. It didn’t fill the stomach, and it tasted awful, but it might give you enough strength to get through the day.

  “Everybody remain seated until you are called!” barked the guard in charge. Those were the first words uttered in the mess hall since Fallon had walked in with the other prisoners. “Table One, shoe factory!”

  Fallon waited till they called out his table. “Broom factory!” Charley Muldoon nodded, and pushed himself to his feet, alo
ng with the others sitting there. Fallon made himself stand. There was no dizziness, but his head hurt like hell.

  Head down, he followed his cellmates through the opening, down the path, and all the way to the broom factory. The foreman of the factory grunted as the prisoners walked in and held out his hand to stop Fallon.

  “You’re new,” he said.

  “Yes, sir,” Fallon answered.

  “All right. Let’s see how good you are at unloading broomcorn.”

  So Fallon and a dozen others went outside and began emptying boxes upon boxes of broomcorn, which smelled like some type of sorghum. Others took what would serve as the working part of the broom inside the plant, to be pressed. Across from Fallon and those working with the corn, other men pulled handles upon handles, some medium length, some short, some more for whisks, and some very long, and hauled those inside the factory.

  A surly convict with a bald head walked up and down the row where men sorted the sorghum, or whatever it was, reminding them to separate the straw—which was exactly what this was—by grades. “You don’t want a slave’s broom to go to some rich ol’ biddy with a mansion overlookin’ the Missouri, now do you?”

  “What the hell’s the difference?” said a man a few feet from Fallon. “The same slave’ll be working for the rich ol’ biddy.”

  The surly foreman chuckled.

  Fallon watched as he worked, seeing how the various grades of broomcorn were grouped together and laid in piles.

  Hours later, with his hands itching from handling the sorghum without any break, or water, Fallon was ordered to begin carrying the broomcorn inside. It was no cooler inside, Fallon quickly learned.

  Men like Worsnop and Frenchy worked inside, sitting at small workplaces and sweating as much as Fallon, as they wrapped a wire to secure the broomcorn to a dowel. When that reached their satisfaction, they began shaping the broom.

  Well, Fallon thought, when this job is done, when you’re finally finished with Sean MacGregor and the American Detective Agency, you’ll have a job you can fall back on. Wouldn’t his mother be proud! He should be able to make a damned good broom.

  * * *

  They worked through the day. Fallon figured he could use a long shower, but someone mentioned that they wouldn’t get a bath until Friday. Friday? When was that? What day was it? It didn’t matter. The way the man had said it, Friday might be a month away.

  A few water breaks had been allowed, and once the shift had ended, new guards escorted them to the exercise yard. That’s exactly what this crew needed, Fallon figured. After working, sweating all day sorting sorghum or wiring brooms together, these men needed to burn off all that fat.

  Fallon found what passed for shade and leaned against the wall. He found himself looking up at the walls, counting the guard towers, seeing what kinds of weapons they had, who was looking intently at the wall, and which guards were lazy. He sought out blind spots, where a man could be hard to see. The heel of his work boot tugged at the sand at his feet, to get a feel about how a man might go about digging a tunnel.

  Which finally caused Fallon to laugh.

  “What’s the joke, Fallon?”

  Fallon shook his head and sighed at the sight of Charley Muldoon leaning one shoulder against the wall, his legs crossed at the ankles, grinning while cracking his knuckles.

  “I was figuring out how to escape,” Fallon told him. He watched the arsonist quickly come straight up, away from the wall, his fingers now clasped as in prayer.

  “Fallon,” the little man said urgently. “Don’t be joshing. And if you ain’t joshing, don’t say nothing to me about that. I want to get out of here. I’m getting out of here. In two days. And don’t need you to get me another year tacked on. I got things to do.”

  “Yeah,” Fallon said. “Places to see. Buildings to burn.”

  That caused Muldoon to laugh.

  Fallon had found something more interesting than guard towers. He saw that black cat he had seen everywhere in the prison, only this time it was walking toward Worsnop, who knelt on the edge of the sand, cooing, and flexing his fingers. The cat looked as though it could care less, but it did make its way toward the convict, although it did so at its own deliberate pace.

  The cat came to Worsnop and began rubbing its fur against the man’s striped trousers. No one paid any attention to the prisoner or the prison’s cat. Not the guards. Not the inmates. Nobody except Harry Fallon.

  So it was Fallon, and only Fallon, who saw Worsnop pull something out of the makeshift collar and slide that into a pants pocket. While that was happening, the slight man was bringing his other hand out of the other pocket and tucking whatever it was inside the collar. He returned to scratching the cat, rubbing the cat, and whispering to the cat until the cat had had enough. It turned and began walking back across the prison yard.

  Fallon let his eyes follow the cat, and then turned to Worsnop, who stood, stretched his back, and began walking toward a group of prisoners who were tossing a ball.

  “What’s the deal with Worsnop and the cat?” Fallon asked.

  “Jeez, Fallon,” Charley Muldoon said. “You’re going to get me six months tacked on if you don’t shut up. You got something to ask Worsnop, take it up with Worsnop.”

  “All right,” Fallon said. “All right. I’ll do that.” So Fallon moved toward the men throwing the ball, and he came right up beside Worsnop.

  “Nice cat,” he said. One of the men threw the ball to Fallon. Even with his hands aching and sticking and smelling like broomcorn, Fallon managed to catch the ball, and he pitched it underhanded to Worsnop, who snagged it, nodded at another inmate, and did some crazy old pitcher’s windup and threw the ball underhanded.

  “Nothin’ but a cat.”

  “How much can a cat like that carry?”

  Worsnop turned and studied Fallon long and hard. “It’s a small cat.”

  “I’ve seen smaller.”

  “You’ve seen a lot of things for a fresh fish.”

  “Because I pay attention.”

  “It’s not good to see too much.”

  “Like Kemp Carver falling to his death.”

  “I didn’t see that.” He caught the ball, tossed it to Fallon, who threw a bit wild toward a dark-skinned man who made a good snag. Fallon tipped his cap and gave the convict a nod.

  “What do you want, Fallon?”

  “If I needed something, could I get a special delivery?”

  “Do you like cats?”

  “Not especially.”

  Worsnop relaxed. “I hate the sidewinders.”

  “Bitches are dogs.”

  Now the inmate laughed harder. “Small things. Cigarettes mostly, rolled already. No guns. No knives. Nothing that’ll get me in trouble. Some of the guards let this go on, because I give them a little payment.”

  “Does Underwood know?”

  “Hell, no. I’d be down in the caverns or in the morgue.”

  Fallon caught a ball, tossed it to Worsnop, who threw a hard shot to a big man in the far corner.

  “Nice arm,” Fallon said.

  “So what is it that you’d like delivered, Fallon?” Worsnop asked.

  “A key,” Fallon said.

  Worsnop stared at Fallon in complete disbelief.

  “Fallon!” He looked up and found the prison guard, the one named Ryan, at the far side of the exercise yard. “Over here, Fallon. Pronto.”

  Leaving Worsnop still staring with wide eyes, Harry Fallon shoved his hands in his pockets and made his way toward the timid guard. He recognized the woman standing next to Ryan. Fallon even remembered the woman standing next to the prison’s doctor. It wasn’t the matron, Eve Martin. It wasn’t Jess Harper, either.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The plain brown dress was gone, replaced by a long, pleated skirt of light gray, a wide belt of black leather around her waist, and a light blue blouse with a high-standing collar. She wore a short black jacket, unbuttoned, and a flat-crowned, flat-brimmed straw
hat with a large black band topped her head. Her blonde hair was rather short, and she had an angular face, round chin, and rosy lips. She still had her notebook, of course, and the pencil in her right hand was holding it ready.

  The little guard named Ryan stepped away from the woman and toward Fallon, and said, “Fallon, this . . . umm . . .” He frowned and looked back at the striking woman. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but I’ve forgotten . . .”

  Fallon cut him off. “Julie Jernigan,” he said. “Of the Kansas City Enterprise. Kansas. Not Missouri.”

  She smiled widely and gave a slight bow. “You have an excellent memory, Mister . . . ?”

  “I am sure you know that already.”

  She laughed. “You have dealt with the press before.”

  “What do you need, Missus Jernigan?”

  “It’s Miss Jernigan. Or Julie.”

  Fallon waited. He had never been one to trust newspaper reporters, but on the other hand he had never met one as fetching as Julie Jernigan, though she had to be a good ten years Fallon’s junior. He could not help but notice her hands, or, rather, her fingers. No band on any of them. In fact, she wore no jewelry at all. Which meant nothing. Only an idiot would come into a prison, even under the escort and protection of a guard, wearing valuable jewelry.

  “Doctor Gripewater said you would be a good source for my article,” the reporter said. “Mr. Getty here was nice enough to lead me to you.”

  Ryan Getty shuffled his feet.

  “You want me to tell you about . . . being here?”

  “That’s the general idea.”

  Fallon shook his head and laughed slightly. “I haven’t been here long enough to form an opinion,” he lied.

  “Well . . .” Julie Jernigan glanced at the young, naïve guard. “Excuse me, Ryan . . . you don’t mind if I call you, Ryan, do you? Could you let me speak to Mr. Fallon here privately?”

  “I can’t leave you alone, ma’am. It’s for your own protection.”

  “Which I certainly do appreciate. But I’m not asking you to leave me alone. Just give me, say, ten or twelve feet. Surely nothing can happen to me before you could swing into action with your baseball bat.”