by J. D. Robb
"Uh-huh. Well, one of your former residents has re-entered society with a meaningful purpose. She likes killing men. We need to talk about Julianna Dunne, Supervisor Miller."
"Yes." He pressed his palms together like a preacher about to call the congregation to prayer. "I was very distressed to learn you believe she's involved in a homicide."
"I don't believe she's involved. I know she's a murderer. Just as she was when she came here."
He paused. "I beg your pardon, Lieutenant, but from your tone I get the impression you don't believe in the basic tenets of rehabilitation."
"I believe in crime and punishment, and that some learn from it. Learn it well enough to change how they live in the real world. I also believe that there are some who can't change, or just don't want to."
Through the glass door at Miller's back, she watched two inmates make a quick, slick exchange of envelopes. Credits for illegals was Eve's guess.
"They like what they do," she added, "and can't wait for the chance to get back to it. Julianna likes what she does."
"She was a model resident," he said stiffly.
"I bet. And I bet she applied for a job position when half her time was up. Where'd she work?"
He drew air through his nose. Most of the warm bonhomie chilled under insult and disapproval. "She was employed at the Visitor's Coordination Center."
"Access to computers?" Feeney asked.
"Of course. Our units are secured and passcoded. Residents are not permitted unsupervised transmissions. Her immediate superior, Georgia Foster, gave Julianna the highest evaluations."
Eve and Feeney exchanged looks. "You want to point me in the direction of that center," Feeney said. "I'll speak with Ms. Foster."
"And I'd like interviews with the inmates on this list." Eve drew it out of her pocket. "Sorry, residents," she corrected, but not without a sneer in her voice.
"Of course. I'll arrange it." Miller's nose had gone up in the air, and Eve doubted the invitation for lunch was still on the table.
"See that pass?" Feeney muttered when Miller turned his back to speak into his in-house communicator.
"Yep."
"Wanna tell this asshole?"
"Nope. Residents' business ventures and recreational activities are his problem. And if I have to listen to him lecture much longer, I may go hit up that con for a little Zoner myself."
* * *
Eve took the interviews one at a time in a conference area outfitted with six chairs, a cheerfully patterned sofa, a small entertainment screen, and a sturdy table manufactured from recycled paper products.
There were bland paintings of flower arrangements on the walls and a sign on the inside of the door that reminded residents and their guests to behave in a courteous manner.
Eve supposed she was the guest portion of that statement.
There was no two-way mirror, but she spotted the four scan-cams snugged into corners. The door leading in was glass, privacy screen optional. She left it off.
The guard, a big-shouldered, pie-faced woman who looked like she had enough sense and experience not to think of the inmates as residents, brought Maria Sanchez in first.
Sanchez was a tough little Latin mix with a mop of curly black hair skinned back into a tail. There was a little tattoo of a lightning bolt worked into the jagged scar at the right side of her mouth.
She sauntered in, jauntily swinging her hips, then dropped into a chair and drummed her fingers on the table. Eve spotted sensor bracelets on both her wrists and ankles.
Miller might have been a moron, but even he wasn't stupid enough, it seemed, to take chances with a hard case like Sanchez. At Eve's nod, the guard retreated to the other side of the door.
"Got smoke?" Sanchez asked in a raspy, musical voice.
"No."
"Shit. You drag me off my morning rec time and you don't got smoke?"
"I'm real sorry to bust up your daily tennis game, Sanchez."
"Shit. Me, I play round ball." She eased back, craned her neck to look under the table. "You got a lot of leg, but I'd still whip your ass on the court."
"We'll have to find time for a pickup game one of these fine days, but right now I'm here about Julianna Dunne. You had the cage beside hers the last three years."
"We don't call them cages 'round here." She sent Eve a sneer. "They call 'em personal areas. Fucking personal areas. Miller, he's an asshole."
Eve wasn't sure what it said that she and Sanchez had that basic point of agreement. "What did you and Dunne talk about when you were in your respective personal areas?"
"I don't give nothing to cops. Oh wait, yeah, I give one thing to cops." She held up her middle finger.
"Bet they've got a salon in this country club. You could use a manicure. You and Dunne make any girl talk?"
"I got nothing to say to her, she got nothing to say to me. Bitch thought she was better than anybody."
"You don't like her, neither do I. We can start from there."
"Like her better than I do cops. Buzz is she offed some rich old bastard over in New York. What do I care about that?"
"She's out, you're not. Isn't that enough?"
Sanchez examined her nails as if she were indeed contemplating that manicure. "No skin off my ass where she is, but I bet yours is burning."
"I guess you think Julianna's pretty smart."
Sanchez snorted through her nose. "She thinks she is."
"Too smart for a cop to figure—then again, I'm one of the cops who put her in here."
A little smirk tipped up the right corner of Sanchez's mouth. "Didn't keep her in."
"That's not my job." Eve leaned back. "You're going to be in another ten to fifteen, given your fondness for jabbing sharp implements into sensitive areas of other people's anatomy."
"Don't do nothing to no motherfucker they don't try to do to me. Woman's got to defend herself out in the bad, bad world."
"Maybe, but you won't breathe the air in that bad, bad world for at least a dime more considering your in-house record won't earn you the crown for Miss Congeniality or cop you toward an early for good behavior release."
"What the fuck I care? Place like this, you can do a dime standing on your head scratching your butt."
"You get conjugals in here, Sanchez?"
Her eyes sharpened. "Sure. Part of the rehabilitation gig. Gotta keep the machine in tune, right?"
"But you're a violent tendency. VT's just get to hump droids. Could be I can wrangle you an lc. A genuine warm body for a night of romance. In exchange."
"You fucking with me?"
"No, but I'll get you a pro who will if you give me something I can use. Who'd she talk to, who did she use. What do you know?"
"I want a big guy, good-looking, who can keep his dick up till I get off."
"Tell me something I want to hear, and I'll get you the conjugal, the rest is up to you. Julianna Dunne."
It was a choice between real sex and screwing a cop. Sanchez went for real sex. "Bitch. Texas gringo beauty fucking queen. Kept to herself much as she could. Treated the guards like they were Sunday school teachers. Yes, ma'am, thank you, ma'am. Made you wanna puke. They lapped it up, gave her extra privileges. She got coin in. Greased palms, paid some of the lesbos to lay off her. Free time she spent in the library or the gym. She had Loopy for her bitch—not a sex thing, more like a puppy."
"And Loopy would be?"
"Lois Loop, funky junkie, doing twenty for icing her old man. Had the cage other side of the bitch. Heard them talking sometimes." Sanchez shrugged. "She'd promise to set Loopy up somewhere cozy when she got sprung, said how she had a lot of money and a nice place to live. Texas, maybe."
"She planned to go back to Texas?"
"She said she'd have business in Dallas. Unfinished business."
* * *
Eve let that simmer in her brain, and sent for Lois Loop.
She wouldn't have needed Sanchez's ID. The woman had the bleached out skin, colorless hair, and pink r
abbit eyes of the funk addict. The mind mister had the side effect of eradicating pigment. Detox could turn the user around, but it didn't put the color back.
One glance at her pinprick pupils told Eve detox wasn't doing much good either.
"Have a seat, Loopy."
"Do I know you? I don't know you."
"Have a seat anyway."
She started toward the table, her movements a mechanical jerk. Wherever she was getting her fix, Eve thought, she hadn't had one recently.
"You jonesing, Loopy? How long since you scored?"
Loopy licked her white lips. "I get my daily synthetic. Part of detox. It's the law."
"Yeah, right." Eve leaned in. "Did Julianna give you coin, so you could score the real funk inside?"
"Julianna's my friend. Do you know Julianna?"
"Yeah, we go way back."
"She went back in the world."
"That's right. She staying in touch?"
"When you see her, you tell her they must be stealing her letters, 'cause I didn't get any and she promised. We're allowed to get letters."
"Where are the letters coming from?"
"She's going to write and tell me where she is, and when I go back in the world, I'll go there, too." Her muscles jerked as she talked, as if they weren't connected to flesh and bone. But she smiled serenely.
"Tell me where she went and I'll find her for you. I'll let her know about the letters."
"She'd maybe go here, she'd maybe go there. It's a big secret."
"You ever been to New York before?"
The wasted eyes widened. "She told you?"
"Like I said, we go back. But New York's a big place. It'll be hard to find her if I don't have an address."
"She has a house, all her own. Somewhere. And she's maybe gonna do some traveling. She's going to come visit me when she comes back to Chicago."
"When's she coming back?"
"Sometime. We going shopping. New York, Chicago, New L.A." She sang the cities, like a child singing a nursery tune. "Dallas and Denver. Ride 'em cowboy."
"Did she talk about the people she was going to see? Old friends, new ones? Did she say the names, Loopy?"
"Should old acquaintance be forgot. We had a party for New Year's. There was cake. Do you know the bone man?"
"I might."
"She read me all kinds of stuff about the bone man. He lives in a big palace in the city. He has green thumbs and flowers grow out of them. She's going to visit him."
Pettibone, Eve thought. First hit. "Who else is she going to visit?"
"Oh, the sheep man and the cowboy and the Dallas dude. She has people to see, places to go."
"When she read you about the bone man, where were you?"
"It's a secret," she whispered.
"You can tell me. Julianna would want you to so I can find her and tell her about the letters."
"And the funk," Loopy said in a whisper. "She's gonna get me the funk."
"I'll tell her, but you have to tell me first."
"Okay. She had the little computer in her cage. The one that fits in your hand. She could do her work on it. She always had lots of work to do."
"I bet she did."
"Did she send you to see me? Did she send you with funk? She always got me the funk, but I'm almost out."
"I'll see what I can do for you."
Eve looked at her—the spastic muscle jerks, the ghostly skin. Rehabilitation, she thought. Mother of God.
* * *
By the time she met up with Feeney again, Eve was steaming. Every interview had added to the picture of Julianna Dunne, multiple murderer, waltzing her way through the system, stacking up privileges and favors, and conning, bribing, sweet-talking guards, staff, and other prisoners into doing whatever she needed or wanted to be done.
"Like they were goddamn servants," Eve exploded. "And this was her goddamn castle. She couldn't leave it, but she made certain what she wanted got in to her. A fucking PPC, Feeney. Christ knows what she sent or received on it."
"Had the office drone who worked over her buffaloed," he added. "I can guarantee she did plenty of authorized transmissions from the units in that complex. Free fricking rein."
"We get an impound warrant, can you track?"
"I already put in for one. Might be spitting in the wind, but we'll go through every one of them, see if she left a mark. Talked to her shrink—'scuze me—her emotional well-being counselor." His lips pursed on the term as if he were sucking a lemon ball. "Got an earful of early childhood trauma, acting out—nice pretty term for murder—flash points, ebbing, contrition, and Christ knows. All adds up to the head broad being convinced Dunne was successfully rehabilitated and ready to take her place as a productive member of society."
"Odds are we'll get the same song from her PO. We'll swing by and see him, check in with the locals, and get the hell out of Chicago." She blew out a breath. "Is something wrong with me, Feeney, that I look at this place and see a huge pile of bullshit being dumped on the taxpayers?"
"Must be the same thing that's wrong with me."
"But people can change, they can turn themselves around. Or be turned around. Prisons aren't just warehouses. Shouldn't be."
"They shouldn't be frigging resort hotels either. Let's get the hell out of here. Place gives me the creeps."
* * *
Parole Officer Otto Shultz was overweight, bucktoothed, and solved his male pattern baldness with a combover that started with a part at the tip of his left ear.
Eve imagined his civil servant salary was far from stellar, but wondered why he didn't earmark a portion of it for basic body maintenance.
He wasn't happy to see them, claimed to be very busy, murderously overworked, and tried to brush them off with promises of copies of all reports and evaluations on Julianna Dunne.
Eve would've been fine with that, if it hadn't been for the nerves she could all but smell pumping out of his pores.
"You helped pass her back out of the system, and the first thing she does is kill. I guess that's got you somewhat jittery, Otto."
"Look." He pulled out a handkerchief, mopped his pudgy face. "I followed the book. She passed all evals, followed the rules. I'm a PO, not a fortune-teller."
"I always figured most PO's have a really good bullshit barometer. How about you, Feeney?"
"Working with cons every day, hearing all the stories, the excuses, the crapola." Lips pursed, he nodded. "Yep, I gotta figure a PO with any experience is going smell out the bs."
"She aced all the tests," Otto began.
"Wouldn't be the first to know how to maneuver the techs and questions and machines. Where'd she bang you, Otto?" Eve asked pleasantly. "Here in the office, or did she get you to take her home with you?"
"You can't sit there and accuse me of having a sexual relationship with a client."
"Client, Christ. These politically correct terms are starting to piss me off. I'm not accusing you, Otto." Eve leaned forward. "I know you fucked her. I don't really give a damn, and I'm not interested in reporting that fact to your superiors. She's a piece of work and you'd have been child's play for her. You can be grateful she just wanted you to help push her through, and didn't want you dead."
"She passed the tests," he said and his voice shook. "She didn't make waves. Her slate was clean. I believed her. I'm not the only one who believed her, so don't dump this on me. We've got scum oozing through here every day, and the law says if they don't blow their parole obligations, we funnel them back into society. Julianna wasn't scum. She was ... different."
"Yeah." Disgusted, Eve got to her feet. "She's different."
* * *
The first breath of fresh air of the day came in a crowded, dingy diner that smelled of badly fried food. The place was jammed with cops, and across the little table, Lieutenant Frank Boyle and Captain Robert Spindler chowed down on turkey sandwiches the size of Hawaii.
"Julianna." Spindler dabbed a condiment masquerading as mayo off his bottom lip.
"Face of an angel, soul of a shark. Coldest, meanest bitch I ever met."
"You're forgetting my first wife," Boyle reminded him. "Hard to believe we're back here, the four of us, damn near ten years later." Boyle had a cheerful Irish face, until you looked in his eyes. They were hard and flat, and just a little scary.
Eve could see the signs of too much drinking, too much brooding in the red puffiness in his jowls, the souring droop of his mouth.
"We put out feelers," Spindler continued. "Fed the media, bumped up her old contacts. We've got nothing new on her." He'd kept his looks, militarily clean-cut, trim, authoritative. "We've got nothing on her, nothing to indicate she's blown our way. I went to her parole hearing," he continued. "Made a personal pitch that she be denied. Brought case files, documentation. Got nowhere. She sat there, like a perfect lady, eyes downcast, hands folded, the faintest glimmer of tears. If I didn't know her like I know her, I might've bought the act myself."
"You know anything about a funky junkie inside? Lois Loop?"
"Doesn't ring," Spindler said.
"She was Julianna's gofer, sounding board, slave. Whatever. She was starting to jones when I interviewed her. I got some info, but she may have more. Maybe you can work her again. She told me Julianna was going to New York to see the bone man. Pettibone. And there was a sheep man. Can you think of anyone who fits her standard target who has sheep in his name?"
Both Boyle and Spindler shook their heads. "But we'll run it through," Spindler promised. "See what pops."
"Also a cowboy and the Dallas dude."
"Sounds like she's thinking of heading down to Texas and paying a call on her stepfather." Boyle took another enormous bite of his sandwich. "Unless you're the Dallas, and she's looking at your dude."
Eve ignored the clutching in her stomach. "Yeah, that's occurred. We'll notify Dallas PSD. I can take care of my own dude. New L.A. and Denver were other cities this Loopy remembered. I'm betting if her mind was clearer, she'd remember more."