“And we need to know who she is,” Stone said. “See if the control room can tell us.”
When following protocol, which wasn’t always as consistent as it should be, the officers in the control room were supposed to visually identify everyone entering and exiting the institution by matching their employee photo ID with the person holding it. They were also in charge of logging and distributing institutional keys to staff.
“At some point we need to call FDLE and get a crime scene unit down here,” Pete said.
“At some point we will,” Stone said. “At the same point we give them two identities—this woman’s and her killer’s.”
“You wait that long, you’re gonna catch hell from them.”
“No, Inspector, you are,” Stone said. “I plan on blaming you. Now, all of you, find out who this woman is and who killed her, and find out fast.”
The three towers of PCI provided one of the best views of the flat North Florida landscape. In addition to the entire prison complex, we could see the seemingly unending pine forest that surrounded it.
Stone and I had climbed up Tower III with the officer who had been on duty last night and were now standing with him and the duty officer inside the tower.
“Who saw the body first?” Stone asked.
I glanced down at the body. It was nearly two hundred yards away, but clearly visible. Colonel Patterson was standing next to it smoking a cigar.
“I did,” Eric Taunton said.
In his early thirties, he was a thick-bodied white man with a thin mustache and freckles. His shift began at seven this morning.
Josh Weeks nodded.
“Josh was gathering his things when I first got in here,” he continued. “I just took a quick look around and—bam, there she was.”
“She?” I asked.
I looked down at the body again. It was difficult to tell from this distance that it was a woman.
“Yeah,” he said, following my gaze. “I’ve got real good eyes. It’s one of the reasons I got this post. It was easier to tell when she was on her stomach. I could see a lot of blond hair.”
I nodded.
“She just jumped out at me,” he said. “At first I didn’t believe what I was seeing, thought my eyes were playing tricks on me, but when I looked back and saw she was still there I called Josh over and showed him.”
“Why didn’t you see it?” Stone asked. “There was at least an hour of daylight before Officer Taunton arrived.”
“I just missed it,” Weeks said. “I guess my eyes ain’t as good as his.”
His eyesight wasn’t the only thing that made me question his assignment to this post.
Much larger than Taunton, Weeks was nearly six-and-a-half feet tall and over three hundred pounds. He had dirty blond hair that was too long and needed washing, and breasts that could have benefited from the support of a bra.
“How do you miss a dead body on the rec yard right under you?” Stone asked.
“Warden, I’m sorry, but I just missed it,” he said.
“Did you even look in that direction once the sun came up?”
He started to nod, but stopped. “Honestly, I can’t remember,” he said. “Thing is, no one’s on the rec yard ’til after the shift change, so I usually concentrate on the compound.”
Stone nodded slightly, but his deep frown and posture communicated how displeased he was.
“What time’d you buzz her through?” Stone asked.
“I didn’t,” Weeks said.
“You sure?”
“Positive,” he said. “Hair like that, I’d remember.”
“She was in there before eleven last night when you started your shift?” Stone said. “That’s a long—”
Weeks shook his head. “I worked a double yesterday,” he said. “I was here from three yesterday afternoon ’til seven this morning. She didn’t come through during that time.”
Stone and I both looked over at Taunton.
He shook his head. “She didn’t come through during my shift yesterday,” he said. “I worked from seven until three and I’m positive I didn’t buzz her in during that time.”
“You realize what you men are saying?” Stone asked. “That she didn’t enter the rec yard yesterday.”
They both nodded.
“That seems far less likely to me than that one of you buzzed her in without realizing it.”
“I’d remember,” Taunton said. “No one gets in without me knowing it.”
“Me, too,” Weeks said, though a little less confidently.
Stone turned to me. “Anything else?”
“Either of you know who she is?” I asked.
They both shook their heads.
“Either she’s new,” Taunton said, “or we’ve never worked the same shift.”
“Yeah,” Weeks said. “Same here.”
“So, you don’t know her and didn’t buzz her in,” Stone said. “Yet there she is on the ground, murdered in a part of the institution you’re responsible for.”
When we stepped out of the tower, Pete and Baker were waiting for us near the gate.
“What’ve you got for me?” Stone asked.
He stepped up to the gate and the rest of us followed. We were buzzed into the holding area by Taunton, then once we closed the first gate and walked to the second one we were buzzed back into the rec yard.
“Nothing helpful,” Baker said. “Everyone’s accounted for.”
Stone cupped the crooked fingers of his bony hand around his ear. “Retransmit.”
“Everyone who entered this institution yesterday is accounted for,” he said. “Logs look good. All the keys’ve been returned. I couldn’t find any discrepancies.”
“It just doesn’t make sense,” Stone said.
“But,” I said, “it does fit with what Taunton and Weeks said.”
Stone looked at me, his face a question. “You believe them?”
I shrugged. “Not necessarily,” I said, “but the fact that it lines up with what the control room says gives it more credibility.”
When we reached the body again, the colonel was puffing on his cigar. It was narrow and cheap and had a beige plastic filter tip on the end.
“Put that thing out,” Stone ordered. “You’re standing near a crime scene.”
Stepping a few feet away, Patterson threw the cigar over the fences and in the direction of the small logging road peeking out of the woods beyond.
The perimeter fence is actually two, ten-foot high fences, both of which are topped with looping razor wire, with twenty feet between them and more rows of looping razor wire inside. The design makes it impossible to enter or exit the institution over the fence without getting tangled up in razor wire and having your flesh filleted.
“You trying to start a forest fire?” Stone asked.
“It landed in dirt,” he said.
I looked over in the direction of the road. The cigar had landed on a patch of yellowish-brown grass between two square indentations about ten feet apart and close to the fence. At least if it started a fire, we’d see it.
“Did all the inmates eat breakfast before we closed the yard?” Stone asked.
Patterson nodded.
“How long can we keep it closed before we have to feed them lunch?”
Patterson looked at his watch. “I’d say we could go five or six hours.”
Stone nodded, then turned to Pete. “How long before we need to call FDLE?”
“We should have already,” he said. “Even when we do, it’ll take them nearly two hours to get here.”
As the small group of men continued to talk, I stepped over to the first fence and looked out. I knew the victim had not come through the fences—her body bore none of the scissored signs, but I wondered if her killer had escaped this way. It was highly unlikely. The fence sensors would have alerted the control room if he had attempted to climb the fence, and even if they had been malfunctioning, perhaps from the thunderstorm, he’d most likely
be tangled up in the razor wire bleeding to death.
Still, it didn’t hurt to check.
There was no flesh or blood on the gleaming blades of the razor wire. No one had been through the fence. I studied the narrow logging path. There were no tracks near the head of it and only some faint tire tracks, most likely belonging to an ATV further back.
“What the hell’re you doin’?” Patterson asked. “No way he got out through there.”
I nodded. “Just looking,” I said, walking back over to join them.
“So we’ve only got a few hours,” Stone said. “How do we proceed?”
“Has anyone talked to the rec yard supervisor?” I asked.
Stone raised his eyebrows, then looked over at Pete.
“I’m still tryin’ to find ’im,” he said. “He didn’t show up for work today and he’s not answerin’ his phone.”
Stone’s eyebrows arched even higher.
“John, you think your dad would send a deputy by his house to see if he’s home?”
I nodded. “I’ll give him a call him in a minute.”
“So how do we proceed?”
“We need to know who the hell she is,” Patterson said.
“That’s the other thing,” Pete said. “No one seems to know. I described her to the control room officers, the admin lieutenant, the guy at the center gate. No one’s ever seen her.”
It was one thing for none of us to recognize her, but unless this was her first day, it seemed unlikely that no one in the control room or security building would. If it wasn’t so unthinkable we might consider that she came in from outside, but it was as difficult to get in the prison as it was to get out.
“How can we identify the body?” Stone asked. “Think, people.”
“What if that’s a wig?” Pete asked.
I had already had the thought and looked closely. It was not.
“Try it and see?” Stone said.
Pete hesitated.
“Ah, hell,” Baker said, and reached down and pulled on the hair. “It’s hers—well, mostly. Feels like some weave in there.”
“White girls call them extensions,” I said.
He smiled. “Extensions, then.”
“That’s good thinking, though, Inspector,” Stone said.
I knew what was coming next, one of the most well-worn phrases of business people and bureaucrats everywhere.
“That’s what I need the rest of you to do,” he continued. “Think outside the box.”
I smiled.
“Something amusing, Chaplain?” Stone asked.
“No, sir,” I said, “I just had an outside the box thought. May I borrow your phone?”
“What is it?”
“Let me check something first,” I said.
He handed me his phone, and I stepped away from the group again and called Dad.
Jack Jordan, my dad and the Sheriff of Potter County, wasn’t in his office, but at a crime scene, so I called his cell phone.
“Where are you?” I asked.
“Linton’s,” he said. “Some kids broke in here, the liquor store, and the co-op last night.”
Linton’s was one of the auto parts stores in town. Not a single bookstore, theater, or art gallery in Pottersville, but we had three auto parts stores.
“Stole some spray paint and painted the town,” he said. “Cut some doughnuts behind the co-op and fucked up some of their equipment.”
“How do you know it was kids?”
“Spelled whore H-O-R-E and damn D-A-M,” he said.
“’Round here that doesn’t necessarily mean kids,” I said.
He laughed.
“Be careful,” I said. “Sounds like you’re dealing with some dangerous, hardened criminals.”
“You know me,” he said. “Always vigilant.”
“I know you’re busy with this big case and all,” I said, “but can you spare a minute for a quick question?”
“Only because it’s you.”
“Has anyone reported a missing person?”
“I don’t think so, but I can check,” he said. “What’s going on?”
I told him.
“Hold on a minute and let me see,” he said.
I did.
In less than a minute he was back. “None so far.”
“Okay,” I said. “Thanks.”
“Keep me posted,” he said.
“I’ll try,” I said, “but I can’t imagine you’ll be able to break away from such a taxing case to even take my calls.”
“Anything?” Stone asked when I got off the phone.
“Not yet,” I said, “but I wanna try one more thing.”
“What’re you thinking?” he asked.
“That no one recognizes her,” I said, “and we all say that if we’d ever seen her before, we wouldn’t forget.”
“Yeah?”
“What if she’s not a CO?” I said. “Uniform doesn’t really fit her and she’s wearing tennis shoes.”
“No way,” Stone said. “Just can’t happen.”
“We’ve got to at least consider it’s a possibility.”
“Then who?” Stone asked.
“I’m about to check.”
“No way a civilian got in here,” Stone said.
“Control room just wouldn’t allow it,” Baker said.
“It’s impossible.”
“Almost, but not quite,” I said. “It’s improbable, but not quite impossible. It’s a whole box and thinking thing.”
He didn’t smile.
“A uniform alone wouldn’t do it,” Baker said. “She’d have to have a photo ID and—”
“Check her pockets,” Stone said.
Baker did. There was nothing in them.
“No way she got in without an ID,” Patterson said.
“Maybe her killer took it,” Pete said.
“Why would he do that?” Patterson asked.
“Conceal her identity,” I said.
“If a civilian managed to get into my institution and get killed …” he said, but trailed off.
No one said anything.
“You thinking of someone in particular?” he asked.
I nodded. “Teacher at the elementary school,” I said. “Been here a couple of years. Name’s Wynn. I’ve heard her appearance has changed a lot lately. I think it’s possible it could be her. ”
“Make the call,” he said.
I did.
First period was almost over and Melanie Wynn had yet to show up for work.
“How the hell’d she get in here?” Pete asked.
“Her husband’s a sergeant in D dorm,” Patterson said. “That’s the one closest to the rec yard.”
“Slow down,” I said. “We don’t know it’s her yet.”
“It can’t be,” Stone said. “It’s just not possible.”
“Joe Wynn worked last night,” Pete said. “I saw his name on the log. You think he brought her in here to kill her—or have someone do it.”
“Pete,” I said, “you’re getting way ahead of what we know. Let me call their home.”
I punched in information, got the number for Joseph and Melanie Wynn, and was connected, but the sleepy voice that answered the phone was neither of them.
“This is John Jordan from Potter Correctional Institution,” I said. “Who am I speaking with?”
“Kayla,” she said.
She sounded about eight.
“Is your mom or dad home?”
“Hold on,” she said.
She was gone a few moments, during which I heard her calling for her mom and dad.
“No one’s here,” she said, a slight alarm in her voice.
“Do you know where they could be?”
“No, sir,” she said. “Mom was supposed to wake me up for school and Dad usually gets back from work before we leave.”
“It’s okay,” I said, “I work with your dad at the prison. I’ll find him for you. Do you have someone who can come and stay with you?�
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