by Brad Parks
The nearest light stanchion was several hundred yards away and behind me. Its output was meager enough I barely cast a shadow. The moonless sky above was dark, save for the stars, which twinkled like an array of tiny, distant LEDs.
I set off toward the rec area, trying not to appear in too much of a hurry. I reminded myself of the role I was taking on: FCI Morgantown corrections officer. I walked confidently, without fear of anyone or anything. I was a little bored, of course. I did this every night. Nothing ever happened.
The administration at FCI Morgantown did a fine job hiding its cameras, so I wasn’t aware of when I was on video or when I was in a black zone. But that was the point of the unicorn. Even if someone was monitoring the feed, the grainy image of a CO walking along in a navy blue blur wouldn’t appear unusual.
I slid past the handball wall, then the pavilion, keeping my head down. There was no one out. At least no one I could see.
The last buildings I passed were Alexander and Bates, where inmates slept barracks-style. Each one housed a few hundred men. I didn’t know if they had one CO each at night, or if they shared one—who might therefore be passing between them.
That wasn’t my concern. I was just a CO myself. If I saw anyone, I’d just nod and carry on. The captain who commanded the night shift had told me to go check out something he saw on the camera, so that’s what I was doing.
It was now just upward-sloping open space between me and the forest. My roiled stomach flip-flopped a little extra as I crossed over the perimeter road, the ring of asphalt that formed the outermost boundary of our lives. Beyond it was no-man’s-land.
I scuffled quickly across, then plunged into the trees, safe for the moment. In theory, I had until sometime before the three A.M. count to get back. I still elongated my strides to cover more ground. My thighs burned from the incline. Freshly fallen leaves rustled under my feet. It was nice not to worry about the noise they were making.
My breathing grew heavier as the slope increased. My eyes were getting better adjusted to the darkness as I got farther away from the facility. I purposefully did not look back at the light stanchions, so my pupils would stay as widely dilated as possible.
The canopy of trees above me was mature enough that the undergrowth was not too imposing. I stumbled now and then as my steel-toed boots hit a root or rock but otherwise had no trouble navigating the darkness.
After maybe four or five minutes of steady climbing, the slope abruptly leveled out. I had reached the ridge that ran atop Dorsey’s Knob.
I quickly flashed the light on my Timex. 12:56. Perfect.
According to my map study, I would crest a ridge, then come to a clearing. Sure enough, I found it after a small descent. Once in the open, I took a right turn, pointing myself in the direction of the picnic area, and broke into a brisk jog.
There were no lights on. The park was closed. But I could soon see the shape of a man, sitting on one of the tables. He was dressed in black.
When I was maybe fifteen feet away, I realized it wasn’t Danny Ruiz.
It was Rick Gilmartin. His black shirt had the letters FBI printed in gray.
“Good evening,” he said.
“Where’s Danny?” I asked.
“New York. We have other cases, you know.”
“Right,” I said. “Well, let’s get on with it, then. I have to get back.”
He stood and walked over to another picnic bench mounded with dark shapes that turned out to be a backpack and two duffel bags.
“Per your request, these are stuffed with Chicken of the Sea fillet of mackerel packets,” he said, patting the backpack. “You’re looking at more than three hundred pounds of fish here. I had to go to one of their distribution centers in Maryland to pick this up. They looked at me like there was something wrong with me even after I flashed my badge.”
The backpack was a large, military-style item, and Gilmartin had expanded its zip-out compartments to their full size. It had been packed solid. I tentatively tried to lift one of the duffel bags by its strap. It barely budged. I had no idea mackerel packets weighed so much. I might as well have asked for sacks of bricks.
“This is great,” I said, using my own voice for a change. Pete Goodrich needed a break.
“I suggest you take at least two trips. I used three to get them here from the parking lot.”
“Good call,” I said.
I could squat more than three hundred pounds. But that was in the controlled environment of a weight room. I didn’t want to know what the compound fracture would look like if I took an awkward step with three hundred pounds on my back.
“And, of course, there’s this,” he said solemnly. He pulled a plastic bag out of his pocket and handed it to me.
Inside were a small handful of what I assumed were marijuana seeds. I stuffed them in my pocket.
“Those were about to be destroyed,” he said. “As far as the United States government is concerned, they have been destroyed. So do everyone involved a favor and never discuss this again.”
“You got it.”
He looked down at the bags. “I’ll help you carry those things as far as the tree line if you’d like. After that, I wouldn’t want to have to explain to the BOP what I was doing in their facility at one o’clock in the morning with a bunch of fish.”
“Actually, there’s something else I’d rather you do, if you don’t mind.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s a GoMart right down the road from here,” I said. “Would you mind picking up some caramel M&M’S and some Slim Jims?”
* * *
• • •
I took the backpack first. It easily weighed as much as I did and only became manageable—barely—when I got the weight balanced right.
Still, I was able to work my way down through the forest until I was as close as I could get to the maintenance warehouse, which was conveniently located near the perimeter road.
Masri’s key worked fine, and I was soon inside, hiding the backpack under a tarp that was exactly where he said it would be.
Then it was back up the hill. Even though it was a cool night, I was sweating profusely. I wondered if I could get away with laundering the unicorn when this was over. Otherwise I feared the COs would find it based on odor alone.
Back up in the picnic area, Gilmartin was waiting for me with a plastic sack containing five bags of caramel M&M’S and a fistful of Slim Jims.
“Here you go,” he said. “This was all they had.”
“Thanks,” I said, stuffing the sack in one of the duffel bags.
I checked my Timex: 1:48. I was doing fine, though I still couldn’t dawdle. I shouldered the first of the two duffel bags, then balanced myself off with the second. Again, the load was awkward but doable.
“All right,” I said, then summoned my best Henry V. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends.”
“Wait, there’s one more thing,” Gilmartin said, reaching into his pocket and producing a small Ziploc bag. “I want you to install these in the phones at Randolph. There are instructions inside. I included some double-adhesive strips. All you have to do is unscrew the mouthpiece and attach them.”
“What . . . what are they?” I said, setting the bags back down.
“Listening devices,” he said.
Now I finally understood why Danny had asked how many phones there were.
“But the calls are monitored already,” I said.
“By the BOP. Not by us. And the BOP doesn’t share well. We gave them the we’re-all-on-the-same-team-here argument, and they told us they could only let us listen if there was evidence of lawbreaking. Then they told us if we had a problem with that to talk to their lawyers. This way is a lot easier.”
I still hadn’t taken the bag from him. I thought about sneaking out to the phones, unscrewing them in the dark
, fumbling around with adhesive strips. . . .
“Forget it,” I said. “I’m taking enough risk for you guys already. If you can’t get the BOP to play with you, that’s not my problem.”
“This is not a request,” Gilmartin said.
“What, you’re giving me orders now? I don’t work for you.”
“Yes, you do.”
“I signed a contract where I agreed to perform a role for a specific length of time. This has nothing to do with that role.”
“You signed a contract that says you are to perform the duties asked of you by bureau personnel. That’s me. And I’ll remind you we’re paying you quite handsomely for that. As a matter of fact, if you’ll recall, I went to bat for you when you wanted more money.”
“That contract also says I can’t break the law,” I pointed out.
“This isn’t breaking the law.”
“Yeah? Then show me a warrant.”
“We don’t need one. This is no different than you tapping the phones in your own home. West Virginia is a one-party-consent state. That means you’re the only one who needs to be aware of it.”
I had no idea if that was true. Frankly, I didn’t care if I was breaking the law—and, obviously, neither did the FBI, since Gilmartin had just handed me a bunch of marijuana seeds. I just wasn’t sure how much more danger my stomach could handle. This is why the bureau had sent Gilmartin to do this errand. Danny wouldn’t have been able to bring himself to be this much of a prick.
Sensing he had gained the advantage, Gilmartin moved quickly to finish me off.
“If you don’t want to fulfill the terms of your contract, that’s fine,” he said. “I’ll pull you out tomorrow, if you like. Is that what you want?”
“Just give me the bag,” I said.
I took it from him and stuffed it in my pocket. “If you guys hear Dupree say something on those phone calls that leads to indictments against New Colima, I get my bonus, right?”
“Of course,” Gilmartin said.
“Great,” I said, shouldering the duffel bags again. “Thanks for the fish.”
Then I started back down the hill. I wasn’t wild about implanting the devices; or the way I’d have to do it; or that the FBI was now going to be listening to everything I said, too.
But mostly I disliked the precedent it established.
What were they going to make me do next?
CHAPTER 24
Charlie had made jazz band. One of just three freshmen to be so honored.
Claire had been invited to the sleepover birthday party of the fall season and was eager to discuss pajama strategy.
It was, all in all, a banner day in the Dupree household. And Mitch was enjoying every trust-fund-limited second of it. For at least a short while, he could suspend disbelief, tell himself he was just on a business trip—a really, really long business trip to a convention without a hotel bar—and that he would not be returning to the bottom bunk of a two-man cell when this call was over.
Then Natalie got on the phone, interrupting Claire with an ominous, “Sorry, honey, I need some time with Daddy today.”
Claire chirped out a sugar-sweet good-bye—“Okay! Love you, Daddy!”—that practically pureed Dupree’s insides. Then he took a deep breath. Usually when Natalie needed time, it was something financial. Something bad.
“What’s up?” Dupree asked.
Quietly and without indulging the hysteria she was feeling—because the kids would hear if she broke down sobbing—Natalie related how a Mexican man broke into the house and held a knife to her throat until she surrendered the GPS coordinates for the hunting cabin.
“Did you call the police?” Dupree asked.
“Of course I did,” Natalie said. “They lectured me about the air conditioner. Like I needed that.”
“Are they even going to try to figure out who did it?”
“Doesn’t sound like it. They told me it was breaking and entering, which, duh, I knew already. They asked me if the guy took anything, and I said no, I didn’t think so. Then it was like they washed their hands of it. They said the only way guys like that get caught is if they try to pawn something later.”
Dupree nearly punched the wall. His wife was being threatened, and there he was, hundreds of miles away, totally worthless to her. If there was a more impotent feeling, he had yet to experience it.
“The cartel is just trying to scare us,” Dupree said.
“Well, congratulations to them. It’s working.”
“They won’t do anything,” he said, which he had to believe, because he’d suffer a breakdown if he didn’t.
She sighed loudly. “On top of that, I saw Jenny Reiner coming out of Nordstrom yesterday with two big shopping bags. To think her husband is free and you’re . . .”
“We can’t dwell on that. There’s nothing we can do about that.”
More impotence.
“I know,” she said. She knew this phone call was already running out of time, so she blurted, “I want to move.”
“We can’t afford it. And it wouldn’t matter where you went. They’d find you.”
“Mitch, I can’t live like this much longer. You have to do something.”
“Let me think about it,” he said.
“No. That’s not good enough anymore. There was a man sitting on my bed with a knife. What are you waiting for? For him to actually use it?”
“Of course not, I just—”
“I can’t take this anymore. I just can’t. I’m done.”
Then she hung up.
They still had a minute left.
CHAPTER 25
I dedicated most of the next day to rest and recovery, not trusting my sleep-deprived self to be quick enough in thought and speech to have my first encounter with Dupree.
The odds and ends of the previous night’s errand were tidied up easily enough. I had quickly installed the bugs Gilmartin gave me, reasoning that it was better to get it over with—especially when I was out already, and I knew there had been no sign of a roaming CO.
After lunch, Masri let me know he had distributed the cans to a variety of hiding spots he had scoped out, then camouflaged them. If I needed to make a withdrawal, all I had to do was ask before work duty.
The other significant improvement on my circumstance was that I was able to find a tree near the perimeter road that had a decent-size knot in it—one that, conveniently, faced away from the facility—that I could cram the unicorn inside. I hid the telltale white plastic with leaves. For all I knew, it was the same place Skrobis had been hiding it.
It wasn’t until the morning after the morning after that I tracked down Bobby Harrison and told him I was ready to take his place in the nightly Randolph poker game. He tried to haggle me up to fifteen cans again, but I insisted we stay with ten. We both knew he was being fairly compensated. I paid for the first two nights, both to establish my credibility as a dependable payer and so I wouldn’t have to trouble Masri for another withdrawal.
That night at five minutes before seven o’clock, I walked into the card room and took my place at the table farthest from the door. I wanted to be early, in case there were any questions about my legitimacy in the game. I had five cans bulging in my pocket for the buy-in.
I was feeling loose, relaxed. It was just a friendly game of cards. Never mind the effort I had expended to join it.
Pete Goodrich would be chill about it. On the outside, he had played in a regular game with a fellow social studies teacher, two math teachers, a chemistry teacher, and the football coach—when it wasn’t football season, anyway. They rotated houses. Low stakes, except if you went all in with three of a kind and got beaten by a flush you didn’t see coming, you’d hear about it in the faculty lounge at school all week.
Three minutes later, one of the guys from the game, the tall one, walked i
nto the room. He was at least six-four. Probably fifty, though his tawny hair showed no signs of gray. He had a hooked nose that the rest of him was just barely large enough to accommodate.
“Sorry, this table’s reserved,” he said agreeably.
“I’m taking Bobby Harrison’s place,” I said. “He sends his regrets.”
The man took this in for a moment. He apparently decided it didn’t bother him very much because he folded his long body into the seat across from me. “I’m Jim,” he said, holding out his right hand. “Jim Madigan. But people call me ‘Doc.’”
I shook his hand. “Pete Goodrich. People call me Pete Goodrich.”
He smiled as another guy from the game walked in. It was the guy with the ponytail—really, just a scraggly assortment of gray hair that he tied back. He was a light-skinned black man and was older than Doc, though it was difficult for me to peg his age exactly, on account of the gray beard that covered his face.
“This is Jerry Strother,” Doc said. “Jerry, this is Pete Goodrich. He’s taking Bobby’s place.”
“You don’t cheat, do you?” Jerry inquired.
He said the line straight, but it was still a line.
“Guess you’ll find out,” I replied with a half grin.
“Oh, he’s gonna fit in fine around here,” Jerry declared, punctuating it with a quick cackle before he took a seat.
Doc had brought two decks of cards and passed them to Jerry, who began shuffling them with an expert flair.
“Feeling lucky tonight,” Jerry declared. “This is my night.”
Doc turned to me. “You can feel free to ignore him. He says that every night.”
Just then Mitchell Dupree entered the room, looking hangdog as ever.
This was the encounter I had been trying to arrange since the moment I set foot in FCI Morgantown—potentially the start of a three-hundred-thousand-dollar life-changing event—but Pete Goodrich was casual about it, paying no more or less attention to him than he did the other guys.
“Where’s Bobby?” Dupree asked.
This was my first time hearing his voice. It was higher and softer than I thought it would be. His accent was upper-middle-class Atlanta, which meant it had been watered down with enough Yankee influence through the years that it wasn’t very southern at all.