Inside

“Faking it,” Peyton clarified.

Stepping into the room, Shelley crossed her arms over her large breasts, which strained against a dress that was far too tight, and leaned against the wall. “What’s he in for?”

Briefly allowing herself to be distracted by the business she’d been dealing with before Warden Fischer’s little meeting eight miles away, Peyton took a sip of the coffee that’d nearly grown cold on her desk. “Molesting three boys.”

“Then he’s in the hat, isn’t he?”

In the hat meant he was marked to be beaten or killed by other inmates. Rapists, molesters and child murderers weren’t well liked, even in prison. “I’m not so sure that’s the only reason he’s saying he wants to exit the land of the living,” she said.

Bracelet jangling as she walked, Shelley approached the chairs on the other side of Peyton’s desk. “Come on, you know how many of these guys try to get themselves into the Psychiatric Services Unit. But with only one hundred and twenty-eight beds, you can’t send them all there. I’d put him back in gen pop.”

“Without a second thought?”

She adjusted her dress, which had started to ride up. “Why not?”

“What if he really goes through with it? What if he hangs himself in his cell? Would you want to be responsible for that?”

“No.” Straightening, she hitched up her giant handbag. “That’s why you get paid the big bucks.”

Big bucks? Peyton made $120,000 year, but money didn’t help her sleep at night. She’d been so idealistic when she’d chosen this profession, so certain she’d be able to make a difference. But, more often than not, there wasn’t a good answer to the dilemmas she faced. She couldn’t put this guy, Victor Durego, in the SHU. The SHU was reserved for behavioral problems; keeping inmates in total isolation cost taxpayers an exorbitant amount of money. If Victor had no mental disorder, she couldn’t keep him in the PSU, either. It didn’t make sense to waste the valuable time of the mental health professionals who worked there or take up a slot that was legitimately needed by someone else. For a week or two, she could move him into the Transitional Housing Unit, where they put the gangbangers who decided to debrief, but returning Victor to general population would leave him vulnerable to what had made him claim he was suicidal in the first place—probably another inmate who’d threatened him.

“There’s always the other philosophy,” Shelley said.

Peyton pushed the coffee to one side so she wouldn’t be tempted by it. “What philosophy?”

“That a guy who molests children deserves whatever he gets.”

She knew Shelley wasn’t alone in her ambivalence toward Victor’s safety. But Peyton believed it was humanity that separated the caregivers from the inmates. If the caregivers appointed themselves judge, jury and executioner, they were no better than the people they imprisoned. “As far as I know, physical injury wasn’t part of his sentence. And we don’t have the right to embellish it.”

“I’m just saying…. You can’t see into the future. What he did landed him in prison. Now that he’s here, all you can do is make the call and hope for the best.”

Shelley was right on that count. Peyton had made many such “calls.” Some turned out as she’d hoped. Others didn’t. Which was why the responsibility weighed so heavily.

“I should get going,” her assistant said. “Good luck with it.”

“Thanks.” Peyton waved. Then the door closed, leaving her alone with Victor’s file, a stack of others on which she had to make some decision or other and the manila envelope on Simeon Bennett.

Removing Simeon’s bio, she read it again. Then she got on her computer and searched the internet for “Department 6, Los Angeles.”

A webpage came up. It provided only general information, as she’d expected, but there was a contact number.

If she pretended to know Simeon and asked for him by name, maybe she could figure out if he at least worked where he said he did….

A man answered on the second ring. “Department 6.”

Peyton curled the nails of her free hand into her palm. She was using her cell phone so her name would’ve appeared on caller ID, but that beat letting him know she was calling from a prison. “Is Simeon Bennett there?”

“Who?”

“Simeon Bennett. B-E-N-N-E-T-T. I met him at a club last weekend. I have an ex-boyfriend who…who’s scaring me.” She drew a deep breath in an effort to make the lie more convincing. “Simeon said he worked for a private security company that could protect me. He said I should call him at this number if my ex kept harassing me.”

“I’m sorry, but I’ve never heard of a Simeon Bennett,” the man responded.

And yet he was supposed to have worked there for most of the past ten years?

“Would you like to speak to someone else? Protection is definitely a service we offer.”

“No. Thanks, anyway,” she said, and hung up.

Just as she’d thought. Bennett didn’t work for Department 6. So what had he been doing? And what about the rest of his resume? Was any of it true? Had she even been given his real name?

She got up and crossed to the credenza, where she picked up the last photograph ever taken of her and her father. At four years old, she stood hugging his leg outside their middle-class home in Citrus Heights, a suburb of Sacramento. Shortly after a neighbor snapped that picture, he’d gone to prison for embezzling the money to pay for her mother’s cancer treatments. Because of him, Grace had survived an additional quarter of a century, but after serving five years, with only three weeks left on his sentence, he was stabbed—and died in minutes.

Her father was the reason she’d gone into corrections. Knowing him and the reality of his story convinced Peyton to look at convicts as individuals with unique backgrounds, situations and desires, just like other human beings. Sometimes mitigating circumstances led a man to do the unthinkable. It wasn’t fair to make snap judgments or lump them all together. Now that she was reaching positions with enough authority to make significant changes, she wouldn’t allow Fischer, or the department, to set her up for failure by sending her into some dangerous investigation without all the facts. She’d worked too hard to get where she was.

So how would she learn exactly what they had planned? Although she’d seen the prisoner number on Bennett’s arm, she’d been so shocked by what it signified that she hadn’t thought to memorize it. She could recall only the first four digits. Otherwise, she might’ve been able to use that to obtain further information.

Maybe she wouldn’t need it. Wallace hadn’t done much to cover his tracks. He was so used to being in charge, so arrogant and sure no one at the prison would bother to check on anything he said, he hadn’t even invented a fictional company for Bennett’s previous employer. Or chosen an organization that wasn’t as easy to locate.

Setting her father’s picture back in its place, she grabbed her purse and flung her jacket over her shoulder. She’d figure out who Bennett really was, or she wouldn’t let him into the prison on Tuesday. Maybe her determination would end her career, but she’d go down swinging.

In the notes Wallace had given him on Operation Black Widow, Crescent City had been called “California’s Siberia” by one defense attorney. Now that he’d seen it for himself, Virgil had to agree. Nearly four hundred miles from both San Francisco and Sacramento, and eight hundred miles from Los Angeles, it was only accessible via narrow, winding roads clogged with RVs, or a small airstrip with very few flights. Dense forests of giant, old-growth redwoods hemmed it in on one side—silent, massive and pungent. An angry, churning Pacific Ocean stretched to eternity on the other.

But it wasn’t just the physical isolation that made this part of the California coast different from the hot sun and toes-in-the-sand party beaches down south. It was the climate. Foggy and chilly, with trees shaped by the wind, this tiny dot on the map seemed every bit as lonely as a barren field of ice. The only major difference was the lush beauty.

There shouldn’t be a prison here, he decided. Especially a supermax as notorious for harsh discipline, even abuse, as Pelican Bay. It was too much of a contradiction.

Chief Deputy Warden Peyton Adams was also too much of a contradiction. He pictured her blond hair pulled into a knot at her nape, the wide brown eyes that’d stared out at him with such quick perception, the satiny skin that made her look too young to hold the authority she did, the lines of her suit, which was practical yet stylish. Had