“A correctional officer here at the prison?” I asked, though I didn’t believe it.
“Yeah. But the point is,” Jefferson continued, “he wasn’t loyal to his old man. He would do anything anytime. He also had a big mouth.”
“What else can you tell me?” I asked.
“Grandma say that all he can say, ’cause he ain’t got a big mouth.”
I thought about all the names that I had come across so far in this investigation. I wanted to ask him about at least one of them.
“Can you tell me who Johnson’s real old man was?” I asked.
“Can’t say,” Jefferson said, and Willie nodded his head in agreement.
“What can you tell me about Captain Skipper?” I asked.
Willie said nothing, but for just a split second the seemingly knocking-on-death’s-door old man was as alert as any twenty-year-old I had ever seen. He leaned over and whispered in Jefferson’s ear again.
“Grandma say, he won’t say nothin’ about that redneck son of a bitch,” Jefferson said.
“Okay, what about Jones, the inmate who works in the infirmary?”
Again the whisper, again Jefferson with the response: “Say all he know is he well looked out for. He in love with them nurses, especially Strickland. Jones say they do things for each other, but Grandma think it a one-way street. Grandma understand what Jones mean. Say if she was straight, she’d love Nurse Strickland, too.” All three inmates smiled widely.
“How about a young officer named Shutt?” I continued.
“Must be new, ’cause Grandma don’t know him,” Jefferson said.
“I don’t really know what else to ask you. I’m trying to find out who killed Johnson and why. Is there anything else you can tell me that would help me do that?”
He shook his head. And then he, and not Jefferson, said, “Look into sex and drugs. It gots to do with sex or drugs or both. Everything out here got to do with sex or drugs.”
“Only thing missing is rock ’n’ roll,” I said.
“We got a little of that, too,” he said.
Chapter 15
“Who can I get drugs from?” I asked a very surprised Anna Rodden.
“Excuse me,” she said, moving her head from side to side in mock confusion. “Have things gotten that bad?” She was wearing a colorful jumper with blooming spring flowers all over it. It fit nicely, though not too nicely, which would have violated her oath. Her long brown hair was worn down in long rolling waves. She was lovely.
“If an inmate wants to buy drugs on the compound,” I said, “how does he do it?”
I was seated across from her desk in a blue plastic chair that sloped down to the left. Behind her, through the window, I could see inmates mowing dead grass. The sun had taken a toll on everything this year, but the grass most of all. The waves of heat made the inmates look as if they were many miles away rather than a few hundred feet. An overweight officer with mirrored sunshades stood nearby to inspect their work.
“Well, let’s see,” she said, narrowing her eyes and tapping her pencil on her forehead. “First he would have to have something to buy them with. This could be cash from an outside account; personal property to trade-say, a watch, rings, or canteen items; or he could be willing to do something-sex, a hit, a favor.”
“Do many of them have what it takes to buy drugs?” I asked.
The officer inspecting the crew outside behind Anna turned slightly to the side. He looked pregnant in profile.
“Not many have money, but almost all can do some service or something. We’re talking about an economy like our own, the trading of goods and services.”
“Just how available are drugs on the compound?” I asked.
“Not as much as you might think after working here and seeing all the crime, but a whole hell of a lot more than a person on the street would think.”
Her phone rang. She picked up the receiver, tossing her head back and slinging her hair out of the way. It swung out to the right of her head and then settled back down to the center. It looked like silk and moved with the bounce of hair on a Breck commercial. If I had seen a more graceful or beautiful sight, I couldn’t remember when.
“Classification, Rodden,” she said into the receiver. “Yes, I’m in a meeting right now. I’ll come over when I finish. Okay. Good-bye.”
She hung up the phone and said, “Sorry. Where were we?”
“I was about to ask how the drugs get in? I mean how can an inmate get drugs past all of the security measures taken to prevent them from getting in?”
She smiled. “Some of the drugs on the compound are homemade. We have chemicals here and a pharmacy. Sometimes inmates get their grubby little hands on that stuff. Usually though, the homemade stuff is liquor. Real drugs come in because someone brings them in.”
“Who brings drugs into a state prison?” I asked, though I knew the answer.
“Well, if you’re asking for names, I can’t help you, but generally it comes down to two types of people. First, there are family members who smuggle dope in mail packages, although that is extremely difficult. Most of the time, family and friends bring drugs into inmates when they come for visitation.”
“But security shakes them down. I see them do it every weekend,” I said.
“That’s true, but you know that it would still be possible to hide the stuff, especially in certain body cavities or in certain parts of the female anatomy. And which officer is going to pull out an inmate’s wife’s tampon to see if she has drugs hidden in it?”
“I see what you mean,” I said, unable to hide my disgust at the picture she had just painted on the canvas of my mind.
“Remember these are the families that produced criminals. Now, not all of them are bad, but some are criminals themselves.”
I nodded my head in agreement. Then, I shook it in disbelief, thinking of the implications of all that she had said.
“Another way,” she continued, “is for corrections officers to smuggle them in and sell them.”
“I’ve heard of that, but does it really happen that much?”
“It’s really hard to say, but drugs do get in, and it’s too much to be coming in just through inmates who get visits. COs don’t make a lot of money. Not often, but occasionally, there’s a thin line between the captives and their captors.”
“What is that thin line?” I asked.
“Time, place, luck-I don’t really know, but I think it’s always borrowed time.”
“You believe in divine justice?” I asked.
“I’ve seen it too many times not to. It’s just not like most people think. It doesn’t come in the same way as the crime. It comes in guilt, paranoia, anxiety, fear, loneliness, and ultimately death-spiritual, emotional, moral death. And those who don’t pay now will pay later.”
“I wonder sometimes,” I said and then fell silent, wondering. “This is off the subject but, have you received any threats lately?”
She smiled. “You mean in addition to the normal stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“No. Why?”
“Just curious,” I said.
“You’re never
“Well, just be careful.”
“I always am,” she said.
