Every time I reflected upon this place, a Latin term resurfaced from deep in my memory: civiliter mortuus. The words translate to “civil death.” In common law, the phrase applies to the loss of almost all of a person’s rights and privileges after having been convicted of a felony. By this definition, prisoners could be numbered along with vampires, zombies, and ghosts as members of the undead. No wonder the Puritans had referred to the first jail they’d built in Boston as “a grave for the living.”
I tried to relax, but my lungs were having trouble processing the stuffy air, as if the afternoon’s previous visitors had sucked all of the oxygen from it. I still couldn’t believe that I had been persuaded to leave my vacation to return to this bell jar—and all on the thinnest of pretexts.
Several hours earlier, I’d been standing in icy, waist-deep water casting Barnes Special streamers to salmon that wouldn’t bite unless you bounced your flies off their noses. That was where Aimee Cronk had reached me. I had tucked the six-weight under my arm to dig the vibrating phone out of my waders.
“Billy needs to see you. He says it’s a matter of life and death.”
“He’s said that before, Aimee.”
“Not like this he hasn’t.”
“Still.”
I could imagine her on the other end: a short, pretty, ginger-haired woman who was plump in all the right places. It sounded as if she was standing in the open air: the parking lot of a Dollar Store, Family Dollar, Dollar General. One of those places. I heard big-engined vehicles downshifting as they passed.
“Admit it, Mike. You’re worried Billy’s going to waste your time with one of his crackpot theories.”
“That’s not true.”
“Bullcrap.”
Aimee tended to dress in flannel shirts, elastic-waist jeans, and Keds. More than once I’d seen people literally look down their noses at the mother of five as she pushed her loaded shopping cart up to the register and paid for the groceries with a SNAP card. Isn’t this overweight, uneducated woman ashamed to be living off everyone else’s tax dollars?
I could have told those snobs a few things about Aimee Cronk, starting with how her cart wasn’t full of the processed food they imagined but fresh vegetables, lean meats, and unsweetened cereals—she had no higher priority than feeding her children the best meals she could afford.
I could have told them that Aimee hated taking assistance and only did so to supplement the two jobs she worked, as a part-time receptionist and a part-time waitress, neither of which offered benefits.
I could have told them that the Cronks had been compelled to sell their house to cover Billy’s legal bills and were then forced into bankruptcy when Aimee was diagnosed with a uterine cyst. The treatment would have been covered by Medicaid in most other states but not in Maine, where the governor had opposed the expansion of the program. As a result they were living in a rented apartment in Lubec above a rat-infested warehouse that shipped clams by truck along the Eastern Seaboard.
I could also have warned the snobs that Aimee had read their hateful minds—just as she’d noticed the half-gallon Tanqueray bottles they’d hidden in their carts under bags of quinoa and cases of coconut water. Despite never having graduated from high school, let alone college, Aimee Cronk was the most gifted natural psychologist I’d met. The woman had a bullshit detector so sensitive it registered a lie before it took shape in the back of your throat.
“Whatever Billy’s worked up about, it’s for real this time,” she continued. “Now, what do you have planned that’s more important than helping your best friend in the world?”
“That’s kind of manipulative, Aimee.”
“Darn tootin’, it is.”
And so I had unstrung my fly rod and packed up my wet waders and driven through a snow squall that had become a rainstorm that had become a partly sunny afternoon by the time I reached the Midcoast. Such was the month of April in Maine.
The security door opened with a click, and in strode Billy Cronk.
Pegg, for all his hours in the gym, looked like a Munchkin by comparison.
I always forgot what a scary son of a bitch my friend was. Six feet five and all muscle. Irises the color of a glacial pool. He wore his blond hair long, occasionally in a braid; his beard was woven of red and gold. Even women who were terrified of him found him sexually compelling—maybe especially the women who were terrified.
“Make it fast, guys,” said Pegg. “You got to be outta here by three-thirty, yo.”
Billy folded his long body into the chair across from me. He wore jeans and a blue cotton shirt, rolled up above his forearms to reveal the war ink tattooed there.
“Thanks for coming.” His voice had always been more of a growl. Imagine a bear with a Down East accent.
“I know it’s been a while.”
“You’re busy with your new job. I get it.”
“That’s no excuse.”
“You don’t need to apologize.”
I found myself in no hurry to get to the reason he’d called me here. I feared it would confirm my suspicions that this latest crisis was as bogus as the previous ones.
“The medical examiner was leaving as I was entering the prison. Was it another overdose?”
“Yeah, I didn’t think it could get worse, but six guys have OD’d since the New Year, all fatals. Drugs are easier to score in here than candy bars.”
He began to tap his foot under the table.
I had delayed as long as I could. “Aimee said you have something important to talk with me about.”
He lowered his voice as if a microphone might have been hidden under the table. “There’s a new CO here. A female sergeant. Her name is Dawn Richie. She got transferred over from the Downeast Correctional Facility after the governor
