Last night, she had not slept well. She had startled awake several times, had lain with heart pounding as she listened for footsteps, for the whisper of an intruder’s breath. At five A.M. she rose from bed feeling drugged and unrested. Only after two cups of coffee had she felt alert enough to call the hospital and ask about Korsak’s condition.
He was still in the ICU. Still on a ventilator.
She lowered the window a crack and warm air blew in, smelling of grass and earth. She considered the sad possibility that Korsak might never again enjoy such smells or feel the wind in his face. She tried to remember if the last words they’d exchanged were good ones, friendly ones, but she could not remember.
At Exit 36, Dean followed the signs to MCI-Shirley. Souza-Baranowski, the level-six security facility where Warren Hoyt had been housed, loomed off to their right. He parked in the visitors’ lot and turned to look at her.
“You feel the need to walk out any time,” he said, “just do it.”
“Why are you expecting me to bail?”
“Because I know what he did to you. Anyone in your position would have problems working this case.”
She saw genuine concern in his eyes, and she did not want it; it only reinforced how fragile was her courage.
“Let’s just do it, okay?” she said, and shoved open her car door. Pride kept her walking with grim determination into the building. It propelled her through the security check-in at the outer control desk, where she and Dean presented their badges and handed in their weapons. As they waited for an escort, she read the Dress Code, posted in the visitor process area:
The following items are not allowed to be worn by any visitor: Bare feet. Bathing suits or shorts. Any clothing that displays gang affiliation. Any clothing similar to that issued to an inmate or uniformed personnel. Double-layered clothing. Drawstring clothing. Easy-access clothing. Excessively baggy, loose, thick, or heavy clothing…
The list was endless, proscribing everything from hair ribbons to underwire bras.
A corrections officer finally appeared, a heavyset man dressed in MCI summer blues. “Detective Rizzoli and Agent Dean? I’m Officer Curtis. Come this way.”
Curtis was friendly, even jovial, as he escorted them through the first locked door and into the pedestrian trap. Rizzoli wondered if he would be so pleasant if they were not law enforcement officers, part of the same brotherhood. He told them to remove their belts, shoes, jackets, watches, and keys and to place them on the table for his examination. Rizzoli took off her Timex and laid it down next to Dean’s gleaming Omega. Then she proceeded to shrug off her blazer, just as Dean was doing. There was something uncomfortably intimate about the process. As she unbuckled her belt and pulled it out of her trouser loops, she felt Curtis staring at her, the way a man watches a woman undress. She took off her low-heeled pumps, set them down beside Dean’s shoes, and coolly met Officer Curtis’s gaze. Only then did he avert his eyes. Next, she turned her pockets inside out and followed Dean through the metal detector.
“Hey, lucky you,” said Curtis as she stepped through. “You just missed being the patdown search of the day.”
“What?”
“Every day, our shift commander sets a random number for which visitor gets patted down. You just missed it. Next person who comes through’s gonna be it.”
Rizzoli said, dryly, “Getting felt up would’ve been the highlight of my day.”
“You can put everything back on now. And you two get to keep your watches on.”
“You say that like it’s a privilege.”
“Only attorneys and officers of the law can wear watches beyond this point. Everyone else has to check in all their jewelry. Now I gotta stamp your left wrists, and you can go into the pods.”
“We have an appointment to see Superintendent Oxton at nine,” said Dean.
“He’s running behind schedule. Asked me to take you to see the prisoner’s cell first. Then I’ll bring you over to Oxton’s office.”
Souza-Baranowski Correctional Center was MCI’s newest facility, with a state-of-the-art keyless security system operated by forty-two graphic-interfaced computer terminals, Officer Curtis explained. He pointed out numerous surveillance cameras.
“They’re recording live twenty-four hours a day. Most visitors never even see a live guard. They just hear the intercom telling them what to do next.”
As they walked through a steel door, down a long hallway, and through another series of barred gates, Rizzoli was fully aware that every move she made was being monitored. With just a few taps on a computer keyboard, guards could lock down every passage, every cell, without leaving their control room.
At the entrance to Cell Block C, a voice on the intercom instructed them to hold up their passes against the window for inspection. They restated their names, and Officer Curtis said: “Two visitors here to inspect Prisoner Hoyt’s cell.”
The steel gate slid open and they entered Cell Block C’s dayroom, the common area for prisoners. It was painted a depressing shade of hospital green. Rizzoli saw a wall-mounted TV set, couch and chairs, and a Ping-Pong table where two men were clacking a ball back and forth. All the furniture was bolted down. A dozen men dressed in prisoners’ blue denim simultaneously turned and stared.
In particular, they stared at Rizzoli, the only woman in the room.
The two men playing Ping-Pong abruptly halted their game. For a moment, the only sound was the TV, tuned to CNN. She gazed straight back at the prisoners, refusing to be intimidated, even though she could guess what each man was surely thinking. Imagining. She did not notice that Dean had moved closer until she felt his arm brush hers and she realized he was standing right beside her.
A voice from the intercom said: “Visitors, you may proceed to Cell C- 8.”
“It’s this way,” said Officer Curtis. “Up one level.”
They ascended the stairway, their shoes setting off clangs against the metal steps. From the upper gallery, which led past individual cells, they could look down into the well of the dayroom. Curtis led them along the walkway until he came to #8.
“This is the one. Prisoner Hoyt’s cell.”
Rizzoli stood at the threshold and stared into the cage. She saw nothing that distinguished this cell from any other-no photographs, no personal possessions that told her Warren Hoyt had once inhabited this space-yet her scalp crawled. Though he was gone, his presence had imprinted the very air. If it was possible for malevolenceto linger, then surely this place was now contaminated.
“You can step in if you want,” said Curtis.
She entered the cell. She saw three bare walls, a sleeping platform and mattress, a sink, and a toilet. A stark cube. This was how Warren would have liked it. He was a neat man, a precise man, who had once worked in the sterile world of a medical laboratory, a world where the only splashes of color came from the tubes of blood he handled every day. He did not need to surround himself with lurid images; the ones he carried in his mind were horrifying enough.
“This cell hasn’t been reassigned?” said Dean.
“Not yet, sir.”
“And no other prisoner’s been in here since Hoyt left?”
“That’s right.”
Rizzoli went to the mattress and lifted up one corner. Dean grasped the other corner, and together they hoisted up the mattress and looked beneath it. They found nothing. They rolled the mattress completely over, then searched the ticking for any tears in the fabric, any hiding places where he might have stashed contraband. They found only a small rip on the side barely an inch long. Rizzoli probed it with her finger and found nothing inside.
She straightened and scanned the cell, taking in the same surroundings that Hoyt had once stared at. Imagined him lying on that mattress, eyes focused on the bare ceiling as he spun fantasies that would appall any normal human being. But Hoyt would be excited by them. He would lie sweating, aroused by the shrieks of women echoing in his head.