“That’s funny,” Naomi replied, using her free hand to dial a number on her phone. “You should be on M*A*S*H.”
“What’s M*A*S*H?” the nurse asked.
Naomi looked up, staring at him. “Oh, God—you’re not even twenty, are you?”
The sharp ring of Naomi’s phone interrupted the exchange.
“Scotty?” she answered.
“Nope. Becky,” replied a woman with a cigarette-scarred voice. “Becky Alter.”
“I don’t know any Becky Alters.”
“From C3.”
“I don’t know what that is, either. Ow!” she hissed, pulling away from the nurse’s dabbing Q-tips.
“Sorry,” the nurse whispered. “It needs to be cleaned.”
“It can wait two minutes,” Naomi shot back, shooing the nurse out of the small curtained exam room. “Go Google M*A*S*H. It’ll make you smarter.”
“C3—Cyber Crimes Center,” Becky explained. “I do computer forensics here at ICE. I was at your birthday party.”
“Of course, of course,” Naomi said, eyeing her wet, open wound, which was now burning from whatever cleaning ointment the nurse had put on it. Naomi was nauseated just looking at it and took a seat on the gurney to steady her stomach. “You have dark hair.”
“I’m blond,” Becky said. “Don’t fret. I just came for free cake,” she added with all the sensitivity of someone who does computer forensics. “Leastways . . . I just finished picking through those files you asked for.”
“I asked for files?”
“The ones Scotty sent—through HUD—Service Point homeless records for a Calvin Harper: all the people he picked up during the last year.”
“No—of course,” she said, remembering the database entries from Cal’s laptop. “What took so long?”
“Long? Scotty just sent them last night. This is fast,” Becky pointed out. “So not to panic you, but there’s one record here I think you need to see. You sitting down?”
Naomi stood from the gurney. “Yeah.”
“Good. Because I think I figured out the real name of your so-called Prophet.”
72
You can feel it, can’t you, Benoni?” Ellis asked, gripping the steering wheel and, thanks to the info from the librarians, turning into the wide, paved parking lot at the Ohio State Penitentiary. With the push of a button, he rolled down the passenger window and let Benoni stick her head out. There was still snow on the ground—the cold was brutal—but Benoni didn’t hesitate. Extending her neck, the dog sniffed the air as Ellis circled through the lot.
“Rrrkk! Rrrkk!” Benoni barked as they approached an old black SUV.
Ellis hit the brakes and kicked his door open. By now, Benoni was well accustomed to Cal’s scent.
Sure enough, as Ellis stepped toward the parked SUV and peered in at the backseat, he saw the blue backpack. Cal’s backpack. Of course he had to leave it behind. No packages or weapons inside. “You knew it, didn’t you, girl?”
Benoni barked again, and Ellis returned to his car. But just as he reached for the door handle, he spotted the reflection of his face and uniform in the driver’s-side window. His nose was definitely broken. He didn’t care. Not when he was this close. He reached up and smoothed his hair.
“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” Ellis asked as he slowly slid back into the front seat and parked right next to Cal’s SUV. Of course the Book was here—at a prison. It was the world’s first murder weapon. “How could it not make its way to such violence?”
Benoni barked again, and Ellis, to his own surprise, felt a swell of tears in his eyes. “Same here—I couldn’t do it without you, girl,” he said, adding a loving pat to Benoni. He meant every word. Like that Plato quote in his great-grandfather’s diary: “A dog has the soul of a philosopher.” Ellis knew it was true. It was all coming true. And once he had the Book—
Benoni let loose with another bark. This one was louder. Angry. She smelled someone.
Reaching for his gun, Ellis spun toward the window. It was already too late. The door to his car flew open and a sharp golden knife stabbed Ellis—chhhk . . . chhhk—once in the chest, then deep into his stomach. It happened so fast, Ellis didn’t even feel the pain. All he saw was the blood seeping through his uniform . . . and the knife still stuck in his belly.
The car door slammed shut just as fast, locking Ellis in with the now wildly barking and clawing Benoni.
“Hggh . . . hggh . . . hggh,” Ellis panted, slowly sinking in his seat and finally getting his first good look at his attacker.
“Oh, c’mon now,” the Prophet said. “How’d you think it was gonna end?”
73
Outside the chain-link fence that surrounds the prison, I glance over my shoulder, checking the thin path that leads back to the parking lot. As my father appears from around the corner, he’s moving slower than ever.
“What the hell took so long?” I hiss, careful to keep my voice down.
“It’s hard to pee in the cold,” he says, hustling to catch up but never making eye contact. It’s not until he gets close that I see what he’s looking at. Over my shoulder, I spin back and spot that nearly every one of the building’s narrow slit windows has someone staring down at us. The librarian at the Historical Society mentioned this was a supermax, which means inmates aren’t sharing cells and playing harmonica behind the standard prison bars. Supermax means solitary confinement—all alone in a concrete box—twenty-three hours a day.
The idea originated in the nineteenth century with the Philadelphia Quakers, who thought isolation would lead to a prisoner’s quiet contemplation. Instead, it leads to at least a few prisoners every year smearing feces on their teeth and insisting that heaven is attacking them. But from the look on my father’s face, it’s not the inmates who scare him. He was locked up for eight years. The terror in his heart is from the thought of going back.
“If you want, you can wait in the car,” I tell him.
“No.” He shakes his head, staring straight ahead. “I’m fine.”
“Listen, Lloyd . . .”
“Let’s just get it and go,” he insists, twisting the handle and opening the chain-link fence. As we step through, there’s another closed fence just a few feet in front of us. In law enforcement, they call it a “sally port”—the front door doesn’t open until the back door is closed. For us, it means that for at least the next minute, we’re trapped.
I think back to the fact that Naomi had to’ve put a lookout for us in the system. The only question now is, how hard are the guards here looking?
“Can I help you?” a soft male voice asks through the intercom.
“We’re here from the Western Reserve Historical Society. To see the librarian,” I call back. “We have an appointment.”
We don’t. But that doesn’t mean it won’t work.
“Hold on for me, sir,” the man says, leaving us in silence. My father’s standing barely a foot behind me. I can’t see him, but I hear the speed of his breathing. The inmates in the windows are still peering down at us. From the angle we’re at, we can’t see their faces. They’re just shadowy, opaque ghosts haunting from above.
“Come on up—I’m calling her now,” the voice announces as the metal gate clicks and we follow the walkway toward the front door of the building.