“Nondairy. It’s surprisingly flammable. Rip a packet open, flick the powder into the air as you light a match beneath it, and watch what happens. People in prison sometimes light other guys on fire with it. Forget nondairy, stick to the real stuff. Trust me.”
Just a little friendly conversation here. About how to burn people alive.
Perfect.
Brineesha leaned forward. “I once heard that prisoners put fruit in fire extinguishers and let it ferment to make booze. They use grapes, peaches, apples, anything they can sneak out of the mess hall. That true?”
“That’s true,” Ralph answered. “And then there’s the weapons they make in prison. Of course, they always try to get into the kitchen — knives, stirring spoons, all that kind of stuff. Guys have been beaten to death with soup ladles. Remember that time you got called in, Pat, to investigate that guy who’d apparently been stabbed by his cell mate, but there was no murder weapon found?”
“Um, I’m not sure we need to talk about that one.”
But that didn’t deter him. “Man, they had nothing. Then you noticed that white powder on the floor of his cell.”
“Ralph, we really don’t need to—”
“What was it?” Tessa asked. “Cocaine? An OD?”
“Nope,” Ralph said proudly on my behalf. “Mashed potatoes.”
“Mashed potatoes?”
“Actually, powdered mashed potatoes. After Pat learned that the guy had checked out a magazine from the prison library and hadn’t returned it, you had him, didn’t you, Pat?”
I was getting nowhere here. “I guess so. Yes.”
Brineesha looked at us curiously. “You lost me somewhere between the mashed potatoes and the library.”
Lien-hua was still just lying there propped in her bed, listening quietly.
“Well”—Ralph was enjoying this a little too much—“the guy mixed the mashed potatoes in his sink while his roommate was asleep. Then he twisted the magazine to a point, dipped it into the mashed potatoes, and let it dry under his cot. The starch in the mashed potatoes acted as a hardening agent.”
Tessa muttered, “He made a paper shiv.”
“In a sense, yes.” Ralph just wasn’t going to give this up. “He stabbed his cell mate in the throat so he couldn’t cry out, then in the abdomen so he’d bleed out more quickly. And then to hide the evidence—”
“Okay, okay. We can—”
“Let me guess,” Tessa said reflectively. “After the murder he what? Soaked the magazine in the toilet and, once it was soggy enough, ripped it to pieces and flushed it down piece by piece?”
“Yes,” I said, “and I have to say it frightens me a little that you figured that out so quickly.”
“Anyway”—it was Ralph again—“the point is, nearly anything can become a weapon in the wrong hands. A pocket Bible soaked in water and then slipped into a sock can make a pretty effective bludgeon. Screwdrivers, machine parts, sharpened toothbrushes, they all work well.” He pointed to his neck. “A pencil in the throat, right here.”
“Ralph. Thanks, I’m sure we—”
But he twisted his finger to show the action of stabbing someone right where the wound would need to be. “Medical personnel can stop the bleeding on the outside, but not on the inside. The person drowns in his own blood.”
I held up both hands. “Let’s change the subject.”
“By the way,” Tessa said to Ralph, “I’m glad I’m not locked up with you.”
He grinned slightly, accepting that as a compliment.
“Tessa,” Brineesha told her, “I hope you weren’t taking notes.”
“I promise not to make a dagger out of mashed potatoes or burn someone alive with nondairy coffee creamer.”
“Well,” I said in a very responsible, fatherly way, “I’m glad to hear that.”
Before Ralph and Brineesha left, he set up a two-o’clock meeting tomorrow afternoon at the NCAVC headquarters, which was about ten minutes from Quantico. Yes, the briefing would be on a Sunday, but in this job you work when you need to and grab time off when you can.
After dinner, Lien-hua told me to head home. At this point her condition wasn’t really life-threatening, and when she pointed out that I’d gotten less than four hours of sleep last night, I had to agree that I needed to give it a go in my own bed rather than trying to sleep here again on the chair in her room.
I made certain an officer was assigned to guard Lien-hua’s room, and then Tessa and I left for home.
22
I threw my dirty clothes in the wash, and when I met up with Tessa again she was in the kitchen pulling off a strip of Saran wrap to cover a plate of leftover spaghetti and meatless marinara sauce so she could microwave it without the sauce splattering all over.
The plastic wrap twisted into a useless mess. She sighed, ripped it off, and tried again with the same result. “Okay, so we can build a computer the size of your fingernail that can pilot a probe to Neptune, but we can’t design a Saran wrap box cutter-blade-thing that actually rips this stuff off in a straight line?”
“I’ll get it for you.”
“No,” she said firmly. “I got it.”
I could tell she was frustrated, but it seemed like more than just the plastic wrap was bothering her.
She finally managed to cover the plate and slide it into the microwave. “Patrick”—she punched the start button—“how come you never take me to church?”
“To church?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know you wanted to go to church.”
“I don’t.”
“You don’t.”
“No. I think it’d be boring.”
“Then why would you ask me to take you?”
“I didn’t ask you to take me, I just asked why you don’t take me.”
“Okay,” I acknowledged. “That’s true.”
“Mom would’ve wanted you to. I think.”
I felt a twitch of guilt. Tessa was right — Christie would’ve wanted me to take her, but in the months following her death, it was a hard time for me to believe in God at all, and I would’ve felt like a hypocrite walking into a church. Over time I’d just gotten out of the habit. “Well, I guess I was hoping I could let you decide what faith to follow rather than imposing my beliefs on you.”
“Oh, how very PC of you. No, really. I’m impressed.”
“Okay, I sense a touch of sarcasm there.”
“Not much gets past you, does it?”
I stared at her. “What are we talking about here, Tessa? What is this all about?”
The plate of spaghetti and sauce was beginning to pop and sizzle and it was a little annoying.
“C’mon, if there was a room with twenty bottles in it and, say, nineteen of ’em were poisonous and one was okay to drink and I was thirsty, would you just tell me to go in there and choose a bottle and drink from it?”
“No, of course, I— Oh, I see. Some belief systems are dangerous and why would I let you sample those? But what if none of them were poisonous? What if they’re all safe?”
“Are you actually saying beliefs like Nazism or sexism or fascism or speciism are safe?”
“Speciism?”
“Thinking we’re better than other species.”
“I’m not sure about that last one, but yeah, okay, I get your point. Yes, there are destructive ideas and worldviews out there that I don’t want you adopting. But let’s say most of the bottles are good for you. That only a small percentage of beliefs are destructive. Let’s say maybe nineteen are healthy and only one has poison in it.”
She looked at me, aghast. “You’d let me go in? If even one of them was poisonous and I was thirsty, you’d still let me go into the room without telling me which one it was?”
“No, I didn’t mean it like that, it’s just…”
She shook her head and started for her bedroom.