Ted ignored them. He stared down at the pastry and debated taking a bite. He started to reach out for one, but his hands were shaking.
“You okay?” O’Reilly asked.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
“We heard about what happened,” Moronski said. “Can’t believe Burroughs would try something like that. You do something to piss him off?”
“Don’t think so.”
“Not sure why you’d take him to the infirmary without letting Kelsey know.”
“I buzzed him,” Ted lied, “but he didn’t reply.”
“Still. Why not wait?”
“Burroughs looked bad to me,” Ted said. “I didn’t want him dying on us.”
Moronski said, “Leave him alone, O’Reilly.”
“What? I was just asking.”
Enough, Ted thought. The big question: What was Burroughs telling the warden right now? Probably his version of the truth—that Ted had been the one with the shiv, not him. But so what? Who’d believe a baby-killer like Burroughs over Ted Weston? And O’Reilly’s questions notwithstanding, his fellow guards would back him. Even Carlos, who seemed pretty shook up when he came upon the scene last night, would fall into line. No one in here makes waves. No one in here is going to buck the system or side with an inmate.
So why didn’t Ted feel safe?
He had to think about his next move. The first thing was, put it behind him. Get to work. Act like it was no big deal.
But my God, what had Ted almost done?
True, Sumner had backed him into a corner, had really blackmailed him into it, but suppose if Ted had been “successful,” he would have killed a man. Murdered a fellow human being. That’s the part he still couldn’t get over. He, Ted Weston, had tried to kill a man. Part of him wondered whether he had subconsciously sabotaged himself, that it wasn’t so much that Burroughs had been quick or good at self-defense, but rather that Ted, no matter what else was true, knew that he could not go through with it. He thought about that now. Suppose the blade had hit home. Suppose he had punctured Burroughs’s heart and watched the man’s life leave his body.
Ted was in a panic now. But if he had gone through with it, if he had succeeded, would he be any better off?
He grabbed a cup of coffee and scarfed it down like an aardvark on an anthill. He checked the clock. Time to start his shift. He headed out of the break room.
Ted Weston was starting up the stairwell, fear still coursing through every vein in his body, when something outside the caged window caught his eye. He stopped short and hard, as if some giant hand had grabbed him by the shoulder and yanked him back.
What the…？
The window looked out over the executive parking lot. The bigwigs parked there. The correctional officers, like Ted, had to park way out back and take a shuttle to their respective wings. But that wasn’t what bothered him right now. Ted squinted and looked again. The warden had been pretty specific: He was going to spend hours, if not the entire day, with Burroughs.
Yeah, okay, whatever.
So why was the warden getting into his car?
And who was the guy with him?
Ted felt something cold slide down his spine. He couldn’t say why. In many ways, this was no big deal. Ted watched the warden get in on the driver’s side. The guy with him—some guy in a hat and trench coat—got in on the passenger side.
So if the warden was heading out, where the hell was David Burroughs? Ted had his radio. There had been no call about a prisoner pickup. So maybe the warden had put him in solitary. No, if that had been done, they would have been informed. So maybe the warden left Burroughs with someone else, an underling, to interrogate him further.
But Ted knew it was none of those things. He felt it in his bones. Something was wrong here. Something big.
He hurried over to the wall phone and lifted it.
“It’s Weston, sector four. I think we got a problem.”
Chapter
11
I can’t believe I’m in Philip’s car.
I look through the front windshield. It’s a gray morning. Rain will be coming soon—I can feel that in my face. I have heard of arthritis sufferers who can predict rainstorms by the pain in their joints. I can feel it, strange as this sounds, in my cheek and jaw. Both had been shattered in that first prison beating. Now, whenever a rainstorm is on the horizon, the bones ache like an infected wisdom tooth.
Philip starts the car up, puts it in reverse, and pulls out. I look out the window at the fortresslike edifice and I shudder. I won’t be back, I tell myself. No matter what. I won’t ever let myself come back here.
I turn to Philip. His big bushy eyebrows are lowered in concentration. His thick hands grip the steering wheel as though he’s preparing to rip it off.
“People are going to wonder how I got your gun,” I say.
He shrugs.
“You’re taking a big risk.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Are you doing this because of what happened last night,” I ask, “or because you believe me about Matthew being alive?”
The older man chews on that for a moment. “Does it matter?”
“I guess not.”
We fall into silence as Philip makes the turn into the circle. Up ahead, I can see the guard tower and exit gates we will soon be driving through. Less than a hundred yards away now. I sit back and try to stay calm.
It won’t be long now.
*
Sitting on the floor of the dark closet, Adam Mackenzie tried to make himself somewhat comfortable. If all goes well, he should be stuck in this dark closet for ten or eleven hours. He sat up against the back of the closet. He’d left his phone in his father’s car because there’d be no way “Crazed David Burroughs” would have let him keep it with him. Still. Ten or eleven hours sitting in the dark in this closet? Adam shook his head. He should have brought a flashlight and something to read.
He closed his eyes. Adam was exhausted. His father had called him after midnight to tell him about David’s incident with the guards and his bizarre claim about Matthew being alive. It was nonsense, of course. It had to be. He remembered when David asked him to be Matthew’s godfather, just as David’s father had once asked Adam’s father to do the same. It had been one of the proudest moments of Adam’s life. He’d always felt that way about his relationship with David. Proud, that is. David was special. He was that guy. Men wanted to be him, women fell for him, but there were demons there. It was why, when Adam first heard the speculation about David being the killer, sure, on the outside, Adam refused to believe it, but there was a small part of him, a little gnawing in the back of the brain, that couldn’t help but have doubts. David had a temper. There had been that fight during their senior year of high school. Adam had been the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, but still it was David, the role player, the guy who hustled, the gritty defender, who’d been voted captain by their teammates. It has always been that way. Adam the finesse player, David his more popular enforcer. Anyway, during their senior year, Revere High had lost to their rivals from Brookside, 78–77, when Adam, who’d scored 24 points, missed a layup with four seconds left to play. That missed layup haunted Adam. Still. Today. But it was later that night, when several guys from Brookside mocked Adam for the big miss, that David took matters into his own hands. He beat the shit out of two guys in an attack so filled with fury that Adam had to pull David away and get him in a car.