Hannah said, “Nothing official. But on one of the message boards a woman was complaining about her husband getting hurt by a guard. It was during a brawl in the exercise yard. Thirty or forty guys were involved but her husband was the only one the guard laid into. She complained, and got told her husband had been trying to escape. They said they’d let it slide, but if she made trouble about his injuries he’d wind up getting his sentence extended.”
“Have there been any successful escapes?”
“I don’t think so. I didn’t come across anything, anyway.”
Reacher was not surprised. The place looked well put together. According to what he read in the file he found in Angela St. Vrain’s purse, it had been built by the state. Those guys knew what they were doing when it came to locking people up. Reacher had some experience of prisons, himself. He had been a military cop. He had put plenty of people inside them. Visited suspects to take statements. Caught inmates who had broken out. Grilled them to find out how. He had even been locked up himself, a couple times.
The first precaution Reacher noticed was also the simplest. The perimeter was protected by a fence, not a wall. That meant the guards could see everyone who approached any part of the place. They could see if anyone was carrying equipment to break in with or items to throw over. And there were red triangles attached to the fences. They were spaced out at fifteen-foot intervals, and they ranged from two to six feet above the ground. Reacher was too far away to read the writing but the symbol of a stick figure flying backward after getting zapped carried a clear enough message. The fences were electrified. The outer ones would only be powerful enough to knock a person on their ass. That would serve as a warning. It would be the inner fence, all small and innocuous, sandwiched between the ones with the wire on top, that would carry the lethal voltage.
Reacher would bet there were vibration sensors in the ground that would trip if anyone got too close to the fence. Alarms that would trigger if the voltage in the fences dropped. Dogs that would be released if the power failed, or got sabotaged. The entrances would all be secured. The one for visitors and staff would be like an airport with X-ray machines and metal detectors. The vehicle gates would have an airlock arrangement so that the trucks and vans could be held between the layers of fence on their way in or out. Inside the buildings the service ducts would be too narrow for anyone to crawl in or climb up. They would have movement sensors and mesh screens, anyway. The doors and gates in the secure areas would all be centrally controlled, with no keypads for inmates to learn or guess the codes for, like you see in the movies. And if all else failed, there were the watchtowers. Two would be sufficient. The prison had four. A guard in each one with a rifle could cover the whole interior of the stockade plus five hundred feet beyond the perimeter, assuming an adequate level of equipment and training.
The area in front of the prison was laid out in a semicircle. There were swathes of grass and neat, colorful flower beds all following the same curve. They looked incongruous, like a bizarre attempt to copy the formal gardens of a European chateau. The only things missing were the fountains. But Reacher knew the real purpose was not aesthetic. It was to maintain a clear field of fire from the two central towers in the event of a breakout. Or an attempt to break in.
There was a broad paved strip around the outside of the semicircle. It was wide enough for vehicles to park in. The left was the staff area. It was half-full. Mainly with pickups. Older American models. Some were not in great shape. There were a few sedans sprinkled among them. Mainly domestic, from the cheaper end of the range. Then at the far side, separated by half a dozen empty spaces, there were three newer vehicles. A Dodge Ram in silver with chrome wheels and a shiny tread-plate tool chest slung across its load bed. A BMW sedan, larger than the one Reacher had encountered in Colorado, but also black. Its license plate read MC1. And a Mercedes, in white, with MC2 on its plate.
The visitors’ parking was to the right. There was only one car in that whole area. A VW Bug. It was metallic green. It had two soft tires. Its running board was hanging off on one side. It wasn’t clear if it had been parked or abandoned.
Hannah opened the driver’s door and turned to Reacher. “You ready? We’ve been here too long. We should go.”
Reacher nodded and climbed in alongside her. There was nothing more to see. But he was left thinking he knew how an epidemiologist must feel after staring at a sample from a patient with a baffling new disease. On the surface everything looked normal, but he knew there was something wrong. He just didn’t know what. Yet.