CHAPTER TWO
2392 Words
CHAPTER TWO
Maya never thought that she would go back to Pollock, Louisiana; yet here she was, standing outside its prison, just a few days after the last time she’d been there.
She checked her dark suit before she went in and tied back her equally dark hair. She wanted to make sure that she looked presentable, businesslike, for this. Sometimes people looked at her and they saw nothing but a good looking thirty-year-old, maybe a little taller than a lot of women, but with delicate features and a heart shaped face that sometimes made them treat her as if she were younger. Today, she wanted people to see nothing but the agent she was. It helped to distract from the roil of emotions bubbling beneath the surface.
She’d thought that nothing would get her to return, but it turned out that there was one thing: the death of Ade Matheson, the killer she’d found that had also killed prison guard Samantha Neele. The moment she’d heard about his death, Maya had been suspicious. Now it was time to find out if those suspicions were justified.
Maya walked into the reception area, which seemed to be deliberately featureless aside from a large federal corrections logo and a few rows of plastic seating. There was a reception booth behind toughened glass there, with a younger guard in it that Maya recognized as one of those she’d spoken to the last time she was here.
The guard looking after the reception area smiled as Maya came in. It was a big difference from the last time she’d been in Pollock, when it seemed that no one had wanted her.
“Agent Gray,” the guard said. “We heard you were coming down, although I’m not sure why.”
“I just want to go over the circumstances of Matheson’s death for myself,” Maya said. “Sorry, I don’t think I got your name last time.”
“Archer, ma’am.”
“I won’t take up too much time here, Archer. I just need to take a look at Matheson’s cell and talk to anyone he might have interacted with in the time between my leaving and his death.”
She saw the guard nod. “Yes, of course. The governor said to give you whatever you need. I also just wanted to say thank you.”
“You wanted to thank me?” Maya said, not quite understanding.
“For getting rid of Jeremiah. No one wanted him as head guard, but we couldn’t do anything about him.”
Jeremiah Wood had been the head guard at the prison until Maya’s visit. Briefly, she’d even thought that he might be the killer. He hadn’t been, but the investigation had turned up enough unpleasantness around him that he’d quickly lost his job and might even be facing charges.
“I’m glad I could help,” Maya said, even though, in truth, she hadn’t been thinking about the effects on the prison when she’d accused Jeremiah. She’d only been trying to find Samantha Neele’s killer in time to appease the man who held her sister and ten other women as hostages.
The Moonlight Killer.
Even now, Maya shuddered at the thought of Megan in the hands of a serial killer. It was a thought that made her want to run screaming to find her, but that wasn’t an option, not without information.
That was why she was here. Maya was convinced that the Moonlight Killer had gotten to Ade Matheson somehow.
“I’ll take you to see his cell,” Archer said.
He led the way through the prison, along gray walled corridors, into wings that smelled stale with the sweat of too many men crammed together for too long. Maya and Archer walked past rows of cells holding inmates in orange jumpsuits. Maya could feel the eyes on her as she passed.
“What you doing here, b***h?”
“Here to be fresh meat for all of us?”
Maya ignored the attempts to intimidate her. She knew that any reaction, from a flinch all the way up to reaching for her g*n, would count as a kind of victory to these prisoners.
She made her way along without looking at them, instead taking in the security of the prison. She spotted camera domes at regular intervals, saw the pacing guards on routine patrols that would make sure that they spotted any trouble.
“Do the guards patrol on a fixed pattern?” Maya asked.
Again, Archer nodded. “Yes ma’am, although there are two or three patterns, and we vary them each day, so the prisoners can’t get used to when we’re coming around.”
Maya guessed that would make it harder for them, but not impossible. All it took to work out a pattern like that was time, and prisoners had nothing but that.
“Matheson was in the maximum-security wing,” the guard said, taking a turning and stopping at a security door with guards standing on either side. “We’ll put the whole place on lockdown while you take a look. It wouldn’t be safe otherwise.”
Maya could hear the note of fear there. She wondered just how bad some of the prisoners had to be to make the guards afraid of them. But then, she didn’t have to wonder. Ade Matheson had almost killed her when she’d given him only the briefest of chances.
Right then, Maya didn’t care about the danger. She almost welcomed it. She’d been feeling on edge ever since the forensics came back on a lock of hair the Moonlight Killer had sent, along with detailed pictures of all the ways he’d hurt one of his bunnies. That hair had belonged to her sister. The thought that he might have done that to Megan was too much.
“I still don’t get what you’re expecting to find,” Archer said. “I mean… Matheson hanged himself.”
“No,” Maya said. “He didn’t.”
It didn’t make any sense for him to have done so. He’d been sneering at her about getting caught, telling Maya it would make things better for him in there, not worse. This was a man who was already going to spend the rest of his life in this prison, and yet he’d somehow been found dead in his cell?
The Moonlight Killer had found a way to get to him. It was just a question of proving it.
They moved through into the maximum-security wing, with rows of barred cells that could let guards look inside at any hour of the day or night. Maya saw another camera at the end of the hall, looking out over everything.
“Did the camera catch the moment when he killed himself?” Maya asked. That wasn’t really what she was asking. What she was hoping was that there might be footage that no one had looked at, footage that would show the Moonlight Killer slipping in like a ghost. She wanted to see his face.
Archer shook his head, though, with an apologetic expression.
“No, ma’am. The camera’s down at the moment. Some kind of fault.”
“Or it was tampered with,” Maya said, but she could see the disbelief on Archer’s face.
“Things go wrong, sometimes.”
And it was a lot easier to believe that than to think that someone might have taken out the camera prior to moving in to finish off Matheson. Another thought came to Maya: would it be possible to tamper with the cameras in here without help? Would it be possible to get into this wing at all? She’d seen the security doors and the guards. Did she really think that someone could just wander in without assistance?
Which meant that the only way it would have been possible for the Moonlight Killer to murder Ade Matheson is if it were an inside job. At least one of the guards had to be in on it for it to work.
Maya found herself glancing across to Archer. She didn’t think it was him. Of all the guards there, he was among the friendliest, and it was obvious that he didn’t have any time for the things his former colleague Jeremiah had been doing; but she still needed to be careful not to say too much in front of him, just in case.
“This was his cell,” Archer said, gesturing to a now empty eight-by-twelve-foot cell, with a bed fixed to the wall and a toilet in the corner. “We found him hanging from the bars. A low-level hanging, using his bed covers.”
“And is that how people kill themselves in prison?” Maya asked.
She saw Archer nod. “It’s… we try to stop it happening. If they’re on suicide watch, we take away anything they might use for it. But… yeah, I’ve seen it happen before.”
It was a reminder of just what a tough job the prison guards could have, but it didn’t help Maya to work out exactly what had happened.
“I don’t know what you’re looking for, really,” Archer said. “The guy was facing charges as a serial killer. He was going to spend the rest of his life in prison, so he hanged himself in his cell. It seems simple enough.”
Except for the part where Maya didn’t believe that Ade Matheson had been in a state of mind where hanging himself had even been a possibility. Matheson was all kinds of things: arrogant, dangerous, convinced of his own superiority, but he wasn’t suicidal. Maya would bet anything on that.
Just by coming here, she was betting plenty. The Moonlight Killer had been clear that they shouldn’t try to find him.
Maya looked around at the cell block. Most of the inmates were locked in their cells, with a few away on work duty or exercising. The eyes of every one of them were fixed on her, and Maya didn’t think it was because she was the only woman they’d seen in the flesh in a while. She was sure that they watched everyone who came in.
She picked the cell opposite Matheson’s, on the basis that the inmate there would have had the best view. He was a weaselly looking Latino man, slender and maybe her age, with tattoos on his neck and face proclaiming his association with some g**g or other.
“What do you want?” he snapped at her as Maya came closer.
“What did you see when Ade Matheson died?” Maya asked.
“Just his old white a*s, hanging from the door.” The prisoner seemed quite pleased with himself for that comment. He pushed up close against the bars. “How about you let me out of here, and I’ll show you a good time?”
“How about you tell me who came to his cell?” Maya said. “You saw someone, right?”
“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t. You think I’m talking to some Fed in front of everyone here? Snitches get stitches, lady.”
He smirked as he said it. He was enjoying this far too much.
Maya wasn’t enjoying it at all. She could feel her frustration building. Her sister was in danger, and this might be the one chance she had to find real information leading to the man who held her. Yet here was this prisoner, acting like it was all a joke. Maya felt something inside her on the verge of snapping. She’d been under too much pressure for too many days now, barely able to sleep knowing that Megan was in the hands of some madman. To know that it was a serial killer only made it worse. As for the photos he’d sent…
Maya knew she should step back, take a breath, slow down, but she couldn’t, not now.
“Who did you see?” Maya repeated, stepping almost as close to the bars as the prisoner was.
“You know what you can do, lady? You can die, b***h!”
Maya saw movement from his hand, saw the shiv there in it as it blurred forward. Of course in a place like this, the prisoners would have no problem with trying to kill a stranger.
Maya reacted on instinct, both hands going down to the attacking arm. Maya managed to grab the arm that held the shiv just in time, stopping it before the weapon could punch into her.
She slammed it against the cell door, once, then again, jamming it against the bars for leverage. She heard bone snap. The prisoner screamed, letting go of his weapon.
Maya should have stopped there, but the problem with stepping so close to the edge was that it was so easy to slip over it.
Maya grabbed for the prisoner, jerking him face first against the bars as if she might pull him through them. She used one arm to wrap around the back of his neck, pulling him tight, then drove the other arm into his throat from the front. It was a crude choke, but an effective one.
“You think I have time for games?” Maya demanded. “You think I’m going to stop? I’ve had enough of this. Tell me what you know. Tell me what you saw!”
She could feel Archer trying to pull her off the prisoner, but Maya kept her grip. She loosened it only a fraction, letting him speak.
“Tell me!” she snarled at him. She was going too far, but right then, she didn’t care. Megan was in danger, and she was done playing nice.
“Eddie!” the prisoner gasped out. “Eddie Chavez. Used to be locked up here. g*n running or something. He came in, and he was wearing a guard’s uniform. He did it, I swear… oh God, my arm!”
Maya let go of him, let Archer pull her off the prisoner. She could see him looking at her like he was almost as afraid of her as of the prisoners, then.
Maya didn’t care. She had a name. She had a place to start looking for the Moonlight Killer, and for her sister.
- Writer
