Sixty-twoLani had slept on a thin straw mattress, the hay stalks poking stiff and scratchy through a thin calico cover. A threadbare gray blanket barely covered her tightly curled body, so she was glad to have the extra warmth of her coat. She’d fallen into an exhausted sleep soon after the bald officer had deposited her there, saying he was off-duty and would question her in the morning. She woke an hour later to an itching line of bedbug bites that ran up her arm and over her shoulder.
The irritation made it impossible to get back to sleep, but it didn’t really matter, because at about that time her new cellmates arrived, filling up the three-cell women’s block with profanity and drunken belching.
The one on her right was a matted-haired loudmouth, a six-foot sss who wore thick makeup
