Skin Privilege (36 page)

‘Jeff?’ Sara called. From the sound of it, she was standing in the front doorway.

‘Don’t come in here,’ he warned.

Sara asked, ‘Are you all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ he told her, trying to open the window over the sink. It was stuck, and he had to holster his gun and use both hands to force it up.

Jeffrey stood at the window, breathing the fresh air. The weeds in the backyard were higher than the ones in the front, but he could easily see the body lying on the ground.

It was Lena.

He ran toward the back door, yanking it open. There were boxes stacked on the back deck, blocking the path. Jeffrey kicked them aside, scattering leaflets into the air. ‘Sara!’ he yelled. ‘Come to the back!’

When he got to the body he stopped. He was wrong. This wasn’t Lena. It was Hank Norton. The man’s body was emaciated, his face sunken. Open needle wounds pocked his arms.

‘Sara!’ Jeffrey yelled again, kneeling down beside the man. ‘In the back!’

He pressed his head to Hank’s chest, trying to see if the man was breathing. Jeffrey heard nothing.

‘Sara!’ he tried again, but she was already pushing open the gate to the backyard. He saw her relief when she realized he was okay, then her astonished expression when she saw the body.

She dropped to her knees and pushed him aside. ‘Did you find him like this?’

Jeffrey nodded, taking out his cell phone to call an ambulance. ‘Is he alive?’

‘Barely.’ She opened Hank’s eyelids, checking his pupils. Jeffrey could see dark blood in the sclera.

Streaks of dried blood flaked from his mouth and ears. ‘Hank?’ she asked, voice raised. ‘It’s Sara Linton, Lena ‘s friend. Can you hear me?’ She patted his face with a firm hand. ‘Hank? I need you to open your eyes.’

Jeffrey was giving the nine-one-one operator Hank’s address when Sara held up her hand for silence. She pressed her ear to Hank’s chest. ‘He stopped breathing.’

Jeffrey ended the call as Sara started chest compressions. ‘The ambulance should be here in ten minutes.’

She nodded, then bent down to put her mouth over Hank’s.

Shocked, Jeffrey pulled her away, yelling, ‘Sara, no! There’s blood.’

‘I can’t just sit here while he-‘

‘Look at him, Sara. He’s an IV drug user.’

‘He’s all Lena ‘s got.’ Sara leaned over Hank again, pressing into his chest, forcing blood through his heart. Jeffrey knew she wasn’t really thinking about Hank right now. She was thinking about Jimmy Powell and the other patients she had not been able to help. She was remembering what it felt like to lose them.

Jeffrey told her, ‘Get the CPR kit out of your trunk.’ She hesitated, and he said, ‘I’ll take over here.’ Finally, she let him take her place. He overlapped his right hand with his left and pushed the heel of his hand into Hank’s chest, counting between repetitions.

Sara jogged toward the gate, but not before saying, ‘Don’t stop compressions.’

Jeffrey felt sweat dripping down his back as he leaned over Hank, the sour odor of the man filling the air around them. He could not believe Sara had not given it a second thought before leaning down to put her mouth against Hank’s bloody lips. Looking at the man, it was obvious he didn’t give a shit what he put into his body. He could’ve infected Sara with anything, and for what? So Hank would die tomorrow instead of today?

Just as Jeffrey was thinking his effort was useless, Hank made a gurgling sound, red-tinged air bubbles popping on his lips. Jeffrey sat back on his heels, watching the old man’s eyes slit open as he struggled to breathe. He saw Jeffrey and gave an almost imperceptible shake of his head, as if he could not understand why he had been brought back, why anyone would care.

Sara burst through the gate, CPR kit in hand.

‘It’s going to be okay,’ Jeffrey told Hank, taking the man’s dry, waxy hand. ‘You’re going to be fine.’

EIGHTEEN

Lena had been to Coastal State Prison once before. Shortly after Jeffrey had arrested Ethan on the parole violation, she had driven to the prison thinking that she would confront Ethan, let him know exactly how she had set him up, betrayed him, given him the biggest ‘fuck you’ that she could muster. She’d sat in her car in the visitors’ parking lot for almost two hours, her mind cataloguing all the violence he had done to her: the split lips, the broken fingers, the sprained wrists.

Unbidden, the image of the two of them in bed came back to her. She had never thought of sex with Ethan in romantic terms, but there had been times, maybe more than a few, that she could recall clutching on to him, holding him in her arms. He had loved her just as passionately as he had hated her, and she had often returned his moods in equal measure. Sitting in the car outside the prison, her skin started to tingle from the memory of his hands, his mouth, his tongue.

She’d barely made it out of the Celica in time to keep from being sick in the car. Visiting day was popular at the prison. Women and children were lined up at the door waiting to see their men. They had all turned, staring with blank curiosity as Lena threw up onto the asphalt. So much came out that her stomach felt as if a knife had ripped it in two. When she could manage, Lena crawled back into the Celica and drove back to Grant County with her tail between her legs.

This time was different, though. It had to be different. If she couldn’t face Ethan for herself, then she could do it for Hank. Ethan was calling him for a reason, and Lena would not leave Coastal without finding out what exactly had gone on between the two men. Before she’d left the motel this morning, Lena had changed into slacks, and a crisp linen shirt. She’d put on makeup and fixed her hair so that she looked like a cop who was in control instead of a terrified woman.

She went into the prison armed with lies and nothing else. Her Glock was hidden under the mattress back at the motel room and her folding knife was tucked in its hiding place under the front seat of her car. She’d even left her cell phone on the sink basin so it could charge. All she took into the prison with her was her ID and a tube of ChapStick.

Lena had told the warden that she was investigating threats made by one of Ethan’s henchmen on the outside. The warden proved to be the picture of compliance. He’d given her transcripts of Ethan’s phone records, his visitor log, copies of his outgoing mail. In addition, he had offered her the full services of the prison to do all they could to make a case against one of its most dangerous inmates.

The records were not going to get Ethan into trouble. The only person he’d called was Hank. He’d had no visitors. Ethan had neither written nor received any mail since the date of his incarceration. Not that any of this meant a damn thing. Lena knew Ethan was smart enough, charismatic enough, to get someone else to do his dirty work. According to the warden, his gang wasn’t the biggest or the strongest, but Ethan managed to wield a psychological power that served to keep them high up in the prison food chain.

Lena had no trouble believing that. She hadn’t seen Ethan in almost a year and still her heart had started pounding the minute she pulled into the prison parking lot.

One of the guards led Lena to the conference room they used for lawyer-inmate meetings. It was more like an interrogation room as far as she could see, little more than ten feet by twelve with a water-stained ceiling and heavy bars blocking the small windows. The table was bolted to the floor, a red line painted down its center as if to separate the good from the bad. The chairs were lightweight, unbreakable plastic so they wouldn’t do much damage if they were thrown or used as a weapon. Guards were not allowed to hear exchanges between prisoners and their legal counsel, so there was a ring bolted to the wall where more violent inmates could be restrained.

‘He’s extremely dangerous,’ the warden had told Lena. ‘I’m not happy about leaving you alone in a locked room with this guy.’

The man had gone on to list suspected crimes committed by Ethan within the walls of the prison: shankings in the yard, drug trafficking, inmate shakedowns, a man who’d had his face burned off in the prison laundry. None of it could be linked back to Ethan, but the warden knew who was responsible for it all.

Lena had asked that Ethan be chained to the ring in the wall. The guard had told her that with violent prisoners, that was standard procedure.

She sat at the table and waited, her ears sensitive to every noise. Finally, the bolt slid back on the door. Lena kept her place at the table, pretending to read the records in front of her, willing her hands not to shake. She could hear chains rattling, feet sliding across the floor.

‘What’s this spic want with me?’

Ethan’s voice; a hot knife in her ears.

‘Shut the fuck up and sit down.’ This from the guard, a beefy man who looked as if he enjoyed his job a little too much.

Lena sat back in her chair, arms folded across her chest. She kept her eyes trained on Ethan’s chest, her vision blurring into the orange of his prison uniform as the guard pushed him down into the chair and linked the chains into the bolt. Ethan tested his boundaries. He could fold his hands in front of him on the table, but the restraint would prevent him from going an inch farther.

Now Lena understood what the red line was for. Ethan’s chains prevented him from crossing it.

The guard told Lena, ‘Knock on the door when you’re finished.’ He waited for her to nod. The warden had shown her the panic button under the table a few minutes earlier. She put her hands in her lap in easy reach of the button.

The guard left and the bolts slid back on the door. There was no window in the door, no cameras the guards could watch to make sure she was okay. Lena was on her own.

Ethan smacked his lips. ‘What a pleasant surprise.’

Lena looked at his hands on the table. The knuckles were red, one of them cut.

She asked, ‘Why have you been calling Hank?’

He spoke softly, intimately. ‘You can’t even look me in the eye.’

He was right. She forced herself to meet his gaze. ‘Why have you been trying to call Hank?’

He pressed his lips together, leaned back in his chair. Had his eyes always been this blue? They were like ice, but colder.

He said, ‘I missed the old guy.’

‘You don’t even know him.’

‘I thought I knew you.’

Lena let the silence build – not because she was in control of the interview but because she did not know what else to say.

He asked, ‘You know what it’s like in here?’

‘I don’t want to know. I’m just here to tell you to back off Hank.’

Was she, though? She didn’t even know where her uncle was. Hank could be facedown in a sewer right now. He could be a John Doe on someone’s slab at the morgue.

Ethan’s chains clunked against the table as he clasped his hands in front of him. The handcuffs around his wrist were heavy-duty reinforced steel and the chain bolting him to the wall was so thick you’d need a torch to cut it off. Still, he somehow managed to seem in control. Lena could not even hold his gaze. She looked at his arms, saw that he had embellished the prison camp tattoos. Bodies were caught in the barbed-wire fence; emaciated prisoners with their mouths open in horror.

‘Do you remember Shawn Cable from school?’

She shook her head.

‘He was in my class at Grant Tech. Short guy, curly hair.’

She shook her head again, but she remembered the guy. They had been lab partners. Shawn had coasted by on Ethan’s work.

‘He’s working at BASF now, in their industrial coatings division.’

Lena stared at the barbed-wire on his arm.

‘That could have been my job,’ Ethan said. ‘But your boss jammed me up, and now I’m in here.’

Lena opened her mouth to defend Jeffrey, but stopped when she realized that she would only be implicating herself.

‘I was out of it,’ he said, indicating the tattoos. ‘I was out of that life and starting a new one with you.’

‘A new one where you beat me.’

‘You hit me sometimes, too.’

Lena ‘s throat started to close, making it hard to breathe. She
had
hit him. She hadn’t just rolled over and taken it. Sometimes she had even started the fights herself.

I loved you,’ Ethan said. ‘I loved you, and this is what you did to me.’

She found her voice. ‘Did you love Evelyn Johnson, too?’

The silence between them was different this time, and when she dared look at his face, he was looking down at his chained wrists.

She said, ‘You never told me she was black.’

‘You never asked.’

They were talking like normal people now and it set Lena ‘s teeth on edge. She tried to keep reminding herself of who he really was, but all she kept coming back to was the person sitting in front of her, his eyes down, his shoulders slouched. She had loved him. She could not get around the fact that she had loved him.

She asked, ‘What happened with her?’

‘Are you recording this?’

‘What do you think?’

He was staring at her again and Lena felt trapped in his gaze, unable to break the contact.

‘Unbutton your blouse.’

‘Fuck you.’

He raised his eyebrow. ‘You did, baby.’ The smile on his face was familiar – the old Ethan was coming out to play. ‘Unbutton your blouse. Let me see if you’re wired.’

‘I told you I’m not.’

‘I’m supposed to take you at your word?’ His lips twisted into a grin. ‘No dice, Lee. Last time I trusted you, I ended up in here. Show me you’re not wired or I’ll call the monkey back to take me to my cage.’

She fumbled with the top button, trying to make her fingers work. She looked at the door as she did this, as if she was afraid the guard would come through at any moment. She’d been sweating in the small room, and the air was cool on her skin as she opened the blouse to her waist.

‘No wires,’ she told him. ‘Satisfied?’

He shrugged, the smile making her blood freeze in her veins.

Lena started to button back her blouse, but he wouldn’t let it go at that.

‘You still look good.’

She couldn’t get the buttons to fasten because her hands were trembling.

‘You know how many nights I’ve jerked myself raw thinking about fucking you?’