Steeled for Murder (9 page)

I realized that I didn’t know whether I hoped I’d see Kelly at the lunch table again or if I dreaded it.

On my budget, my lunch wasn’t much different from last night’s. Two peanut butter sandwiches, somewhat less squashed because they had been in the lunchbox, not my pocket. And the thermos was full of hot instant coffee, not water.

Had Kelly felt sorry for me? Did she see me as some kind of pathetic loser? My stomach, cramp and all, lurched at that thought. Whatever happened, I didn’t want to look pathetic in Kelly’s eyes.

I was a convicted murder, for heaven’s sake. Most people thought I was a pathetic loser. What difference would it make what Kelly thought?

But I did really want to sit across the table from her, to see her long dark hair, hear her laugh. I could do that all night. A new feeling for me.

Kelly’s lunch time was another one of the many things not under my control. Probably fortunate. By the time I got to the lunch table, I was so tongue-tied that I would have made a fool of myself if I’d tried to talk to her. When I arrived, the only one sitting there was a skinny kid with acne, morosely sipping from a can of grape soda. His lunch seemed to consist primarily of a cold hot dog and several candy bars.

At least my peanut butter sandwiches were meant to be eaten cold.

I plunked myself down and opened my lunchbox. The kid looked over at me and stopped with his hot dog halfway to his mouth. He stared, blinking rapidly.

“You’re Jesse Damon, aren’t you?” he asked. His teeth were discolored and worn.

I briefly wondered if I should have gone somewhere else to eat, and then decided, no, if this kid didn’t want to eat lunch with me, he could find someplace else.

“Yeah,” I said, unwrapping one of my sandwiches.

“Name’s Aaron. I heard about you.”

I nodded an acknowledgement and wondered what he had heard about me.

“I just want you to know, a lot of us understand that Mitch had it coming,” he said, wiping his hand on the front of his greasy gray sweatshirt.

“Yeah?” I asked, taking a bite of my sandwich.

“Yeah. He’d been cheating a lot of us,” the kid said.

“You don’t say.”

“At first, he was pretty reliable. Could get hold of all the weed you wanted. And then he started selling that crystal meth.”

The kid scratched the back of his hand. Probably a user himself. None of my business.

He glanced at me and looked away. “I think he started using himself.”

“Pretty common.” I poured coffee into the thermos cup.

“Now we got to find a new dealer.”

Didn’t seem it would do any good to suggest maybe he kick the habit before it got him locked up, so I just nodded.

“You know anybody?” he asked.

That took me by surprise. “Sure don’t,” I said. “I don’t need to be messing with nothing like that.”

“But you must have contacts,” he whined.

“Not that kind, for sure. And I like going home at night. Beats the hell out of a prison cell.”

The kid looked at me. “People make a lot of money dealing,” he said. “Most of them don’t get caught.”

I narrowed my eyes and stared at him. “Most do eventually. Street-level dealers don’t last long. They either wise up and get out of the business, get locked up, or get killed.”

“Well, Mitch’d been doing it for a while. He made a lot of money.”

“Mitch got killed.”

That shut him up for a few minutes. I finished my sandwiches and drained the last of my coffee.

“Did Mitch make his own meth?” the kid asked.

“Don’t know.”

“Must have come from somewhere. And it ain’t that hard to make.” The hot dog lay half eaten on the table in front of him.

I shrugged. If this kid really thought I was involved in the drug trade with Mitch, nothing I said to him was going to convince him otherwise. I just hoped he didn’t feel compelled to share his thoughts about my “contacts” with Belkins or Montgomery.

“A couple of us was wondering, if Mitch made his own stuff, what happened to the lab equipment and supplies?” So much for keeping his thoughts to himself.

“Don’t ask me.” I screwed the top on my thermos and put it into my lunchbox.

“Well, could you pass on the word that we’d be happy to take it off of whoever’s hands, if they want? I got a good place to set it up, an old barn nobody ever goes to.” His hands were twitching nervously.

“Don’t hold your breath.” I shut my lunch box and got to my feet.

The kid sat there. He must be overstaying his eighteen-minute lunch. I wondered if his pay would be docked.

“I get it,” he said, rubbing the side of his face nervously. “You don’t know me, so you can’t talk to me, right? Well, I was a good customer of Mitch’s. And I never said a word. Anybody’ll tell you that.”

I thought about pointing out that, for someone who claimed to have never said a word, he’d just told me a lot. But I couldn’t see that it would do any good, so I just threw away my trash.

“Somebody like you, you’re more of an enforcer than a dealer, anyhow, aren’t you?” He scratched the side of his face. “I can tell. You have those cold gray eyes.”

Enforcer. How many of my co-workers thought that? I could just imagine Belkins questioning everyone on the shift, which I was quite sure he and Montgomery either had done or were going to do, and having several people repeat that. Belkins had already made up his mind about me. I’d just as soon, though, he not get anyone else contributing to his suspicions. And it might influence the way Montgomery looked at me.

“Look.” Aaron tossed the half-eaten hot dog in the trash. “I don’t care what you done. Ain’t nothing to me. I’m ready to do business. If you want.”

I shook my head. A common prison saying—“Don’t deny, don’t defend”—flashed through my mind. People like Aaron believed what they wanted to believe. Saying anything to him would just encourage him to keep badgering me. I picked up my lunchbox and headed back to the plating room to finish out my shift. Hank treated me just like he always had.

When I got out at eight, the weather was even worse, at least for walking. The sleet was changing to a driving rain, but the sidewalks were still icy underfoot. The dark, empty storefronts loomed over the cracked sidewalks. Of the few places that remained in business, only the Laundromat and the Korean convenience store were open. The gloom swallowed up the feeble light shining through their windows.

I had my weekly appointment with my parole officer in two hours. The whole municipal complex, with the courthouse, the local lockup, and the parole office, was in the opposite direction from my place. Maybe I could find someplace to hole up for an hour or so.

The library. I loved the library. Mrs. Coleman, the mother in the foster home where I had lived for most of my early teen years, had unlocked the treasures of the public library for me. She took all “her” kids there on a weekly basis and encouraged us to read.

It was prison, though, that really taught me to appreciate libraries. When I was first settled in at the institution where I would be spending the foreseeable future, I faced a mind-numbing succession of hours and days and years stretching out before me, and I put in to visit the library as soon as I could. The prison’s collection was limited, and each inmate could only go once a week and only take out three books at a time. I read everything I could get my hands on. A librarian at some point had purchased a whole set of classic literature. I became quite fond of Shakespeare and Dickens.

When I was released less than two months ago, I knew home detention meant I was going to be in my apartment for hours at a time. I didn’t have a TV or radio. The public library would be free, and I made it a priority to find it. I was lucky it was located in same county government complex as the parole office.

Mr. Ramirez, my parole officer, allowed me some time to run errands and become familiar with the neighborhood. I headed straight for the library.

Of course, I needed a card before I could take anything out. To get the card, I needed proof of residency and some form of picture identification. My month-to-month lease provided the proof of residency. My only form of identification was my prison ID.

The lady at the desk was a tall, sallow blonde with a name tag that read, “Mandy.” She was very pretty, but otherwise looked just like I would expect a librarian to look. Reluctantly, I pulled out my prison ID and handed it to her.

She frowned. “Is this all you have?” she asked.

“With a picture? Yes.” I felt the heat rising on my neck.

“I guess I can be content with that,” she said, filling in the blanks on the form.

“Thank you.”

She smiled. “‘My crown is called content…’”

I grinned back. “‘…a crown that seldom kings enjoy,’” I finished.

Her eyes opened wide. “You know Shakespeare?”

“I’ve read a little.”

She laughed. “He also said, ‘Neither a borrower nor a lender be.’”

“I don’t think he was talking about libraries.”

“You’re probably right. Or I’d be out of a job.” She punched something into her keyboard. The gray machine on the desk whirred to life and spat out a card, which she handed to me.

I always looked for her at the front desk when I went into the library. Often, she was working. She’d smile at me. I always smiled back. Pleasant interactions like that, even if they seemed pretty much insignificant to most people, meant a lot to me.

The library steps were covered with salt and melting ice. I bounded up them.

But the library didn’t open until nine. I stood in the sleet, my hands jammed in my pockets and my hood up, wondering if I should just wait. The entrance offered no shelter.

The sleet cut into my face. I could feel dampness beginning to creep through the shoulders and back of my jacket. I shivered.

A twenty-four hour diner was about two blocks away. Maybe I could nurse a cup of coffee for a while. I headed in that direction.

I hesitated on the sidewalk outside the diner’s door. But the wind picked up, driving an icy trickle down my neck. I shoved the door open and stepped inside.

Bacon. Coffee. Fresh bread and cinnamon. The comforting scents filled my nose. A line of people stood at the cashier’s station, ordering coffee and breakfast for takeout. The diner itself wasn’t crowded. Several of the booths were occupied. Only one person sat at the counter. A tall, well-dressed woman with her back to the door.

I stood aside from the line, my battered lunchbox under my arm. Pulling a handful of change from my pocket, I counted it. I looked up at the breakfast menu. The prices weren’t bad, but I really couldn’t afford much.

The plant would be closed all next week for Christmas. For long-term employees, it was a paid vacation week. For new hires not yet in the union, it would be an unpaid week. I hadn’t even been there long enough to collect unemployment compensation for the week. It was going to put a real crimp in my already tight budget. And I’d probably have to stay home the time I’d normally be out working. Depressing.

Not realistic to think Mr. Ramirez, my parole officer, would let me wander the streets from midnight to eight. Maybe if I asked, he would extend my daytime hours out.

And maybe not. Why should he?

Definitely have to make it to the library and get out some of the biggest books they had. A week in that little room without enough to read would drive me crazy. Or crazier than I already was.

The line at the cashier’s station had grown much shorter. I stepped to the end to order. If I got my coffee here, I hoped I could get away with not leaving a tip. Then what? Maybe I could go sit way at the end of the counter, up against the wall. I hated the exposed feeling of sitting in the middle of the diner.

My steaming coffee came in a thick white mug. If I’d ever noticed how good fresh-brewed coffee smelled, I’d forgotten.

Someone—a woman with a floppy red hat that shielded her face—half-stood in one of the booths. She was gesturing in my direction. I glanced behind me to see who she meant. Everyone else had left.

Surely she wasn’t gesturing at me? Why would anyone be doing that?

Chapter 6

The woman pushed the hat back. It was Kelly. I turned again to look behind me, see if she could mean anybody but me.

She put her hands on her hips and glared toward me. “You,” she mouthed. “Jesse.”

Unsure, I approached her.

“Have a seat,” she said, indicating the worn vinyl bench across the table from her.

I put my coffee on the table and slid across the seat to where the back of the booth and the wall made a corner. Although I tried to be careful, my leg brushed hers as I slid in. Felt like a contact with an electric magnet. My knee tingled and wanted to go back to touch hers again. I glanced across the table at her. She leaned forward, her heavy breasts in a loose blue sweatshirt resting on the tabletop. Her hair was escaping from where it was loosely gathered at her neck. It covered her forehead and dipped toward her snapping dark eyes. She gripped a mug of hot coffee in her hands.

Gentle wisps of steam rose from my wet jacket. It smelled of wet wool. We both smelled of the factory: oil and chemicals. I’d been working in the hot plating room all night; I probably smelled of sweat, too. I didn’t want to get too close and have to watch her wrinkle her nose at me.