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INMATE 6881
Initials mar the bench of the holding cell; a sea of letters scratched into the paint by the forgotten ones, marking their existence.
So and so was here. There’s a lot of gang insignia, too. I see a skull done up quite nicely. That person had some talent. Wasted, clearly.
Keys clank against the metal gate. Wanda stands there, sliding a key into the slot and twisting. She’s one of the nicer guards, which is why she works in the out-processing unit.
Wanda’s uniform strains against her bulk. The heavy-duty leather belt cinched up tight sections her belly into top and bottom folds. She’s an older woman, approaching retirement, I hope. What an awful place to spend her golden years.
"Case dismissed." She pushes the gate open, looking me up and down. "Let me take a picture. It’s not often I see a murderer walk free."
"Murderess," I say, rising to my feet and straightening my prison issue garb. I smooth back my hair and walk freely out of the holding cell.
"‘Scuse me," she says, following me down the barren hallway. "They all come in here howling about how they’re innocent little lambs. And the justice system has done them wrong and they deserve to be set free. Except none of those smart lawyers on the outside can never seem to find a single reason why."
I’m thinking about all the unfortunates who lack the ability to plan the perfect crime. Poor them.
Behind me, Wanda labors for breath, a wheezing sound that keeps time with her footsteps. Then we reach the last gate before freedom, the last time I’ll be referred to as an inmate number.
"What’s your secret?" she demands in a low voice, hand grasping the bars of the sally port door in front of us. "I saw your case file. You killed that guy deader than a doornail."
My gaze passes from the pockmarked metal bars to her fleshy hand, wrapped around the bar, knuckles rising up in soft mounds.
I recall Chris’s hands wrapped around my neck, his nostrils flaring, his lips stretched across the tidy white line of his teeth. Then I remember the gleam of my knife before I sank it in his belly.
"Foresight," I say with a wry smile. She smiles too, an involuntary reaction, but I can tell from her quick sideways glance that she’s confused, trying to work out the meaning. While her wheels are turning, I nod toward the gate. "Shall we?"
I retrieve my articles, stored the night they processed me into general. No probation or bail for me. No way. A female killer? The authorities didn’t want to take their chances, rare as we are. Women are supposed to be peaceable, not violent. What had driven me to kill?
Until they knew, nobody wanted the responsibility of authorizing my release. And who can blame them? Nobody wanted to face the possibility that it could happen again.
But it just might.
In fact, I wouldn’t rule it out.
2
BRYNN
ONE YEAR LATER
Sunlight pours through our bedroom curtains, stupid gauzy things that I thought looked stylish when I bought them. But now, lying in bed with my arm slung over my eyes, hung over, I realize I should have splurged on blackout curtains instead.
My boyfriend Dan lies next to me as still as a corpse, his dark hair mussed, stubble emerging on along his square jawline, eyelids jumping as if he’s reliving a terrible nightmare. Maybe he is reliving a terrible nightmare. We just survived an encounter with his ex-girlfriend, Erin.
Last night we walked into Delmonico, a bar in a trendy neighborhood close to downtown San Diego, the meeting point for Dan’s D-Day party, his departure day party, the last hurrah before deployment, and Dan spotted her sitting at a pub table.
I didn’t know anything about her except that she had moved away after The Break. Her name had come up exactly once at a backyard barbecue, putting the festive mood on ice. Dan had clammed up, of course. A whistle escaped his friend’s lips, followed by another, who turned his back, pretending to be busy.
Dan’s big blowout could have derailed right from the very beginning. But you know what? I liked her. We had a lot of fun. Okay, too much fun. As the night descended into hazy oblivion, somehow we became bosom buddies. Isn’t that strange?
Lying there on the bed, head pounding, I open my eyes experimentally and wait for my pupils to adjust to the bright light, but the blaze feels like stabs to the back of my head. So I roll over instead and try to piece the night together.
There was singing. Mine. ‘Every party needs a pooper,’ followed by Erin’s rousing rendition that Dan didn’t particularly enjoy. And there was drinking. Lots of drinking. I drank, at first, to quash my insecurities.
Dan had steadfastly refused to talk about his ex. But there I was, sitting across from the real life specimen, and I couldn’t help but draw comparisons.
She’s a platinum blonde with wavy layers that framed her face, parting around her prominent forehead. There was a hint of sadness in her wide set eyes. She wore minimal makeup, except for a lashing of red on her enhanced lips. And she has big breasts. Wasn’t Dan more of a ‘bum man’? That’s what he’d told me.
That’s exactly what I was thinking when she offered to buy me a drink, brown eyes glistening a little. She was so sweet about it. I could tell she was hurting. I felt sorry for her. I’d be hurting too if I happened upon Dan and his new girlfriend.
She returned with a bottle of wine in an ice bucket—just for us—and placed her hand on my forearm. We clinked glasses and a warm friendly feeling washed away my apprehension. She was so nice. Non-threatening. Funny, even. Why did they break up again?
Desperate thirst brings me back to present. I grope around for my water flask on the bedside table and knock it over. So I lie there, face down on my pillow, listening to water drip onto the carpeted floor. Then I pull in a big breath and heave myself up to sitting.
The bedroom swirls around me; it’s the biggest room in Dan’s beach cottage with narrow-plank wood floors popular in the 1950s and a tiny overstuffed closet. When the four walls return to their original position, I swallow the last few drops in my water flask and half-heartedly wipe the puddle off the top of my nightstand, while my mind runs over the grooves from last night like a broken record player, trying to fix the glitch because something is missing.
We journeyed to the club, I remember. A group of us. Laughing. Confused. Led by the Pied Piper, a short guy who talked way too fast. I remember a VIP section. Red velvet ropes. Friendly strangers. Erin was there, of course. Then she wasn’t. There’s that black hole that Dan fell into, followed by his re-emergence and an after-party at someone’s house.
The fragments dovetail, almost coming together, but then they disappear again into the foggy landscape of my mind. How did I get home? And when did I change into Dan’s Navy t-shirt?
My body aches. My mind feels like fodder in a Jack LaLanne juicer. I can barely think straight, but I’m fighting a growing sense of dread. I think something happened last night. Something bad.
From the mist rises one specter. It’s blurry and not well formed, this ghost, but I’m ninety-seven percent certain that I saw Erin leave.
And Dan follow her out.
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