JJ09 - Blood Moon by Michael Lister Read Free Book Online Page B

asked.
    “Nothing. I’ve been waiting for your call.”
    “No, I mean what were you doing when I called?”
    “Being interviewed by the inspector about my involvement in the death of a staff member that happened here a few days ago,” I said.
    “Is it a problem?”
    “No.”
    “Is he gone?”
    “Yes,” I said, not correcting his assumption.
    He knew how to reach me in the chapel at the prison but didn’t know the new IG was a woman. What else did he know and not know?
    “Have you spoken to anyone about anything?”
    “Absolutely not. I’ve done exactly what you’ve told me to. Nothing more. Nothing less. How is Anna?”
    “She’s good. Resting. We’re taking better care of her than you did. I assure you. The only thing that can go wrong with any of this, the only way she gets mistreated or dead, is if you do something I’ve told you not to or fuck up something I’ve told you to do.”
    “Not gonna happen,” I said. “Can I speak to her?”
    “I told you, she’s sleeping. You’ll talk to her again soon. And if you do what I tell you, you’ll see her tomorrow night.”
    “Okay. Who am I bringing you to trade for her?”
    “Last name is Cardigan,” he said. “Like the sweater. First name Ronnie. DC number 745491. You have a little over a day. Make it count.”

Chapter Seventeen
    I had a name.
    Now I had to come up with a plan.
    And I had a day to do it.
    The first thing I did was call down to Classification and request Cardigan’s file.
    While waiting for the inmate jacket to arrive, I called around to find out what job and dorm Ronnie was assigned to.
    Previously, everything I was doing now was accomplished with a single phone call to Anna.
    That thought made me even more sad and lonely, and for a moment I was overcome with such intense longing, I couldn’t catch my breath.
    No time for that now. Put it away. No good to her if you don’t.
    I took a moment, gathered myself, and once again returned to the place deep inside, distancing myself from all else.
    Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.
    Wordsworth’s line came to mind, and I made myself concentrate on the verse, actually saying it out loud in my empty office.
    “‘Thanks to the human heart by which we live. Thanks to its tenderness, its joys, and its fears. To me the meanest flower that blows can give, Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.’”
    That’s where I’ve got to be, to get back to, to stay until I get Anna back––in the place where my thoughts lie too deep for tears.
    The file was delivered to my desk in a stringed state courier envelope by an inmate orderly from Classification before I had finished my calls. I flipped through it while I was on the phone, and by the time Ronnie reached my office, I knew a good bit about him.
    Serving a ridiculous mandatory minimum on a nonviolent possession-with-intent-to-distribute charge, he had been failed by his public defender, and had a lot of time left on his sentence. A model inmate, he was housed in the honor dorm, and worked in the kitchen as a cook. A constant reader, he used the library as much as any inmate on the compound. A devout Catholic, he never missed Mass.
    Cardigan looked like someone who would wear one.
    As if a community college professor instead of a state of Florida inmate, Ronnie Cardigan blinked a lot behind his big glasses and wore his coarse light-brown-going-gray hair as long as the prison would allow, combing it back into a soft, full white man’s low afro. His body was a bit bulky—not fat, but broad and soft.
    “You know why you’re here?” I asked.
    “Oh, God, no. My mom? Please tell me she didn’t die.”
    I shook my head. “No. Nothing like that. Sorry to alarm you.”
    “Oh, thank God. I’m so . . . so relieved. Thank God. Thank you God.”
    “I thought you would know.”
    “Know what?”
    “Why you’re here.”
    “Why would I?” he asked.
    “Have you spoken with your family lately?”
    He shook his head.