I rubbed my hand over the stubble on my chin and sighed.
The bar was busy when I pulled up, but I managed to grab a spot near the back of the parking lot, away from the entrance. I watched the rest of the group arrive and file in before I followed, refusing to have to make awkward as shit conversation with the first lonely fucker there. In a crowd, I could just linger, listen, pick up on the clues they laid down about their character and judge. It was also easier to blend in or fuck off if I wanted to. Irish goodbye that motherfucker.
“Hey!” Sally, the nurse I was hoping to catch, gave me a smile as I arrived at the table, a beer in hand. Luckily, she was on the end, so I could sink in next to her.There were a good number of bodies in the bar,but it wasn’t overwhelming; plenty of space to spread out and chat.
Sally was one of those rare colleagues who didn’t give off bad energy. I was good at reading people from years on a corrupt force, and she read well. Lonely, maybe, but solid. She was also the nurse who’d tended to Karner this morning, who had filled me in on her mood before I stepped into the small, curtained bay.And I’d got the impression they’d been… nice to each other.
“Sally,” I said with a nod of my head. “How are you?”
“Tired!” she replied, taking a slow sip of her frosty wine glass. “But you know how it is.”
We fell into easy chatter. I turned on the charm as best I could, letting her rant on about her shift, nodding and making noise in the right places. Everyone else flitted in and out of the conversation, and I made sure to engage them all.
“It’s just such a hellscape sometimes, when they keep reducing our funding but expecting more,” Sally huffed, two more glasses of wine in. “I have half a mind to go and give the warden a piece of my mind.”
I smiled, knocked my bottle against her glass, imagining this slight woman yelling at Warden Domingo. “I’d be right there with ya,” I said. “I can be the muscle.”
She snorted a laugh and whacked my arm, rolling her eyes. “We’ll make it work, Adrian. Don’t you worry. We always do.”
The conversation around the table drifted again. It was a decent mix of COs from our shift and admin staff, some nurses, all just unwinding after a difficult day surrounded by the worst of society.
Sally was getting tipsier, and her inhibitions dropping as she continued to rant and rave, mixed with giggles and gentle chiding of others. She really was a delight. I leaned closer.
“The inmate you had in today, the one I had to question, what can you tell me about her?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light. Failing, but she was too tipsy to notice.
Sally thought for a moment. “Karner?”
I nodded.
“She’s done awful things. I knowthat,” she blurted, then hiccupped. “But she was polite. Grateful.”
All that, like Karner hadn’t murdered three innocent men. Like she hadn’t destroyed lives with her ripple effect of evil and madness. But I inclined my head, encouraging Sally to carry on. I just needed to hear her say it.
Karner’s murders were some of the most brutal I had ever seen, sustained, deeply disturbing deaths given to these poor saps for no apparent reason.Nothing she had ever said in interviews, not the stand because she didn’t take it, gave a clue.
But I needed to know if my words to Randal had done what I’d suspected. It had been stupid, a way to put that distance back. Make it clear to Karner where we stood, that this didn’t mean a thing, that she was just another inmate to fuck about with. I couldn’t have her thinking there was anything special about her.
I’d panicked, sure. But now she knew her place with me.
Maybe I’d bring her something. Chocolate, or good coffee. Something from the outside to remind her how this worked. What this was supposed to be.Couldn’t have her thinking she had any say in this game.
“Karner’s one sick bitch,” Anderson blurted, leaning in from across the table, surprising me with the roughness of his words. “Don’t think many of us don’t have a story about her screwing with us.”
“The men, anyway,” one of the female COs I hadn’t spoken to interrupted, frowning. “She only screws with the men who screw with her.”
Anderson scowled, others stiffened. “I don’t know what you think you’re implying, Boulet, but you’d best keep your mouth shut.”
For a second, the tension at the table built. Like we were at work, words unsaid, faces turned away from the despair and corruption.
“So you didn’t almost lose a finger a few weeks ago after slipping your way into Karner’s cell?” Boulet spat back, her voice raising with the flush of red in her cheeks. “She bragged, you know? That you tried it with her.” Boulet sat back and crossed her arms. “Fucking men and their audacity. Think the killer will be different for them…”
“Fuck this,” Anderson grunted, standing and downing his drink. With each swallow, my opinion of him cracked. He’d tried to fuck Karner?
Life as a prison officer wasn’t easy; it was damn lonely, in fact. And we were all in it. And we were all apparently as bad as each other. I was no better than Anderson, really, but hot, hypocritical anger built anyway.
I gulped down my beer, the glass squeaking in my grip. The urge to hurt him bubbled, so I focused on the cheap beer, on calming my pulse. My anger issues were new, and I didn’t want to get a handle on them yet.
A few months ago, my spaniel, Boba, had gone to live with my mother. I’d sold my apartment and moved somewhere unsuitable for a dog. It wasn’t a good spot, no garden, but more fitting for my needs, so my only regular company lived with another lonely person. My mother. The dog liked it more there now anyway. And Boba was a pleasant companion for the forlorn, broken woman that had birthed me.
