Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 43, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1998

Double Jeopardy by K. R. MacLeish

“Now what?” Corrections Sergeant Frieda Ferguson muttered as she entered Unit Five to begin her work shift. Angry shouts were coming from upstairs. It was five minutes before eleven o’clock on Friday night, and the curfew in this minimum security prison demanded quiet after ten o’clock every night, with no exception for weekends. It looked as if her night was off to a bad start.

Frieda tried the office door. Locked. She shifted her backpack, which hung over one shoulder, and slid her other arm into its strap to secure the pack and free her arms and hands. She ran swiftly up the stairs toward the voices.

At the other end of the hall Derrick O’Neill, the second shift sergeant, was telling Inmate Greene that if he went into his room this minute he would get a conduct report, and if he didn’t, he would go straight to the detention unit as well.

Frieda stopped at the top of the stairs out of their sight, waiting while Greene made his decision. A door opened across the hall from where she stood and Inmate Willis looked out. Frieda put her finger to her lips and shook her head. Willis stepped back and stood inside his room, watching Frieda.

Greene’s door slammed with a resounding bang, and Sergeant O’Neill came down the hallway toward Frieda. “What’s his problem now?” she asked.

O’Neill swung quickly toward Willis, who stood quietly in his doorway. “Get inside, Willis, and keep the door closed,” he hissed. Willis backed farther inside, quickly closing the door.

Together Frieda and Derrick walked down the stairs to the office. “I’ll write these reports, and then I’m outa here,” Derrick said. He leafed through a stack of forms in a wire basket on the corner of the desk. “Greene’s pulling the same old crap. He taunts Willis until Willis gets mad and swings or throws something. Greene sees that as a go-ahead to torment him further. This time he decided to argue with me about it.” Derrick finished one report and started on the other. “They’re both on room confinement until the first-shift lieutenant sees them. Wish I knew what Greene is after. This is the first time he’s started something this late. And the first time he’s mouthed off to me, far as that goes.” Derrick finished the reports and made a note of the disturbance in the logbook.

“Maybe he wants to be shipped out,” Frieda said.

“That would make everyone happy. I’ve written reports suggesting that he doesn’t belong here, isn’t ready for minimum security,” Derrick said. “Ray’s been trying as well. We haven’t even been able to get him sent up to detention. Maybe they’re keeping him here to test our patience.”

“Ray’s opinion usually counts, since he’s the exalted first-shift officer,” Frieda said. “Maybe Greene’s related to someone.”

“If he was white, I’d think so.”

“Oh well, maybe we can still civilize him.”

“If you’ll cover my shift tomorrow and Sunday, you can work on him,” Derrick said hopefully.

Frieda made a face.

“It’s short notice I know, but one of my kids was in an accident. I just got the call about eight. They’re with my ex. In Chicago.”

“Is he okay? She?”

“She. Just banged up a little, but bad enough to be admitted to the hospital.” Derrick looked at his watch. “I’ll be there before she wakes up in the morning. Will you cover?”

“Why not? Maybe sixteen hours of me for a couple of days will be more than Greene can stand, and he’ll beg to get out of here.” Frieda dug the work-exchange form out of the pile and signed her agreement to work Derrick’s shift on the weekend.

“I’ll turn the request in to security along with the conduct reports and hope for the best.”

“It shouldn’t be a problem. I’m here anyway.” Frieda locked the office behind them and entered the television room as Derrick left the building. It was already a quarter past eleven. Her initial count would be late, but when Derrick stopped at the security office with the paperwork, he could explain.

The usual three men were watching television. Frieda noted their presence on the roster she carried on a clipboard.

“Uh, hi-ya, Fred.”

“Evenin’, Miss Frieda.”

“Yo!”

“Hi, guys,” Frieda responded. She walked down the hall checking the six inmate rooms on the ground floor. The door was open at number six. Otis was one of the three in the television room. He always called her Fred, Fred Fergustone, in his best Barney Rubble voice. Frieda checked the basement door and the back exit to be sure they were locked and climbed the stairs silently in her rubber-soled jogging shoes.

All quiet. She started down the hall, stopping at each door and raising the privacy curtain. It was Friday night, and everyone was awake with lights on. She raised the curtain at Greene’s room. He glared at her.

She knocked on Willis’s door and looked in through the small rectangle of glass. Willis looked up, and Frieda opened the door.

“I ain’t done nuthin’, Miss Frieda,” Willis whined, sadness and bewilderment in his dark eyes.

“I know, Willis,” Frieda assured him. “But you know the rules. When there’s a fight, everyone who’s involved gets room confinement.” Room confinement in this minimum security prison operated on the honor system, since none of the rooms had toilet facilities and the inmate could not be locked in his room.

Willis’s radio emitted a screech of static. He wheeled around and grabbed it. Cradling it against his body, he turned the sound down to silence. An inmate on room confinement was not allowed to play his television or radio. Willis looked frightened. “O’Neill say I can play the radio, Miss Frieda. He tell me I can.”

“I know, Willis. You can always play your radio, even on room confinement. Don’t worry about it.” Frieda smiled encouragement. “Willis, why do you think Greene always fights with you?”

“Because I be slow. He call me a ree-tard. I ain’t no ree-tard, Miss Frieda. An’ I ain’t no queer neither.”

“No, you’re not a queer, Willis. And you’re not a ree-tard. You’re a kind and gentle man. And it’s okay to play your music — quietly. Goodnight, now.” Frieda pulled his door closed and continued her count.

Back in the office she called the numbers in to the security office.

“Hey, Ferguson, if you can’t climax any faster than this, we’ll get a real man in there to help you,” Officer Aiken grouched.

“And if you can’t give birth, you’re taking up far too much space on the planet, Ron.”

“Doctor, doctor,” he screeched. “I’m already at three centimeters.”

“Well, keep tickling it, Ron. Maybe you’ll get it up to three inches.” Frieda said, flinching when Ron slammed his phone into the cradle.

Locking the office again, she went into the television room and sat near the door where she could see down the hall. When a commercial came on, the men started fidgeting. She didn’t usually sit there with them unless they were noisy or there was some problem that required her presence.

“It’s okay,” Frieda teased. “I didn’t catch you at it, whatever it was.” The fidgeting stopped. “I need some information.”

“We don’t know nuthin’. We just cons.”

“That’s why you know, guys. Don’t fight with me, I’m on your side.” She waited until they looked at her. “I’ve seen new men come into the house who act up. And to keep them from bringing the heat down on all of us, you guys teach them the facts of life. Don’t deny it,” she said as the men started to protest. “I’ve heard you. That’s fine. You make life easier for everyone. What I’m wondering is, why haven’t you been able to civilize Greene? He’s been here two months, and he’s still acting like a bull with a bee in his ear.”

“Hmmph! That punk!” Otis muttered.

“He got an attitude, Miss Frieda.” John said quietly. “Be careful he don’t hurt you.”

“He picks on Willis,” Frieda said. “Why do you think he might hurt me?”

Silence. Frieda waited.

“We been tryin’ to straighten him out,” Manny said.

“Greene don’t like queers, or women neither,” Otis offered. “Ain’t no queers in this house since Benny gone home.”

“He know he can always get Willis mad if he call him queer,” Manny said, “and when Willis mad, he fight, and Greene always win.”

“Make him feel like a big man,” Otis added.

“And he doesn’t like women?” Frieda asked.

“He don’t like women who be in charge, Miss Frieda,” John explained. “He got to be top dog, ’specially over women. An’ he know how to use his fists. Be extra careful, Miss Frieda.”

“Jerk need to be in the walls till he learn how to act,” Manny said.

“Why he ain’t never locked down?” Otis asked. “Other mens do time in the hole for less than what he do.”

Frieda watched the light change on the wall across from the stair. Someone was moving just outside the door. As quietly as she could, she got up from the plastic covered lounge chair and stepped quickly to the door. She almost collided with Howard from room number twenty.

“Could I get a couple of aspirin?” he asked, rubbing his eyes.

Frieda relaxed. It wouldn’t do to start imagining things. Graveyard shift could do funny things to the mind. She gave Howard his aspirin and followed him up the stairs and into the hall.

All quiet. She walked slowly through the hallway and down the stairs at the other end.

The rest of the night was uneventful. The three men watching television were in their rooms before two o’clock without her prodding them. Frieda’s shift ended at seven in the morning. She had to sleep fast and be back by three in the afternoon to do Derrick’s shift and then her own for the next two days. Back-to-back doubles. Two sixteens. And Greene.

“Well, what’s the verdict on Greene?” Frieda asked Ray when she arrived shortly before three that afternoon.

“The usual,” Ray growled. “Be nice, now, Tommy,” he squeaked, mocking an ineffective mother scolding her naughty child. “Room confinement till Monday morning at seven when the captain gets in,” he added in his own voice.

“Well, that helps me a little. Have a good evening, Ray. I’ll be here when you get back. Maybe he’ll escape before then.”

“Wish he would,” Ray grumbled.

“Doesn’t Security ever tell you why they insist we keep him when he causes so much trouble in here?”

“No, and it’s the damnedest thing. Seems like somebody in here’s being set up. Hope it ain’t me.”

“Or me.”

The main hallway on the ground floor ran from the television room on one end to the dining room on the other. On the left, just outside the dining room, a short hall led to the rear exit, the basement door, the back stairway, and the kitchen. The kitchen was separated from the dining room by a long pass-through counter.

Before five o’clock the men were lining up outside the dining room door. Willis was in the kitchen setting up the food on the steam table, ignoring them as best he could.

Frieda remembered when Willis first moved into the cottage. The security director told the officers that Willis was slightly retarded and easily frustrated. If he felt cornered, he would fight. Because he was soothed by the music he loved, the officers were instructed to allow Willis to play his radio even when he was on room confinement, which was often. What Frieda could not understand was why, if that were true about Willis, he would be given the job of serving food. The kitchen man needed nerves of steel and a lot of self-control, more than in any other inmate job in the entire institution. Everyone always complained about the food and heaped abuse on the kitchen man even though his job was only to serve the food that had been delivered from the main kitchen. And on top of that undeserved abuse Willis had to put up with the stress of living with Greene. Poor Willis.

Frieda stood against the far wall of the dining room facing the door and hallway, watching the men as they snaked in, took their food, and sat down to eat at tables of four. She took her plate last. She had just finished eating when she heard the telephone ringing and went to the office to answer it.

As she returned to the dining room, she saw Greene standing at the foot of the back stairs, taunting Willis through the open kitchen door. At that moment Willis scooped up a spoonful of mashed potatoes and flung them at Greene. Greene ducked, and the potatoes splashed against the door frame near Frieda’s head. She stopped short. Greene spun around when he saw the horrified look on Willis’s face.

“Get!” Frieda said, her thumb pointing up the stairs. The word was like a gunshot.

Already moving, Greene sprinted up the stairs three at a time. A few diners fingered in the dining room, waiting to see what Frieda would do. Several more men gathered at the door, drawn by the drama. They had never before heard Frieda raise her voice. No one spoke.

Frieda entered the dining room, grabbing up a napkin as she passed the counter, and wiped potato spatters from her forehead and hair. She sat down, covered her face with both hands, and shook with laughter. She laughed until the tears came.

“You all right, sarge?” somebody asked.

She stifled a giggle. “Just a little hysteria,” she said wiping her eyes. Willis stood like a statue, shocked by what he had almost done. “Finish up,” Frieda told him. To the rest of the men, who had once more begun to breathe, she said, “I’m going to see if I can get that bozo out of here.” She returned to the office to phone the lieutenant on duty.

“He stays,” Lieutenant Austin said irritably. “He’s on room confinement already. It’s your job to see that he stays in his room.” In the background Frieda could hear male voices telling convict jokes accompanied by raucous laughter. “I’ll stop in when I get a chance,” the lieutenant added.

Frieda spent most of the evening walking through the house. She would make sure Greene and Willis stayed in their rooms. She decided to ask Ray if he would be able to move Greene downstairs nearer the office and farther from Willis.

The lieutenant stopped in at about half past ten. When Frieda came downstairs from one of her trips through the halls, he was standing by the office door.

Frieda unlocked the door, and they entered. She wished she could ask the lieutenant what the motive was behind the seemingly dangerous decisions being made about Willis and Greene, and who was making those decisions. But she didn’t try. Earlier in her career, on another shift, she had asked questions and expressed opinions about ways things could be made safer or more convenient in the prison, and her efforts resulted in her becoming an outcast. She’d requested a transfer to third shift and forced herself to stop caring about the institution and the people who worked in it.

Apparently the lieutenant was expecting her to complain because after his first few attempts to encourage her to talk about the problem, he brought it up himself. “I pulled the file on Greene,” he said. “Just what is the problem with him?”

The lieutenant is playing concerned uncle, Frieda thought. In turn, Frieda was supposed to pour all her woes onto his broad and caring shoulders, and then sit through a lecture that would boil down to “if you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” She said, “Does the file include the incident and conduct reports written by Ray and Derrick?”

The lieutenant looked startled. “Er, yes,” he said. “But there’s more?”

Frieda shrugged. “I haven’t seen their reports,” she said, as if none of it really concerned her.

“Something happened this afternoon?” he prompted.

“Nothing more than what I told you on the phone. I have the paperwork here.” She indicated the forms lying neatly on the edge of the desk.

The lieutenant was looking uncomfortable. Now Frieda was puzzled. Maybe he did want to talk about the situation. Maybe he didn’t like it any more than she did. Frieda waited politely.

The lieutenant cleared his throat, looked at Frieda, looked away, looked back. “Do you think Greene is getting special treatment?”

“I’m third shift, lieutenant. The guys are usually pretty mellow by the time I get here. Everyone knows better than to let Greene provoke them into a fight after eleven at night. They just go to their rooms and close the door. Greene doesn’t want to make a ruckus by himself.”

“Do you think Greene is unsuited for minimum security?” When Frieda didn’t answer, he asked, “Why did you call me at suppertime?”

“It’s not my place to make judgments on the security decisions you all make,” Frieda said, smiling. “I called at suppertime in case you wanted to check it out right then rather than waiting for me to bring the paperwork up front tomorrow morning. You got Derrick’s report from yesterday? I wanted to keep you up to date.” Frieda couldn’t control a little hysterical giggle. She blinked the tears from her eyes and wiped away her smile with one hand. “The potatoes could as well have hit me instead of the door frame.” She giggled again, imagining the picture. “Splat! right in the puss,” she said, and let the laughter come.

The lieutenant saw the picture, too, and tried not to laugh. “It’s not funny,” he said, his face turning crimson. He cleared his throat again. “Anyway, that was, um—” he paused, looking at Frieda’s report “—Willis. That was Willis.”

“Right.” She let the word hang there, and looked into the lieutenant’s eyes. She wanted to see if he knew what was going on and was uncomfortable with it or if he knew and was part of the problem.

He wasn’t giving anything away. “Do you think Willis is a threat?” he asked.

“No,” Frieda said flatly, “he’s not. Lieutenant, I need to cruise through again, if you’ll excuse me,” she said, rising. “It’s my job to see that Greene stays in his room, you said, so I’d best be seeing to it.”

“Frieda, help me out here. We were sergeants together on second shift. I know you have a feel for, for—” he searched for a word “—injustices. I see an odd situation here, I just want your take on it.”

Frieda was saved from replying when Officer Don Hendricks clumped in the front door and into the office, keys jangling. His studded leather jacket flapped open, exposing a huge, snarling Tasmanian Devil that covered the entire front of his T-shirt. “I can give you a real good take on it, lieutenant,” he said. He pulled a can from his jacket pocket and handed it to Frieda. “I brought you a Coke, Freddie, for your next shift.”

“What are you doing here already?” Frieda looked at her watch. “Good grief, it’s eleven oh-five. Excuse me, lieutenant, I do have to count now.” She grabbed up her clipboard and pen and escaped into the hall.

Frieda expected to find Hendricks alone in the office when she returned, but the lieutenant was still there. She called her count total in to the security office.

“If you could bear to remove your hand from Lieutenant Austin’s fly,” Ron began.

Frieda bent quickly toward the floor. “Ooooh, oof,” she said as she straightened up and pressed the speaker-phone button. “I’m sorry, Ron. I dropped my lunch here. I didn’t hear what you said.”

Ron repeated what he had said and added, “George is waiting here to commune with him.” George Fuller was the third-shift lieutenant.

Lieutenant Austin’s face reddened. He took the receiver and disconnected the speaker phone. “Put George on,” he said.

Officer Hendricks and Frieda looked at one another, eyebrows raised.

“George, I’ll be up front shortly,” he said stiffly. “Meanwhile, please inform Officer Aiken that I’ll be writing a report for his file concerning his comment about my fly and Sergeant Ferguson’s hand.” He hung up abruptly. “Does he always talk to you like that?” he asked Frieda.

Frieda took a deep breath. She was sure the lieutenant knew how Ron talked to her. Didn’t he work in the same office? She’d hoped that hearing Ron’s words in mixed company would embarrass him a little. Lieutenant Austin looked more shocked than embarrassed, and that surprised her. She’d always painted the entire security office bunch with the same brush. That included Ron Aiken, the desk officers on the other shifts, all the lieutenants, and the captain. They had the leisure for boredom and crude jokes. They didn’t spend eight hours each day alone in the company of twenty-five felons who had nothing more pressing to do than think of ways to drive the house sergeant crazy. The staff in the security office didn’t feel the isolation and need for friendly communication that the officers in the housing units felt.

“He usually talks to me like that, yes,” Frieda said. “And depending on my level of stress, I either ignore him or insult him in return.”

“You could file a sexual harassment suit.” The lieutenant looked as if that were the last thing he would want to see her do. Frieda was surprised that he even brought it up.

“I could,” she said. “But then I might as well quit, and I like this job. He doesn’t really insult me, I just consider the size of his brain. It only bothers me if I have an emergency here and he wants to play sexy-poo on the phone.”

“Well, maybe this will slow him down some. Thanks for letting me hear it.” He stood up. “Well, goodnight, Frieda, Don.”

After Lieutenant Austin had gone, Frieda asked Hendricks, “So, did you give him your take on the Greene, slash, Willis caper?”

“I sure as hell did. I even suggested he become a steady reader of the Inlet, the weekly rag that prints news the regular press is afraid to touch.”

“Yikes,” Frieda said. “Did you really...”

“Bunch of us were in Lenny’s the other night. Our regular beer ’n’ bitch session, you know, and we were filling each other in on the Greene, slash, Willis caper as you call it. Apparently Greene torments Willis out in the yard and at the gym, too. Everybody had something to say about him.” He smiled, remembering. “A writer from that paper was at the bar eavesdropping. He introduced himself and said it sounded like an unhealthy situation and was the warden insensitive or was he intentionally setting somebody up to get hurt? Well, we told him that if he would make sure the story got a lot of press when the situation exploded, we’d tell him anything he wanted to know.”

“ ‘Inmate at Beechwood Correctional Institution Goes Berserk and Kills Officer and Twenty-four Inmates.’ Wow! Nice headline.”

“How about ‘Staff Mutiny at Beechwood Correctional Removes Warden, Corrects Dangerous Policies’?”

“It would be nice,” Frieda said wistfully, “if they would tell us the reason we’re keeping Greene so we could at least be working together on it instead of running around in the dark trying to protect ourselves from both enemy and friendly fire. What a bass-ackward way to run a prison, she redundantly repeated one more time again.”

“Shall we walk through the house so I can stick my ugly puss up against Greene’s porthole?” Hendricks asked. “Give him something to dream about.”

Another uneventful night, almost. Frieda was walking the halls, counting again, at four in the morning. She shone her light into Greene’s room and didn’t see him. There was a mound in the bed, but the rule said that the officer must see skin. Frieda followed the rule religiously. No one would trick her into thinking he was asleep when he was actually gone. She opened the door and reached in, pulling the blanket toward her. Nothing was under it but pillows. She turned on the light and backed out, closing the door, then ran down to the office. She called Ron Aiken, wishing it were someone she could count on, and asked him to send Hendricks right away. She hung up before Ron could comment or question.

Otis was standing outside the office door. “Be careful, Fred,” he said softly. “We’ll back you up if the badge don’t get here in time.”

“Thanks, Otis.”

“Greene be on the move.”

Frieda nodded and went upstairs. How on earth does Otis know this? she wondered. She checked Greene’s room again. It was as she had left it. Pillows. She opened the closed bathroom door, forgoing her usual courteous knock that allowed a man using the facilities to call out his room number rather than have her walk in on him. The light was off. She flipped it on. Willis lay on the floor, his blue and white striped bathrobe raised, exposing his buttocks.

Blood dripped from his nose and ear. His face was scraped and bruised. More blood was smeared on his buttocks. As quiet as it was in the building at night, Frieda had heard nothing. She checked the toilet stalls and shower. Except for Willis and herself, the bathroom was empty. Moving around so she faced the open door, she felt Willis’s neck for a pulse, getting her fingers bloody in the process. Thank goodness, he was alive. She pulled a sock from his mouth. No wonder he didn’t make noise. Greene must have cornered Willis, stuffed the sock in his mouth, and pounded him until he went unconscious.

Frieda stifled the urge to hunt for Greene. Alone she would be no match for him, and she didn’t want Otis and the others to have to come to her rescue. She was on the phone with Lieutenant Fuller when she heard the outside door open and close quietly. Thinking that Greene must be leaving the house, she was startled when Hendricks came into the office.

“Greene has beaten Willis up and is hiding somewhere,” Frieda said softly. “Unless he took off while I was upstairs.”

“He didn’t,” Otis said, standing in the office doorway. “He ain’t come down.”

“Okay then. Unless he went out a window, he’s upstairs someplace,” Frieda said. “Shall we look? You go one way, and I’ll go the other?”

“Fine,” Hendricks said. “I’ll take the back stairs. Turn on all the lights you come to.” He stepped down to the front door and turned on the entry light.

Frieda got the TV room and hall lights. She crept quietly up the stairs, clutching her flashlight, wishing for the first time that it were bigger and heavier. At the top she turned on the stairway lights and then flipped the hall switch. The fights came on, went out, and instantly came on again. Hendricks must have flipped the switch at his end the same time she did. She looked both ways and stepped into the hall. She saw only Hendricks. He motioned that she should open doors and turn on lights in every room. She threw a door open, reached around the jamb to turn on the light, and moved on to the next room, to those at the end of the hallway, then down the opposite side. She saw Hendricks stop in the bathroom doorway for a minute and look in at Willis. At Willis’s room Frieda motioned for Hendricks to join her. She heard the lieutenant come in downstairs with at least one other officer, judging from the noise they made.

Frieda stood against the wall on one side of Willis’s door, Hendricks on the other side. Hendricks threw open the door and flipped the light switch. Greene burst out of the room toward the stairway, stopping short when he saw the lieutenant coming up. He spun around to go the other way. Hendricks moved into his path. Greene tried to push past, and the two men struggled. Greene threw a punch and broke away, sprinting toward the far stairway.

John was standing in the hall outside his room. Otis stood in the open doorway that led to the stairs. Greene charged toward Otis and bounced back in surprise, cursing Otis, who leaned against two mop handles, holding them crossways against the door jamb at the level of his buttocks. Greene hadn’t seen them, and they had halted his forward movement without breaking.

Greene raised his fist to throw a punch at the grinning Otis, but John slid an arm around his neck and pulled him backwards, off balance. The lieutenant and the officers moved in with handcuffs and hustled Greene away.

Hendricks looked at Otis and John. “First time I ever saw cons helping the law bust another con,” he said.

“We swat flies,” Otis said, “no matter who they bitin’. This be for Willis.”

“Thanks a lot, guys,” Frieda said. “Hey, pretty clever, Otis.” She indicated the mop handles he was holding.

The ambulance attendants arrived and examined Willis. As they prepared to turn him to lift him onto the stretcher, Frieda said urgently, “Wait. Before you turn him, please see if there’s any foreign object inside that might damage him when he’s moved.”

They gave her a look that made her feel dirty.

“Please,” she said again. “The one who did this might want to sodomize Willis but isn’t likely to do it in the usual way.”

While she was talking, an attendant put on surgical gloves and examined Willis’s rectum. He carefully removed a wooden dowel about twelve inches long. He sealed it inside a plastic bag.

“Oh, poor Willis,” Frieda whispered.

“Thanks, man,” Hendricks said.

The attendants lifted Willis onto the stretcher and slipped soft cuffs around his ankles and wrists. “Procedure,” they said, seeing the anger on Otis’s and John’s faces.

Frieda and Hendricks nodded and followed the men downstairs.

“Poor Willis,” Frieda said again when the ambulance had gone.

“He deserves a medal,” Hendricks said, “for getting Greene out of here. I’ll get him a Certificate of Appreciation. A membership in the dragonslayers’ club. He’ll like that.”

“Your eye is getting colorful, Don.” Frieda took a wad of paper towels and wet them with cold water. “How long do you think our good fortune will last?” she asked. “Oh my gosh! You have to give your reporter the story now.”

“All hell should break loose.”

“We’ll probably all get canned,” Frieda said.

“Then the Inlet would have another good story.” Hendricks picked up the phone and dialed an outside number. “Austin,” he mouthed.

“Sorry to wake you so early, lieutenant,” he said into the phone, and went on to tell the lieutenant the final chapter of the Greene/Willis story. When he hung up the phone, he said, “Lieutenant’s buying us breakfast.”

Ray arrived at seven o’clock, and Frieda held the office keys aloft, jingling them joyfully. “He’s gone,” she said. “It’s in the log, and I’m going to hit the sack.” She grabbed her backpack and departed.

In the parking lot Hendricks reminded her, “Breakfast at Lenny’s.”

“Oh yeah.” Frieda scrubbed her hand over her face to force her eyes and brain to keep working. “Not long, though. I have to be back here at three.”

Lieutenant Austin was waiting outside the restaurant when Frieda and Hendricks pulled up. “The warden will be joining us,” he said. “Go on in.”

“Good thing that reporter didn’t answer his phone,” Hendricks said as they slid into a booth. “I was going to invite him to breakfast, being as our unhealthy situation has done exploded.”

When their breakfast arrived, Frieda said to the warden, “Sir, I just worked a double and have to be back at three for another double, so pardon me for being blunt but I need to know why we’ve had to suffer Greene’s threats for the last two months?”

“I’m sorry, Ms. Ferguson,” the warden said. “I learned about the situation only this morning when Lieutenant Austin called me. He told me it was Captain Lundquist’s order to keep Greene in Unit Five. When I questioned Mr. Lundquist, he explained that Greene is a boxer. Lundquist is sponsoring him in a tournament coming up. He didn’t want to take a chance that Greene might be shipped out of here.”

The captain! Frieda closed her eyes, but tears squeezed past her lashes. She was so tired. “Greene is a boxer?” she whispered, her voice quivering. “With fists considered by law to be deadly weapons. Poor Willis.”

She wondered why Greene hadn’t bragged about being a boxer. She wondered how he could be a successful boxer anyway when he was such a loose cannon.

“Willis, yes,” the warden said. “I need to stop at the hospital and check his condition. I was thinking how fortunate we are that you, Ms. Ferguson, and the other sergeants haven’t been hurt. Greene should never have been in minimum security. I’ve offered Mr. Lundquist an opportunity to resign.”

“Thank you, sir,” Frieda said and got to her feet. “Please excuse me now, I really do have to sleep. See you at three, lieutenant, at eleven, Don.”

She picked up her bag and hurried out to her car.