No way out

Chapter Twenty-two

“Why do they call it the Farm?” Kate asked.

We were eastbound on Blue Parkway in her rented Chevy Malibu approaching LC’s Bar-B-Q.

“Turn here,” I told her, pointing to a street called Sni-A-Bar that fed onto Blue Parkway, one side of the triangle framing LC’s. “Before it was the municipal jail it was a farm, a two thousand-acre hog farm. The city bought it, sold the hogs, and built the jail. It opened in 1972. There are two hundred acres inside the fence. Now the city is talking about shutting it down to save money and moving the inmates to the county jail.”

“Ethan told me that Jimmy should be in the county jail but they didn’t have room for him.”

“That’s today. Long term, the city says it’ll be cheaper to pay the county to house their inmates than to keep the jail open. The county wants the money and is talking about building a new jail.”

“Which is less lousy, the Farm or the county jail?”

“Security isn’t as tight on the Farm. There are two dormitories, one for women and one for men. Unless they put you in an isolation cell for protection or discipline, you do your time on an open floor, like an old hospital ward with rows of beds, only the beds are made of steel and the mattresses are thin enough you can use them to floss your teeth.”

“No stars from Zagat?”

“Not when the majority of inmates have some kind of mental illness and even more of them have drug and alcohol problems. Plus, most of them are homeless, which means they’re happy to have a roof over their heads and that they aren’t likely to be violent. The food sucks, but the body odor quotient makes you forget how bad the food smells.”

“Can’t wait. What was Jimmy like when you and Lucy saw him?”

“Like a guy who spent all day practicing his poker face. Lucy asked the questions, but she didn’t get any answers.”

“What did he say? What was he like?”

“He didn’t say much. Just listened but acted like he didn’t hear a word she said. Only time he showed any reaction was when Lucy asked him why he’d make his wife suffer, not telling her what happened to their kids.”

“What did he say?”

“Said, ‘Ask the bitch.’ Kind of smiled when he said it.”

“Charming. Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Ask the bitch?”

I laughed. “Peggy doesn’t strike me like that, though you never know what someone’s really like until you’re married to them. She says he’s doing it out of spite. Says he’s a mean prick. Says he accused her of cheating on him and smacked her around. She got a restraining order against him a month before he was arrested. He couldn’t see the kids except with a court-appointed social worker.”

“What do you know about the kids?”

“Evan is six, and Cara is eight. They look like their mother.”

“That’s it? That’s all you know?”

“They’re little kids, they’re missing, and good things don’t happen to little kids when they go missing. That’s all I need to know.”

“Well, it’s not all I need to know.”

She followed Sni-A-Bar, turning onto Ozark Road, continuing until we came to the entrance to the Farm. A two-story chain-link fence topped with razor wire and curved inward like a baseball backstop surrounded the complex of one-story buildings.

“Ethan told me he arranged for us to meet Jimmy in the Women’s Recreation Area, wherever that is,” Kate said.

We announced our presence to an intercom and a camera at the gate and waited for an unseen hand to push a button, gears groaning as the gate slid open. A guard met us inside the administrative building and searched Kate’s shoulder bag. A woman wearing a gray pantsuit, her blond hair, sparkling eyes, and perky smile contrasting with the dreary surroundings, introduced herself as Superintendent Annette Fibuch, confessed her love of corrections, told us that the guards were corrections officers, not guards, and escorted us to the Women’s Dormitory, telling us that’s where we’d find the Women’s Recreation Area.

Lucy and I had met with Jimmy Martin in the visitor’s area, talking to him through a phone, separated by a bulletproof glass barrier, a setting that nurtured evasion and invited denial. The Women’s Recreation Area could have passed for a community college rec room; it was the one space I’d seen at the Farm where inmates could feel at ease and Kate might learn something from Jimmy.

It was a long, rectangular room, its cinder block walls painted yellow with red trim on three sides, the pattern reversed on the exterior wall, the upper third of which was a bank of windows. Sunlight poured into a carpeted room furnished with a Ping-Pong table, a game table, a chalkboard, and a quartet of soft, black club chairs clustered together in a tight square.

“An officer will bring Jimmy here in a few minutes,” Superintendent Fibuch said. “He’ll wait outside the room if you need him. Jimmy isn’t thrilled with the company he’s keeping, but I don’t think he’ll cause any trouble. Feel free to stop by my office on your way out if you need anything else.”

“She seems more like a concierge than a jail superintendent,” I said, after she left.

“Ethan says she takes good care of him because he worked with her on getting the inmates decent mental health care. He says a lot of them used to live in state mental health facilities but those days are over, thanks to budget cutbacks. Now, this is their ticket to the help they need.”

“That Ethan is something else. One step removed from sainthood.”

“Do you have a good reason to dislike him, or are you just oozing resentment because he hired me instead of you?”

“I don’t like surprises and setups.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning he should have told Lucy you were involved in this case.”

“Why? Because you and I used to be together?”

I felt the heat rise in my neck. “Yeah. That’s right.”

“So you naturally assumed that he knew about us.”

“I assumed you told him if he didn’t know already.”

“Why would I tell him, and why would you think he would know if I didn’t tell him? You and I didn’t make the society page, and I didn’t put my relationship status on Facebook. Honestly, Jack, no one cares what happened between us.”

“I care.”

The words tripped out as unexpected and involuntary as the stutter that accompanied them, a guilt-laden tremor rippling through my torso for punctuation. Joy was dying, and I was playing wounded Romeo.

Kate caught her breath, her face coloring as her mouth hardened.

“So you do.”

The door opened, the officer, a towering black man, led Jimmy Martin into the room, cupping Jimmy’s elbow in his massive hand. He had a good six inches and fifty pounds on Jimmy, his gray uniform and dark skin a sharp contrast to Jimmy’s orange jumpsuit and pasty complexion.

Jimmy was nondescript, the way so many people are, his features even and bland. Comb his brown hair back, dress him in a blue suit and he could have been a bank vice president though he looked just as at home wearing the latest in jailhouse fashion. His clothes outlined him, but he filled in the empty spaces when he opened his mouth.

“You be nice to these people, Jimmy,” the officer said.

Jimmy shook off the officer’s touch, his flat expression in place. “I don’t need you to tell me shit, nigger.”

The officer cuffed him on the back of the head. “Mind your manners, Jimmy. You don’t want these people getting the wrong idea about you. And, don’t forget, you and me got a long walk back to the men’s dorm. Lot of places along the way a man can slip and fall, especially the sorry shape this place is in.” The officer looked at us, smiling. “Don’t worry about me and Jimmy. We got an understanding. I’ll be right outside if you folks need anything.”

Kate waited for the officer to leave before walking toward Jimmy, her hand extended, Jimmy’s red, puffy eyes darting from her to me and back to her, his arms at his side, clenching his fists. She waited, her hand outstretched, Jimmy studying it like it was a hot poker before giving in and slowly raising his. Kate took hold, not letting go.

“Jimmy, I’m Kate Scranton. Thank you for agreeing to talk to me. Let’s sit down and figure out how I can help you.”