The Death Sculptor

Sixty

The room was a bland, ten-paces-by-six squared box – no windows, one heavy door. There was nothing there but a metal table bolted to the concrete floor, two plastic chairs that would have looked more at home on a patio, and the strong smell of thick bleach. Smell aside, the space reminded Alice of the interrogation rooms she’d seen at the PAB, minus the big two-way mirror mounted on one wall.

A full minute went by before Healy opened the door again. He was accompanied by a man half his size and twice his age. The little white hair he had left on his head was cropped short and neat. His face carried deep, sad wrinkles, testimony to a life spent mostly behind bars. Reading glasses balanced at the tip of a nose that had been broken several times. His eyes looked as though they had once carried a hard, mean look, but now were tired and resigned. He was wearing an inmate’s orange jumpsuit.

‘Our librarian called in sick today. This is Jay Devlin, our assistant librarian,’ Healy announced. ‘Has been so for nineteen years. He knows everything there is to know about this library. If he can’t help you find what you need in here, no one can.’

Devlin nodded politely but refrained from shaking Alice’s hand. He kept his arms by his side and his gaze low.

Healy turned and faced Devlin. ‘If she needs to go to the library floor, call Officer Toledo to escort her, you hear? I don’t want her out there by herself.’

‘No problem, boss.’ Devlin’s voice was a notch louder than a whisper.

‘If you need to use the john,’ Healy addressed Alice again, ‘Officer Toledo will accompany you and make sure it’s empty before you enter it. We don’t have women’s facilities in here, only in the visitors’ block. When you’re done down here, Jay will call up and I’ll come and get you.’

‘Yes, boss,’ she replied with a nod, almost giving him a salute.

Healy’s eyes narrowed and he gave her a look that could sour milk. ‘I hope you find our library to your liking,’ he finally said before exiting the room and allowing the door to slam behind him.

‘He’s not a man for jokes, is he?’ Alice said.

‘No, ma’am,’ Devlin replied, his posture timid. ‘Guards here don’t really care for jokes unless they involve us prisoners.’

‘I’m Alice.’ She offered her hand.

‘I’m Jay, ma’am.’ Again, he refrained from shaking it.

Alice took a step back. ‘What I need is quite simple. I just need a list of all the books an ex-inmate checked out from this library.’

‘All right.’ Devlin nodded, his gaze now moving back to her face. ‘That should be easy enough. Do you have the inmate’s number?’

‘I’ve got his name.’

‘No problem, we can work from that. What’s the name?’

‘Ken Sands.’

Devlin’s eyes fluttered for an instant.

‘I take it you know him.’

Devlin nodded and quickly ran a hand from his mouth to his chin twice. ‘I know every inmate that comes in here, ma’am. I’ve been here long enough. Since this library opened, really. Every different prison block here has an allocated day and time during the week when they can use the library. Not a good idea to mix inmates from different blocks, you know what I mean? But very few ever take advantage of what we have here. A pity, really. Ken, on the other hand, pretty much never missed an opportunity to sit and read. He loved his books. He loved studying. He visited this library more than any inmate I ever knew.’

‘That’s good. So we shouldn’t have much of a problem.’

‘Well, how long do you have, ma’am?’

Alice cocked a smile. ‘Did he read that much?’

‘He read a lot, but that’s not the problem. The problem is our system. It only started being updated and digitized at the beginning of the year. And that process is going real slow. Until its completion, we still have to use the old library-card system to catalogue our books. No computers.’ Devlin bobbed his head from side to side. ‘Which is a good thing for me. When the new system takes over, I’ll have to find something else to do. I’m not very good with them computers, ma’am.’

As part of the District Attorney’s office, Alice understood well why the digitization of prison libraries was moving at a snail’s pace. Everything the state’s government did was linked to a budget. That budget varied every year, and its allocation was supposedly directly related to prioritization. With so many reforms due to take place inside the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, the prisoners’-library-system automation, Alice guessed, was pretty low on that priority list.

‘We use a library card for each inmate,’ Devlin continued after a brief pause. ‘Every time they check a book out, the book’s catalogue number gets added to the inmate’s library card together with the checkout date. The inmate’s number gets added to the book’s catalogue card. No names are used.’

Alice’s eyes widened. ‘So you’re telling me that I’m gonna get Sands’s library card, and all it’ll have on it is a whole bunch of numbers, no book titles?’

‘That’s right. You’ll then have to cross-reference that number with the book card to find the title.’

‘But that’s a crazy system. It will take anyone forever to find anything.’

Devlin gave her a shy shrug. ‘Time is the one thing we all have to spare in here, ma’am. Ain’t no use doing nothing fast. You just end up with more time on your hands and nothing to do with it.’

Alice couldn’t argue with that. ‘OK.’ She glimpsed at her watch. ‘Let’s get to it then. Where are all the cards and book lists kept?’

‘In file cabinets behind the checkout counter, ma’am, on the library floor.’

‘Let’s call the guard then. If that’s the system you guys use, I can’t do anything from here.’