Rusty Nail

“Lieutenant Daniels, welcome to our facility. We’ll need to check your weapon, of course.”

My.38 was locked away, and Ms. Pedersen had me sign in before leading me inside. I knew a little something about the prison. It was the first all-female penal institution in America, having opened in the 1870s. High-medium security, dorm living rather than individual cells.

“We’re currently over capacity, with 388 inmates. Most of the latest are juvenile offenders. We just received an eighth grader who beat her mother to death with a baseball bat. Tried as an adult and sent here. Thirteen years old.”

The hall we walked down didn’t have any doors – just concrete blocks painted gray and a white tile floor that met Ms. Pedersen’s square-heeled shoes with a horselike clip-clop.

“Tell me about Lorna.”

“Admitted twelve years ago. She cut off another woman’s breasts. Lots of trouble, for the first few years. Fighting. Attacking guards. Starting fires. She’s settled down some recently, since turning sixty. Still a strong woman, though. Don’t underestimate her.”

“Any visitors lately?”

“I don’t think so. I can check the records.”

“If you could.”

She led me through some heavy steel doors and into the first dormitory. It resembled a military barracks, beds alternating with metal lockers. All were empty.

“Breakfast just began in the mess hall. We’ll catch her as she’s coming out. Need a private room, or can you talk in the yard?”

“A room.”

“I can move some chairs into isolation, post a guard on the door for you.”

“If you could take her there first.”

“Of course. You can wait in my office.”

“Can I read her file?”

“I’ve already pulled it for you.”

Ms. Pedersen took me through more locked doors, another lonely hall, and into a small room with a cluttered desk. An American flag hung limply on a pole in the corner, and a signed picture of a former president adorned the wall. I sat in a wooden chair, the red vinyl cushion cracked and hard.

She brought me the Lorna Hunt Ellison file, and I gave it a quick go-through. Lorna had been born in Indiana, sixty-two years prior. She’d been arrested over a dozen times, mostly violent offenses, and previously served a two-year stint in Rockville Correctional Facility for setting fire to a liquor store.

That was the litmus test for blue-collar crime: liquor store burning.

A psych eval spun a story of antisocial personality disorder, passive-aggressive disorder, impulse disorder, and sadistic tendencies. A recent update added bipolar to the diagnosis. Lorna took a daily cocktail of antipsychotic medication, the dosage high enough to cause stupor in a gorilla. Her IQ was in no danger of reaching the triple digits.

Hardly any mention of her son, Caleb, and no mention at all of Bud Kork.

I wondered if the Feebies were wrong, and Lorna had nothing to do with Kork. Wouldn’t be the first time.

Ms. Pedersen came back and told me Lorna was ready. “She’s not in a pleasant mood this morning. Just warning you.”

“Did you check her visitor list?”

“Yes. Not a single visitor since her incarceration.”

“Popular lady. Do you think I might grab a bagel or something? I left early and missed breakfast.”

“Sure. Let’s swing by the mess.”

I wasn’t really hungry. I wanted Lorna to stew for a while.

We went through the kitchen entrance, and I had two slices of toast with butter while standing next to two women who were peeling an impossibly large pile of potatoes. They didn’t talk to me, I didn’t talk to them.

Ms. Pedersen remained silent during my meal; not hurried, but not noticeably pleased to have to watch me eat. After a good ten minutes had passed, I asked to be taken to Lorna.

The isolation area was clean, brightly lit. The doors were solid metal, with a sliding panel covering the eyehole slot. A male guard with a pot belly sat outside the door.

“Half an hour long enough?” Ms. Pedersen asked.

I nodded. “It should be.”

“I promised Lorna extra dessert if she cooperates with you. Years ago, she stabbed another inmate with a fork to get her cobbler.”

“Thanks.”

“We’ve heard about the corpses at the Kork house, of course. Terrible.”

“Does Lorna know about it?”

“Everyone knows about it. See you in a half.”

Ms. Pedersen walked off, her footsteps echoing after her.

The guard stood up and offered a lazy smile. “If she gets frisky, just pound on the door or yell or something. Then I’ll come in and save you.”

Save me? I figured it would have taken me all of four seconds to blind him, break both of his knees, and leave him singing castrato. But since he had the key, I kept that to myself. He opened the cell door.

The smell hit me first, the pungent reek of old body odor. I crinkled my nose and stepped inside. The door clanged shut behind me.

The room was small, perhaps fifteen feet by fifteen, with stark white walls and harsh fluorescent lighting recessed into the ceiling. A stainless steel toilet jutted from the corner, next to a one-valve sink that resembled a drinking fountain.

Lorna Hunt Ellison sat in a lightweight plastic chair, facing me. Her hair was white and Einstein wild, like she’d just French-kissed an electric outlet. Her face looked worn, eroded, but the eyes sparkled like oily blue marbles.

She wore jeans, perhaps a size sixteen, her belly hanging over the waistband. Her shirt was light blue, big enough to be a painter’s smock. Armpit stains spread down her sides, past her ribs, her small breasts hidden in the folds of the fabric.

“Good morning, Lorna. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

“Pig.” Her voice came out cracked and squeaky. A witch’s voice.

I sat in the second chair, facing her, our knees almost touching. Lorna scooted her chair backward.

“Got nothing to say to you, pig.”

Charm to match her beauty.

“I just saw Bud. He says hello.”

She hocked up something from deep in her lungs and spat it onto the floor. “He’s not saying dick. He’s unconscious.”

“That’s what the papers say. The truth is, he’s talking up a storm. He’s telling us all kinds of things. Things about you. About your victims.”

Lorna squinted, her oily eyes focusing.

“I didn’t kill none of those folks. You can’t prove nothing.”

I kept quiet. We both knew she had a hand in the killings. But that wasn’t why I came.

The silence stretched. Lorna scratched an armpit and left her hand tucked beneath it. She broke first.

“What’s your name, pig?”

“Lieutenant Daniels. And if you call me a pig again, Grandma, I’m going to grab you by your chicken neck and make you lick the toilet clean.”

Lorna cackled, her eyes crinkling in amusement. “Daniels! I know you! You the one that got little Charles.”

“You did a good job raising that one. He was a real piece of work.”

“Charles was already ruined, ’fore I moved in. Bud thought he was the devil hisself.”

“Is that what you thought?”

She shrugged. “Boy had some problems.”

Which might have been the understatement of the century.

“How about your boy? Caleb? Did he have problems?”

“Caleb was a good boy. Listened to his mama.”

“Where’s Caleb now?”

She didn’t answer, but her eyes stayed on mine. I didn’t see any intelligence there, but I saw cu

“Did you once have red hair?” I asked.

“No. Used to be brown. Been white since my forties.”

“So Caleb got his red hair from his father?”

“Damn Irish deadbeat. Wasn’t worth his weight in shit.”

“Where’s his father now?”

She smiled, like a naughty child caught in a lie. “Caleb didn’t like his daddy much.”

“Are you telling me Caleb killed his father?”

“I’m not telling you nothing…” Her lips were about to form the word pig, but she read my expression and instead said, “Lieutenant.”