“But right now, I must go. You think about what I’ve said and maybe tomorrow we’ll have another little chat.”
The door opened a second time. Somebody else had come into the room. The woman stood up.
“Mr Banes has come to see you now,” she explained. “I wish I could stay with you and keep him away. But until you’re ready for me, until you’re mine, I can’t. I’m so sorry, my dear. But I will come back. I promise.”
The bald man sat down in her place. Scott squeezed his eyes shut and groaned, deep inside himself.
He heard the door close softly and the two of them were left alone.
SILENT CREEK
Jamie had been in court once before so there were no surprises here: not the smallness of the room, the few people in it, the speed at which everything took place. There were two tables facing the judge, and a middle-aged woman dressed in black sat between the flag of Nevada and the Stars and Stripes. Jamie was at one table with his lawyer. His probation officer and a woman from the district attorney’s office were at the other. A clerk took notes and a security man stood by with a seen-it-all-before look on his face. There were two rows of chairs at the back of the room. No press or public were allowed into a juvenile court but Alicia was sitting there on her own, an anxious look on her face. She had come as a family friend.
Jamie’s hands and feet were shackled. That had alarmed him because it hadn’t happened the last time he had been taken into custody. But this time the offence was more serious. He had been arrested, supposedly, for selling drugs at school – a crime which would guarantee him jail time. It was all fake, of course. The probation officer and the lawyer were both part of the set-up, somehow connected to John Trelawny, who had arranged the whole thing. They had even given Jamie a false name – Jeremy Rabb: case number J83157. Somehow they had slotted him into the Nevada juvenile justice system and, as far as Jamie knew, the judge was the only person in the room who didn’t know what was really going on.
It was all fake – and yet the plastic strips binding his wrists and the chains around his ankles were horribly real. Free movement, the most basic of all human rights, had been taken from him. He felt the horror of having his identity stripped away, of belonging to a system that would now do with him as it pleased. Worse still, he remembered what the senator, John Trelawny, had told Alicia on the telephone.
“I can get him in, Alicia, but there’s something you have to appreciate: I can’t get him out again, not once he’s been sent to Silent Creek. Too many people would know. What we’re doing here is necessary and I can justify it in my own mind, but it’s borderline illegal. Do you understand what I’m saying? Once Jamie’s inside the system, I cannot intervene.”
Alicia had explained it to Jamie, who understood. The senator was already sticking his neck out for him and couldn’t risk a scandal if it all went wrong. At the same time, Jamie wasn’t too concerned. He had his power and he could use it to walk out of prison at any time. He thought about Scott. Finding his brother was all that mattered to him and there was no other way. It was only now, unable to separate his hands, unable to walk without shuffling, that he had second thoughts. He was about to be sentenced, processed, swallowed up. When that happened, he would be completely on his own.
His hair had been cut short and he had been given a pair of thick black plastic glasses to wear. He was surprised how much his appearance had changed. The danger was that anyone who had met Scott would recognize him as an almost identical twin, but there seemed little chance of that now. Looking in the mirror, he could barely recognize himself.
“…the sentence set down by this court is twelve months in a detention facility…” The judge was talking. Jamie had missed the first part of what she was saying. She turned to the probation officer. “I’ve looked through the case files and I think Summit View would be appropriate.”
Jamie had heard of Summit View. It was a Youth Correctional Centre on the edge of Las Vegas. But the probation officer was shaking his head. “With respect, your honour, I was going to recommend Silent Creek.”
The judge was surprised. “It’s pretty tough out there,” she remarked. “The boy is only fourteen and this is a first offence.”
“Yes, your honour. But he was selling crystal meth to kids as young as twelve. Some of them are now in rehab programmes, out of school. Rabb has shown no remorse. In fact, he’s been pretty pleased with himself.”
Rabb. Jamie had to remind himself that they were talking about him.
The judge thought for a moment, then nodded. “Very well. It’ll be a hard lesson, but maybe that’s what he needs.” There was a file in front of her. She closed it. “Twelve months in Silent Creek.”
The security guard stepped forward and Jamie was led out through a side door, his feet moving only inches at a time. The last thing he saw was Alicia watching him. Her eyes were wide and full of dread.
They took him by minibus, still shackled, with a bottle of water wedged between his knees. He was going to need it. The temperature would rise quickly as soon as the sun rose and they planned to drive all night. There was nobody else on the bus: just the driver – an old, weather-beaten man – and a guard who had briefly checked Jamie’s wrist and ankle restraints and then ignored him.
It had been eight o’clock in the evening when they left. Jamie had watched the darkness fall before he had nodded off, sitting uncomfortably upright, asleep but still aware of the shuddering movement of the bus. When he opened his eyes, the light dazzled him. They had left the highway and were following a track, kicking up a cloud of dust all around them. Jamie could see only sand and scrubland with a few Jericho trees dotted around the landscape. A mountain range, burned red by the sun, stretched out across the horizon.
Then the road dipped. They had come to a miniature valley. And now he saw his new home, Silent Creek. The two words were written on a sign – unnecessarily. The inmates surely knew where they were and there was nobody else to read it for miles around. Despite everything, Jamie felt a shiver of excitement. He had seen the sign before – inside the head of Colton Banes. Scott was here, somewhere inside this complex. Jamie felt sure of it. He would find his brother and the two of them would bust out. The nightmare was almost over.
A long rectangular compound stood in front of him. The buildings were low-rise but they were surrounded by a razor-wire fence at least ten metres high. There were two satellite dishes pointing up towards the sky and on the other side Jamie saw a playing field with two goals – but of course there was no grass, not in this heat. The surface was yellow-grey sand. At the far end of the pitch, there was a wall – like all the other buildings, made out of cinder blocks and topped with more razor wire. As they bounced down towards the main gate, Jamie caught a glimpse of more buildings on the other side of the wall but realized he would be unable to see them again without the advantage of height. For some reason, Silent Creek had been divided into two: one third on one side, two thirds on the other.
The minibus passed between a number of outlying houses. These must be where the guards and maintenance staff lived. Jamie was annoyed with himself. He had only woken up at the last minute and he had no idea how near they were to any town or community. Scott would have been better prepared. But it was too late to worry about that now. They had stopped in front of the gate. This was the entrance to the prison, known as the sallyport. There was a buzz and the gate slid open electronically, allowing them into a narrow corridor between two lines of razor wire. The minibus jolted forward and stopped in front of a second gate. This only opened when the first one had closed. Now, at last, they were inside the prison. Jamie looked around him, searching for security cameras. There were no guard towers. Nor was there anybody in sight.
The minibus stopped one last time. The door hissed open.
“All right! Out!” They were the only words the guard had spoken since they had left.
Jamie shuffled out of his seat, along the aisle and out of the door. At once the heat hit him. It
was like being physically battered. He was forced to squeeze his eyes shut, then opened them more carefully, fighting against the glare. He was already sweating. The temperature had to be in the nineties. Even the air was scorched. He looked around. The sun had sucked the colour out of almost everything. The silver of the fence, the grey sand, the ash-coloured cinder blocks – they all seemed to seep into each other like an over-exposed photograph. An electric generator and a fuel tank stood next to each other, locked in a cage. They were bright yellow. There was nothing else to catch the eye.
“This way!”
The guard led him to a door set in a wall, which opened as they approached. Jamie noticed a camera, mounted high above. It swivelled to follow him when he moved. The door led into a large, shabby room with a second officer sitting behind a desk with a computer. There were a couple of holding cells, some chairs – none of them matching – and a shower with a plastic curtain drawn half across. There were no windows. The room was lit by strip lighting. Mercifully, after the furnace of the courtyard, it was air-conditioned.
“Sit down!” It was the second guard who had spoken. He was casually dressed in jeans and a short-sleeved shirt. Jamie saw that he carried no weapon. He was a man in his forties, with black hair tied behind his neck. He obviously had Native American blood and Jamie wondered if that might make him more sympathetic. But his manner was brisk and formal.
“My name is Joe Feather,” the man said. “But you call me Mr Feather or sir. I’m the Intake Officer and I’m going to process you and then show you into Orientation. Do you understand?”
Jamie nodded.
“You’re going to find it tough here. You’ve had a spell in juvie – is that right?”
“Yeah.”
“Well then you know the basics. Keep your head down. Do as you’re told. It’ll make it easier on you.” He nodded at the other guard. “You can take off the shackles.”
Jamie’s hands and feet were unfastened and gratefully he moved his legs apart. There were red marks across his wrists and he rubbed them. In the next twenty minutes, his details were entered into the computer … or at least, the details of Jeremy Rabb, the boy he was supposed to be. He had been up half the previous night with Alicia, memorizing them before he had been handed over to the police.
“Go into the shower and strip,” the Intake Officer told him. “I want all your clothes, including your shorts. You have any piercings?”
Jamie shook his head.
“OK. I’ll pass you your new kit…”
Jamie went into the shower and drew the curtain. But it seemed he wasn’t going to be given any privacy. The side wall of the shower contained a window looking into a storeroom and, as Jamie stood under the running water, he was aware of Joe Feather examining him from the other side. Jamie had been through strip searches when he was in juvenile hall, but even so he was embarrassed and turned away. That was when the officer saw the tattoo on his shoulder.
“Mr Rabb…” Joe Feather spoke the words softly. “Turn off the shower.”
Jamie did as he was told. He stood with drops of water trickling down his shoulders and back.
“Where did you get that tattoo?” the Intake Officer demanded.
“I’ve always had it. It was done when I was born.”
“You have a brother?”
Jamie froze. Had he been recognized already? “I don’t have a brother,” he said.
“No brother?”
“No, sir.”
Joe Feather handed him a bundle of prison-issue clothes. It fitted through a slot beneath the window. “Put these on,” he said. “I’ll take you in.”
Jamie was the ninety-sixth boy to arrive at Silent Creek. The prison could hold one hundred in total with ten full-time guards – or supervisors, as they called themselves – to watch over them. There were four living units – North, South, East and West – and life was arranged so that the inmates were kept apart as much as possible. That way, rival gang members barely saw each other and never spoke. Each unit ate at a different time – there were four sittings for every meal – and there were four exercise times in the prison gym. The age range went from thirteen to eighteen.
There were rules for everything. The boys had to walk with their hands clasped behind their backs. They weren’t allowed to talk while they moved and they couldn’t go anywhere, not even the toilet, without adult supervision. They were watched constantly, either by supervisors or security cameras. They were patted down after every meal and if a single plastic fork went missing, they were all strip-searched. There were six hours of school every morning, two hours of recreation (in the gym – it was too hot outside) and two hours of TV. Only sport was allowed – never movies or news. The prison uniform consisted of blue tracksuit trousers, grey T-shirts and trainers. All the colours had been chosen carefully. Nothing was black or bright red. Those were gang colours and might be enough to provoke a fight.
Life at the prison was not brutal, but it was boring. There were library books for the boys who could read, but otherwise every day was the same, the hours measured out with deadly precision, stretching out endlessly in the desert sun. There was solitary confinement or loss of privileges for anyone who stepped out of line and even an untied shoelace could bring instant punishment if the supervisors were in a bad mood.
And there was the medicine wing. Boys who were violent or unco-operative went to see the doctor in a small compound set right against the cinder-block wall. They were given pills and when they came back they were quiet and empty-eyed. One way or another, the prison would control you. The boys accepted that. They didn’t even hate Silent Creek. They simply suffered it as if it were a long illness that had happened to them and that wasn’t their fault.
It didn’t take Jamie long to find out what he needed to know. None of the other boys had met Scott. There was no record of his ever having been here. But he knew that what he had so far seen of Silent Creek was only half the story. There were two parts to the prison: he had seen that much for himself when he arrived on the bus. There was a whole area of the prison, on the other side of the wall, which stood quite alone. Nobody communicated with it. It had its own gymnasium, its own classrooms, kitchens and cells, as if it were a slightly smaller reflection of the main compound. And there were rumours.
On the other side of the wall. That, it was said, was where the specials were kept.
“They’re the real hard acts. The killers. The psychos.”
“They’re sick. That’s what I heard. They’ve got something wrong with their heads.”
“Yeah. They’re vegetables. Cretins. They just sit in their cells and stare at the walls…”
Jamie was having lunch with four other boys. The chair he was sitting on was made of metal, welded into the table, which was in turn bolted to the floor. The canteen was a small, square room with bare white walls. No decoration was allowed anywhere in Silent Creek, not even in the cells. The food wasn’t too bad though – even if it was served up in a compartmentalized plastic tray. Jamie had been surprised by most of the boys he had met. Nobody had given him a hard time – in fact they’d been glad to see a new face. Perhaps his experience at juvenile hall had helped. From the start he was one of them. So far, he hadn’t needed to use his false name. The other boys at the table called him Indian. He knew them as Green Eyes, Baltimore, DV and Tunes.
“The story I heard is that nobody wants them,” DV said. He was seventeen, Latino, arrested following a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas. The boys weren’t meant to ask one another about their crimes but of course they did. DV was a member of the Playboy Gansta Crips. He had tattoos on both arms and planned to go back to the gang as soon as he got out. He had never known his father and his mother ignored him. The gang was the only family he had. “They got no parents,” he went on, “so now they’re using them for experiments. Testing stuff on them. That sort of thing.”
“How many of them are there?” Jamie asked.
“I heard twenty,” Green Eyes said. Ja
mie wasn’t sure how he’d got his nickname. He was fifteen years old, arrested for possession of a deadly weapon – meaning a gun. His eyes were blue.
“There are fifty at least,” Tunes growled. He was the youngest boy in the prison, barely fourteen. He turned to Jamie and lowered his voice. “You don’t want to ask too many questions about them, Indian. Not unless you want to join them.”
Jamie wondered where all these rumours began. But that was the thing about prisons. There were never any secrets. Somehow the whispers would travel from cell to cell and you had as much chance of keeping them out as you had of stopping the desert breeze.
As usual, they were being supervised while they ate. This was one of the few times when they were allowed to speak freely, but they still couldn’t even stand up without asking permission first. This was what had most struck Jamie about life at Silent Creek. They were no longer people. They were objects. At no point in the day could they do anything for themselves. The man watching them was the most senior – and the toughest – supervisor. He was a bulky, round-shouldered man with thinning hair and a moustache. His name was Max Koring. If anyone was looking for trouble, it would be him. He seemed to enjoy humiliating the inmates, carrying out strip searches for no reason at all, taking away a month’s privileges simply because it amused him.
Baltimore leant across the table. He had been named after the city where he’d been born. He was a tall, handsome black boy who never spoke about the crime that had brought him here. “You want to know about the other side, you need to talk to Koring,” he whispered. “He works both sides of the wall.”
“How do you know?” Jamie asked.
“I’ve seen him come in through the medicine wing.”