A defiant Abbie Elliot, proclaiming her innocence to The New York Times and vowing to prove it at her appeal.
“How did you let that happen?” the man asked.
“I cannot keep reporters away,” Boulez whispered into his cell phone. “And I cannot control what she says to them.”
“You’re the goddamn warden, Boulez. You control everything. So control her.”
Boulez looked at the photos on his ego wall, a shot of him receiving an award for distinguished service from the Minister of Justice and Liberty. He saw his reflection in the glass and looked away.
“We have tried,” he said. “She is…exceptionally resistant to persuasion.”
“‘Exceptionally resistant’?” The man scoffed. “Then be exceptionally persuasive.”
“I will…evaluate our methods. Perhaps—”
“Perhaps,” the man said, “there is an alternative to a confession. So that we’d never hear from Abbie Elliot again?”
Boulez paused a beat. The thought had crossed his mind, of course. “But now?” he said to the man. “After she just gave this…defiant statement to the press? It would be more than just a coincidence if something happened to her now. And a suicide would be impossible to believe.”
The man was quiet a moment. “She probably knows that,” he said. “That’s probably why she said those things to the reporter. To insulate herself.”
“Perhaps so,” Boulez conceded. “She is smart.”
“Then you’ll have to be smarter, Boulez, won’t you?”
Boulez exhaled slowly. “There are still two months remaining before her appeal.”
“I don’t have two months, Boulez. Which means you don’t, either. Get this done right away. I want that confession yesterday. And if you can’t do that, then take care of the problem the other way.”
The line went dead. Boulez pinched the bridge of his nose. Abbie hadn’t cracked yet, hadn’t confessed and dropped her appeal. And he was running out of time.
But surely he could think of something.
CHAPTER 76
“THE SUITE WAS like a square,” I said to Linette, as she sat on one of the beds in the infirmary. She had a laceration on her arm. The nurse, Leonore, had treated it and now I was wrapping it with a bandage. “Winnie and I were in the front room. Bryah and Serena stayed in the back room, by the balcony.”
“How long would it take?” Linette asked.
I thought for a moment. “Not long to get to Winnie’s and my room. That was right by the front door. Pull out some Kleenex that Winnie had used from the trash for her mucus. Grab one of my used Q-tips for the earwax. Pull hair out of our brushes. Find something with our fingerprints. Two, three minutes?” I estimated. “Then do the same in the other bedroom—Bryah and Serena’s bedroom. Then plant the evidence at the crime scene.”
“But why didn’t they get any DNA from Bryah? Serena, yes, but not Bryah?”
I shrugged. We could never figure why there was no evidence planted at the crime scene that implicated Bryah. The three of us, dead to rights; Bryah, nothing.
“Maybe…they only got to the first room,” Linette suggested. “Yours and Winnie’s. Maybe they were afraid to stay longer than that.”
I shrugged. That made some sense, of course. Whoever it was, not wanting to linger and be caught, might just pop into the first bedroom and then get out. But that logic had one obvious flaw. “That would explain why they had nothing from Bryah,” I agreed. “But then how did they have forensic evidence of Serena?”
Linette shook her head. She didn’t have an answer. Neither of us did.
The dimensions of the infirmary reminded me of my high school gym, except the ceilings were very low here. It was exceptionally bright—so bright that I had to squint every time I walked in. But I welcomed the contrast from the dreariness.
There were twenty-five beds on one side and a cage on the other side, where the prisoners waited to be seen. On one of the short sides of the rectangle was la pharmacie, the room with medical supplies and prescription drugs. On the other short side was the room where Linette and I were right now—a secure area, big enough for five patients, usually reserved for special cases, such as people with contagious maladies or those who posed security risks. If the room was otherwise vacant, as it was now, we used it for overflow.
Up in the corner of the room, a security camera monitored us. This room, with its wall of thick glass separating us from the main room, its privacy blinds, and a door that locked from the inside, could otherwise be pretty private if not for the surveillance camera. A fortress, actually. That thought drifted in and out of my mind.
“Abbie, I need ampicillin.” The nurse, Leonore, was in the main room, treating a prisoner with a bladder infection. She spoke passable English and liked to practice it on me. “Can you re—receive it for me?”
“I can retrieve it for you,” I said with a smile. She laughed at her mistake. She handed me the key to the pharmacy. This was, as a technical matter, strictly forbidden. Only doctors or licensed nurses could enter the room. But as a practical matter, the nurse couldn’t afford to spend her time going back and forth to the drug room. The infirmary was notoriously understaffed. We were lucky if even a single nurse showed up on a daily basis; a doctor came, at most, every other day. The waiting line to get treated usually went out the door. So time was precious, and if an assistant could be trusted to run back and forth to la pharmacie, so much the better.
That was a big “if,” though. Letting a prisoner near drugs was like letting a bank robber into Fort Knox. So Leonore was saying something here by trusting me.
You took what good you could in here. It didn’t come often.
After I delivered the ampicillin to Nurse Leonore, waited for her to use it, then returned it to the pharmacy and signed it back in—all under the watchful eye of a security camera—I returned to Linette in the secured room.
She was done now, her bandage wrapped. She wagged a finger at me.
“That’s what you have to figure out,” she said to me in French, the language in which she felt more comfortable. “You have to figure out why they had evidence of Serena, but not Bryah.”
CHAPTER 77
SEVENTEEN HUNDRED HOURS, or five in the evening, was the time for “lockup.” With very few exceptions, all prisoners were required to be in their cells from then until morning. For la compte, the nightly accounting of inmates before nightfall, we had to stand at attention in the middle of our cells for the guards to see us through the hatch and count us. Usually, somewhere along the way they would miscount and have to start over. Once we were all accounted for, dinner was served.
After we were counted and recounted, we settled in and waited for dinner. I watched with indifference as a rat the size of a Chihuahua poked its head out from under one of the beds and then retreated. He must have heard about dinner, too.
“Lexie,” Josette called out. I wasn’t sure what Josette had done to become the unofficial leader of our cell, but the leader she was. She was telling Lexie, the deranged arsonist who never left the cell, that she had to find the spot from which the rat had entered the cell and plug the hole. All along the intersection of the floor and the wall, we had stuffed newspaper, pages from magazines, or, if we had nothing else, balled-up underwear or T-shirts in the cracks.
Lexie jumped off the bunk, pulled some newspaper out of the trash, and crawled under the bed. Lexie was afraid of leaving her cell—hell, she was afraid of her own shadow—but the rats and roaches didn’t faze her.
“Where’s Mona?” I asked. Mona, the only overweight one of our bunch, usually ate her own dinner and then some of ours.
“La bibliothèque.” The library, Josette explained. Mona worked there, and tonight a new shipment of books had come in that would require the removal of some old periodicals to make room.
The prisoners with the most privileges—or, if you prefer, the drug dealers—were the “porters” who delivered the food on wheeled carts. They knocke
d on the door and we held out our tin plates, on which they dropped our meat and vegetable and starch, plus juice or water. Usually a quarter loaf of French bread as well. And then some extra goodies, like a hash cigarette or pills, for those who had made that purchase.
They slipped the hash to Josette tonight, not even trying to conceal it from the rest of us. I retreated to the corner with my plate of mystery meat, green beans, and something brown that could have been sweet potatoes or maybe baked beans. Another gourmet meal chez JRF.
At midnight, the door latch popped open. My heartbeat fluttered. It was Lucy. Another night of torture.
We walked in silence, the two of us. Lucy kept a distance behind me. I wasn’t handcuffed but she’d frisked me, as always, so she knew I wasn’t carrying a weapon.
She was humming to herself. Having a grand time. After descending the stairs, we walked back through several barred doors to the center of the prison—to get from any block or wing to another, you first had to return to the center—and turned toward H wing.
This was different. Usually we went to the basement.
Each wing was secured by a guard at the intersection of the wing and the center. If there was a way out on the other side of the wing, such as H wing’s exit into the prison yard, there was a guard at that end, too. Always in a booth with bulletproof glass and a weapons stash.
Lucy removed her pepper spray and handed it to the guard in the booth. Same for her handcuffs. That was also different. I’d never seen her surrender these weapons.
Where were we going?
It was sickly hot in the corridor, the humidity lingering from the scorching temperatures today. And my nerves were twitching. It wasn’t like I enjoyed being subjected to the “scarecrow” or the “chair” or the pepper spray—but at least I knew what to expect. Something was different tonight, and I doubted it would be a pleasant surprise.
We stopped at room H-11. When the door opened, I saw a cot and a card table, on top of which was a bottle of vodka and three paper cups.
And Sabine, the head guard, standing in one corner with a grin on her face.
CHAPTER 78
LUCY PUSHED ME into the room. I lunged forward but then stopped and turned so that my back was to neither Lucy nor Sabine. I backpedaled to the wall.
In French, Lucy said, “Take off your clothes.”
We were required to submit to a strip search upon any guard’s request at any time. I had no legal right to say no. “No,” I said.
There was one window, covered with iron bars, that looked out over the courtyard where we first got off the bus, where Sabine first beat the piss out of me. Lucy closed the inside shutter, leaving the three of us in total privacy.
Lucy and Sabine looked at each other, and they seemed to make a decision that Sabine would be first. I wasn’t sure what that meant but I had an idea.
Lucy poured herself and Sabine a cup of vodka. She even offered me one but I was too tense to respond. My hands balled into fists.
The two guards saluted each other and downed their shots. Sabine sat on the cot and loosened the belt on her pants.
In French, Lucy said, “You will pleasure us. First, Sabine.”
I didn’t respond, didn’t move, which itself was an answer.
Sabine pulled down her pants and lay flat on the cot, resting her disgusting little head on the pillow. Lucy advanced on me with predatory eyes and her baton drawn. “You will do this,” she said.
I shook my head no. Lucy got close to me and swatted the baton in my direction. She wasn’t trying for serious contact, but she caught my hand, raised in defense, rapping my knuckles hard. I shuffled away from her, as if we were doing a dance around the room. She was herding me toward the cot, where Sabine had now pulled her underwear down to her ankles and awaited me.
“You will do this,” said Lucy in French, “or you will never walk the same again.”
She swatted the baton at me once more, this time landing with a crack on my wrist. I was like a trapped mouse, my back against the wall, ready to move in either direction, while Lucy shadowed me.
“No!” I blurted out with rising panic.
“Lucy,” Sabine called out. In my peripheral vision, I saw Sabine hike up her underwear and pants. “Nous devons commencer avec elle.”
We will have to start with her. A shudder coursed through me.
Sabine got off the cot, took her baton, and joined Lucy. Lucy handed her baton to Sabine, so her hands were free.
In an instant, Lucy was on me, grabbing my hair with one hand and tearing at my shirt with the other. She wrestled me to the floor and I tried to scream but sheer terror prevented me from uttering a sound. I moved my legs furiously and tried to push her off me but she was far stronger than I was, and her fury seemed to outweigh my fear.
Her forearm to my face held me down and she yanked off my pants. I tried desperately to find my voice, as if it would do any good to scream in here, as if anyone would listen, and I realized that as brutal as the physical torture had been, it didn’t hold a candle to this, to this violation, this utter invasion—
“Hold still!” Lucy grunted into my face. I was now naked from the waist down, as Sabine approached me with her baton in one hand.
Tears blinded my eyes, my pulse exploded through my body, bells and whistles screaming in my brain—DON’T, PLEASE DON’T—
And then the alarm bells went off. Real ones, booming sirens throughout the prison. All of us froze. We looked at each other for a beat before panic spread across Lucy’s face.
Real alarms. Sirens with a distinctive cadence—three quick beeps, buzz. Three quick beeps, buzz. I’d never heard them before, but they’d been explained to me. They could mean only one thing.
Someone was trying to escape.
CHAPTER 79
I QUICKLY DRESSED and Lucy handcuffed me to the cot. She and Sabine rushed out, bolting the door behind them. I dragged the cot toward the window and used my free hand to open the shutter.
If I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes, I wouldn’t have believed it. The rooftop lights were all turned on. A searchlight coming from the prison yard provided further illumination, sweeping across the midnight sky as it tried to stay locked on the helicopter hovering over the rooftop.
The copter was blue with white trim. A rope dangled down from the copter and a woman was climbing it, struggling as the rope swayed from side to side and the copter bobbed like a buoy in the ocean. From the copter, gunfire erupted from some kind of rifle toward the courtyard. The guards in the towers on each side of the front gate, to my right, had opened fire on the copter. The woman was struggling to climb the ladder. She was heavyset and her ponytail—wait—
“Mona,” I said. My cell mate Mona was escaping. Right—she’d been working late tonight in the library, which was in the back of the prison.
The gunfire abated from the guard tower nearest me. Had someone been shot? I didn’t know. Guards in the tower on the other flank were still firing on the helicopter, sparks flying off the copter’s body as it bobbed and spun, making it difficult for Mona to climb.
She was halfway up the rope when the helicopter rose. A decision by the pilot. Escaping with Mona dangling from the rope was preferable to being shot out of the sky.
Right decision, but too late. A burst of flame came from the rear of the copter and it began to spin out of control. The copter rose a bit higher and then veered sharply to its left, toward the courtyard, moving almost sideways through the air and losing altitude.
I averted my eyes but not in time. I saw Mona lose her grip on the ladder and fly through the air before plummeting to the courtyard face-first. My eyes moved away just as I saw her head burst open on impact. A moment later, the helicopter crashed down on its nose, not twenty yards from Mona’s body, bursting into flames.
I felt the heat on my face, the sting in my eyes. This was happening right in front of me, maybe thirty yards away. The tactical-response guards didn’t stop shooting into the helicopter until th
e fire department showed up, maybe twenty minutes later, spraying the orange flames and dark clouds of smoke until nothing was left but a melted, twisted bird.
I closed the shutter as the smoke drifted toward me, closing my nose to the putrid scent of burned gasoline. It reminded me of the Molotov cocktails, of the attack on the police convoy during the trial. But I had lived to see another day.
Mona Mourcelles would not.
CHAPTER 80
THE SIX OF US STOOD, handcuffed, outside cell 413 while the guards tossed the room. Une recherche, they called it—a search. The prison retained the right to inspect our cells at any time for contraband. They went through the mattresses and our books and opened our personal boxes—each of us had a rectangular box where we could hold any personal items, from candy to cigarettes to CDs, whatever we bought from the commissary that would fit in there.
The guards removed a bunch of stuff from the cell. Then they marched us down to the basement and interrogated us. They stripped us naked, hosed us down, and threw out a few questions to us while they beat us with their batons. It wasn’t much of an interrogation. It was more an outlet for their anger.
Mona and the two Saudis in the helicopter—friends of her boyfriend—had perished in the failed escape. But more important than all that, a prison guard in the tower had died in a spray of gunfire. The guards had lost one of their own, and someone had to pay. Might as well be Mona’s cell mates, even though, as far as I knew, none of us had been aware of Mona’s plans.
The six of us lay huddled on the floor, shivering from the cold spray that hit us every few minutes, covering our heads while the guards rained down blows with their batons. Lexie, lying next to me, was positively terrified. This was the first time I’d seen her outside the cell. She’d gone about twenty months, at this point, without leaving it.