His Last Wife
“Let’s go with that, then. We can drop all that stuff about Jamison being in Harlem and just say the government or somebody else killed him because he was trying to help black people or something. Right? Isn’t that what Auset was getting at? What then? What does that have to do with you?”
“I don’t know.” Kerry thought about it for a second. “I guess it would explain why I can’t seem to get out of this place.” She remembered her conversation with Lebowski. Everything he’d said about no one taking his calls and feeling like he was swimming upstream to be slaughtered. Then there was Jamison before he died and all of his suspicions about the governor. How he’d had Governor Cade locked up and hours later Jamison was dead and Kerry was in jail. “I mean, what if they framed me? They did it and they framed me”
“You really think so?” Garcia-Bell asked.
“Hell no!” Kerry laughed suddenly. “That’s crazy. Crazy as hell.” She looked at Garcia-Bell, who was clearly following along with her analysis. “I can’t believe you were falling for it too. I thought you were the one telling me to focus.”
Garcia-Bell laughed with Kerry, but really she was thinking that with everything she’d been reading about Jamison and Kerry online in the computer lab, what Kerry just said made sense. She’d only lied about one thing—her little Internet research had nothing to do with boredom. It made her feel closer to Kerry. Like maybe she understood her or could connect with her beyond the concrete walls and metal bars that ironically put them together.
“I’ll tell you just like I told crazy-Auset: I was there—remember! I saw everything that morning. And there wasn’t any white man or government in sight,” Kerry said.
“Then who was?” Garcia-Bell asked.
“Coreen. I told you before. And I’ve told everyone else. Coreen was the person on that roof who threw Jamison over. Coreen.”
The lights in the hallway flickered and quickly there was the sound of the footsteps of inmates returning to their cells before the final call for lights-out on the entire ward.
Garcia-Bell, of course, stayed in place on the edge of Kerry’s bed, but Kerry poked her head out of the bunk to catch a glimpse of her neighbor spying again.
“All right. I’ll see you tomorrow,” Kerry started. “I’m turning in. Kind of tired.”
“Tired? From what?”
“The day. Dealing with Auset and all of this. My brain is fried,” Kerry complained. “I’ll just see you tomorrow.”
Garcia-Bell looked down at Kerry on the bed like a child about to throw a tantrum.
“Okay? I’ll see you tomorrow,” Kerry said jovially to hide the good-bye tension. “Okay?”
The lights flickered again, signaling that all inmates had about five minutes to make it to their cells.
“Okay,” Garcia-Bell agreed finally, avoiding Kerry’s eyes as she stood to head toward the door. “Tomorrow.” She walked out without turning back to wave at her, something Kerry hadn’t seen her do before.
When Garcia-Bell was a good ways down the hall, Kerry’s neighbor showed up on her threshold, holding her hands on her hips and grinning.
“What are you smiling about?” Kerry asked, sitting back up on her elbows.
“You. Wondering how long you’re going to torture that woman. You know what she wants. And I suspect you ain’t about to give it to her,” the woman said, shaking her head. “You’re like a man stringing a woman along. Or a woman using a man. I swear, I see everything in here. Can’t wait to get out.” She turned back toward her cell and walked out.
Chapter 7
“Been a while.”
The first wife was standing in the corner of the room, leering over at the second wife sitting at a table. The tension was too thick between them. Guards standing by whispered and watched for any signs of contention.
“Been too long. Too damn long.”
“I’ve been—”
“No. Don’t say it. Please don’t say anything about why it’s been as long as it’s been. Let’s just admit what it is and then . . . that’s all.” Kerry had cut Val off and sat back, annoyed and speechless, in her seat.
And these were two people who were supposed to be on the same team.
They were, after all, sitting in the private visitation room where inmates commonly met with counsel.
After a while, Val said rather dismissively, “You think I want to be doing this? Doing any of this? But—” She looked around at the walls, with indistinguishable globs of this and stains of that decorating each cinder block.
Kerry cut Val off again. “Exactly, so you admit it. You don’t care. And that’s all there is to it. We can stop this right now.” She looked like she was about to get up, but she still needed to hear something else from her visitor.