Killing Floor (Page 18)

The bus rattled to a halt. The idling engine set up a vibration. What little ventilation there had been ceased. It was stifling. Hubble finally looked up. He peered out through his gold rims. He looked around him and out the window. He groaned. It was a groan of hopeless dejection. He dropped his head.

The driver was waiting for a signal from the first gate guard. The guard was speaking into a radio. The driver blipped the engine and crunched into gear. The guard signaled to him, using his radio as a baton, waving us through. The bus ground forward into a cage. We passed a long low sign at the curb: Warburton Correctional Facility, State of Georgia Department of Corrections. Behind us a gate swung closed. We were sealed in a wire cage. It was roofed with wire. At the far end a gate swung open. The bus ground through.

We drove the hundred yards to the next fence. There was another vehicle cage. The bus went in, waited and drove on out. We drove right into the heart of the prison. We stopped opposite a concrete bunker. The reception area. The engine noise beat against the concrete surrounding us. Then it shut down and the vibration and clatter died away to silence. The driver swung out of his seat and walked up the aisle, stooping, pulling himself like a climber on the seat backs. He pulled out his keys and unlocked the cuffs fixing us to the seat in front.

"OK, boys, let’s go," he grinned. "Party time."

We hauled ourselves out of our seat and shuffled down the bus. My left arm was pulled back by Hubble. The driver stopped us at the front. He removed all three sets of handcuffs and dropped them in a bin next to his cab. Hauled on a lever and sprang the door. We got out of the bus. A door opened opposite and a guard stepped out. Called us over. He was eating a donut and spoke with his mouth full. A sugar mustache frosted his lip. He was a pretty casual guy. We went through the door into a small concrete chamber. It was filthy. Deal chairs surrounded a painted table. Another guard sat on the table reading from a battered clipboard.

"Sit down, OK?" he said. We sat. He stood up. His partner with the donut locked the outer door and joined him.

"Here’s the deal," said the clipboard guy. "You guys are Reacher and Hubble. In from Margrave. Not convicted of any crime. In custody pending investigation. No bail application for either of you. Hear what I say? Not convicted of any crime. That’s the important thing. Excuses you from a lot of shit in here, OK? No uniform, no processing, no big deal, you understand? Nice accommodations on the top floor."

"Right," said the donut guy. "Thing is, if you were convicts, we’d be poking and prodding and hitting on you, and you’d get the uniform, and we’d shove you on the convict floors with the other animals and we’d just sit back and watch the fun, right?"

"Right," his partner said. "So what we’re saying is this. We ain’t here to give you a hard time, so don’t you boys be giving us a hard time neither, you understand? This damn facility ain’t got the manpower. Governor laid off about a half of the staff, OK? Got to meet the budget, right? Got to cut the deficit, right? So we ain’t got the men to do the job the way it ought to be done. Trying to do our job with a half a crew on every shift, right? So what I’m saying is we shove you in there, and we don’t want to see you again until we pull you out on Monday. No hassle, right? We ain’t got the manpower for hassle. We ain’t got the manpower for hassle on the convict floors, let alone hassle on the holding floor, you understand? Yo, Hubble, you understand?"

Hubble looked up at him and nodded blankly. Didn’t speak.

"Reacher?" the clipboard guy said. "You understand?"

"Sure," I said. I understood. This guy was understaffed. Having problems because of a budget. While his friends collected unemployment. Tell me about it.

"Good," he said. "So the deal is this. The two of us are off duty at seven o’clock. Which is in about one minute’s time. We ain’t staying late for you boys. We don’t want to and the union wouldn’t let us anyway. So you get a meal, then you’re locked down in here until they got manpower to take you upstairs. No manpower until lights out, maybe ten o’clock, OK? But then no guards will move prisoners around after lights out anyway, right? Union won’t let ’em. So Spivey will come get you himself. Assistant warden. Top boy tonight. About ten o’clock, OK? You don’t like it, you don’t tell me, you tell the governor, OK?"

The donut eater went out into the corridor and came back a long moment later with a tray. On it were covered plates, paper cups and a Thermos. He put the tray on the table and the two of them swung out through the corridor. Locked the door from the outside. It went quiet as a tomb in there.

We ate. Fish and rice. Friday food. Coffee in the Thermos. Hubble didn’t speak. He left most of the coffee for me. Score one for Hubble. I put the debris on the tray and the tray on the floor. Another three hours to waste. I tipped my chair back and put my feet up on the table. Not comfortable, but as good as I was going to get. A warm evening. September in Georgia.

I looked over at Hubble without curiosity. He was still silent. I had never heard him speak except on Finlay’s speakerphone. He looked back at me. His face was full of dejection and fear. He looked at me like I was a creature from another world. He stared at me like I worried him. Then he looked away.

MAYBE I WOULDN’T HEAD BACK TO THE GULF. BUT IT WAS too late in the year to head north. Too cold up there. Maybe skip right down to the islands. Jamaica, maybe. Good music there. A hut on the beach. Live out the winter in a hut on a Jamaica beach. Smoke a pound of grass a week. Do whatever Jamaica people do. Maybe two pounds of grass a week with someone to share the hut. Roscoe kept drifting into the picture. Her uniform shirt was fabulously crisp. A crisp tight blue shirt. I had never seen a shirt look better. On a Jamaica beach in the sun she wouldn’t need a shirt. I didn’t think that would prove to be any kind of a major problem.