Once they were gone, Peyton returned to her seat, cautiously hopeful. She’d found Virgil a Hells Fury cell mate she felt somewhat comfortable with, and she’d set up a context for his insertion into the prison. If she’d pegged Buzz accurately, he’d complain to high heaven—everyone would be expecting Virgil when he showed up.
A moment later, a C.O. by the name of Gibbs appeared in the doorway. “We got a challenge coming in, huh?”
How had he heard? The door had been shut. He’d probably tried to listen in. But…maybe not. Life at the prison had a certain rhythm and the slightest change put everyone on notice.
“That’s the latest.” She smiled as if it was business as usual. But she had no idea how they’d pull off what they were attempting to do. Especially now. The warden had spooked her with his talk of changes in gen pop. If the inmates had been tipped off, they’d be more watchful than ever. And that kind of tension could lead to anything….
18
John Hutchinson was the last person Peyton wanted to see, especially now, just before she left the prison. Today she’d worked fewer hours than she normally did, but her long nights over the weekend and the stress of what was going on in both her personal and professional lives seemed to be taking a toll. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this exhausted. Shelley had gone home an hour ago. She wanted to follow her assistant’s example and head out—preferably without speaking to anyone.
But she could tell by the look on John’s face that there was no way to avoid this encounter. ISU had delivered the bad news.
“Can I talk to you?” he said, his voice clipped.
She’d stood the moment he poked his head into her office. Reluctant to deal with the high emotion inherent in this particular situation, she almost said it would have to wait until tomorrow and reached for her purse. But she felt too obligated to everyone who worked at the prison to walk out on a C.O. who was this upset. The time she and John had spent at dinner last night, and the other two meals they’d shared, only heightened that feeling.
Resigning herself to staying another few minutes, she drew in a deep breath. “Of course. Come in.”
As he entered, his jaw jutted forward, telling her just how upset he was—as if his taut posture and tone hadn’t already communicated that.
“Lieutenant McCalley has spoken to you?” she said.
“He has.”
Assuming he’d take the seat opposite her, she sank into her chair. “I’m sorry, John.”
Obviously agitated, he remained on his feet. “He came to you, then? You know about this?”
“Of course. We met this morning. After a careful review of the details, I had to agree. You deserve to be suspended. You made a mistake, a serious mistake.”
“But I didn’t mean to hurt anyone!”
Was that true? The testimony of the witnesses contradicted him, which had come as a surprise to Peyton. She knew some of the C.O.s pushed the limits sometimes. She wasn’t naive about what went on here. But she’d never expected such behavior from John. “You went too far. What if Bentley Riggs had died as a result of that kick?”
“He didn’t. He’s fine—fine enough to be talking smack to everyone around him about how he’s going to come after me someday.”
She refused to let him cloud the issue. Riggs wasn’t on trial here. “He fell and cracked his skull when you kicked him. And there are… Never mind.”
“There are what?”
She wasn’t sure she wanted to get into this part. But she felt she owed it to him to back up her decision. So she finished her statement. “People who claim you used the fight as an excuse to unleash your aggression.”
He threw up his hands. “Are you kidding me? Who said that? Other inmates? Like they’d ever come to my defense.”
“Not just inmates.” That was the shocking part….
His eyes turned so cold she nearly shivered. She’d never seen him like this. “So…Rathman? Ulnig? My fellow officers—they claim I was out of line?”
“I’d rather not go into who said what. No one likes what has to be done, least of all Rathman and Ulnig. But we talked to everyone, those most likely to defend you and those most likely to accuse you. You got a fair shake.”
“How can it be a fair shake when you think I ‘unleashed aggression’ and tried to hurt an inmate?”
There were times when they all wanted to hurt an inmate. They wouldn’t be human if they didn’t get angry when they were physically or verbally abused. It was not being able to overcome that reaction that became the problem. “If I truly believed that, I would’ve insisted on dismissal. You know I’ve done it with others. So you’re still getting the benefit of the doubt.”
His knuckles whitened on the back of the chair. “They were fighting, Chief Deputy. I had to stop it and stop it fast.”
“The fight was over, John. Almost everyone agrees you’d already split them up. It’s your intent we couldn’t quite figure out, and that’s why we decided on suspension instead of termination.”
“If I hadn’t acted, those two would’ve gone at it again.”
“But you had help by then. And someone heard you say you were going to teach ‘this bastard’ a lesson.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“There were two witnesses.”
“Oh, come on,” he said with a groan. “You’ve been a C.O. You know how it is. Once your adrenaline starts pumping you simply…act.”
“I have been a C.O. so I sympathize with the difficulty of the job. But that doesn’t change what happened. You can’t let your temper, or adrenaline or anything else, get the better of you.”
He scratched his head in apparent frustration. “Think about what you’re doing. If the papers get hold of this they won’t just vilify me. They’ll go after the institution.”
Peyton was very aware of that. She’d seen it before. In 1992, a mentally ill prisoner smeared himself with fecal matter and refused to bathe, so the guards dragged him from his cell and forced him into a tub of hot water that left him with third-degree burns on the lower half of his body. And that wasn’t the only incident in Pelican Bay history of which she wasn’t proud. There’d been other allegations of torture, other lawsuits through the years. But since she’d begun working here, she’d been doing her best to improve the reputation of the prison, and she did that by keeping the guards as honest as she could. She didn’t want Pelican Bay to face another dark moment like the one in 1992, not after all her hard work. And not because John couldn’t control his temper.