Crooked Halos Read online

  “Of course,” he replied.

  “So, uh, wanna talk about what just happened out there?”

  “Carlos is a jerk, and everyone knows it. He does terrible things to admittedly terrible people, but he also stabbed my last cellmate. I told him if he ever tried it again, I’d break him in half.” Martin said all of this in a matter-of-fact way, his tone light and friendly as if he were discussing the weather and not the bloody mutilation of a fellow inmate. It sent an involuntary shudder up my spine, which was, fortunately, still completely intact.

  “Well, um, thanks for saving my ass back there. I appreciate it,” I said. “What do you think is going to happen to us?”

  “You’re both going into solitary for a month,” a voice said from the door. We turned to see a man well into his middle years, his hair graying in a dignified way. He wore it cropped close to the skull with a neatly-trimmed beard. His suit was cheap but well-kept. He didn’t seem to have an ounce of extra fat on him, though his face was starting to sag in that way old men’s faces often do. A few years from now, it would be hard to tell where his chin ended and his neck began, since one was clearly collapsing into the other.

  “I’m Warden Pemberton,” he said, taking a seat behind the desk across from us. “I understand there was an incident in the yard a short while ago.” Neither of us responded to the warden’s statement. He clearly knew what had happened.

  “Mr. Ashton, you and I have spoken about your animosity toward Mr. Rivera before. You were warned what would happen the next time the two of you scuffled.” The sheer understatement of the euphemism nearly knocked me out of my chair. Warden Pemberton went on. “You will spend a month in solitary, Mr. Ashton, at which point we will convene a hearing to determine further steps.” He gestured to a guard, who helped Martin to his feet and escorted him out of the office. The warden then turned his attention to me. “Ah, Mr. Hazzard, our newest inmate. You’ve been here less than twenty-four hours, and already you are causing trouble.”

  “Um, I didn’t—” I started, but the warden cut me off.

  “I do not like trouble in my prison. Troublesome prisoners are not profitable prisoners. Troublesome prisoners create disharmony and instability, which are bad for business. I have never not turned a profit in the nearly twenty years I’ve run this correctional facility. I will not have your presence destabilize a perfectly-functioning system. You will not be the grit in the cogs, Mr. Hazzard. You will spend a month in solitary, to help you think about the sort of prisoner you wish to be and the impact your presence should have in this place. Is that understood?”

  “I—” I began, but Warden Pemberton was already dismissing me with a wave of his hand. A guard hauled me up by my elbow and led me off through a warren of hallways and stairwells, deep into the bowels of the prison. I found myself in a dim hallway with a low ceiling that had a cold, damp quality about it. Along each side of the hallway were a series of heavy, metal doors with small slots about halfway down the door where—I assumed—food trays would be placed for the inmate locked up inside.

  I was led to the third door on the left-hand side of the hallway. One guard unlocked the door while another took off my handcuffs and shoved me inside. “See ya in a month,” one of them snickered at me as they slammed the door closed.

  The cell was small—barely a couple of meters on a side, just long enough for me to lay down and stand up in—and dank. There was a small toilet and sink, a moldy-smelling cot, and a drain in the middle of the floor for when they hosed the rooms down. The walls were slick with dampness, and the atmosphere was oppressive and close.

  “A couple of throw pillows, an area rug, maybe a lamp or two, and this place could be quite nice,” I muttered to myself. That was going to be a problem: I talked to myself at the best of times. How much worse was it going to be now that there was no one else to talk to?

  There were at least two advantages to being stuck in solitary: first, no one was actively trying to kill me down here. I could probably let down my guard a bit and spare some brainpower for other issues.

  That led to the second advantage: I had time and energy to devote to figuring out how the hell I was going to get out of prison, clear my name, and bring Dresden Crowder to justice. None of it was going to be easy, but I had friends on the outside who were working to help, and a month of nothing but time to think things over.

  I sat on the cot and got to work.

  V.

  I should have known better. The notion that I’d be able to do much thinking while in solitary was, in hind sight, laughably naïve. Stupid, even. They don’t put prisoners in solitary for a vacation: it’s a punishment, and I had forgotten that part.

  The quiet was eerie. It was the quiet of knowing there were hundreds—thousands—of other people close at hand, and not being able to see or hear them at all. And the cell. It had seemed so spacious when I went in. Within a day or two, though, the walls—cliché as it sounds—started to close in. I lost track of time. I began to struggle to maintain a train of thought for more than a minute or two. I developed a couple of nervous facial tics.

  Then, of course, the Other Me’s started to visit.

  I’d dealt with them before, of course; the Platonic conceptuals, the different, extreme versions of me who had their own opinions about every action I took and thought I had. There was Type A Me, who was always properly dressed and had his hair combed like some sort of jerk who has his life together. That was my analytical self, the detective at the heart of things.

  Then there was the other one. The Feral Me.

  Feral Me was little more than a beast in a cheap suit. He was violence and anger and vengeance. He was the version of me that could’ve wound up running the Organization as its true Boss, not as the twit trying desperately to dismantle it.

  I didn’t fully trust either of them. Neither one was really Me. Oh, they were aspects of me, part of my personality, but they didn’t tell the whole story.

  “I mean,” I said to Type A Me one day—or was it night? It was increasingly difficult to mark the passage of time when there weren’t any indicators of it to follow— “where’s the me who loves attending the opera? Or the me who does the crossword puzzle in the Sunday Sentinel?”

  “Those would both be me,” Type A said. Thought. Projected. I’m not really sure how the conversation worked, honestly. It wasn’t actual words being spoken aloud—not by the other me, at any rate—and there wasn’t anyone else actually in the cell with me. Type A Me was all in my head. It’s just, that was an increasingly crowded place to be.

  “We should rip Crowder’s throat out!” Feral Me piped up, a wicked grin splitting his face.

  “So we can eat him?” I asked wearily.

  “Yeah, so we can eat ‘im!” Feral Me agreed. I’d already had this particular conversation with myself a few times.

  I sighed. “We’re not eating him,” I said. “We’re also not going to convince the warden to let us out and go hunt him down through ‘cogent, well-rehearsed arguments.’ That has literally never worked on anyone ever,” I added, glaring at Type A Me. He had the decency to look slightly chagrined.

  “What, then, is the plan?” Type A Me asked.

  I shrugged. “Sit in here and wait to get released, then die when some mook upstairs decides I need a shiv between the ribs.”

  “That’s rather fatalistic,” Type A Me said.

  “We should rip their throats out!” Feral Me snarled.

  I rolled my eyes. “Look, can you guys, like, go away for a while? This is a small room, and I could use some me-less time.” The two other me’s evaporated into nothingness, leaving me even more alone with my thoughts. I sighed and plopped down on the cot.

  “No lonesome train whistles, no old-school iron bars, no guards twirling keys and singing old hymns…I feel like Johnny Cash has lied to me about what prison is like.”

  I was interrupted in my thoughts by the sound of keys in the door to my cell. I stood up, trying to smooth down the front
of my prison jumpsuit. I’d been wearing the same one for at least a couple of weeks, by my count. They didn’t really let you out to shower or exercise or anything when you were in solitary.

  The door swung open, and a pair of guards stood in the doorway, flanking Warden Pemberton.

  “How are we today, Mr. Hazzard?” the warden asked. His tone was conversational, as if we had met in an elevator and were chatting about the lovely weather we’d been having.

  “Well,” I said, speaking slowly and choosing my words carefully for perhaps the first time in my life, “I can’t say I’ve cared for my accommodations these past few weeks, but the view was incredible.” Okay, so I wasn’t choosing my words quite as carefully as I’d intended, but this was the first contact I’d had with people who weren’t alternate versions of myself manifesting in my conscious mind in about a month, so I feel I should be forgiven a certain amount of snark.

  The warden chuckled drily. “Have you learned nothing from your month here?” he asked.

  “I learned I don’t like Mondays. They were always the worst. Weekends were pretty okay, though.”

  The warden shook his head ruefully. “Perhaps another month will help break your bad habits,” he said. The guards shut the door and locked it before I could protest.

  └●┐└●┐└●┐

  The door creaked open again. It was essentially a repeat of the previous month: two guards, Warden Pemberton, me feeling like a moleperson.

  “Good morning, Mr. Hazzard. How are we feeling today?” the warden asked.

  I shrugged. “I’unno,” I muttered.

  “Do speak up, please,” Pemberton encouraged.

  “I’m…” I began, then trailed off. Even my hallucinatory me’s had stopped showing up after a while. I’d been completely alone. I spent the first week or two talking out loud to myself, then third week muttering under my breath, and every day since then in silence. I was definitely starting to crack up.

  “Go on, there’s a good lad,” Pemberton said.

  “I wish to speak with your manager,” I finally croaked. “These accommodations are completely subpar.”

  “Still defiant. Impressive.” The warden came into the cell with me, then caught a whiff of the stench wafting off my unwashed body. He took a couple of steps back and out of the cell once again. “Mr. Hazzard, we have reason to suspect you’ve been targeted by some gang members. We have kept you down here partly as a consequence for your involvement in the incident two months ago, and partly for your own protection.”

  “And you couldn’t have mentioned this, oh, anytime in the past seven or eight weeks?” I growled.

  “Must have slipped my mind, I’m afraid,” Warden Pemberton replied. There was not an ounce of regret in his tone.

  “So, is it safe now? Can I finally get out of this hole and take a shower?”

  “I’m afraid not,” Pemberton said. “We are still trying to sort out all of the people who want you dead. It’s quite a long list, as it turns out.”

  I sagged onto my cot. “Can you at least send me, like, a magazine or something? I’d settle for Cosmo, even.”

  “Again, I have to disappoint you. We are actually here to kill you ourselves.” The two guards advanced into the small cell, each of them wielding batons longer than their forearms.

  “Hold up, hang on a sec,” I said, trying to scramble back into the wall behind me. Maybe I’d get lucky and phase through it. I could’ve had a gen-mod done in the last month or so that would give me phasing powers, right?

  Nope.

  “Dresden Crowder sends his regards,” Warden Pemberton said. “As does Genevieve Pratt.”

  The first guard came at me then, his baton held high. He was hoping to crush my skull with a single overhead blow. I managed to roll away from the attack. His baton smashed into the cot’s metal railing instead, bending the aluminum frame. I lashed out with a kick at his head, but he was wearing a helmet and my muscles were a little weak from two months of inactivity. He did rock away from me, though, and collided with his partner. I jumped up and made for the door. The warden was there, standing between me and freedom. He was a short, rather dumpy man, with a low center of gravity. But I didn’t see that I had much of a choice: it was either try to barrel through this guy, or deal with the two heavily-armed and armored guards behind me.

  I did the only logical thing and headed for the warden. I dropped my chin and rammed him in the upper chest with the top of my head, knocking the wind out of him and bowling him over. I stumbled over his prone body, our feet tangled. I managed to kick free and lash out at the door, swinging it shut in the face of the guards. Their yells and pounding on the door were muffled, and I doubted anyone would be down to let them out for several hours at least.

  I reached down and grabbed the warden by the nape of his neck, hauling him to his feet and frog-marching him to the nearest empty cell. It happened to be the one right next to mine. I grabbed his keys from him, opened the cell, and shoved him in.

  “What do you think you’re going to accomplish, Hazzard?” he yelled. “You can’t get out of here. Even if you knew where to go, no one will let you out.”

  I frisked Pemberton, grabbing his personal computer, wallet, and prison ID card. “I’m sure I’ll come up with a plan,” I said, shoving him over to the cot. “Now, you sit here and have a good, long think about how naughty you’ve been. Trying to kill a prisoner in your custody. For shame.” I slammed the door shut before he could reply and stumbled off down the corridor toward the nearest set of stairs. Pemberton was kind of right about one thing: I didn’t know where to go or how to get out. That was going to make things tricky. But I figured I’d be okay if I just headed in a general upward direction. As I walked, I checked Pemberton’s computer for reception. When I finally got a signal, I immediately put in a call to Kimiko using an encrypted channel Maya had set up for us.

  The call was audio-only, but that was probably for the best. No one needed to see me in my current state. On the second ring, Kimiko picked up. “Hazzard?” she said tentatively.

  “Yeah, it’s me,” I replied in a hushed tone. “Look, the warden of Pratchett Correctional just tried to kill me in my cell. I need an extraction as soon as you can put a team together.”

  “Um, Detective Hazzard,” Kimiko said.

  “I’m not exactly sure where I’ll be or how we’ll pull it off, but I’ve got faith in you and the ninja,” I continued.

  “Sir,” Kimiko said.

  “And bring me a change of clothes. This jumpsuit can just about stand on its own now.”

  “Eddie! I cannot rescue you,” Kimiko said.

  “Um, wanna run that by me again, with an explanation this time?” I said.

  “We cannot rescue you. We…no longer work for you,” Kimiko said. There was a hint of sadness in her voice.

  “You are not making sense,” I said.

  “We work for the Organization, not you personally,” Kimiko said. “We now work for a new Boss, and they have forbidden us from aiding you in any way.”

  “Damn it,” I snarled. “What the hell am I supposed to do, hide in a prison until I die of old age or body odor?”

  “I’m afraid I cannot do any more for you, sir,” Kimiko said. The line went dead as she disconnected.

  “Well, shit,” I muttered. “I am well and truly screwed.”

  VI.

  I continued making my way up through sub-basements into the prison proper, eventually finding my way to the laundry room. Much to my surprise, it was daylight and Martin was working.

  I crept up and got his attention as surreptitiously as I could. He was surprised to see me, but managed to contain his joy and keep quiet. I gave him a brief rundown of what had happened since we both went into solitary, including the warden’s attempt to have me killed by the guards.

  “I left him and the two guards locked up down there, but it’s only a matter of time before someone discovers them and sounds the alarm,” I told Martin. “I need to get
out of here, and quick.”

  “Hmm. That could be a problem,” Martin said.

  “Yeah, I know. The logistics are insane, but there’s gotta be a way. Maybe we can sneak me out in a basket of laundry? We do send some things off-site to be cleaned, don’t we?”

  “Yes, but that’s not the problem,” Martin said.

  “What is?”

  Martin pointed across the laundry room to where Ezekiel Cromhower stood surrounded by guards and goons. Several of them were carrying improvised weapons of various descriptions: metal pipes, shivs, socks filled with chunks of asphalt from the yard. It was a DIY weaponsmith’s dream come true, and a bit of a nightmare for yours truly.

  “So, you’re out of the hole finally,” Cromhower sneered. He was carrying a length of pipe nearly as tall as he was. “I figured they were gonna let you rot down there for the rest of your life.”

  “I think they were considering it, but I decided I needed a breather,” I replied as casually as I could manage. “The warden was kind enough to let me take a break.”

  “Speaking of breaks,” Cromhower said, hefting his pipe menacingly. The goons around him smiled sinisterly.

  “Hey, I’m just as excited about a throw down as you are, buddy,” I said, “but I’ve been sitting in my own filth for the past two months. I’d really like a shower and a change of clothes, y’know? A nap might be nice, too. What do you say we put a pin in this and revisit it tomorrow?”

  Cromhower pointed the pipe at me. “Get ‘im.”

  The goons and guards advanced, weapons held at the ready, and I panicked for a minute. There wasn’t really another way out of the laundry room except for the one the bad guys were blocking. I didn’t have much in the way of resources available: Pemberton’s computer and ID card, my wits, and Martin. And I wasn’t completely sure I could trust Martin.

  Then the big guy went and dispelled any doubts I had about him by picking up a washing machine and hurling it at Cromhower.

  The machine landed with a mighty crash, scattering thugs and half-washed linens. Martin roared a challenge and charged forward, arms out to grab whoever he encountered. He snatched up a guard, wrapping him up in a bear hug. Even from several meters away, I could hear the guard’s spine snap and saw him sag against Martin, out of the fight for good.