‘The warden at Byberry doesn’t know shit.’ Emma sighs. ‘Talk with Dr Scott at St Elizabeths, she’s seen what Simon’s capable of.’
‘Dr Scott is no longer working at that institution,’ Carter says, ‘but I’ll make an effort to reach out to her.’
‘Simon made four escape attempts under Scott’s care.’ Emma experiences a slippery flutter in her skull just thinking about it.Anthony Hoyt’s screams. The blood on Simon’s teeth as he smiled. Andshewas the one who let him loose…She blinks it all back. ‘The last attempt nearly worked.’
‘Who’s going to break him out here at Allegheny? His sister?’ Carter makes a faint snort.
‘Simon can manipulate anyone. He looks harmless, but I’ve seen him …’The gleam in Simon’s eyes as he ripped Hoyt’s face apart.Emma shakes her head. ‘I’ve seen him do terrible things.’
‘And I’m taking that very seriously, Miss Lewis.’ Carter gestures at the combined forces on the floor of the intake garage. ‘My men, these guards – they’re all highly trained professionals.’
A state trooper begins unlocking the door behind which Simon is confined. Sweat breaks out on the nape of Emma’s neck, despite the jail’s chill.
She turns to face Carter directly. ‘Are you going to speak with Simon yourself?’
Carter shifts on his feet, which is the only tell that reveals his irritation. ‘His sister is acting as liaison, but I’ll speak with him once he’s gone through intake.’
Emma moves so Carter can’t just keep her in his peripheral vision. ‘Look, I know I’m just a college student, and you’re FBI, and you think I’m emotionally compromised. I’m sorry if this seems like I’m trying to tell you how to do your job. But if you haven’t dealt with Simon before, please be careful.’
‘Miss Lewis, let me say this again – I’ve worked with a lot of maximum-security prisoners, a lot of serial offenders. I treat them all the same, with the utmost caution.’ Carter switches a clipboard from his right hand to his left, retrieves a pen from his inside jacket pocket. ‘Excuse me, please. I need to deal with the documentation for the transfer.’
He exits the guardhouse through the hatch and is met at the top of the stairs by a skinny figure with slicked-back hair. Emma’s startled to recognize Grenier. She can hear their conversation through the open doorway.
‘Ayuh, paperwork is moment-of-transfer, so we both gotta sign it.’ Grenier has a clipboard of his own, although his papers look more wrinkled and the pen he fishes out of his white asylum-staff shirt is a plain ballpoint, not a fancy Sheaffer Targa.
‘Absolutely,’ Carter says, slipping on his glasses, making hismark. He offers his corresponding papers. ‘Sign here and your duty’s done.’
‘Wonderful.’ Grenier signs off Carter’s documentation, tucks his pen away. ‘Okay, he’s all yours. Hope you have a fun time, listening to him recite some poetry bullshit all night long. Enjoy.’
‘Thank you, Mr Grenier.’
Grenier clears his throat and spits off the side of the stairs. His expression is sour. ‘Y’all won’t care, but I gotta say it. This is dumb. This guy is one of the sharpest characters I ever had the pleasure of keeping locked up. At Byberry, we could handle it. At Allegheny, who the hell knows. You want him, you got him, but don’t screw the pooch here, or someone’s gonna end up getting hurt.’
For once, Emma finds herself in agreement with the man.
‘Thank you, Mr Grenier,’ Carter repeats stiffly. ‘We’ll give your advice due consideration.’
Grenier shrugs, raises his hand. Six feet below, the bolt on the Transit van’s rear doors cracks back like a double-tap hammer.
Fighting against instinct, Emma steps out of the metal cocoon of the guardhouse to stand beside Carter and watch the proceedings. Her extremities still feel limp from last night’s Valium, but her stomach is hard as a rock as the van doors swing wide.
One of the state troopers unlocks the mesh grille separating Simon from the outside world. The trooper takes a long implement with a curved attachment like a bail hook from the side of the van. He reaches into the van with it, drags it back. The motion of the hook pulls forward a steel-plate floor section that slides along a set of rails.
Atop the raised section, like some kind of satanic god worshipped by deranged heretics, Simon Gutmunsson sits strapped to a wheelchair.
The chair is locked down to keep it from rolling, and Simon is secured to the chair with canvas webbing. In addition to his blue asylum scrubs, he is wearing a white straitjacket and leg restraints. He has also been fitted with a grotesque mask, like a veterinarian’s dog muzzle. Behind the wire of the muzzle, his lower face – mouth, chin, cheekbone to cheekbone – is entirely covered by a thick band of black leather. Above all this, the blaze of his freakishly white hair and arctic blue eyes.
Across the room, Emma feels a crawling sense of dread when Simon’s gaze searches, finds her, locks on. He gives her a slow nod. She nods in return, unblinking, careful to keep her face completely expressionless.
Beside her, Carter shifts, uneasy. ‘All this for one boy.’
‘Don’t think of him as a boy.’ Emma’s voice comes out faint. ‘Think of him as a rattlesnake in a boy suit.’
But there are no disasters, and no mistakes. Simon is smoothly lowered on the steel platform. When his chair is wheels-down, he’s rolled up a ramp on the other side of the intake garage to the platform, and through an archway to a corridor leading away from general population, toward an assigned cell. The dark corridor is lit by large round lamps the size of crystal balls: Emma watches the shadows shift in the corridor as Simon and his entourage pass each lamp in turn.
‘Okay, that’s done,’ Carter says with quiet satisfaction. He turns his back on the process Grenier and his crew are going throughto close up the van and return to Byberry. ‘Now it’s time to meet Miss Gutmunsson.’
He walks Emma out the way they came in, but turns them both before the jail exit to take a set of stone steps down to an external door that opens onto a courtyard with high stone walls, flat concrete pavers, lanky elms that smell like sap. Some kind of family waiting area, or maybe someplace for inmates to stare at out their windows with tortured longing. Kristin is standing by one of the trees, swinging her hands and peering up into the yellow leaves as if she’s at the park.
