Page 13 of Hard Heart

Levi leaned over to look at the page. “It’s pronounced ‘seg-way.’ It means there’s a transition from one thing to the next with no interruption.”

“Right. Thanks, Prof.”

Prof. Since moving to Redding’s Hill, Levi had become Unit Four’s unofficial teacher, a position that paid a pittance but gave him a certain amount of freedom thanks to a little staff corruption. But greed and power were natural bedfellows, so he figured he might as well use them to his advantage.

Over ten years had passed since he lost his freedom, and this was his fourth and probably final home. His time in the Fairfax County Detention Center had been filled with horror and hope, his stint in Redding’s Gap a journey into the pits of hell. He’d found himself at a crossroads: embrace the darkness, or strive to stay in the light.

He’d opted for the latter.

No matter what his former friends thought, no matter what the media said, he wasn’t into devil worship.

Good behaviour had allowed him to earn his way out of supermax, through high-security at Redding’s Grove, and finally into the medium-security facility at Redding’s Hill. The three compounds lay next to each other in southwest Virginia, one big mega-prison built to house two thousand men, but holding close to double that now. Shared cells, crowded chow halls, fights in the exercise yard. Incarceration was a big business in the United States.

“What time is it?” Diesel asked.

Levi checked his contraband watch. “Ten forty-five.”

“Oh man, I’m starving.”

And lunch wouldn’t be served until twelve thirty. Levi searched through the pens on his desk for a spare candy bar and tossed it to his friend and cellmate of the past four years.

“Enjoy, buddy.”

“What are you drawing today?”

Levi studied the printed photo taped to the wall in front of him. “A cat. A cat in a hat.”

A black kitten, to be precise. His least favourite subject because black cats reminded him of the past, of Shadow, the scrawny creature Ruby Costello had found crawling behind a dumpster, riddled with fleas. That was the night the “no pets in the house” rule had fallen by the wayside because if Ruby asked him for a favour, he was never going to say “no.”

Now Ruby was dead, and maybe Shadow too. Levi knew the cat had gone to live with Justin Norquist, a move he’d protested but one he’d also had no say in seeing as he’d been locked up at the time. He only hoped the cat had shown enough sense to run the hell away because didn’t serial killers like to practise on animals?

With his morning exercises taken care of, Levi turned to a fresh page in his sketchbook and laid out a grid for the cat portrait. His elbow hit a box of pens, and he moved it to the floor to give himself more space. The tiny room looked more like a branch of Hobby Lobby than a jail cell. Technically, he wasn’t supposed to have any of this stuff, but when he’d gone into business with the staff, he’d soon found that capitalism trumped pesky prison rules.

Pens, paints, pencils, pastels, Levi had them all. An easel stood by the wall—designed by Levi and built in the prison’s wood shop—and the correctional officers had even run an extension cord in for his desk lamp. Some days, he laughed at the absurdity of his life. The “arrangement,” as everyone called it, had started five years ago, soon after Marnie’s pet pit bull died. Marnie worked the graveyard shift, jigsawing childcare around work commitments with her husband, and she carried a photo of the dog in a locket, also against regulations. One day, the chain had broken, and Levi found the necklace lying on the floor. He’d sketched a quick picture of the pet and offered it to her when he returned the jewellery. Thought nothing more of it. Drawing was just a way for him to while away a lifetime behind bars.

Then Marnie’s supervisor had shown up with a photo of his wife’s parrot. Would Levi mind doing another quick sketch? Sure, but it would have to be black and white because the commissary only sold #2 pencils, and the prison-approved sharpener didn’t even get much of a point on them. A box of coloured pencils had duly arrived, along with a good-quality sketchpad and a sheet of sandpaper to help with the sharpening problem.

Fast forward a year, and Levi had drawn every single pet the staff owned, plus painted several landscapes, a couple of portraits, and a picture of the warden’s prized Corvette. Levi had only two conditions—no partners, no kids. The last thing he needed was accusations of being a paedophile because someone saw a photo of a young child in his cell. By then, he’d settled into a cordial relationship with the men and women tasked with his punishment. He treated them with respect, and they allowed him some leeway when it came to following the rules. As far as he could ascertain, each unit at Redding’s operated in a reasonably autonomous manner, and the unit manager had decided to turn a blind eye to the situation because the pet pictures improved staff morale.

Then one of the correctional officers had the idea of opening an Etsy store.

Staff at Redding’s didn’t get paid much, not even the unit manager, it seemed, and they’d embraced the scheme wholeheartedly. When Levi couldn’t keep up with the demand alone, he’d begun teaching art classes in the chow hall after lunch, and now Unit Four had quite the little production line going. On the rare occasions the Department of Corrections showed up for an inspection, COs rushed around, shoving art supplies into boxes and wiping browser histories. But most of the time, the outside world left Unit Four alone.

Unfortunately, Diesel couldn’t draw for shit, but they’d developed a symbiotic relationship over the time they’d been stuck together. Levi fed Diesel’s candy bar habit, and Diesel worked the evening shift in the kitchen so they never went hungry. Levi convinced the guards to provide a games console and headphones, and Diesel’s buddies in the Fredericksburg chapter of the Diamondback Devils MC delivered news from the outside world. Levi negotiated extra yard time for both of them, and Diesel’s crew left flowers on Ruby’s grave once a month as well as keeping an eye on Levi’s old home. He knew he’d never set foot in there again, but he still hated the idea of Blackstone House crumbling into a ruin. Ruby had lived, laughed, loved, and died there, and it was more of a tomb than her grave ever would be.

The Devils had offered to help with the Justin problem as well, but Levi held back for two reasons. One, although Occam’s razor suggested Justin was the man responsible for Ruby’s death, Levi couldn’t be a hundred percent certain another of his housemates hadn’t killed her, and if he sent the MC after the wrong man, he’d be no better than the motherfucker who’d raped, stabbed, and strangled a woman he’d cared deeply about. And two, Levi was selfish. He’d engineered a reasonably comfortable life for himself in this hellhole, and he didn’t want any blowback that would send him on a one-way trip to Redding’s Gap.

The Devils were brutal, but not necessarily smart. That was why Diesel was serving twenty-seven years for killing the man who’d punched his pregnant girlfriend in the stomach and caused her to lose their baby. If Diesel had simply put a bullet through the man’s head out in the forest, he might have gotten away with the crime, but no, he’d tied the guy to the back of his motorcycle and dragged him down the highway until his body was ninety percent road rash.

For the first few months after they began rooming together, Levi had sensed Diesel felt he deserved a similar fate, but eventually, the big guy had come to understand that Levi wasn’t the type to kill a woman in cold blood. Or any type of blood, in fact. So, here they were, trying to make the best of a shitty situation.

Diesel scrunched up the candy wrapper and tossed it at the trash can in the corner. Missed.

“Fuck,” he muttered, then rolled off the bed to try again. This time, the wrapper hit its target.

“He shoots, he scores,” Levi murmured as he began putting lines onto the page. The buyer wanted a Christmas hat on the cat. For the past week, the requests had taken on a decidedly festive theme. The COs had bought Levi an Advent calendar, and he wasn’t certain whether they were being altruistic, or subtly trying to remind him that sales were through the roof and he had deadlines. It was only December first, and Diesel had already eaten half the chocolates.

Life wasn’t exactly good, but it was bearable. His toxic family was nothing but a bad memory, his head was clear now that he didn’t swallow a handful of pills every day, and although he missed his research work, he was able to embrace his inner artist. In a strange way, the structure of prison days suited him. No money worries, no decisions to make, no need to mask his personality to “fit in.”