Mind Games - Page 225
“Okay, what is it?”
“I’m going to Virginia, to Red Onion State Prison, to meet with Riggs face-to-face.”
He started to speak, stopped himself. Walking to the window over the sink, he took a long pull from the bottle. “My first instinct is to say Don’t even think about it. You shouldn’t get anywhere near him.”
He turned back. “Only you can’t do that, can you?”
“No.”
“But how would this help you? How would giving him the gift of you going to him like this—and it would be for him—help you?”
“That’s the right question.” Because it was, she sat, breathed away the tension she’d held tight inside. “He’ll think it’s a gift, enough to excite him at first, let him feel like he’s gained the advantage. But it’s the opposite. He won’t know I’m coming until I’m there. He won’t have time to plot and plan. I have. I’ve thought about this a long time, even made notes, drawn images. I kept a folder, but I kept tucking it away, thinking later, maybe later. Later’s now.”
“What folder?”
“The game plan. Literally. He’s back in seg—segregation. Solitary. It’s a room with a cot and a toilet. A steel door with a little window in it, another little window up in the back wall—frosted glass. He can’t even see outside. When they put him in general population, he screws up. He can’t and won’t follow the rules. He’s violent—he’s made of violence.
“He’s spent more than twelve of the last nearly sixteen years in one of those rooms. Twenty-three hours a day. His meals come through a slot in the door. One hour a day, he’s cuffed, shackled, and led down to a mesh cage so he can exercise. He doesn’t. He paces sometimes, or he broods, or he tries to climb the mesh, screams obscenities.”
“You’ve watched him.”
“Yes. Keeping to the edges of things, but yes. I know he reads other inmates as much as he can, and guards, medical personnel. Once he was in population for over six months—and managed to score some opioids. He’d trade what he read for favors, for drugs, for whatever he could get. He even qualified for one of the prison programs, and used that privilege to attack the instructor.”
“So back in segregation.”
“Yes.”
Not exhausting after all, she realized. Telling him, feeling the way he listened, invigorated. It helped her believe she could do it.
“In all the years he’s been in there, he hasn’t had a single visitor, a single letter. He has no friends, no family who care about him on the outside, no friends or community inside. He’s alone.”
“He has you.”
She closed her eyes and thanked whatever power had placed this man in her life. The man who understood, really understood.
“Yes, and that’s his obsession, his lifeline, really. No one else knows him, no one understands what he has, except me. I took away what he wanted most. Not things, but the ability to kill and take things.”
“You’ve got a reason for telling me all this.”
“I want you to have a clear picture. Maybe he was born broken, maybe circumstances broke him. I don’t care. He became a monster, and he remains one. But his focus has narrowed and narrowed. He can’t read others the way he once did because it’s so narrowed on me, and so much in him is broken.”
“Because it’s all on you, it’s worse on you. It’s hurting you more.”
“It is, and I’ve had enough. Physically he’s healthy enough. He could live a very long time, focused on me, hurting me, shadowing my life. I’ve fought back, Ty, but it’s always temporary before the cycle starts again. It’s like … Nadine’s husband hits her.”
“Christ.”
“Not every day, not every week, but she never knows when something’s going to set him off and the fist is coming. She’s carrying her third child with him. She doesn’t leave. Maybe she fights back, I don’t know. But it’s temporary. I won’t be like that. I’m going to break the connection, break the cycle. I’m going to break him.”
“Good. When do we leave?”
The heart that clogged her throat made her eyes sting. “I—”
“Don’t say you’re going alone. That’s not a possibility.”
“I already had this with Rem. I can’t have him or Grammie with me. My mother came from Grammie, Rem came from our mother. I don’t know if Riggs could use that somehow. I don’t know if that’s part of what ties me to Riggs or not.”
“We’re not blood, you and me, so that reason’s out. And if I know Rem, if he didn’t go with you, he’d be right behind you.”