Taking the Heat

“Working my way up the ladder could take months. Tucker needs help now. Besides, Warden Crumb has an open-door policy, and I feel he should know what’s going on. There’s more at risk than Tucker. Someday Crumb might be facing allegations of major corruption. I’d want a chance to deal with the situation before I was hit with something like that, wouldn’t you?”

“I don’t care about the warden. I care about you, and I don’t want you to go to him even if he’ll see you. What if this Hansen guy denies what happened? Won’t the other officers back him up because they’re guilty, too? It’s you against the rest. Not even Randall Tucker can substantiate what you say. A murderer sentenced to life doesn’t exactly possess a lot of credibility.”

“I can’t let this kind of thing go on. It’s not right. Randall Tucker was seriously injured. He could’ve been killed.”

“I doubt Hansen would’ve let it go that far.”

“So that makes it okay? Tucker accused him of staging fights. The only thing missing is the bookie.”

“I understand that. But you’re new there, Gabby. You don’t know how everything works yet. Why not lie low for a while and see what happens? Maybe it was a personal thing between Hansen and Tucker. Now that Tucker’s had his beating, it might be over. For all you know, Tucker deserved what happened to him.”

“That’s not for us to decide.”

“So don’t. Just wait a week or two, that’s all I’m asking. See what happens,” he said again. “If you won’t do it for me, do it for Allie.”

“You and Allie are the only reasons I didn’t go to the warden today.”

“Thank heaven for small favors,” he muttered. “You don’t want to alienate everyone your first week, Gabby. Did you get my child support?”

“I did, but you sent more than we agreed.”

“I don’t want you eating noodles every day.”

“I’m not your responsibility.”

“You’d send it to me if you thought I needed it.”

That, at least, was true. “I’m working now. What makes you think I need money?”

“I helped you move into that piece of junk you call a trailer, remember?”

David was right about the trailer. Nearly eighteen years old, it had brown shag carpet, fake wood paneling and pieces of tattered, mismatched furniture. A small awning covered Gabrielle’s white Honda Accord, and various cacti dressed up the desert landscape that predominated in the park, but the place didn’t have much to recommend it. Except that it was cheap and clean and she could call it her own.

“I remember. But this is only until I can afford something better.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t been around very much since the move,” he said.

“That’s okay. You can’t exactly schedule the deaths in your family. I feel bad about Grandma Larsen. I know she meant a lot to you.”

“She was quite the old dame. I never dreamed taking care of her estate could take so long, though. I feel like I’ve been out of circulation for months instead of weeks.”

“How’s your work now that you’re back from Michigan? You doing plenty of loans?”

“Things have fallen off, but I have a new gal on the phones, drumming up refinances.”

“I hope interest rates stay down.”

“I pray to the interest-rate gods every day. How’s Allie?”

“She’s happy and chubby and sometimes I look at her and think I could never love anyone quite so much.”

He fell silent and, for a moment, Gabrielle feared she’d hurt him. “I didn’t mean—”

“Forget it,” he said. “We’ve already been through all that. You love me, but you don’t love me, as if I’m supposed to be able to tell the difference.”

“David, you’re my best friend. I never wanted to cause you pain.”

“I know.” He cleared his throat. “Is Allie walking yet?”

“Almost. She gets around by hanging on to the furniture. When are you going to come see us again?” David’s visitation rights included weekends and holidays, but Allie was still so little, he rarely took her to his place. Even when she and David had first separated and Gabrielle was living in an apartment in Mesa, he typically spent the weekends at her place, where they could all be together.

“I’ve got a lot to do here at the office, and I was planning to get caught up this week. I could come down next Monday. Can you wait that long?”

Five days sounded like an eternity. Gabrielle was tempted to say no. Her life was much easier when David was around. But she wouldn’t let herself use him. He needed to let go of her and to meet someone else, someone capable of being the kind of wife and lover he deserved. “Monday’s fine, except I have to work.”

“Don’t you get off at three? I’ll come down late Sunday and spend the night so I can watch Allie while you work on Monday, then I’ll take the two of you out to dinner.”

Allie started to fuss, wanting to be held, and Gabrielle gladly obliged. “Sounds great.”

“You be good till then. Let Hansen and the others take the lead. Don’t risk yourself for an inmate again, you hear?”

Gabrielle pulled the phone cord out of her daughter’s mouth, but Allie shoved it right back in. “I hear,” she said.

“That doesn’t sound like a real commitment.”

Gabrielle thought of Randall Tucker and his broken hand and knew she couldn’t make David any promises. She wanted Tucker’s hand X-rayed and set. She wanted him to have stitches so the cut above his eye would heal properly. And she feared the only way to make that happen was by going over Hansen’s head.

But would Warden Crumb listen? Or would all hell break lose?

“I’ll give it another day or so,” she said. “Maybe Hansen will change his mind.”

“Yeah, maybe he will,” David agreed, but he didn’t sound any more convinced than she was. “I’ll call you tomorrow.”

Gabrielle said goodbye and hung up, but her thoughts didn’t linger on David. Instead she pictured Randall Tucker. Intelligent, articulate, handsome, he was so unusual for a convict.

Was jealousy enough to drive a man like that to murder?

CHAPTER THREE

NIGHTS WERE THE WORST. Especially this night, Tucker thought. He lay on his bed trying to tolerate the throbbing of his hand and the snoring of the man in the next cell so he could get to sleep, but he couldn’t manage it. He’d waited until ten o’clock to take the Tylenol that Officer Hadley had given him, hoping that might help, but it wasn’t enough. Rodriguez and his gang had fixed him up good this time. He needed something stronger.

Still, it wasn’t the physical pain that bothered him half as much as the images in his mind—images of Landon taking his first step, Landon playing T-ball, Landon learning to ride a bike.

If a man could die of missing someone, Tucker had one foot in the grave. He’d sell his soul to see his son again, even for only a few minutes. At six years old, the boy had lost both parents. Death had taken one, prison the other. Now the poor kid was being raised by strangers in a foster home in Phoenix, strangers who, in the six months Tucker had been imprisoned at Florence, had never once brought him to see his father. Tucker’s own parents had brought Landon down a few times, but it was a bittersweet experience to see him sitting in a booth on the other side of a piece of thick glass.

The guy next door rattled into a wheeze, then guttered out, giving Tucker a moment’s reprieve from the racket. Wishing he could ease the pain as well, he shifted, but he was in a world of hurt from which there was no escape, at least until his injuries healed.

Perhaps he’d been stupid to let Rodriguez provoke him. He’d known from the beginning that the Border Brothers wouldn’t fight fair. There was no such thing as “fair” in prison. Most inmates did anything and everything they could to hurt and maim. His best defense against the Border Brothers would be to join a rival gang such as the white supremacist Aryan Brotherhood, but he refused to align himself with that group or any other, refused to espouse their twisted ideals. So he had to fight to survive.