is William Preston. The warden asked me to bring you in. Do you have any weapons? Contraband?” Elizabeth’s personal weapon was in the car, but a rumpled pack of cigarettes rode in a jacket pocket. She pulled it, showed it to the guard. “That’s fine,” he said, then walked her to a visitor processing area. “I need you to sign in.” She signed, and he slid the paperwork to an officer behind the bulletproof divider. “This way.” She went through a magnetometer, and Preston stood close as a two-hundred-pound woman administered a thorough pat down.
“You realize I’m a police officer.”
Thick hands went up one leg, then the other.
“Procedure,” Preston said. “No exceptions.”
Elizabeth endured it: the feel of hands through fabric, the smell of latex and coffee and hair gel. When it was done, she followed Preston up a flight of stairs, then down a hallway to the east corner of the building. He walked with his shoulders down, and the round head tipped forward. His shoes made rubbery noises on the floor. “You can wait here.” He indicated a small room with a sofa and chair. Beyond the room was a secretary of some sort, and beyond her a set of double doors.
“Does the warden know I’m here?” Elizabeth asked.
“The warden knows everything that happens in this prison.”
The officer left, and Elizabeth sat. The warden didn’t keep her long. “Detective Black.” He swept past the secretary, a dark-haired man pushing sixty. Elizabeth’s first thought was Charming. The second was Too charming. He took her hand with both of his, smiled with teeth too white to be anything but bleached. “I’m so sorry to keep you waiting. Detective Beckett has spoken of you for so long and with such passion, I feel as if I’ve known you a lifetime.”
Elizabeth retrieved her hand, wondering at the line between charming and slick. “How do you know Beckett?”
“Corrections and law enforcement are not so dissimilar.”
“That’s not really an answer.”
“Of course, it’s not. I apologize.” He blinded her again. “Charlie and I met once at a recidivism seminar in Raleigh. We were friends for a time—professional men with similar jobs—then life, as it so often does, took us in different directions, he more deeply into his career and I more deeply into mine. Still, I know a few in law enforcement, your Captain Dyer, for instance.”
“You know Francis?”
“Captain Dyer, a few others. A handful of people in your department have maintained an interest in Adrian Wall.”
“That doesn’t seem entirely appropriate.”
“Morbid curiosity, Detective. Hardly a crime.”
He gestured to the office beyond the double doors and did not wait for a response. Inside, they sat, he behind the desk, Elizabeth in front of it. The room was institutional, and trying to hide the fact: warm art and soft light, heavy rugs under custom furniture. “So,” he said, “Adrian Wall.”
“Yes.”
“I understand you knew him before.”
“Before prison,” she said.
“Have you known many on the other side? By that, of course, I mean men who’ve served lengthy sentences. Not misdemeanor recidivists, but hardened felons. Men like Adrian Wall.”
“I’m not sure what Beckett told you—”
“I ask because this is the great difference in our chosen professions. You see the actions that lead men to places like this. The things they do, the people they hurt. We see the change that prison inflicts: hard men made crueler, soft ones unmade entirely. Loved ones rarely get the same person back when the sentence is done.”
“Adrian is not a loved one.”
“Detective Beckett led me to believe you have certain feelings—”
“Look, this is simple. Charlie asked me to come, so I’m here. I assume there’s a purpose.”
“Very well.” A drawer opened, and a file came out. The warden placed it on the desk; spread his tapered fingers. “Much of this is confidential, which means I will deny ever showing it to you.”
“Beckett’s seen it?”
“He has.”
“And Dyer?”
“Your captain as well.”
Elizabeth frowned because it still felt unseemly: the easy smile and the office that tried to be what it was not, the heavy file that should not be so well thumbed. Of course people would have kept track. How could she have presumed otherwise? The deeper question was why she had not done the same.
“Pedophiles and police.” The warden opened the file. “Convicts hate both with an equal passion.” He handed over a sheaf of photographs. There were thirty maybe; all of them full color. “Take your time.”
If Elizabeth thought she was ready, she wasn’t.
“The miracle,” the warden said, “is that he survived at all.”