told Faith, “See if they’ve tossed Vasquez’s cell yet. If they have, I want to know who did it and what they found. If not, you do the honors.”
Faith never had to be told twice to leave a dead body.
“Will.” Amanda was already typing into her phone. “Finish up here, then start the second-round interviews. These men have had enough time to get their stories straight. I want this solved quickly. This isn’t a needle-in-a-haystack situation.”
Will thought it was exactly that kind of situation. There were roughly one thousand suspects, all of them known criminals. “Yes, ma’am.”
Sara nodded for him to follow her into the kitchen. She pulled down her mask. “Faith lasted longer than I thought she would.”
Will pulled down his mask, too. The kitchen was in similar disarray. Trays and food and blood were splattered everywhere. Yellow plastic markers on the butcher’s block indicated where Vasquez’s hand had been chopped off. A meat cleaver was on the floor. Blood had spilled over like a waterfall.
“No fingerprints on the knife,” Sara told him. “They used plastic wrap around the handle, then shoved it down the sink.”
Will saw that the drain under the sink was disconnected. Sara’s father was a plumber. She knew her way around a P-trap.
She said, “Everything I’m finding shows they had the presence of mind to cover their tracks.”
“Why take the hand into the cafeteria?”
“Best guess is they threw it across the room.”
Will tried to gather a working theory of the crime. “When the fight started, Vasquez stayed seated at the table. He didn’t get up because he’s not affiliated.” Inmates had their own form of NATO. An attack on an ally meant you were in the fight. “Only two guys went at him, not a gang.”
“Does that narrow your field of suspects?” Sara asked.
“Inmates tend to self-segregate. Vasquez wouldn’t have openly mixed with inmates outside his race.” The haystack had grown marginally smaller. “This feels like a crime of contingency. If a riot happens, this is how we’ll kill him.”
“Chaos creates opportunity.”
Will rubbed his jaw as he studied the bloody shoe and footprints across the floor. Vasquez had fought like hell. “He must’ve had information they wanted, right? You don’t chop off somebody’s hand just because. You hold him down, you threaten him, and then when he doesn’t give you what you want, you take a cleaver and chop off his hand.”
“That’s how I’d do it.”
Will smiled.
Sara smiled back.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He didn’t answer. “Vasquez was known to hide phones on his person. Could that be why they gutted him?”
“I’m not sure they gutted him so much as stabbed him repeatedly. If they were searching for a phone, the sock lock to the ribs would’ve had a sort of Valsalva effect. There’s a reason prison guards make you cough when you bend over. The increased abdominal pressure reduces the constrictive force inside the sphincter. The phone would’ve dropped out with the first blow,” Sara said. “Besides, cutting in through the belly doesn’t make a lot of sense. If I was searching for a phone up your ass, I’d look up your ass.”
Faith had impeccable timing. “Is this a private moment?”
Will took his phone out of his pocket. The missed call had been from Faith. “We think Vasquez’s killers were looking for something. Information. Maybe a stash location.”
Faith said, “Vasquez’s cell was clean. No contraband. Judging by his art collection, he was a fan of half-naked ladies and our Lord Jesus Christ.” She waved goodbye to Sara as she led Will back through the cafeteria. Her hands cupped her nose to block out the smell. “Nick and Rasheed have narrowed down our list of suspects to eighteen possibles. No one with murder on their sheet, but we’ve got two manslaughters and a finger-biter.”
“His own finger or someone else’s?”
“Someone else’s,” Faith said. “Surprisingly, there are no reliable witness statements, but plenty of snitches offered up bullshit conspiracy theories. Did you know the Deep State is running a pedophile ring through the prison library system?”
“Yes.” Will asked, “Does this murder feel personal to you?”
“Absolutely. We’re looking for two Hispanic males, roughly Vasquez’s age group, on the inner ring of his social circle?”
Will nodded. “When was the last time Vasquez’s cell was tossed?”
“There was a prison-wide search sixteen days ago. The warden brought in eight CERT teams to toss the cells. The sheriff’s office provided twelve deputies. Shock and awe. No one saw it coming. Over four hundred phones were confiscated, maybe two hundred chargers, the usual narcotics and weapons, but the phones were the obvious problem.”
Will knew what she was talking about. Cell phones inside a prison could be very dangerous, though not all prisoners used them for nefarious purposes. The state took a cut off the top of all landline calls, charging a $50 minimum to open a phone card, then around five bucks for a fifteen-minute call and almost another five bucks every time you added more funds. On the other hand, you could rent a flip phone from another inmate for roughly $25 an hour.
Then there were the nefarious purposes. Smartphones could be used to find personal information on COs, oversee criminal organizations through encrypted texts, run protection rackets on inmates’ families, and most importantly, collect money. Apps like Venmo and PayPal had replaced cigarettes and Shebangs as prison currency. The more sophisticated gangs used Bitcoin. The Aryan Brotherhood, the Irish Mob Gang and the United Blood Nation were raking in millions through the state prison system.
Jamming cell phone signals was illegal in the United States.
Will held open the door for Faith as they walked outside. The sun was beating down on the empty recreation yard. He saw shadows behind the narrow windows in the cells. More than one man was screaming. The oppression of the lockdown was almost tangible, like a screw slowly drilling into the top of your head.
“Administration.” Faith pointed in the distance to a one-story building with a flat roof. They took the long way, using the sidewalks instead of walking across the packed red clay that passed for the recreation yard.
They passed three COs leaning against the fence, each sporting a thousand-yard stare. There was nothing to guard. They were just as bored as the inmates. Or maybe they were biding their time. Six of their fellow guards had been injured in the riot. As a group, COs weren’t known for their ability to forgive and forget.
Faith kept her voice low, saying, “The warden went apeshit over the phones. Segregation was already at full occupancy. He suspended all yard time, shut down the commissary, stopped visitation, turned off the computers and TVs, even closed the library. For two weeks, all these guys could do was wind each other up.”
“Sounds like a smart way to start a riot.” Will opened another door. They walked past offices with plate-glass windows overlooking the hallway. All of the chairs
