Chapter 23
ROGERS
Sleek and black and anxiety inducing. That’s what body bags are.
Black dumplings containing what was once alive.
Dumplings to carry the deceased from prison to the town’s morgue then onto wherever their living relations want them.
They have had too many of these dumplings departing the prison gates of late. Way way too many.
Watching the living step through the exterior doors to visit the trapped is a reminder of how out of touch with the world prison is. How bland and colourless these walls are.
The people of vibrant colours and styled clothes sitting in the waiting area for their chance to see a loved one are glaring reminders of these differences. The time when two worlds come together.
And it’s all thrust into Rogers’s face, whether he wants it or not. At least until his break. If he can hold out that long without screaming or being called out on his keen interest in any bulges in clothing.
It’s a difficult task to pretend he’s disinterested in the arriving people, and not watching for weapons missed by the metal detectors or the pat down they’re subject to at the entrance.
He feels somewhat bad for the two female correctional officers who are conducting the pat downs.
But it’s safer to have females touching the visitors, less likely to get blamed for inappropriate touching than if a male officer does them.
Or so the prison board says, pretty sure it’s just to keep the pretty women officers away from the creeps in the cells.
And this is the one thing he can stand behind, hiring petite women to work a male prison is asking for trouble.
Maybe at a maximum prison it would be fine, where inmates don’t have as much free range as they do here.
But in this place? He wouldn’t trust it.
“Switch.” CO Kelly Hammett steps in beside Rogers, his blond locks pulled back into an organised ponytail. His eyes already scanning the room for trouble. He needs to lighten up some, take his face out of the CO handbook for once.
Not Rogers’s problem though. He is out for his food break. About time too, his stomach is running on empty fumes. Another minute and the visitors might start looking appetising.
Each door receives the tap of his key card.
One after the other until he is in the corridor that will take him past visitation to the officers’ break-room.
Another room without cameras or adequate security.
A simple lock which needs a key to open the way, something any inmate with the basics of lock picking could easily open.
The cardboard flimsy white door is just about to touch base on the latch and close him off from the prison corridor when an inmate grabs all of Rogers’s attention.
In the way they move, how twitchy they are, frantic, grey as a ghost. Jasper’s not quite jogging but not walking either.
His posture is guilty as all hell and back.
What did the kid do? If it was anyone else, he would instantly plunge into high alert and expect to find a slew of dead inmates littering the corridor in Jasper’s wake. A grotesque trail of breadcrumbs.
However, this is not anyone else, and Jasper is the least of Rogers’s concerns for troublemakers. He seems to be a magnet for trouble finding him, but that might have more to do with Sinn'ous creeping in his shadow than anything else.
When no one comes barrelling past chasing the kid, Rogers closes the door fully, locking himself away from the prison population. His only company for the next half hour is a room that’s seen better days. And furniture that looks like it contains tetanus and termites.
Perhaps Jasper just had a difficult visit from whomever came to see the kid. Can’t imagine it would be easy having your family see you behind bars.
At the wall of dented paint flecking lockers, Rogers clicks in his locker combination. Pulling open the morphed door that bows inwards, to retrieve his bag and whatever snacks he’d stuffed in there in his pre-caffeinated haze when he left for work.