CHAPTER EIGHT
Ella was back at the MPD side office by half past six, the spider plant still dying on the windowsill, the laptop awake from sleep and her network finally talking to the building.
She’d left Ripley downstairs in conversation with Hibbert about manpower.
Whatever they decided would land on Ella’s plate inside the hour and she wanted a head start on Billy Hayes before it did.
She started with Hayes’s rap sheet.
He’d filed eleven formal grievances in four years.
That on its own was unusual. Most cons learned within a few weeks of being inside that grievances resulted in nothing except the attention of the people you’d grieved against. Eleven was the work of someone who either didn’t care about being seen or – Ella thought, reading the dates – wanted to be seen.
The grievances were all small, all internal, and all aimed at other inmates rather than staff.
There was a complaint about a cellmate stealing commissary, a complaint about being threatened in the yard, a complaint about a contraband search that had supposedly been timed to embarrass him.
When read separately, they were the petty everyday activities of prison life, but read together they formed a pattern.
She trawled through every page. Some parts she had to skim.
She found disciplinary notices, details of medical visits, visitor logs that were thin to the point of empty.
Hayes hadn’t had many people on the outside, and what he’d had he’d lost piece by piece across the four years.
Hayes had stints in the laundry, one in the kitchen, one short and unhappy spell on grounds.
Three cell moves. The third cell move was a single page tucked between two longer documents and Ella nearly turned past it before she registered what she was looking at.
It was an internal transfer memo dated late in his third year.
The cover sheet was routine. The body of it recommended moving inmate B.
A. Hayes from Housing Unit C to Housing Unit E with effect from the following week, on the recommendation of Lieutenant Aaron Pell.
The reasoning was given in a single sentence near the bottom of the page.
Recommend transfer in light of inmate’s protected status arising from ongoing cooperation with SIS.
‘Huh,’ she said.
The SIS were the Special Investigative Services. They were a prison’s in-house intelligence unit, and usually looked after multiple prisons in an area.
She read the sentence over and over until it made sense.
‘Ongoing cooperation with the SIS. Protected status,’ she said.
Very few inmates in the United States were awarded protected status.
It basically meant they were given special treatment and guarded by prison officers whenever there was a risk of them finding a shiv in their backs.
The list was reserved for the notorious, be it serial killers, celebrities, terrorists, dirty cops.
The last protected inmate she knew of was Charles Manson.
Why would an obscure offender like Billy Hayes find himself on that exclusive list?
Ripley burst through the door and disrupted Ella’s train of thought.
‘Hibbert’s got two uniforms going to Hayes’s social housing block in Anacostia tonight to seal the unit before any of his neighbors decide to take a souvenir.’ Ripley dropped into the chair opposite and looked at Ella’s screen. ‘What have you got?’
‘Doesn’t that strike you as weird?’
‘That they put him in Anacostia when he’s from Baltimore? Yeah. Especially as Maryland has tons more social housing options than D.C. We’re already overflowing here.’
Ella spun her laptop to show Ripley. She tapped the screen and said, ‘Read this. I dug into Hayes’s prison file. Read that little memo on his transfer letter.’
Ripley pulled the device closer, leaned in. ‘Recommend transfer in light of inmate’s protected status arising from ongoing cooperation with SIS.’
‘Yeah. Why would Hayes be gifted that? He doesn’t strike me as-’
Her partner was on her feet with her jacket in hand in the blink of an eye. She rummaged through her pockets and presented her car keys with a flourish. ‘Come on, Dark. We’ve got our motive. Let’s go.’
‘Huh? Go where?’
‘Hayes’s former prison. Jessup, is it?’
‘Yeah, it’s Jessup, but what’s the motive? I’m lost.’
‘It says right there he cooperated with the SIS,’ Ripley said.
‘Yeah, but that could be anything. He could have just been a model prisoner. I mean, he filed eleven grievances, but still.’
‘Nope. Put the pieces in order, Dark, and you’ll get the answer.’
Ella simultaneously enjoyed and hated the fact that Ripley could still get ahead of her. ‘No. I’m clearly not as familiar with prison politics as you are.’
‘Then get ready for a crash course. Billy Hayes had protected status because he was a prison snitch.’