CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
By the time the prison rose up in front of her again, Kate’s jaw ached from clenching.
Northbridge SMU sat in the light like the same concrete spaceship she remembered, dumped in the middle of rural Maine and wrapped in razor wire for luck.
It was muggy and close day, the sky a bleached, indifferent grey.
The fields beyond the perimeter were yellow and parched now instead of green; the hills hunched in on themselves as if waiting for a deluge.
She pulled into the visitors’ lot, eased the sedan into a space and killed the engine. The tick of cooling metal filled the silence.
Next week, she thought. Next week, it'll be me in a different kind of box.
The notice from Internal Affairs sat folded in the glove compartment, as if location could muffle meaning.
Formal Review Board, re: conduct during active investigation.
Failure to follow chain of command. Failure to notify SAC.
Failure to notify partner, failure to notify commanding officer.
Disregard of direct instruction from supervising AUSA.
The list had gone on for a page and a half, neat bullet points marching like charges at a court martial.
Her association rep had read it over with her in the cafeteria, lips pursed around a toothpick.
Peskoff looked like someone had carved him out of leftover Bureau granite and then forgotten to sand down the edges.
Forty years in, silver hair buzzed short, shoulders still thick under a jacket that had seen three administrations.
“Could go either way,” he’d said finally, sliding the paper back. “You gave them a hell of a lot to work with, Valentine.”
“Thank you for that comforting assessment.”
He’d snorted. “You soloed it to Chi-town. You ignored orders, you put yourself in harm’s way without backup, you left it to your partner to work out that you were a thousand miles away from the investigation. On paper, this is a mess. Oh, and you damaged your gun. Government property.”
On paper. On a motel mattress, with a muzzle pointed at her head, things had looked decidedly different.
“But,” Peskoff had gone on, rolling the toothpick between his teeth, “you also closed a case nobody else was going to close. You stopped a killer, prevented a whole bunch of headlines nobody needs. And your jacket?” He’d tapped the file with a knuckle.
“It’s not clean. I won’t lie. You’ve pulled some stunts over the years.
But you’ve got a wall of commendations. They’re not going to pretend that doesn’t exist.”
“So which matters more?” she’d asked. “The list of stupid or the list of useful?”
“That’s the fun of review boards,” he’d said dryly.
“Nobody knows until the coffee runs out. Best I can tell you is: it’s genuinely fifty-fifty.
Some of them are True Believers, you know?
Real by-the-book types, who prefer an agent with shiny boots to one with a stellar arrest sheet.
But some of them remember what it’s like to be in the field.
And some of them”—another tap—“like to be associated with people who catch famous killers. That kind of vanity works for you.”
“Marcus says your name sounds like an insult,” she’d told him, because it was easier than saying thank you.
“Marcus can kiss my pension,” Peskoff had replied. “Go do your job.”
“I’m suspended.”
“Oh yeah, well let me do mine. And for God’s sake, Valentine—no more side quests before the hearing, yeah?”
She’d nodded. But a nod wasn’t a promise.
Now, outside Northbridge, she sat for a few more seconds. Then she opened the door.
The warm air hit her like a bath. Under darkening clouds, the razor wire on the fences caught what little light there was, flashes of mean silver.
She locked the sedan and walked toward the entrance.
The check-in process hadn’t grown any smoother with repetition.
Empty pockets into the plastic tray. Belt off, hands flat on the counter while Rivera ran the handheld scanner up and down her sides.
Shoes in the X-ray machine. Sign the liability waiver that cheerfully assured her the State of Maine wasn’t responsible for anything that might happen to her inside its walls.
“Is it me, or has the check-in routine got even longer?” she said when Rivera handed her badge back.
Rivera nodded faintly and leaned in. “Everything’s been tightened til it squeaks. There’s been a bit of a discovery.”
“What kind?”
Rivera merely pointed to the corridor ahead, indicating that this wasn’t the place to speak.
They moved along in silence at first: the sage walls, polished concrete, the faint tang of disinfectant overlaying the human undernote.
Cameras watched from smoked-glass domes at every corner.
Somewhere distant, a shout rose and fell, followed by the slam of a heavy door.
Eventually, Rivera spoke out of the side of her mouth.
“Each inmate has a tablet; they can file requests and complaints, book a phone call, order commissary.”
“What could possibly go wrong with that?”
“It’s very tightly monitored,” Rivera said, defensively.
“But we found out there’s a code. When they order commissary.
Numbers of items, the order of the list. Kind of like: three Honeybuns and 12 chili ramen noodles means ‘send Joey to beat up my ex-wife’.
I mean, not that exactly, but… See, the orders are all processed by trustees in the main prison, and from there…
” She snorted, without humor. “Trustees.”
“Cox involved?”
“Everyone’s involved. Some terrorist squealed in return for a transfer. It’s been going on for a couple of years.”
That explained how Cox had still been able to maintain some influence and a degree of communication while entombed in this concrete dungeon.
Instincts kicking in, Kate started to think of the implications, how she could use the data to build a picture of Cox's communications, his network, perhaps thwart future crimes.
Then she remembered: next week you might be out of a job.
The maximum-security visiting room looked unchanged. Same humming fluorescent strip lights flattening everything into one institutional color palette.
The guard called Bailey was on the back wall again, arms folded over his gym-built chest, red hair buzzed down to prison-regulation contrition.
“Heard about you in Boston,” he said. “Or was it Chicago? Both? Damn good work, anyway.”
“Thanks,” Kate said. “My bosses don’t agree.”
Bailey shrugged. “Bosses are full of shit.”
Through the glass, Elijah Cox sat where he always sat: pale grey jumpsuit, chains at his wrists and ankles, hair cropped close enough to show his scalp in patches.
If anything, he looked thinner than before, the planes of his face more pronounced, like someone had been whittling him down to essentials.
When he saw her, he smiled that small, intimate smile like a secret handshake.
She ignored the churn in her stomach and walked to her side of the booth. The metal stool was cold against the backs of her legs. She picked up the phone. On the other side of the glass he mirrored the gesture, chains chiming.
“Agent Valentine,” he said. The handset made his voice metallic again, as if he were speaking from deep beneath the sea. “Twice in one year. People will talk.”
“They already do,” she said. “Let’s not give them more material.”
His eyes swept her face, cataloguing the way they always did. "You look tired," he observed gently. "The work takes more from you, lately."
“Occupational hazard,” she said. “I’m not here for a wellness check, Cox.”
One corner of his mouth ticked up. “No. You’re here to tell me I was right.”
She refused the bait. “I’m here to tell you your latest disciple is in federal custody,” she said, voice flat. “Quinn Marsh. He’ll be tried. He’ll be sentenced. He’ll die in a cage like you.”
Cox listened without so much as a blink. If the name meant anything to him, it didn’t show.
“And yet,” he said softly, “his work is done.”
A pulse beat hard at the base of her throat. “He murdered three people that we know of. He butchered a woman in her own office. He terrorized a family. His work is over when a jury says so.”
Cox tipped his head, as if humoring a child. “His mission was not about numbers. It was about revelation. For you.”
“I’m not interested in your theology.”
“But you are steeped in it.” His tone remained mild, conversational. “You came to me with questions about the fifth commandment, remember? Honor thy father and thy mother. You wanted to know who would bleed under that banner. Now you know. You’ve seen the commandment in action.”
Her fingers tightened around the phone. She could feel the groove of the plastic under her palm.
“You think I needed Marsh to teach me anything?” she asked. “I fought him round a motel room with my bare hands. I nearly died because of him.”
“And yet you live,” Cox said. “Because you were never the sacrifice. You were the disciple.”
“Explain,” she said. The single word carried more acid than she intended.
And more dread than she wanted to admit to.
He watched her carefully, as if weighing how deeply he could push the knife.
“All this time,” he said, “you’ve worn your father like armor.”
She felt herself still, in the way a body does before impact.
“You’ve built him a shrine in your mind,” Cox continued. “The Brilliant Doctor. The Martyr. The man who did no wrong, who held the scalpel of justice with perfect, trembling hands. You have made an idol of him, Kate. That is the sin. Not love. Idolatry.”
“You don’t know a damn thing about my father,” she said.