Chapter 10
That Guy is Poisoned
I’m sitting alone at a table in the prison visitors’ room, waiting for my dad to be brought out.
There are bored-looking guards standing against each wall.
Their eyes scan the room, but I can’t tell if they’re actually paying attention or if they’re lost in their own personal daydreams. I try to make it up here to see my dad once a month, but it’s close to a four-hour drive each way.
In the almost twenty years I’ve been coming to visit him, I’ve never seen the guards do anything more than lean against the wall or occasionally bark out some orders to make people move apart if they’re too close for too long.
The room itself is nothing like you see on most TV shows.
There are no glass panes separating the prisoners from their visitors.
No plastic phone receivers. No one is handcuffed.
The room looks more like a cafeteria than anything.
There are even vending machines. The small windows are high above the floor and covered with metal grates, though, and the light that bleeds through them is torpid and weak.
Between the windows, the guards, and the prisoners’ beige uniforms, you can never quite forget where you are.
At the next table, there’s a mother and daughter visiting with a man—likely the girl’s father.
Or at least I assume it’s a mother, daughter, and father.
I suppose it could be an aunt and her niece.
Jeanette was the one who usually brought me here to see my dad when I was that age.
By then, my mom was no longer around. She’s probably still alive.
Somewhere. I don’t know for sure though, because the last time I saw her was at my fourth birthday party.
She left to ‘visit family’ not long after that and never came back.
She called on my sixth birthday, and again on my ninth—but I haven’t heard from her since that last phone call.
I could hire a private investigator to find her, I guess.
Hell, I could probably even ask Vaughn to do it.
But why bother? She could find me easily enough if she wanted, and clearly she doesn’t want to.
There’s clattering near the doors opposite my table, and then a minute later, my dad is escorted into the room.
His eyes find me within a second. Not that it’s hard.
There are only twenty tables in the room.
We’re not exactly playing Where’s Waldo.
Visits are granted on a first-come, first-served basis and can last a maximum of three hours, so you never know how long you’ll be waiting when you show up.
Today’s a Tuesday in the middle of the day, so I only had to sit in the waiting room for about fifteen minutes.
“Hey dad,” I greet as he takes a seat on the bench opposite me, running a hand through his short-cropped, salt-and-pepper hair.
“Hey Alyssa. You look tired.”
I snort. “Thanks dad. Just what every woman wants to hear.” I don’t mind, though.
Not really. I’d prefer the truth to a lie any day, and it’s true.
I only got about three hours of sleep. After I made it back to my office last night, I immediately hopped in my car to drive up here.
It was after five in the morning when I pulled into the hotel parking lot and then collapsed face down on the bed until my alarm woke me up at eight-thirty.
“The hair looks good,” he comments.
That’s right, I think. I forgot he hadn’t seen it. “Thanks,” I say again.
“Gotta ask why, though.”
“I’ll trade you. An answer for an answer. You don’t bullshit me, and I won’t bullshit you.”
“Alright. You go first.”
“Did you ever consider stopping? Before the police raided our house? Before it all came crashing down?”
“Honestly?” he asks, and I nod, already knowing I’m not going to like the answer. “No, not seriously. Sometimes I’d say it was the last one, but I never really meant it. I never really believed it. When all you see are the angles… well. I wasn’t built to just sit around and notice them.”
“Yeah. I know.”
“You got a diagnosis for that?” he questions, only partially joking.
“About half a dozen.”
“Want to tell me what they are?”
I raise my eyebrows. “Do you actually want to hear what they are?”
“No. I don’t care. But I’ll listen if you ever want to tell me.”
“I know,” I say. My dad’s a high-functioning psychopath with both narcissistic and obsessive-compulsive tendencies.
In another life, he could’ve run a Fortune 500 company.
It’s not that he doesn’t love me. He does.
But he literally can’t help himself. Randall Reed sees the angles, and he has to prove he’s the smartest person in the room.
He loves me, but he loves the adrenaline rush of getting away with it—and it doesn’t matter what it is—more.
However, he’s not lying when he says he’ll listen if I ever want to tell him what’s wrong with him.
Because even if he doesn’t love me the most, he does love me. “Your turn.”
“The hair?” he says, inclining his head.
“I dyed it for a guy.”
“I thought we said no bullshitting.”
“No bullshit. I dyed it for a guy. I needed to get close to him, and he seems to have a thing for black hair, so here we are.”
“Do I want to know more than that?”
I shrug. “No idea. Vaughn sends his best, though.”
“Alyssa, what the fuck are you doing?” my dad hisses.
“Nothing you wouldn’t do, dad. Only I’m going to do it better than you. Learn from your mistakes and all that. Did you ever think about trying to find mom?”
“Not really. She was gone, and I was busy,” he says like it’s that simple, and I’m pretty sure, for him, it was. “Why? Are you thinking about trying to find her?”
“Not really. She’s gone, and I’m busy.”
My dad smiles, and the corners of his eyes crinkle. “I hope you know what you’re doing, Alyssa. I’d hate it if I were released just in time for you to get locked up. Wouldn’t be much of a homecoming.”
“Chess?” I ask, changing the subject. “If I remember correctly, I’m one up on you.”
It’s nearly three in the afternoon when I plop into the driver’s seat of my car.
The hockey game tonight is scheduled to begin at seven.
I should be getting back into town right as it’s starting.
I haven’t decided what I’m going to do tonight yet.
Do I go to a sports bar so I can watch the carnage?
Because there’s no way I’ll put the game on in the condo with Katie there.
Or do I go home, act surprised when I hear the news, and then watch the highlights—or lowlights, depending on your perspective, I suppose—on the internet afterward?
I designed this train wreck, and I should be woman enough to watch it unfold.
Some of these guys are sure to have families who love them despite the fact that they’re scum.
But the guilt I’ll feel for putting their family members through an unexpected, untimely death is worth it to make sure they can’t ever hurt anyone else.
I guess I believe in the greater good, and the greater good says they need to pay.
And if the judge and the jury had gotten it right, then I wouldn’t have to play executioner, but they didn’t, so I do.
It’s not like anyone else is signing up for the job.
I grab my phone and text Katie to let her know I’ll be home around eight-thirty, and then I send Mark a quick message wishing him good luck tonight. I refrain from including the words ‘knock ‘em dead’ anywhere in my text. Because I’m thoughtful like that.
The sports bar is dimly lit, and the bulk of the bar’s lighting is pouring out of the eighty-whatever-inch TVs on the wall. There’s no sound coming from their speakers, though. It’s an unwritten rule of sports bars everywhere: the TVs must always be on, and the sound must always be off.
It’s a few minutes into the game, and it’s hard to keep track of what’s going on.
The Black Bears are wearing black and amber uniforms, and the other team is wearing red and white.
Aside from that, the figures are completely ambiguous and totally interchangeable—in fact, I’m pretty sure every single person on both teams is white.
Mostly, the players just look like flies buzzing around the ice, and they keep climbing in and out of the bench, which seems like a misnomer.
Presumably, Mark is somewhere among the sea of players crammed into the space, but I haven’t been able to pick him out at all.
The cameras are constantly moving and cutting and zooming, and I think I’d have a better idea of what the hell was going on if they simply held still and showed the entire rink.
As it is, I’m wondering how people don’t get motion sick trying to watch this.
Joey Carmichael is number thirty-four—I remember it from the label on his stall—and I’m trying to keep track of him, but between the camera jump cuts and how often who’s on the ice seems to change, it’s next to impossible.
He might keel over on the bench for all I know. What a travesty that would be.
“Is the camera work always this bad?” I mutter, jabbing at the ice in my soda with my straw.
Vaughn laughs from his spot on the stool next to mine before saying, “You get used to it.”
“Are you secretly a hockey fan?”
“Less a fan and more exposed by virtue of being in places like this.”
“Can you tell what’s going on?” I inquire.
“Some. The Black Bears’ offense looks strong. And the other team looks under-conditioned in comparison.”
“How can you tell?”
“Do you actually want to know?” Vaughn questions, side-eyeing me.
I consider it for a minute. “No.” I jab my straw back into my drink and return to trying to keep an eye on jersey thirty-four, but the stupid cameras won’t cooperate. It’s pissing me off.
“Thought so. Besides. You can ask your coach about it if you want to know.”
“He’s not my coach,” I snap.
“You want to tell me what’s bothering you?”