Leopard's Baby

The chief guard plopped himself into a chair in front of the warden’s desk and mopped his brow. Even though it was December, a week before Christmas, and cold outside, he was sweating. Maintaining order was difficult under the best of circumstances, and seemed to be getting harder each day. Rather than having conditions inside the prison improve after the leaders of two primary gangs had been killed, as might be expected, the situation had deteriorated. Not only was there internal strife in the affected gangs over who was to become the new leader, the animosity between the two had increased markedly. There were daily fights. To make matters worse, other gangs were attempting to move into what had previously been the “territory” of the Aryan Women and the Black Avengers. Violence was rampant. The only island of relative stability were the group of women who spent most of their time with Tammy.

“Any change, Mike?” the warden asked.

“Shit, no,” Mike replied. He leaned back, closed his eyes, and blew air out of him mouth. “If anything, it’s worse. You’d have thought they’d calm down by now, but it isn’t happening.”

“What about the investigation? Anything new?”

“Nada. We’ve questioned each member of the Aryan Women and the Black Avengers until we’re blue in the face, but nobody knows anything. So they say. A couple in each gang thought there might have been some plan to get Roberts, but they can’t believe their side would work with the other side.”

“So six people, three from each gang, lock themselves into a shower room late at night for a knife fight which kills all of them?” the warden said in disbelief. She slammed her hand down on her desk. “I don’t believe it. Somehow or other Roberts is involved, I know it. I just don’t see how she pulled it off.”

“We questioned her for hours the day after,” Mike reminded his boss. “She claims she took a shower and went back to her cell without seeing anybody. We know she was back before curfew. The doc examined her. Not a scratch on her body. A couple of bruises, but what the hell. Comes with the territory here. Hard to believed she could be involved and show no physical signs of it. Speaking of Roberts, something interesting happened today.”

“Yeah?”

“I was watching from a distance so I didn’t see precisely who was involved. A Hispanic and a black were pushing each other and appeared to be ready to really go at it. They both had people behind them and the situation looked grim. I was all set to call for guards wearing riot gear to get ready to break up a gang fight. Then Roberts walked by. She didn’t even look at them, but they all scattered. Somehow Roberts puts the fear of God into them. I asked a couple of the inmates about her. One looked as if she were about to shit her pants and wouldn’t say anything. The other said something like, ‘When she comes near me the hairs on my arms stand straight up and I feel like I really have to pee. Nobody messes with that bitch.’ Somehow Roberts has some kind of voodoo mojo which scares the crap out of everyone but her group.”

“Huh!” the warden said. She tapped her right forefinger on her desk. “Interesting. Roberts could be the answer to our problem. Get her in here, would you Mike.”

***

The chief guard ushered Tammy into the warden’s office. She sat in the indicated chair, crossed her legs, and raised her eyebrows. The guard took a seat against the wall. The warden kept tapping her desk with the eraser end of a pencil and didn’t say anything for nearly two minutes. Finally she said, “I still think you had some part in the knife fight.”

“Which knife fight?” Tammy asked. “There’s been more than one.”

“You know damn well which fight. The one in the shower where six women got killed.”

“You asked me about that previously, warden,” Tammy said calmly. “I told you then and I’ll repeat it now. I know nothing about it. How could I possibly be involved in a fight where six people, all bigger than I am, get aced and not have a mark on me. Shit, Big Bertha alone was nearly twice my weight.”

“I’m just letting you know what I think,” the warden said. “I don’t know how you did it, but I know you did. I also know questioning you about it is futile. I have to put up with enough bullshit in this job as it is without spinning my wheels over something that’ll accomplish nothing.” She pointed toward the chief guard. “According to Mike, every inmate in the place is terrified of you.”

“I never noticed,” Tammy said with a barely suppressed grin.

“More bullshit!” the warden exclaimed. “Mike, tell her about the incident you described to me earlier today. How she broke up a possible battle just by passing by.” Mike did.

“I won’t call him a liar,” Tammy said. She shrugged. “If he says it happened, then it happened. It wasn’t anything I did deliberately.”

“Let me get to the point,” the warden said. She leaned forward and put both palms flat on her desk. “Since the knife fight, maintaining order has gotten increasingly difficult. Unless you’re around. The inmates are more afraid of you than they are of the guards. Far more afraid. I’m not sure of the reason, but I want to take advantage of it. Anytime it appears there’s the potential for a gang fight, I want you to be there. The guards will be instructed to make it happen. You don’t have to do anything other than make an appearance.”

“I told you once before I’m not interested in becoming your inmate policewoman. I’ve been incarcerated for seven months. I have less than a year to go until my sentence is completed. If I get involved in a fight I could find myself here a lot longer. I won’t risk that.”

“Help me out and I’ll help you.”

“How?”

“Somebody, I don’t know who, with a lot of juice is having my superior pressure me to get your sentence extended,” the warden said. She leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest. “So far I’ve resisted.”

“You’re threatening me!” Tammy exclaimed angrily as she jumped to her feet.

“Sit down and relax, Roberts,” the warden said. “I’m not making threats. I’m telling you the situation. I do have scruples. I’d never do anything underhanded like that. I want to make a deal. You help me and I’ll do more than just resist the pressure. They, whoever they are, want me to find some niggling little rule you’ve broken which can be blown up into an incident that would land you more prison time. I could probably do that for everyone here if I wanted to. Rather than do it for you, I’ll go the opposite route. I’ll write up glowing reports of your rehabilitation. So good that there’s some chance you won’t have to serve more than the minimum of twelve months. I can’t promise that, of course. It’s beyond my control. What I will promise is that I’ll make it impossible for them to extend you beyond the maximum of eighteen months. Deal?”

Tammy would grasp at any opportunity to get her sentence reduced. “Deal!”

“You’ll still have to have a psychiatric examination,” the warden cautioned. “That’s also beyond my control.”

***

“Bad news, Jennifer,” Merritt Covington said to Jennifer Roberts. The two were meeting in Jennifer’s home office.

“What now?” Jennifer asked.

“Our plan to have your nemesis removed didn’t go as planned. Not only that, we’re not getting our down payment back. When I asked my man about it, he grinned and said I should sue him. Obviously I can’t do that.”

“Damn!” Jennifer exclaimed. Covington grinned. It was rare for Jennifer to use a four letter word. “That girl has more lives than a cat. Can anything be done?”

“There’s a couple of steps. Removing her permanently didn’t seem to work. She’s very resilient. She still has at least five more months to serve. That gives us a little time. I’m working on getting her sentence extended by having her charged with violating some of the prison rules. Get her labeled as a troublemaker. I have to admit, however, there’s been pushback. The warden won’t cooperate. Not yet anyway. I’m looking for dirt on her, but so far I’ve found nothing. I’ve been using Curtis’s name, but that’s potentially dangerous. He hasn’t given his blessing.”

“I know,” Jennifer said. She rolled her eyes. “I don’t understand why, but both my husband and daughter seem to like Tamara. Especially Karla. Curtis also likes having his grandson around, so he’s gone along with us. So far anyway. You said there’s a couple of steps. What’s the other one?”

“When Tamara completes her sentence she still has to undergo a psychiatric evaluation. If the doctor feels she’s a threat, she’ll be held in a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. If we, or rather the psychiatrist, pushes her buttons enough that she flies off the handle the way she did at the custody hearing, that’ll do it.”

“Good work, Merritt,” Jennifer said. She patted him on the arm. “In the meantime, there’s a couple of steps I can take on my own. Just in case.”