Kristen stood in front of her desk, a stack of DataBlast files in a neat pile before her. Across the table were strewn her notes from the night before: every hospital, every police station, every sheriff, in Portland, in Salem, in Tristess. Fourteen sleepless hours of searching.
Aldean had called her as soon as he realized what had happened. She had taken his call in the foyer of the University Club, surprised to hear his voice. He always made her a little nervous. Although they had drunk manhattans on the deck of the Tristess and chatted when she visited the distillery, he watched her warily. He reminded her of Lilith, circling Marydale, friendly but ready to lunge at anyone who threatened her. And Kristen liked him for the love he so obviously bore for Marydale. But when he called her at the University Club, he had felt like a stranger on the other end of the line. Marydale’s been arrested. You know she’s on parole. I can’t find her.
Now she clutched her phone to her ear.
“Holten State Penitentiary,” a woman’s voice said.
There was no How may I help you?
“I’m looking for…someone.”
The vocabulary didn’t fit: an inmate, an offender, a parolee. She was looking for Marydale’s cascade of golden hair.
“I’m with the Falcon Law Group in Portland,” Kristen said. “I’m looking for a parolee. She was arrested last night, and I can’t track her down.”
“A client?” the woman growled.
“A client.” The lie stuck in her throat, but client mattered more.
“Arrested last night?”
“Yes. Probably around seven. Her name is Marydale Rae.”
The woman paused. “We don’t have her.”
“No one has her!”
“Then she’s probably in transit.”
“Probably? She’s a human being. Someone needs to know where she is!”
“If she got arrested in Portland, she wouldn’t be coming here.”
“She was paroled in Tristess. I’ve called everyone in Portland. Please check to see if you have a record of her.”
“Hold.”
Kristen could hear the force with which the woman punched the hold button. There was no friendly elevator music or public service announcements on the line, just silence. Only the green call icon on her phone told her she was still connected.
Eleven and a half minutes later, a man came on the line.
“Looking for Rae, Marydale Marie?” he asked. “She’s in transit. Should be here tonight. They got hung up at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility, waiting for some paperwork to come through. Looks like an abscond. She didn’t have permission to leave the county.”
“I need to talk to her,” Kristen said. “This is a mistake. She had permission to be in Portland. She’s a business owner.”
“I’d just call on Wednesday or Thursday. We’re not as busy then. Her PO will put a sanction into the system within fifteen days, and then there’ll be a hearing. Are you representing her?”
“There shouldn’t even be a hearing. She didn’t do anything wrong!”
The man sighed. “We just got a new director. Turns out some POs have been letting their nonviolent offenders do whatever. Move. Travel. As long as they stay out of trouble. New director’s been cracking down on that. Cleaning house.”
“Why are they sending her back to prison?” Kristen asked. “Why not a county jail?”
“They closed down the women’s jail in Tristess. Everyone’s coming here. It’s a damn mess, if you ask me. We can’t keep a stable population. That’s the whole point of prison. It’s for people who’ve got a year or more. Now we got inmates coming in for two-week parole sanctions. But nobody wants to pay for a woman’s jail, so what are you gonna do?”
Kristen checked the time on her laptop. She didn’t need to call up Google Maps to know the answer to her question. It was Sunday, and it was nine hours and thirty-two minutes from Portland to Tristess if she didn’t catch any traffic. It would be almost seven in the evening by the time she arrived. If she were going to get back to court in the morning for the first day of DataBlast, she’d be able to stay for only an hour or two before turning back around…if Marydale was even there.
“How late do you allow visitors?” she asked.
“Tuesdays and Thursdays,” the man said. “Ten to four.”