“Sorry.” The sturdy black-uniformed brunette facing Nora from the other side of the chest-high reception podium added an apologetic smile.
For the third time, she’d stopped processing Nora into the Washington Corrections Center for Women. Distracted, the brunette had to buzz in more prison guards.
Nora frowned.
The woman facing her was surprisingly cautious when admitting staff.
Nora had watched her deal one-by-one with two heavy-set men and an equally solid woman.
Each time the wall-mounted monitor chirped, the brunette at reception dropped what she was doing to peer through the bulletproof glass in the entry door.
Like she had to confirm that the person ringing her bell wore the same death’s-head-black outfit she did.
After checking out the new arrival, she remote-unlocked the steel gate in the tall chainlink fence between the institution and the parking lot.
When her colleague was inside the fence and the gate had clanged firmly shut, the woman turned toward the wall behind her and studied the monitor.
Nora guessed she wanted proof that the gate had relocked.
Finally, the brunette buzzed the glass door open.
Nora had assumed that the guards entering were coming in to work a regular duty schedule. But given the way the brunette was acting, maybe they’d been called in to deal with an emergency?
Could that be why the woman behind the podium had put herself on high alert?
Or was she new at her job and afraid of making a mistake?
The arriving guards didn’t act like they were rushing to a crisis.
Unhurried, each trudged through the reception area carrying a thick-sided thermal container large enough to hold a six-pack.
The containers were twice the size of a school lunch box.
Nobody responding to an emergency call would stop to load a container with food and beverage. These staffers were coming in to work the next shift.
Prison guards were big people. Hearty meals were required to keep them alert for an eight-hour shift.
Nora’d seen only three skinny guards in her life. As if the work itself bulked them up.
Turned them cynical and suspicious, too.
One more clue that the brunette behind the podium was a recent hire.
She hadn’t once given Nora the evil eye. She’d apologized for the delay.
Maybe Nora had achieved a respectable good-citizen look?
She’d tried hard, donning yesterday’s tan cotton slacks and topping them with a black cotton V-neck sweater. It fit nicely over a sports bra that wouldn’t set off the metal detector.
Her penny loafers were easy to slip off and load into the scanner.
She was a law-abiding person with no secrets hidden in her shoes or undergarments.
Still, the brunette was nervously studying the ID card that identified Nora as an officer of the court.
Frowning, the woman said, “Looks like somebody decided to put you in the visitor room. The attorney interview room is free. You want to meet your inmate there?”
“No, thanks.”
Nora pulled out the debit card she’d purchased on an earlier trip to the Washington Corrections Center for Women. It was stamped with the institution’s acronym, WCCW.
“I requested a special visit, not an attorney appointment. I want to use the vending machines.”
When she’d been inside, she’d yearned for junk food.
She couldn’t visit Silvia Simon without offering her potential client a snack.
Placing a twenty-dollar bill with the card, Nora laid both on the podium and asked for the cash to be added to the card.
The woman sighed and pulled out an instruction manual.
Putting twenty bucks on the card while admitting four more guards required another ten minutes of painstaking effort.
But by two o’clock on Thursday afternoon, Nora’d cleared the metal detector, passed through the double-doored sally port to the visitor room, and seated herself on a chainlink-gray plastic chair at a matching square table.
The soda and snack machines hummed at her back and the air smelled of lemon-scented cleaner.
Beyond the bank of windows in the exterior wall, she saw lint-colored sky. The sun was hidden and only a single scrap of pale blue broke the cloud cover.
The prison was situated a few miles inland from Puget Sound. The marine climate was wet. Annual rainfall on the Washington coast was four times the amount that fell on the Spokane side of the Cascade Range.
Nora avoided overnighting in Gig Harbor, the closest town. She was sure she’d start to mold if she lingered in the damp environment.
Today’s visit was as brief as she could manage. She’d arrived at Sea-Tac this morning. She’d fly to Spokane tonight.
She was eager to get back. She had to stay on top of her real estate deal.
Nothing like being inside a prison to make her yearn for the condo.
Infrequent visitors probably weren’t bothered by this room.
But two years behind bars had given her an aversion to any form of incarceration.
Her skin itched like she was breaking out in hives.
And this was the nicest spot in the institution. The decor tried to be kid-friendly.
The majority of inmates were mothers. If a kind relative hauled an inmate’s children to WCCW, this was where she saw them.
The charcoal gray concrete floor was covered with creamy vinyl and colorful murals decorated the matching walls.
Games, puzzles, and coloring books suited for all ages filled the bookshelves lining the wall beside the vending machines.
For Nora, that welcoming message was undercut by the presence of another black-uniformed guard.
A heavy-set blonde, the woman was stationed at a small metal desk near the sally port.
She was present to enforce the rules.
At Nora’s table, a single reddish chair stamped with a big black number six was the only one in which Silvia Simon could sit.
An inmate could move only as far as the nearest bookshelf to collect the Scrabble game or a deck of cards.
She wasn’t allowed near the vending machines.
Over their hum, Nora heard the metal door on the prison side of the room click open.
She shifted to watch Silvia enter.
Lithe and brown-skinned, Silvia headed briskly for the seated guard.
Silvia’s black hair was recently styled into a chin-length bob. A light touch of makeup high-lighted dark brown eyes that made Nora think of Bambi’s mother.
The black-and-white mug shot in Nora’s file had caught a different Silvia.
That photo showed a frail twenty-year-old swaddled in borrowed clothes that were too big for her. Her stringy hair was uncombed, her eyes empty.
She’d looked dazed and defeated
Based on her mug shot, Nora had assumed Silvia’s neatly-typed letter asking for legal assistance was copied from models available in the prison library legal section.
An inmate trying to find a lawyer usually relied on form letters and mass mailings.
But the woman Nora watched was clear-eyed and confident.
Had Silvia composed that well-reasoned and grammatically-correct request herself?