Through the tiny slat, Betsy said calmly, loudly, “He opened the door, called me a bitch, pulled down his pants, showed me his tiny pencil dick, and told me what to do with it if I wanted to eat.”

“She’s a liar,” Duke said, agitated, his fat face scrunched up. “That didn’t happen. I was trying to help her. I was going in to talk to her so she’d eat.”

“He wanted me to eat him,” Betsy said. She tried to keep her voice strong, but it cracked. She tried not to cry.

Coralee and the other guards didn’t believe Duke. Betsy may have been a murderer, but they knew Duke, the warden’s nephew, was a lying, scheming jerk.

“Get out, Duke,” Coralee said. “Go to the warden’s. I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

“You believe this liar? This murderer?”

Coralee peeked through the slat at Betsy, on the ground, her skinny arms wrapped around her skinny self, then at Duke. Duke was a craven, disrespectful, nasty liar. A man who was not half as smart as any woman here but believed himself to be twice as smart because that’s what he wanted to believe. “Yes.”

Betsy felt her face swelling up. She was dizzy. She was aching. She felt sick from the punch.

“We’ll get you another tray,” Coralee said, “but first you’re going to the infirmary.” One of the guards headed off to get the tray, following Duke, who was punching the air with his meaty fists and swearing. That Coralee could order him around, that infuriated him, too. Women should never be in charge of men. Stupid woman. Stupid whore.

He listened, seething, to Coralee telling the warden, his uncle, what happened to Betsy, the murderess in isolation. Duke called Coralee a liar and pretended to be outraged.

Coralee told him that his nephew wasn’t fit to be working in the jail, that he was an egomaniac, a danger to the women prisoners, continued to insist on unlimited power, and had a problem with authority, especially with women. “I’ve worked with him for a year now. Look, sir, we’re not responsible for our family members,” she told the warden. “We’ve all got relatives who are loony or corrupt, but you are responsible for this prison and the people in it.”

The warden told Coralee not to tell him how to do his job, and Coralee apologized.

The warden sighed. He knew his nephew had a brain filled with filth, but he loved his older sister. She was the sweetest woman he had ever met. It was Rosalind who had comforted him when their parents were screaming at each other when they were kids. So he didn’t fire Duke. He told Duke, “Stop making problems for me here, and keep your damn hands to yourself or you’re out of here.”