“I went up there once on a prisoner transport. Poked around a bit when nobody was watching me. I guess my big brother thought I could be trusted. Stuff I saw, heard. Yeah, I called it in. Howard found out later. That was the official end of our brotherly love and I haven’t been invited back to Blue Spruce since.”

“Let’s just call the place by its real name, okay?” said Annabelle sternly. “Dead Rock!”

“With all that stuff how come the Justice Department or the Civil Rights Division hasn’t opened an investigation then?” said Harry Finn. “Or at least the Virginia Department of Corrections?”

Caleb looked at his notes. “Apparently, the current state and federal administrations don’t have the rights of prisoners as a priority. There was talk of a state inquiry but it went nowhere, and the Justice Department has nothing pending. And for the last two years the prison has been more or less shut down to all visitors.”

“So Howard Tyree has his own personal little fiefdom and can do what he wants. Including selling drugs,” growled Reuben. “And holding innocent men.”

“Looks that way,” said Caleb.

“What about the mineshaft?” asked Annabelle.

“I did find some info on that,” Caleb answered as he pulled out some pages he’d printed off at the library. “It was cut on a parallel course to the shaft the miners were trapped in. I read a couple newspaper articles about it and then compared it to records I was able to access about the prison construction. I can’t be certain, mind you, because it’s not like they publish the blueprints for supermax prisons online. But it seemed to me that that rescue shaft ran all the way up that ridge because that’s where the miners were trapped. When the explosion happened it collapsed the tunnel the trapped miners were in, but the rescue tunnel survived. I know that because the other miners were able to get out okay. It says that the mine was sealed up at the entrance, but it doesn’t say anything about the rescue shaft entrance.”

Reuben said, “But if you build a supermax on top of a mine and you know there’s a shaft running underneath, you sure as hell are going to plug it up.”

“Plug it up, sure, but maybe in a way that allows you to unplug it,” replied Annabelle as she paced the room in front of them.

“Howard was involved in the construction planning, that I know,” said Tyree. “It would be just like him to allow himself some flexibility.”

“But why would anybody do that?” asked Alex. “Prisoners could escape that way.”