“Yep.”

“What newspaper?”

“Not a paper. A blog. Digital reporting, I don’t know. They say newspapers are passé. Internet news will be the Pulitzer Prize–winning wave of the future. Of course, how do you line a litter box with that?”

“And Shana read every letter?”

“Only the first few. She’s refused them all since.”

“But you’ve read them?”

“The security team grew curious. Understand, your sister isn’t one of our more popular inmates.”

I nodded, knowing what she meant. Many inmates maintained very active social lives while behind bars. If you were a beautiful young woman, that certainly added to the appeal. Shana, on the other hand, was midforties, prison hardened and mean ugly. Most men probably assumed she was a lesbian. Given the sexual nature of her homicides, I didn’t believe she was, but then again, I’d never asked.

“When she started getting weekly mail,” the superintendent continued, “we became suspicious the letters might contain more than social content.”

I nodded again. My sister might not be pretty, but she did have a history of drug abuse, so I could understand the security team’s concern.

“If it’s code or contains some kind of hidden content . . .” The superintendent spread her hands. “It’s better than anything we’ve ever seen. My best guess, this reporter is obsessed with your sister. Which, after I ran a background report on him, makes some sense; he’s the cousin of Donnie Johnson.”

I startled, glancing up. Donnie Johnson had been twelve years old when Shana had strangled him with her bare hands before taking a knife to his face and upper body. Though only fourteen at the time of the murder, she’d been tried as an adult given the “heinous” nature of the crime. During her trial, she’d alleged that Donnie had tried to rape her. She’d only been defending herself. As for the removal of his ear, the mangling of his face, the long strips of skin she’d excised from his arms . . .

Remorse, she’d stated deadpan. Classic disfigurement to repent for her crime.

As the DA had pointed out, Donnie had been a pale, scrawny little boy, the kind of kid picked last during gym class. The odds of this frail ninety-pounder sexually assaulting the bigger, wiser, street-tough foster girl next door . . .

The jury had needed less than two days to deliberate my sister’s fate, and that was after the defense blocked any admission of my sister’s prior bad acts, including another episode with a knife and a boy that had occurred while she was institutionalized at the age of eleven.

My sister had been branded a monster in every major media outlet at the time. Given that she’d killed three more people, including two COs, while incarcerated, I don’t think the public’s perception had been wrong.

In her own words, she was Daddy. A born predator.