She shook her head. “Not much. Before yesterday I would’ve sworn he wasn’t an escape risk. Could be something new going on with him I don’t know about yet. You should probably ask his pimp.”

“Who’s that? The chaplain?”

She frowned. “So childish.”

“And what were you being earlier?” he asked. “All I need is a little information. Why’re you being so damn difficult? Who’s his pimp?”

“Inmate named Jacobson.”

“What’s Jacobson like?”

“Pretends to be crazy—which he is, but not in the way he pretends to be. He acts looney but he’s truly dangerous.”

“Okay. Thanks. I’ll talk to him. What about Johnson’s family situation on the outside? Who’d he have?”

“Grandmother who raised him and an aunt that I know of.”

“No girlfriend?”

“He didn’t like girls, never has.”

“Faggot on the outside, not just in here?”

“Use language like that again and you won’t get any more information from me. I don’t care who you are.”

“Sorry. I just . . . Didn’t mean to give offense. Sorry. What I meant was . . . Was he a homosexual for real and not just for convenience the way some of ’em are in here?”

“Ike was gay. If you’re asking if I am aware of a lover he would have tried to escape for, I am not. He did have four visits from a Don Hall when he first got here, but that was over a year ago.”

He jotted something down in a small notebook and said, “Anything else?”

“I’ve just started looking,” she said. “I . . . Like I said, I didn’t think he was an escape risk. Obviously I missed something.”

He stood, withdrew a card from his pocket, and placed it on the desk in front of her.

“This is an official investigation of a death within this prison. A death in which you are at least partly to blame. Call me the moment you come up with anything else. Don’t tell the chaplain or anyone else. Only me. No matter what it is. Understand?”

She nodded without saying anything.

“And don’t discuss my case or anything about it with anyone but me. Not the chaplain. Not your mama. No one.”

Without waiting for her to respond, he turned and walked out of the office, closing the door a little harder than was necessary—but not hard enough to be overly obvious.

She shook her head and narrowed her eyes at me. “Know how to pick ’em, don’t you?”

“Whatta—”

“That was your ex-father-in-law, wasn’t it?” she said.

I frowned and nodded.

“I never liked Susan,” she says. “Now I know why. What an ass. You two are working on the same case?”

“We’re supposed to be working it together.”

“You don’t seem too together.”

I smiled. “That’s about as together as we’re ever gonna get.”