“I’ve changed my mind about helping you with the case. Hell, I’m gonna help you solve it before that smug, obnoxious ass does. But I’m gonna be keepin’ a close eye on you. If it gets too—”

“It won’t.”

“So how can I help?”

“Do you know for a fact that Jacobson was Johnson’s pimp?”

“As much as you can know such things for facts inside here. They were both assigned to me.”

“What was his job assignment?”

“Not pimp, I can tell you that.”

“I meant Ike Johnson.”

“Outside grounds,” she said, seeming not to catch how odd that was.

Inmates who worked outside of the institution did so because they were deemed to be a low escape risk. It had to do with their custody, their release date, and past history.

“Outside the gate?” I asked. “You sure?”

She nods. “I know.”

“He works outside the gate five days a week, but he tries to escape in the trash truck on his day off?”

The vast majority of escapes occurred while an inmate was already outside the prison—work assignment, court hearing, transport, medical procedure. Breaking out of a maximum-security prison was extremely difficult to do—nearly impossible.

“What else can you tell me about him?” I asked.

“As you can imagine, he spent a lot of time in confinement for physical contact with other inmates. And sometimes drug use.”

“By physical you mean sexual contact, right?”

“Sure wasn’t for fighting. You see how small he was?”

He had fit in a garbage bag but before this moment I hadn’t realized how small that meant he had to be.

“Skinny too,” she added. “He had HIV and AIDS.”

I thought about being covered in his blood.

She must have seen something in my eyes.

“You came in contact with his blood, didn’t you?”

“Contact is one word for it. Swimming. Drowning. Are a couple of others.”

“The chances that you could be . . . are so small . . . Are you worried?”

“Didn’t even know to be until a minute ago.”

“Don’t be. Get tested. Just for peace of mind. But don’t worry. I’m sure you’re absolutely fine.”

I nodded. “Okay. I’m not really worried,” I lied.

“Good. Because you’re fine. But if you get worried and need to talk . . .”

We were quiet a moment and I thought about what happened yesterday in light of what I now knew about Johnson.

“If he really wanted to escape . . .” I said, thinking out loud. “He’d’ve tried it while outside for his job, right? He sat there in that bag and heard what the officer was doing to all the other bags. He knew what was coming.”

“You’re thinking suicide?” she said.

“Considering the possibility. But there are much better ways to commit suicide. Maybe it was murder.”

“Murder?” she said.