“Everybody here knows how the garbage is checked before it leaves the front gate. It’d be a great way to hide a murder or have one committed.”

“So somebody kills him and puts him in the garbage bag so he’d be dumped somewhere or get stabbed and it would look like he was trying to escape.”

“I think if it were an escape attempt, he’d’ve lost his nerve there at the end. And maybe even if it were suicide.”

“Maybe the officer had been paid to miss that bag,” she said.

“That’s good. But if he was, that meant he knew the inmate was in there, which meant he knew he was killing him. Which means he deserves an Oscar for the performance he gave. Hard to fake shock like that. What can you tell me about Jacobson?”

“He was in the infirmary with Johnson on Monday night.”

“What?”

“Yeah. And they had a fight. Tuesday morning Jacobson was taken to Confinement and locked up, and Johnson . . . Well, you know what happened to him.”

“What time was he placed in the box?”

“Log indicates it was around six thirty in the morning. Of course, those logs are never exact.”

“No, but it’s probably close to the actual time, which means he could have killed him and bagged him before he was taken away.”

“Maybe. I don’t know. Seems to me that whoever did the deed would have to actually load the bag on the truck. Otherwise . . . it’d be too heavy . . . obvious a body was inside, wouldn’t it?”

“It may not mean anything, but then again . . . He was locked up before the shift change. And yet, it was close to the time of the shift change. Too close.”

“Whatta you mean?” she asked.

“From what I’ve seen, if something occurs that close to the shift change, the officers leaving save it for the officers just coming in.”

“That’s true,” she said. “They definitely do.”

5

Potter Correctional Institution was its own little world—a society of captives and captors with its own social order, classes, economy, and laws.

Neither captive nor captor, I wasn’t just an outsider, I was a stranger in limbo between the two groups.

I needed a guide into the first group, and the first and most obvious choice was the inmate assigned to the chapel to assist me, Mr. Smith.

I was told during orientation not to call any inmate mister or sir, but I made an exception for Mr. Smith.

Mr. Smith was an old black man whose back was slightly bent, causing him to bow forward a little as he walked.

Life had bent but not broken this man.