The Inmate: A gripping psychological thriller Read online

  “That smells incredible, Margie,” I say.

  Margie beams at me and tucks an errant strand of gray hair behind one ear. “Oh, it’s nothing. Just roast chicken pieces with butter garlic sauce. And of course, rice and asparagus on the side. You can’t just eat chicken.”

  Hmm, you can’t? Because I am pretty sure that over the last ten years, there have been plenty of nights when Josh and I have eaten nothing but chicken. From a bucket with a smiling colonel on the side of it.

  But that’s in the past. Things are going to be different now. This is a fresh start for both of us.

  Josh takes an overly exaggerated whiff of air. “It smells too saucy.”

  I stare at him. “What does that mean? You can’t smell too much sauce.”

  Margie winks. “I think he’s smelling the butter garlic.”

  He crinkles his nose. “I don’t like garlic. Can’t we just go to McDonald’s?”

  I don’t quite understand how you can love somebody so much, yet so frequently want to throttle them.

  “First of all,” I say, “there’s no McDonald’s in Raker, so no, we can’t go to McDonald’s. And second, Margie made us a delicious home-cooked meal. If you don’t want it, you can make your own dinner.”

  Margie laughs. “You sound like my daughter.”

  I’m hoping that’s a compliment. “Thank you so much for coming today, Margie. You’ll be here to meet Josh after school on Monday? The school bus is supposed to be here around three.”

  “It’s a date!” she confirms.

  I walk Margie to the door, even though she’s got her own key. Just before I bid her goodbye, she hesitates, a groove between her gray eyebrows. “Listen, Brooke…”

  If she tells me she’s quitting, I am going to curl up in a ball and cry. She was the only available sitter even remotely in my price range, and I can barely afford her as is. “Yes…?”

  “Josh seems really nervous about starting school,” she says. “I know it’s hard being in a new town and all, especially at his age. But he seemed even more anxious than I would expect.”

  “Oh…”

  “I don’t want to worry you, dear,” she says. “I just wanted to let you know.”

  My heart goes out to my ten-year-old son. I can’t blame him for missing McDonald’s. McDonald’s is familiar. Raker is not familiar, and neither is this house. In his entire life, my parents would never let us visit—they always came out to us in the city, until I told them they couldn’t anymore. This town is home for me, but to Josh, it’s a town full of strangers.

  And I can think of a few other reasons why he would be scared about starting school after what happened back in Queens.

  “I’ll take care of it,” I say. “Thanks again, Margie.”

  I come back into the kitchen, where Josh is sitting at the kitchen table, playing with the salt and pepper shakers. He’s making a little pile of salt and pepper, which I’ve told him repeatedly not to do, but I’m not angry about it right now. I slide into the seat across from him.

  “Hey, buddy,” I say. “You okay?”

  Josh traces his first initial, J, in the pile of condiments on the table. “Yeah.”

  “Feeling nervous about school?”

  He lifts one of his skinny shoulders.

  “I heard the kids are really nice here,” I say. “It won’t be like back home.”

  He lifts his brown eyes. “How could you know that?”

  I flinch, experiencing his pain like it’s my own. Last year at school, Josh got bullied. Badly. I didn’t even know that it was happening because he didn’t talk about it at home. He just started getting quieter and quieter. I couldn’t figure out why until the day he came home with a black eye.

  Even with the shiner, Josh tried to deny anything was going on. He was so ashamed to tell me why the other kids were bullying him. I had no idea what happened. My son is a little on the quiet side, but there’s nothing about him that stands out—I didn’t have a clue what made him a target. Until I found out the name all the other kids were calling him:

  Bastard.

  It was a knife in my heart that the other kids were bullying him because of me. Because of my history and the fact that my son never had a father. I had some dark thoughts after that, believe me.

  The school had a no-tolerance bullying policy, but apparently, that was just something they said to sound like they were doing the right thing. Nobody seemed to have any compulsion to do anything to help my son. And it didn’t help that the principal had judgment in his eyes when he noted that the other kids were simply pointing out an unfortunate reality about my situation.

  When you are a single mom who is barely keeping it together as it is, it’s hard to deal with a school that pretends nothing is wrong. And a bunch of other parents twenty years older than you are and who have a lot more money. I even consulted with a lawyer, which wiped out most of my checking account, but the upshot was that they recommended moving Josh to a new school.

  So after a car wreck killed both my parents at the end of the school year, I decided not to sell the house where I grew up. This was the fresh start Josh and I needed.

  “You are going to make friends,” I say to my son.

  “Maybe,” he says.

  “You will,” I insist. “I promise.”

  The problem with your kid getting older is they know there are some things you can’t promise.

  Josh doesn’t look up from the little pile of salt and pepper. This time he writes an S in it for his last name. “Mom?”

  “Yes, sweetie?”

  “Now that we’re living here, am I going to meet my dad?”

  I almost choke on my own saliva. Wow, I did not know that thought was going through his head. As much as I have tried my best to be two parents for this kid, there have been times in Josh’s life when he has seemed obsessed with who his father is. When he was five, I couldn’t get him to stop talking about it. Every day he would come home with a new drawing of his father and what he imagined that father would look like. An astronaut. A police officer. A veterinarian. But he hasn’t mentioned his father in a while.

  “Josh,” I begin.

  “Because he lives here?” He raises his eyes from the table. “Right?”

  Every word is like a little tiny dagger in my heart. I should’ve just told him that his father was dead. That would’ve made things so much easier. I could have made up some wonderful story about how his father was a hero who died, I don’t know, trying to save a puppy from a fire. He would’ve been happy with that. Maybe if I told him the puppy fire story, the kids wouldn’t have bullied him last year.

  “Honey,” I say, “your dad used to live here, but now he doesn’t. Not anymore.”

  I can’t quite read the expression on Josh’s face. The other problem with your kid getting older is that they can tell when you’re lying.

  Chapter 3

  The man in front of me has exactly one tooth.

  Okay, that’s not entirely true. Mr. Henderson has a couple of teeth in the back that are black and in need of serious dental care, but when he smiles, all I can see is that one yellow tooth on the top row of his mouth.

  “You’re a lifesaver, Doc,” Mr. Henderson tells me as he flashes ol’ Chomper at me one more time. I’ve told him twice now that I’m not a doctor, but he seems to like to call me that. “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this.”

  “Happy to help,” I say.

  I have done practically nothing for Mr. Henderson. All I have done is give him a prescription for a new inhaler for his emphysema, which seems to have worsened in the last few months. The prisoners have to fill out a kite form, which is a requisition to come see me if it’s not a regularly scheduled visit, and the form Mr. Henderson filled out just says, “Can’t breathe.”

  All the patients I have seen on my first day have been like this. I don’t know what these men did to end up in the maximum-security prison, but they are all so incredibly polite and grateful for the care I p
rovide. I don’t know what terrible crime this sixty-three-year-old man committed, and I don’t want to know. Right now, I like the guy.

  “I’ve been coughing and wheezing ever since the other girl left,” Mr. Henderson tells me. As if to demonstrate his point, Mr. Henderson gives a loud, wet, hacking cough. I’d love to get a chest x-ray, but the technician isn’t here today, so it will have to wait until tomorrow.

  The staffing here is terrible. One day into the job, and that much is painfully obvious. Before I came aboard, Dr. Wittenburg was stopping by occasionally, and other than that, they were sending inmates to the ER or urgent care for basic medical care—at enormous cost to the prison. No wonder they seemed so desperate to hire me.

  Desperate enough to overlook my intimate connection to one of the inmates.

  “What about Dorothy?” I ask. “Did you tell her about your breathing problems?”

  He waves a hand. “She just says stop being such a baby.”

  While the men are polite enough, I’ve heard my fair share of whining about Dorothy today. None of them seem to like her much.

  “You’re great though, Doc,” Mr. Henderson says.

  “Thank you.” I smile at him. “Do you have any other questions or concerns?”

  “Yeah, I got a question.” He scratches at the rat’s nest of gray hair on his head. “Are you married?”

  Dorothy’s warning about not giving out personal information to any of the patients is still ringing in my ears. But this seems like a rather harmless question. And he can clearly see that I’m not wearing a wedding band.

  “No,” I say. “Not married.”

  “Well, I’m sure you’ll find somebody soon, Doc,” he says. “You’re real young and pretty. You don’t need to worry.”

  Great.

  Mr. Henderson hops off the examining table and I lead him out of the room, making a few last-minute quick notes on his paper chart. The documentation requirements here are pretty limited, from what I’ve seen. The last nurse practitioner, Elise, just made a few notes in her large loopy handwriting for each of her visits. Whatever else Elise is guilty of, I’m grateful she had good handwriting.

  Correctional officer Marcus Hunt is waiting outside the exam room. Hunt is the officer assigned to the medical unit, which means he brings the patients to the waiting area (i.e., the plastic chairs lined up outside the examining room), and he stands at attention right outside the room while I’m with the patients.

  Hunt is tall, and while he’s not exactly broad, he looks strong under his blue guard’s uniform. He’s maybe in his early thirties with a shaved skull and a few days’ growth of a beard on his chin. There are no windows on the doors, so it’s comforting to leave the door to the exam room open and know Hunt is right outside. I’ve noticed sometimes Hunt leaves the door wide open, and other times, like with Mr. Henderson, he just cracks it slightly. I figure he knows more about the inmates than I do, so I leave it to his discretion.

  About a third of the men today came in with their wrists shackled. A couple of them had their ankles shackled as well. I didn’t ask how they determine who gets shackled and who doesn’t.

  I deliver Mr. Henderson to Officer Hunt, and he nods at me without expression. Like Dorothy, he doesn’t smile much, or at all. The only people who have smiled at me since I’ve been here have been the prisoners.

  “I’ll take him back to his cell,” Hunt tells me.

  I check the plastic chairs outside the examining room. “Nobody else is waiting?”

  “No, you get a break.”

  I watch Hunt disappear down a hallway with Mr. Henderson, leaving me alone. Not that I’m not glad to have a break, but there’s not much to do around here. The Wi-Fi signal is practically nonexistent, and there’s nobody around to talk to. I should start bringing a book to read if there’s a break in the schedule.

  The medical records room is located on the left. I’ve been in there a couple of times today to locate charts since nobody does it for me. I look down at my watch—still another hour before quitting time. Then I look both ways down the hallway.

  There’s nobody here but me.

  I creep over to the medical records room and use my ID badge to unlock the door. It’s a painfully claustrophobic room packed with as many file cabinets as can be squeezed into this amount of space, lit by a single naked bulb on the ceiling. There’s also a stack of files dumped in the corner of the room, the pages spilling out. Dorothy told me those are from inmates who are no longer here. Since most of these men are serving life sentences, I’m guessing that means they’re dead.

  I don’t have much time here before Hunt returns. Fortunately, I know exactly what I’m looking for.

  I make a beeline for the drawer marked N. I pull it open, exposing a thick stack of charts packed tightly into the drawer. I thumb through the names. Nash. Nabb. Napier. Neil.

  Nelson.

  I pull out the chart, my hands shaking slightly. The name scribbled on the tab is Shane Nelson. It’s him. He’s still here. Not that I should be surprised, since the last time I saw him, he was being sentenced to spend the rest of his life here.

  I close my eyes and I can still see his ruggedly handsome face. His eyes looking into mine. I love you, Brooke.

  That was what he said to me just a few hours before he tried to kill me.

  And that’s not even the worst thing he did.

  I stare down at the paper chart, wanting to open it and look inside, but knowing I shouldn’t. Morally, I definitely shouldn’t. Legally… It’s a gray area. Technically, as a prisoner of this facility, he’s one of my patients. But if I open this chart, I won’t be looking at it as a practitioner.

  I’ve only been here a day. It’s a bit early to be breaking the rules.

  When I applied for this job, I didn’t think I would get it, given my connection to one of the inmates. But I was a minor at the time of Shane’s trial, and my parents worked hard to keep my name out of public records. Still—I had believed a background check would give me away. But I was wrong.

  Or else the warden knew about the connection, but they were so desperate to hire somebody, they let it slide.

  I hear a click, and I realize somebody has used their ID badge to unlock the door to medical records. Panicked, I stuff Shane’s chart back into the file cabinet and slam the drawer shut just as the door swings open. Officer Hunt is standing there, his tall silhouette filling the doorway.

  “We have another patient for you.” In the dim light of the room, his eyes look like two dark sockets. “What are you doing in here?”

  “I, uh…” I glance back at the file cabinet. “There was just something I thought of on a patient from this morning that I wanted to make a note on.”

  I have every right to be in this file room. There’s no way for him to know that what I was doing in this room was far from kosher, although I suspect my burning cheeks are giving me away.

  Hunt narrows his eyes at me. “I laid out all the charts for the scheduled visits. If you need any other charts, I can bring them to you.”

  “Oh!” I force a smile. “Well, thank you then. I sure appreciate it.”

  He doesn’t return the smile.

  Well, great. I’ve been here less than a day, and the guard already thinks I’m a problem. But it sounds like they need me more than I need them, so my job is safe. For now.

  As long as Shane Nelson doesn’t need to be seen in the medical ward anytime soon.

  Chapter 4

  ELEVEN YEARS EARLIER

  My parents would kill me if they knew what I’m doing right now.

  They think I’m studying after school with my best friend Chelsea. They think Chelsea is giving me a ride home, then I’m going to pick up a change of clothes and have a sleepover at her house.

  If they knew I was sitting in a car a block away from my house with Shane Nelson, it would be bad. And if they knew it will actually be Shane’s house where I’ll be spending the night tonight… well, I don’t even want to know w
hat they would do. For starters, I would be grounded. And not the kind of grounded where I don’t get to play video games or get deprived of an extra serving of dessert. I would be yanked out of high school, probably homeschooled, and never allowed to leave my bedroom ever again. That kind of grounded.

  So that’s why when Shane drives me home, he always parks a block or two away. Even that is a risk, but when it comes to Shane, I’m all about taking stupid risks. I’ve always been a good girl—straight A’s, honor society, debate club. I’ve never met a guy who has made me want to break all my rules before. And when Shane looks at me from the driver’s seat of his Chevy, I realize there’s not much I wouldn’t do for him.

  “I’m really looking forward to tonight,” I tell him, in a voice that I hope sounds mature and sexy, but more likely sounds squeaky and nervous. I can’t help it—I’ve never spent the night at a boy’s house before.

  “Me too.” He traces the curve of the gold snowflake necklace I always wear around my throat. “So much.”

  Shane’s vivid brown eyes meet mine. I’ve known Shane since middle school, and I swear he gets better looking every year. Shaggy dark hair, a dangerous grin, and now all those damn muscles. Back when we were twelve, he was just a punk who couldn’t quit getting in trouble at school. Then in high school, he joined the football team and became the star quarterback. I watch him every day as Chelsea and I cheer from the stands, and he is really talented. Still not good enough for my parents though.

  “You know,” Shane says, “it could just be us at my house tonight. You say the word…”

  When Chelsea found out that Shane’s mother was going to be out of town visiting his grandmother for the weekend, it was her brilliant idea to have a little party at his house tonight. She quickly invited herself and her own football star boyfriend, Brandon. Brandon is particularly skilled at always having a bottle of something alcoholic at every party.