Falling For The Enemy. Dawn Stewardson
handed it to her as he sat down.
Sloan Reeves, Attorney at Law, it informed her.
“I’ll come straight to the point,” he said. “I’m here on behalf of William Fitzgerald.”
“Oh?” And what, she wondered, did the newest executive-suite prisoner at Poquette want from her?
When she asked, Reeves flashed her another easy smile, then said, “Well, first off, I hope you won’t take any personal offense, but he isn’t happy he was sent to Poquette.”
“Really.”
She did her best to conceal her amusement. Fitzgerald should be grateful one of the smaller prisons had had space available for an inmate requiring protective custody. Otherwise he’d have ended up in Angola.
“What, specifically, does he find wrong with Poquette?”
Sloan Reeves leaned forward in his chair. “He’s being kept in virtual isolation.”
Reeves had to be aware of the reason for that, but since he was apparently waiting for an explanation, she said, “Surely he realizes it’s for his own safety. The prison staff can’t assign... celebrity prisoners, for lack of a better term, to the general population cell blocks.”
“No, of course not. But we both know isolation is brutal. That it almost always leads to deterioration—mental or physical or both.”
“You’re right, it’s far from ideal. I’m afraid there’s no magic solution, though. Even if Mr. Fitzgerald qualified for a minimum-security facility, we don’t have country-club prisons in Louisiana. He’d be segregated no matter where he was.”
Reeves nodded slowly. “I guess the basic problem is that he’s a very sociable man. He finds the lack of human interaction difficult to cope with.”
Rather than respond to that, Hayley merely gazed across her desk at Reeves. He was falling short on his promise to come straight to the point, because he couldn’t possibly be suggesting that Fitzgerald wanted to be moved into general pop. Not unless he’d like to end up graveyard dead, courtesy of some inmate with a shiv.
After a few seconds, she checked her clock again, assuming Reeves would get the message. He did.
“Here’s the bottom line. Mr. Fitzgerald wants to be transferred to a prison with a rehabilitation program. Being in one of them would give him both human contact and something to occupy his mind. And inmates in a rehab program shouldn’t be a threat to his safety.”
“I see,” she said again, still trying to figure out the game. Reeves wasn’t being straight with her, she knew that much.
The prison psychologists did a psych assessment on each new prisoner, and she’d read her copy of the one on Fitzgerald. He didn’t believe he belonged locked up with a bunch of low-lifes. So even if he did want more human contact, she wasn’t buying that he’d want it with his fellow prisoners.
As for a rehab program to occupy his mind, it would more likely bore him to death. Besides which, he wasn’t an even remotely viable candidate. The programs were strictly for prisoners nearing the end of their sentences, and she’d bet Reeves knew that. All of which added up to a hidden agenda of some sort.
Since she had a meeting to get to, she didn’t probe Fitzgerald’s motivations further but simply said, “You know, I rarely have anything to do with transfers. The person you should talk to is Warden Armstrong, at Poquette.”
“Yes—in fact I have an appointment with him this afternoon to file the request forms. But I wanted to let you know I’ll be asking him to have you do the mental-health assessment.”
“Oh?” That news made her more concerned about what the hidden agenda might be.
“It is something you occasionally do, isn’t it? Some of the mandatory evaluations? In this case, give your opinion about whether a transfer might benefit Mr. Fitzgerald?”
She nodded. Obviously Reeves had done his homework, and it had included checking into her job description. The realization unsettled her. She didn’t like having a stranger poke around for information about her.
“The staff psychologists at Poquette are more than competent,” she told him. “Why would you request that I assess Mr. Fitzgerald?”
“Because of your position. Because your signature on a transfer recommendation would carry more weight.”
“You’re assuming I’d recommend it.”
“I’m hoping you will.”
“Well... Look, there’s a fundamental problem here. The rehab programs are solely for prisoners close to their release dates, and with Mr. Fitzgerald not meeting that criterion...”
Reeves gave her a slow shrug. “I think I’ll be able to get around that by emphasizing his need for more human contact. You see, the way I look at it, there’s an Eighth Amendment violation involved.”
“A what?”
“I feel that his being kept in isolation constitutes cruel and unusual punishment.”
Hayley almost groaned. Sloan Reeves had things figured upside down and inside out.
“After you’ve talked with Mr. Fitzgerald,” he said, “I’m sure you’ll recommend a change of scenery to improve his mental health. If you don’t... Well, I’m sure you will.” With that, he leaned back and smiled at her once more.
It was a warm smile that reached his eyes and turned them an impossibly deeper shade of blue, a smile that under different circumstances she knew she’d have found both engaging and appealing. Under these circumstances, she found it neither.
Maybe her overdeveloped sense of fair play was coming to the fore, but she didn’t want to be involved in any attempt to manipulate the system.
And there was something else, of course. She was annoyed as hell at the way this man had walked in unannounced and told her what she was going to recommend.
THERE WASN’T a law firm’s name on Sloan Reeves’s business card, and several times during her ten-thirty meeting Hayley caught herself wondering whether he had a one-man practice. And whether he specialized in representing clients who were unquestionably guilty. The minute she got back to her office she phoned Peggy Fournier, a detective with the New Orleans Police Department, to find out.
A couple of years ago, Hayley had helped Peggy talk a jumper in off a ledge. During the aftermath, the two women had established that they were both single mothers with young boys. In no time, their sons were buddies, while she and Peggy became the sort of friends who were always trading favors.
If Peggy didn’t recognize Sloan Reeves’s name, locating someone who did wouldn’t take much effort. Since he was representing Billy Fitzgerald, three-quarters of the cops in the city could probably fill her in about him.
When Peggy proved to be on duty but not in the station, Hayley left a message. Then she grabbed a salad from the cafeteria downstairs, took it back to her office and spent the next hour reviewing every last detail in the Poquette psychologist’s intake assessment of Billy Fitzgerald.
He and his wife had divorced long ago, and she’d given him custody of their sole child, a son named Brendan, without an argument. According to Billy, at least. The wife’s version of the story would probably be very different. Something like, if she hadn’t given Billy custody he would have killed her.
His psychological profile, as Hayley had noted during her first reading of it, showed him to be a charming, highly intelligent, extremely manipulative psychopath.
Deciding she had as accurate a read on him as she could get from the file, she set it aside and started in on some backed-up paperwork while she waited for Peggy to return her call. It was close to four o’clock before she did.
“Sloan Reeves?” Peggy said when Hayley