[Georgia 03] Fallen

He smelled of pancakes.
    “Jimmy Kagan,” he said, shaking their hands. “I’m not sure what strings you pulled, Deputy Director, but this is the first time in my six years as warden here that I’ve been called back to work this late at night.”
    Amanda had easily transitioned back to her old self. It was like seeing an actor slip into character. “I appreciate your cooperation, Warden Kagan. We all have to do our part.”
    “I didn’t have much of a choice,” Kagan admitted, indicating the guards should open the door into the main prison. He led them down a long hallway at a fast clip. “I’m not going to disrupt my entire system no matter who you get on the phone. Agent Trent, you’ll have to go back into the cells. Ling has been in solitary for the last week. You can talk to him through the slot in the door. I’m sure you know the type of person you’re dealing with, but I’ll tell you straight up I wouldn’t be in the same room with Roger Ling if you held a gun to my head. I’m actually terrified that’s going to happen to me one day.”
    Amanda raised an eyebrow at Will. “You make it sound as if the primates are running the zoo.”
    Kagan gave her a look that said he thought she was either deluded or insane. He told Will, “At any given time in the U.S. penal system, at least half the inmate population have been diagnosed with some kind of mental illness.”
    Will nodded. He’d heard the statistic before. All the prisons in the country combined bought more Prozac than any other single institution.
    Kagan said, “Some of them are worse than others. Ling is worse than the worst. He should be in a mental ward. Locked down. Throw away the key.”
    Another gate opened and closed.
    Kagan listed the rules. “Don’t get close to the door. Don’t think you’re safe just because you’re an arm’s length away. This man is very resourceful, and he has a lot of time on his hands. The razor blade we found up his ass was wrapped in a hand-tied pouch Ling made from strings he pulled out of his bedsheets. It took him two months. He braided a Yellow Rebel star into it as some kind of joke. Must’ve dyed it with urine.”
    Kagan stopped at yet another door and waited for it to open. “I have no idea how he got the razor blade. He’s in his cell twenty-three hours a day. His yard time is isolated—he’s the only one in the cage. He doesn’t have contact visits, and the guards are all terrified of him.” The door opened and he continued walking. “If it was up to me, I’d leave him to rot in the hole. But it’s not up to me. He’ll be confined another week unless he pulls something awful. And believe me, he is capable of the awful.”
    The warden stopped at a set of metal doors. The first one clanged open and they went inside. “The last time we locked him in the hole, the guard who sent him there was attacked the next day. We never found the responsible party, but the man lost one of his eyes. It was plucked out by hand.”
    The door behind them shut and the one in front of them banged open.
    Kagan said, “We’ll have the cameras on you, Mr. Trent, but I have to warn you that our response time clocks in at sixty-one seconds, just over a minute. We can’t get it any tighter than that. I have a full raid team suited up and on standby if anything happens.” He patted Will on the back. “Good luck.”
    There was a guard waiting to take Will through. The man looked filled with the kind of dread you’d see on a death row inmate’s face. It was like staring into a mirror.
    Will turned to Amanda. He had broken his silence in the waiting room so that she could coach him on what to say to Roger Ling, but he just now realized she hadn’t offered any advice. “You want to help me here?”
    She said, “Quid pro quo, Clarice. Don’t come back without some useful information.”
    Will remembered again that he hated her.
    The guard motioned him through. The door closed behind them. The man said, “Keep close to the walls. If you see something coming at you, cover your eyes and close your mouth. It’s probably shit.”
    Will tried to walk as if his testicles hadn’t receded into his body. The lights were out in the cells, but the hall was well lit. The guard kept to the wall, away from the prisoners opposite. Will followed suit. He could feel a new set of eyes tracking him as he passed each cell. There was a skittering noise behind him as kites, tiny pieces of paper with strings attached to