[Georgia 03] Fallen

Spivey said keep it on the DL.” The down low—don’t tell anyone. “Watch your back. Sounds to me like this thing is getting out of hand.”
    “Anything else?”
    Will saw Boyd’s mouth move, but he couldn’t make out the words. Will asked the guard, “Did you hear what he said?”
    The guard shook his head. “No idea. Looked like ‘amen’ or something like that.”
    Will checked Amanda’s reaction. She was nodding.
    “All right.” Boyd’s tone indicated they were finished. His eyes followed Amanda as she got up from the chair. He asked, “You know what I miss the most?”
    “What’s that?”
    “Standing when a lady enters the room.”
    “You always had good manners.”
    He smiled, showing his busted teeth. “Take care of yourself, Mandy. Make sure Evelyn gets back home to her babies.”
    She walked around the table and stood a few feet from the prisoner. Will felt his stomach clench. The guard beside him tensed. There was nothing to worry about. Amanda put her hand to Boyd’s cheek, and then she left the room.
    “Christ,” the guard breathed. “Crazy bitch.”
    “Watch it,” Will warned the man. Amanda may have been a crazy bitch, but she was his crazy bitch. He opened the door and met her out in the hallway. The cameras hadn’t been focused on her face, but Will could tell now that she had been sweating inside the tiny, airless room. Or maybe it had been Boyd who brought out that reaction in her.
    The two guards were back on point, standing on either side of Amanda and Will. Over her shoulder, he saw Boyd being duck-walked down the hall in his hand and leg shackles. There was only one guard with him, a small man whose hand barely wrapped around the prisoner’s arm.
    Amanda turned around. She watched Boyd until he disappeared around the corner. She said, “It’s guys like that who make me want to bring back Old Sparky.”
    The guards gave off deep belly laughs that echoed down the hallway. Amanda had been pretty soft on Spivey and she had to let them know it was all for show. Her act in the tiny room had been pretty convincing. Will had been momentarily fooled, even though the one time he’d heard Amanda ask about the death penalty, her response had been to say that the only issue she had with it was they didn’t kill them fast enough.
    “Ma’am?” one of the guards asked. He indicated the gate at the end of the hall.
    “Thank you.” Amanda followed him toward the exit. She checked her watch, telling Will, “It’s coming up on four o’clock. We’ve got at least an hour and a half back to Atlanta if we’re lucky. Valdosta is two and a half hours south of here, but it’ll be closer to four with traffic. We’ll never make it in time for a visit. I can pull some strings, but I don’t know the new warden and even if I did, I doubt he’d be foolish enough to yank two men out of maximum security that late at night.” Prisons ran on routine, and anything that changed that routine brought the risk of sparking up violence.
    Will asked, “You still want me to go through my case files on the investigation?”
    “Of course.” She said it like there had never been any question that they would talk about the investigation that led to Evelyn Mitchell’s forced retirement. “Meet me at the office at five tomorrow morning. We’ll talk about the case on the drive down to Valdosta. That’s about three hours each way. It shouldn’t take more than half an hour each to talk to Ben and Adam—if they’ll talk at all. That’ll put us back in town by noon at the latest to talk with Miriam Kwon.”
    Will had almost forgotten about the dead kid in the laundry room. What he clearly remembered was that Amanda had skated over the fact that she knew Boyd Spivey well enough for him to call her Mandy. Will had to assume that Ben Humphrey and Adam Hopkins were on the same familiar terms, which meant that yet again Amanda was working her own case within the case.
    She told him, “I’ll make some calls to parole in Memphis and Los Angeles to reach out to Chuck Finn and Demarcus Alexander. All we can do is send them a message that Evelyn’s in trouble and we’re willing to listen if they’re willing to talk.”
    “They were all very loyal to Evelyn.”
    She stopped at the gate, waiting for the guard to find the key. “Yes, they were.”
    “Who’s Ling-Ling?”
    “We’ll get to that.”
    Will opened his mouth to speak, but the air was pierced by a shrill alarm. The emergency lights