Sam Kincaid 01 - The Commission

criminal record to the jury and exposes the rewards offered to secure the inmate’s testimony, the prosecution’s star witness ends up looking like a dolt. But given our present situation, right now a dolt looked pretty good.

Chapter Thirty-seven
    Milo Sorensen had been working in the prison’s furniture assembly and upholstery plant for a little over a month. He worked afternoons from one to five. For the first time in a lengthy prison career, he’d finally gotten a job with decent pay and the opportunity to learn a vocational skill that might do him some good on the outside.
    As the newest inmate hire, Sorensen’s lack of seniority made it his responsibility to perform routine janitorial duties at the close of each work day. He had to sweep the plant floor, empty the trash in the adjoining small office, and clean the head. Most days, Milo began the evening cleanup by four-thirty to ensure he would be finished by five o’clock or a few minutes after. On this day, he’d been so busy attaching legs to new office chairs that he hadn’t begun cleaning until almost five, when a civilian employee noticed and told him to get busy. At a few minutes past five, Sorensen was alone in the plant.
    He moved methodically from task to task. First he took a broom to the plant floor. Then he emptied the trash and tidied up the small office adjacent to the production line. At first, the only sounds he heard came from the four large ceiling fans scattered around the plant and the constant drone of the old natural gas furnace. The old furnace had long since failed to provide adequate heat to an equally old building. For just an instant as he shuffled with mop in hand toward the restroom, Sorensen heard what he thought sounded like the rustle of clothing and the soft foot-fall of a tennis shoe on the concrete floor. He looked around but saw nothing.
    Minutes later, as he came out of the restroom on to the plant floor, for a fleeting second, he saw a blur of motion. It was the last thing he would ever see. The three-foot-long metal pipe crushed his skull on the first blow. Before he hit the concrete floor, a second assailant had stabbed him several times in the lower back with a sharp plastic shank. The blows rained down. By the time it was over, Milo had been stabbed more than a dozen times. His head looked like a crushed melon. For good measure, one of the attackers bent over the prone figure, lifted his head by the hair, and ran the shank across his throat from ear to ear, leaving a deep, jagged wound, amid a river of blood and tissue.
    The assailants dropped the weapons next to the body and quickly left the shop. Almost an hour later, a corrections officer, on routine patrol, entered the plant and discovered Sorensen’s body.
    ***
    It was a little past six p.m. Kate and I were reviewing the list of incarcerated forgery inmates when Patti interrupted. She told me I had a call on the red phone. The red phone was a direct telephone line into the Special Investigations Branch from anywhere inside the penitentiary. It couldn’t be accessed from outside the prison and was never used for routine business calls. Calls on the red line meant only one thing: somewhere in the prison, a critical incident had occurred that required an immediate response from me or a member of my staff.
    I picked up immediately. “SIB, Kincaid.”
    “Sam, Steve Schumway. We’ve got a dead inmate here at North Point, and I can tell you, he didn’t fall off a ladder. Somebody slit his throat, bashed his head in, and cut him up for good measure.”
    “Where’d it happen?”
    “One of my COs found him lying on the floor in the furniture factory. He had a job in there. He hasn’t been dead for long.”
    “Any witnesses?” I asked.
    “None so far.”
    “Okay. Secure the scene. We’ll be right over. Oh, what’s the name of the victim?”
    “The inmate’s name is Milo Raymond Sorensen, U.S.P. number 167841.”
    “Be right over,” I said, and hung up.
    Kate hadn’t been paying attention to the call. She’d been engrossed in our list of forgery inmates. When I asked Captain Schumway who the victim was, her head came right up.
    “Guess what? I think I’ve just located our man. His name’s Milo Sorensen, and you’ll find his name on the short list you’re holding. Unfortunately, Milo is no longer with us. Somebody just killed him.”
    “Christ. How did it happen?”
    “Beaten and stabbed to death.”
    “How would you like to take a look at