Smoke, Mirrors, and Murder

to put something over on corrections officers. Notes are smuggled, or whispers are passed from one cell to another until messages get to the intended recipient. Most of the men in Bill Jensen’s pod were repeat offenders, and adept at evaluating new guys. They listened now to Jensen and saw that he was highly disturbed about situations he couldn’t attend to while he was locked up.
    The rumor in the tank was that Jensen had money—possibly big money—but he was playing things close to his vest.
     
    Yancy Carrothers* was a “frequent flyer” in the King County Jail. Indeed, he felt as much at home in jail as he did anywhere else, and didn’t really mind being arrested again and again. Yancy was proud to be known as a kind of career criminal, and often bragged that he’d been trained by his father to be an above-average practitioner of crime from the time he was a child. He took pride in the fact that he knew most of the guards in the jail as well as the inmate “regulars.” Yancy knew which prisoners were important in their gangs, who was planning an escape, and what the messages circulating in the tank were about. He knew how to send “kites” (notes) to jail management in a discreet manner.
    Yancy had a long, long rap sheet. He had numerous convictions for VUCSA (violation of uniformed controlled substance abuse—drugs), drunkenness, and assault. He liked to hint that he had been involved in far more violent felonies, although he stopped short of spelling out the details.
    Yancy Carrothers was nearing middle age, and his craggy face was marked by the indulgences he’d chosen. He looked somewhat older than he really was. He was as rail-thin as Bill Jensen was overweight, about five feet ten, with dark, longish hair. A man full of nervous mannerisms, he was smart and streetwise, and he let it be known to his fellow prisoners that he would do almost anything for money—or for drugs.
    Whenever Yancy Carrothers went to jail, he invariably ended up in the protective custody tank; he had a reputation for starting fights in jail, and the jail supervisors didn’t bother putting him in with the general population, knowing that, inevitably, there would be a fight with Yancy in the middle of it.
    He himself wasn’t sure why he tended to hit other prisoners in jail, but there was something about the county jail that made him want to fight. He may have known the reason very well: whenever he came into jail it was fresh off an arrest for being drunk or high on drugs, and in that state he was quite combative. He claimed to be a “pussycat” by the time he got to prison after weeks or months in jail. He hadn’t had a drink or drugs for some time, so he wasn’t inclined to fight.
    Despite his awesome number of arrests and his tendency to act first and think later, Yancy had a sentimental side. He had lost the woman he loved, and even though they’d never married, he considered himself a widower.
    On June 17, 2003, Yancy Carrothers found himself in the same protective custody tank as Bill Jensen: North 11, Lower B Housing Unit. There weren’t many white prisoners there at the time, and he felt that drew them together initially.
    Among his other talents, Yancy was an artist. He drew portraits and animals, and he was pretty good. Occasionally he decorated envelopes for other prisoners in exchange for favors, and sometimes he just passed the time in his cell by sketching.
    Yancy was aware of the big man named Bill who waddled painfully around the dayroom, but he waited—as always—for the stranger to approach him. Bill was out in the day area for his hour of comparative freedom when he stopped outside Yancy’s cell and began a conversation. They touched lightly on a number of subjects, feeling each other out.
    Yancy considered himself something of an expert on the law, and they spoke a little about the justice system. He didn’t know what Bill was in jail for, but the massive guy seemed to have some knowledge of different statutes, and he also talked as if he was pretty smart. Yancy could identify with that; he’d always known he was very intelligent, too, and capable of thinking way ahead of most people he dealt with.
    Neither man gave away much information, waiting for the other to go beyond idle chatting. They danced around like two boxers waiting to get in the first jab. Yancy was savvy about evaluating people, and he was in his element. He knew all the ropes.
    Bill had to be in “ad seg” for some