Stranded

rules.
    “You’ll need to remove your high heels,” Demarcus told her when his man was finished.
    “Why is that?” she asked, trying to sound curious instead of stunned.
    “Too provocative. What are those, three inches?”
    “And what would you have me wear instead?”
    The guard pulled out paper shoe covers that were about twice the size of Gwen’s feet.
    “She’s not taking off her shoes,” Kunze said before Gwen could respond.
    She watched the two men stare each other down.
    Outside the prison walls Warden Demarcus might be mistaken for a high-paid lawyer. His shirt and trousers looked tailored, his tie an expensive silk. Gwen recognized Italian leather shoes when she saw them, though she thought the tassels were a bit much. He had a handsome face and a thick head of dark-brown hair with a peppering of gray at the temples that made him look distinguished. But it wasn’t the clothes that made the man intimidating. There was something about the way he carried himself. His back was ramrod straight. He held his square chin slightly up as though he were looking down at everyone he met. Gwen decided it was the man’s eyes that made him so intimidating. They were narrow set with a hawkish nose that made him look like a predator.
    Demarcus stood several inches shorter than the assistant director. Gwen had heard that Raymond Kunze had played linebacker in college and had even been drafted into the NFL. But he chose the FBI instead. He still looked like he could level half of an offensive line and he certainly could pick up Demarcus quite easily and throw him across the room. But he didn’t need to do that. His stare telegraphed that fact quite well.
    Gwen got to keep her shoes.
    Now, as she waited alone in the interview room, she actually felt better knowing Kunze sat somewhere behind the one-way tinted window that took up most of the wall to Gwen’s left. She made herself as comfortable as was possible in the metal folding chair. She had bypassed the opportunity to take notes. Her last experience proved how easily pen and pencil became weapons. Iteven made her question how the wire in a spiral notebook could be used.
    Gwen heard the door open and she sat up straight. Otis P. Dodd came into the room and instantly filled it, a giant of a man with a lopsided grin. As the guard attached Otis’s shackles to the iron rings in the floor beside his chair, Gwen couldn’t help thinking how silly it was for her to worry about pens and pencils. Otis P. Dodd’s hands looked big enough to snap her neck in seconds.

CHAPTER 24

    “What do you like about starting fires?” Gwen asked him.
    After their short introductions, she delivered her first question exactly like she had practiced it in her head during the long drive from the District to the prison. It was a gamble. She didn’t want to put him on defense but she wanted to learn about him. She wanted to find out a little something about Otis before she asked about his friend, the killer who left his victims in orange socks.
    Otis seemed pleased with the question, but it was actually difficult to tell. He hadn’t stopped grinning since he sat down.
    “Some people like to call me a pyromaniac.” He licked his lips and Gwen already recognized it to be a nervous tic. “I’m really a powermaniac.” Then he smiled more broadly, crinkling the crow’s-feet at the corners of his eyes.
    Despite his size and Gwen’s initial reaction, she realized she didn’t find him as frightening as she had expected. He had almost a childlike demeanor about him. His Southern drawl came out soft and gentle, slow and thoughtful. Even as he claimed to be a “powermaniac,” there was nothing threatening in his tone or manner.
    “You like the power it gives you?”
    “Absolutely. Nothing quite like it.”
    Before Gwen could ask another question, Otis offered, “I’d like to see a whole city burn down. That’d be somethin’, wouldn’t it?”
    Still grinning, his tongue darted out the corner of his mouth.
    Gwen would quickly learn that the grin was a permanent fixture, no matter what Otis was talking about. Perhaps another nervous tic, just like licking his lips. There was nothing salacious about either. In fact, he reminded Gwen of a teenager, a bit awkward and uncomfortable in his own body.
    Then he added, “But I know you didn’t come all this way out here to ask about me.” He tilted his head and squinted, looking her directly in the eyes, as if gauging what she was after.