Page 19 of Girl, Entangled

‘Huh,’ she said.

The SIS were the Special Investigative Services. They were a prison’s in-house intelligence unit, and usually looked after multiple prisons in an area.

She read the sentence over and over until it made sense.

‘Ongoing cooperation with the SIS. Protected status,’ she said.

Very few inmates in the United States were awarded protected status. It basically meant they were given special treatment and guarded by prison officers whenever there was a risk of them finding a shiv in their backs. The list was reserved for the notorious, be it serial killers, celebrities, terrorists, dirty cops. The last protected inmate she knew of was Charles Manson.

Why would an obscure offender like Billy Hayes find himself on that exclusive list?

Ripley burst through the door and disrupted Ella’s train of thought.

‘Hibbert’s got two uniforms going to Hayes’s social housing block in Anacostia tonight to seal the unit before any of his neighbors decide to take a souvenir.’ Ripley dropped into the chair opposite and looked at Ella’s screen. ‘What have you got?’

‘Doesn’t that strike you as weird?’

‘That they put him in Anacostia when he’s from Baltimore? Yeah. Especially as Maryland has tons more social housing options than D.C. We’re already overflowing here.’

Ella spun her laptop to show Ripley. She tapped the screen and said, ‘Read this. I dug into Hayes’s prison file. Read that little memo on his transfer letter.’

Ripley pulled the device closer, leaned in. ‘Recommend transfer in light of inmate’s protected status arising from ongoing cooperation with SIS.’

‘Yeah. Why would Hayes be gifted that? He doesn’t strike me as-’

Her partner was on her feet with her jacket in hand in the blink of an eye. She rummaged through her pockets and presented her car keys with a flourish. ‘Come on, Dark. We’ve got our motive. Let’s go.’

‘Huh? Go where?’

‘Hayes’s former prison. Jessup, is it?’

‘Yeah, it’s Jessup, but what’s the motive? I’m lost.’

‘It says right there he cooperated with the SIS,’ Ripley said.

‘Yeah, but that could be anything. He could have just been a model prisoner. I mean, he filed eleven grievances, but still.’

‘Nope. Put the pieces in order, Dark, and you’ll get the answer.’

Ella simultaneously enjoyed and hated the fact that Ripley could still get ahead of her. ‘No. I’m clearly not as familiar with prison politics as you are.’

‘Then get ready for a crash course. Billy Hayes had protected status because he was a prison snitch.’

CHAPTER NINE

It was just after 6PM, but luckily for Ella, prisons were open all night.

They’d crossed state lines to reach MCI Jessup in Maryland. From the outside, the place was a large spread of concrete in the shape of a cross, the walls of which were twenty feet high and topped with razor wire. According to Ella’s quick research en route, MCI Jessup had opened in 1981 as an annex and grown into a medium-security state facility for a thousand men, and quite clearly, the architecture had never quite forgiven its origins.

Once through the main gate, they’d been directed through two more checkpoints where they’d surrendered their weapons, and eventually led into the beige waiting area where they were now sitting. According to the receptionist, the shift commander would be along shortly. Ella was reading a poster about contraband. It listed everything you couldn’t bring into the facility, and the list was long. Ella found her eyes going down it for something to do.

‘Dark, don’t pretend to read a sign. It’s unbecoming.’

‘I’m not. I just can’t hear any more about prison snitches.’

Ripley had spent the drive here walking Ella through what she’d called the trade. She’d run a year on the BAU prison liaison detail twenty years ago and had never quite lost the knowledge of how the inside actually worked.

As it turned out, snitches weren’t who Ella’s training had suggested they were. The popular picture was a terrified man in a corner whispering to a guard about something they’d seen. Ripley said the real ones were the opposite. They built friendships, built connections, lent commissary to new arrivals and remembered every detail they heard from other inmates. They then gave that information to the guards to stop anything from happening that would make their jobs harder. A working snitch at a place like Jessup could earn himself a private cell, his own television, double commissary, and family visits at irregular hours. He could earn his sentence shaved a year or two by a word to the right people at parole. He could get protected status when the wind changed, which was what had happened to Billy Hayes. The job was a good one if you had the temperament for it.