23 Hours: A Vengeful Vampire Tale(81)

Caxton grunted in frustration. “Good-bye, warden. I’m sure we’ll meet again,” she said, with as much menace as she could put in her voice.

“Yes, I think we will. Though perhaps not the way you’re hoping for. Now, if you’ll excuse me—there’s much for me to do before the sun goes down. I really must be going.”

Bellows headed quickly for the door then. Caxton turned in place, keeping the shotgun trained on the warden. But the older woman didn’t even look back as she left the room.

When the door had closed behind Bellows, Caxton went over to the desk and studied the papers there. There were several dozen sheets, all of them printouts of chat transcripts. Caxton remembered when she’d seen the warden’s BlackBerry, and thought there was something familiar about the archaic language on the screen. It had been enough to make her think—if only on a subconscious level—that Malvern was involved. Now she could see that it had definitely been Malvern talking to the warden.

The transcripts went back for months, since shortly after Caxton’s trial. Malvern must have been following the news very closely, and she had learned what prison Caxton would be sent to, then had begun to seduce the warden, making promises to get her to betray her duty. It looked like it hadn’t been very hard. The transcripts revealed how much the warden hated her prisoners, saw in them everything that was wrong with herself and every other human being she’d ever known. Over just a few pages of conversation, Malvern had convinced the warden that sacrificing everything—her career, her life, the lives of all her COs—would be worth the curse Malvern offered as reward.

Caxton was a little surprised to find the papers. It would have been easy for the warden to take them with her, to fold them into her pocket before she left, and yet she hadn’t. She’d left them in plain sight.

The transcripts were a confession of sorts. Caxton wondered—had the warden left them behind because she had no desire to hide her guilt? Or was she just so convinced that Caxton was going to die that it didn’t matter whether she saw them or not?

Or was it all part of Malvern’s latest insidious scheme? Did she want Caxton to see the transcripts? Had she ordered Bellows to leave them behind?

“Where—where are we—what’s—next?” Gert asked. Her eyelids were drooping and she was swaying back and forth on her feet.

“I’m going downstairs,” Caxton said.

“Oh? Okay let me just get my stuff and—”

“But you’re not coming with me,” she told her celly





43.

Gert. I’m sorry about this,” Caxton said.

“About what?” Gert asked. She was barely able to stand up straight. She was crashing hard.

Caxton grabbed the quick-release tabs of Gert’s stab-proof vest and tore it off of her. Then she pulled down on the plastic zipper of Gert’s jumpsuit, stripping her to the waist. A white cardboard box fell out from between Gert’s breasts and crashed to the floor. Caxton picked up the box, zipped her celly’s jumpsuit back up, and then steered her over to the warden’s desk and made her sit down.

The box held a bottle of pills. The plastic safety seal on the bottle had been torn open, and when Caxton took the lid off the bottle she saw the foil seal underneath had been pushed in. She shook out a few pills into her hand and saw they were simple round, white tablets. She didn’t recognize them—her training had been in illicit street drugs, not prescription medication. “Methylphenidate 20mg,” she read from the side of the box. “What are these?”

“Vitamin R,” Gert slurred. The hunting knife fell out of her hand and clanged on the floor.

“You mean—Ritalin? You took Ritalin? Do you have ADD, then, too?”

“Chronic fatigue,” Gert said. “I said! You know. It’s just a little… boost. A little boosty to keep me goin’.”

“How many did you take?”

Gert didn’t answer. Caxton went over to the other side of the desk and grabbed Gert’s chin. The younger woman made a grab for the bottle, but Caxton held it out of reach.

“Just stay with me a second, and I promise you can sleep as long as you want,” Caxton said. “How many did you take?”

“Five or six.”

Caxton shook her head in dismay. On the box it said that dosage should not exceed two tablets a day. There was a warning on the side of the box that told you what to do in case of an accidental overdose. You were supposed to call your local poison control center immediately.