Confession of a King

Things were going smoothly, or at least as smoothly as they possibly could be. Brian did execute Jason, the photo proved it, but Brian didn’t exactly get away scratch free. A bullet grazed his arm, so he was all bandaged up and had to make up an excuse about why he was in a splint when he came to visit Matt last week. There had been no word from Behemoth or his men since Jason and Adam were killed, but Zacky warned me that they would probably come when least expected and to keep my guard up and let him know if ANYTHING seemed out of the ordinary. Matt, being his hot-headed and dominant self, was mad that he couldn’t be the one who killed either one of those pieces of shit, and still refused to tell me who did.

That brings me to my next topic - things were going smoothly in the prison, also. The guards had no idea who started the fight that resulted in Adam being murdered on prison grounds. Someone had shut the cameras down that were monitoring the yard, and the guards on duty that day said that they hadn’t realized what was going on until there were about twenty men going at it. They were conducting thorough questioning and interrogation of the inmates to try to find out who did it. The issue was that it was a communal yard, so it could’ve been someone from any sect of the prison. I didn’t really understand why they needed to know who did it, but it was their job to prosecute any crime whether it was committed outside of this hell-hole or in it, so I let it be. Since we were in this thorough investigation, and since I’m the end-all-be-all of confidential talking-to’s, I had to be roped into the situation and present at this month’s meeting.

I wedged myself in the chair between Sandy and the wall of the officer’s break room, a few rows back from the front of the room so that Mr. Morgan’s gaze wouldn’t sit on me too long. I was also trying to stay as far out of Red’s view as possible, seeing as this was something that was mainly for officers so he was in here. I saw a young girl walk in, probably around the same age as me, and take a seat in the front next to Red. His arm immediately went around her shoulders and he smiled at her. I fought back the vomit rising in my throat. That poor, poor girl.

“I would like to introduce everyone to McKenna,” Mr. Morgan smiled and pointed at the girl who was currently being sucked into Red’s shitty vortex. “She’s our newest psychologist and has been working in the sexual offense wing for a couple of weeks now. I hope everyone has time for a few words with her and welcomes her with open arms.”

Oh, I wanted to talk to her alright. Get out of here as soon as you could, girl, and get that creep off your back already. I was somewhat shocked that Mr. Morgan would hire someone so young and pretty to take charge of the sexual offense wing, but maybe things were different over there. I’ll stick with my homicidal maniacs.

“Fresh bait for Red, huh?” Sandy whispered and nudged me with her elbow. She laughed when I rolled my eyes. “Hey, at least he’ll definitely be out of your hair for a while.”

“I’m sure she’ll be the next Maria. I bet he’s feeding her brainwashing lines as we speak,” I eyed the girl as she sat with a big grin on her face talking to Red. “I’m grossed out.”

Sandy giggled, “Right there with you. How’s your cold, by the way? I noticed you were late this morning.”

“Pretty sure I must have like post-nasal drip and it’s making me nauseous. I couldn’t keep my breakfast down this morning,” I sighed. “How much longer until this thing actually starts?”

“Why? You need to go throw up again,” Sandy poked at me. “If you need to puke, puke on me so we can bot get out of here.”

I laughed and finally Mr. Morgan was really starting the meeting. He had a white board behind him where he was mapping out something that I didn’t really care to pay attention to. I just wanted to go to my office and get on with the day. Of course, my whole morning was cleared so I could sit here and listen to him rattle on about things that didn’t pertain to me. Budgets… Planned drug busts… Officer of the month award… Who’s on our radar… Blah blah blah.

Finally, something that pertained to me started to come out of Mr. Morgan’s mouth, “We’re going to start our interrogations with some of our most dangerous homicide suspects in here this upcoming week. This is going to cause some disruptions to your schedule, Ms. Miada.”

I spoke up, “Do you have a list of these suspects? If I need to flip flop some people around on my schedule I would like to get a head start on that.”

Mr. Morgan nodded, “I’ll get that list to you once this meeting has ended. Good thinking.” He turned his attention back to the entire room, “If for some reason someone makes a confession during their counseling session, they will not have to undergo the interrogation. If we get multiple confessions we will continue on with all interrogations until we determine who was the one that murdered Adam Ackers. Our best guess so far is that it was probably someone who was involved in gang activity since Mr. Ackers was an underling.” Mr. Morgan paused for a couple of seconds, “I would like to get together a new interrogation committee. This can be composed of more than just officers and detectives. I may just start to pull names out of a hat. Please let me know if anyone would not want me to have them on the committee.”

A few people in the room raised their hands and I put mine up. There was no way I was going to sit there and interrogate someone. Lord knows some of the inmates within the homicide wing hate Matt and *know* what is going on between me and him, even if they say it is just a rumor. I didn’t want someone running their whole mouth with me sitting there. I was also nervous that someone could rat Matt out for it, and possibly even me, although, I trusted that Matt chose someone who would not be a top suspect for this case. He’d been in the gang realm long enough… he may not be the smartest, but he knows what he is doing.

The best part about the meeting being mainly officers was that there was coffee and donuts sitting in the break room, but we weren’t allowed to touch them until the meeting was over. After vomiting up my entire breakfast, my stomach was screaming for food by the minute. I may or may not have grabbed two donuts and a cup of coffee and took off for my office faster than usual, just so no one noticed me being a little bit of a pig. I closed my door behind me and smiled at the darkness of my office. I had made Matt put the black out curtains up yesterday while I worked on some paperwork. He had complained before about us never doing creative thinking sessions, so that was his creative thinking… figure out how to do a “woman’s job” as he referred to it as, without any instructions from the woman.

I pulled up the list that Mr. Morgan had sent of the homicide inmates who were going to be interrogated this upcoming week. I was grateful that he had even taken the time to write down which day and time each person was going to be interrogated, so that I could map out my new and improved schedule for counseling. I read the names of the list and didn’t recognize a few of them, so I was slightly confused as to why my boss felt like they were so dangerous. I thought I dealt with our super crazies unless dismissed? I shrugged it off and continued down the line, cursing under my breath when Matt’s name popped up on the list. I grabbed my desk phone and dialed Mr. Morgan’s extension.

“Morgan,” he spoke into the phone.

“Hello, sir. It’s Ivy; sorry to bother you. I had a question about the suspect list,” I tried not to sound aggravated by faking a smile.

“Go on.”

I played with the phone cord, “Why is Matthew Sanders on that list? He was in my office at the time of the fight.”

“Thank you for the clarification. Ken hadn’t put Shadows end time on his sheet, so I assumed that the end of session was when your tape recorder was turned off. That would’ve been about five minutes prior. How much longer was he in your office for?”

“Until after we went off of lockdown. I can assure you he wasn’t involved. Ken had even made a comment about it when he escorted Mr. Sanders out of my office,” I smiled to myself, realizing that I just got myself and Matt out of what could have been a load of trouble.

“Makes sense. I will take him off the interrogation list. Keep up the good work, Ms. Miada.” The line went dead.

I tried to work out the schedule for the next week over and over, groaning whenever something wouldn’t work out. I didn’t want to have to short anyone of time, or completely cut out their session for the week, but things were not working out as well as I had hoped. I kept telling myself that I could probably shift Matt’s schedule around a bit to make things easier, but the last thing I really wanted to deal with was him being grouchy if he didn’t see me Monday, Wednesday and Friday. We upped his amount of sessions about a month back to get Mr. Morgan more information. Of course we were using this to our advantage, but now I really needed to cut some Matt time down. I figured that since today was Tuesday, I could just bring it up to him tomorrow when I saw him and then figure out the rest of the schedule afterwards. It would just be to remove his Monday session… that couldn’t be too much to ask for, right?

I was pulled away from my messy notebook paper, scattered with make-shift schedules, and my attention was brought to my door. Someone had knocked on it, but hadn’t opened it yet. I heard voices outside the door so I shouted for whoever it was to come in. Sandy came in with Jimmy in cuffs, no mask on his face this time. I had come to realize that it was generally the guys that made Jimmy wear that ridiculous Hannibal Lecter mask. Did they really think he was going to bite them or something? Pussies.

“Hey, Jimmy,” I smiled as he sat in the chair, Sandy tightening his wrist restraints. “How are you doing, today?”

“Pretty swell, Ivy! How are you doing today?” Sandy went to excuse herself from the room and Jimmy turned his attention to her, “See you in a bit, Sandra!”

I let out a laugh, “You just make friends with everyone in here, don’t you?”

“I like her. She’s sweet. She also gave me a lollipop last week so now I think we’re best friends. I told her where to find the ducks.” Jimmy grinned.

My jaw dropped, remembering that I forgot to share a tidbit of information with him the last time I saw him. “Remember when I told you that I went to look for the ducks and I couldn’t find your friend? Well, I found him and I took a picture of him for you!” I pulled out my phone and flipped through the pictures, “This is your guy, right?”

“That’s him! That’s my boy! So glad to know that he is still alive and kicking. Did you bring them lettuce? They love lettuce.” I nodded and his grin got bigger. “You are the best, Ivy. I am so glad the ducks now have a friend like you.”

I shook my head with a smile. “How has your week been? Were you around when all that craziness took place last week?”

“I was,” Jimmy nodded his head furiously. “My week has been really well. Like I said, I was gifted a lollipop from my good friend Sandra. I also was able to see Leana again. It’s always good time when I get to see her. Let’s see… what else happened last week? Oh, I was able to get a pack of cigarettes. That may have been nicer than the lollipop. The craziness was crazy, Ivy. I had not seen that much blood in a long while.”

I frowned. I didn’t like Adam, and I especially didn’t like that his whole purpose in coming to prison was to hurt me, but I was hoping that his death would’ve been a quick one.

“Invigorating. I hadn’t felt like that since that man was mean to my ducks.” Jimmy rambled. “So much blood. So much blood. Don’t touch the ducks. Leave the ducks alone. This time I didn’t feed. No, I didn’t feed. I couldn’t feed. I’ll never feed again. The ducks don’t eat meat and neither will I.”

My eyes were probably so big and bulging that they were about to come out of my head. I was trying to grasp my head around what Jimmy was rambling about. “What was invigorating, Jimmy?”

“The blood. The kill. Who knew a cinderblock could crush a skull? I didn’t know. It can crush a skull, Ivy. I saw it. It was incredible. Like a hyena’s jaw. Crush, crush, crush. Broken into bits. Waiting to be swallowed and digested, but not worthy.”

“You were there when Adam died?”

“I killed him.”

Notes