Penned In Read online

  “I like dive bars.” Angie put her arm in his and watched Dom sniff his way down the hallway. “Besides, dating a co-worker’s ex will get you in a fight no matter where you work.”

  “You have to admit, your team members are the most normal people here.” He glanced down at her. “Besides the two of us, that is.”

  “Sure, start with the sweet talk. Just because we’re sharing a cell doesn’t mean you get to move over to my side of the room. Dom will be watching.” She squeezed his hand.

  “It had crossed my mind.”

  Another scream came from in front of them and they quickened their pace. The group was crowded around the doorway to the library. When Angie got closer, she saw a pair of uniform legs sticking out and blood pooling on the floor. She leaned in to check the guard’s face and realized it was Pat. The ex-husband. Had Marty tired of Pat’s interference in his new girlfriend’s life? “Is he…”

  Estebe shook his head. “He’s dead.”

  “He has a cell phone on his belt. Use it to call nine-one-one.” Angie pointed to the place where the cell had been earlier in the night. “Wait, it’s gone. Maybe it fell off when he was killed. Look around, everyone.”

  “There’s nothing around him except for blood.” Hope said taking a few steps back. “I think I might be sick.”

  “Angie, Felicia – you guys take Hope and go find Bridget and the other guards. Ian, you go too. Matt, Nancy and I will stay here with him.” Estebe moved away from the body and pointed to a table. “We’ll sit there because we can see all of the exits from that spot. Make sure they call for help before they come back. We need everyone to gather together. There’s safety in numbers.”

  “You don’t think someone’s just going to kill us off, one by one, do you?” Hope’s eyes widened. “I don’t even like horror movies.”

  “Let’s just assume he fell. We don’t know if he was murdered or not, but we aren’t professionals.” Ian glanced at Angie. “Let’s go so we can get everyone rounded up. Maybe we can hit Denny’s on the way home and get some coffee. I’d love a cup of strong coffee right now.”

  Angie knew Ian was just chattering. Pat’s death had everyone on their last nerve. She put a hand on his arm. “Coffee would be awesome, but first, let’s go find the guards.”

  They finally found Marty and Bridget in the gun room. They were sitting at the same table Angie and the others sat at earlier. Bridget looked up in surprise when the group came in. “What are you guys doing out of your cells? I thought you’d all be asleep by now.”

  “There is a problem.” Ian started, swallowed, then looked at Angie.

  She nodded, letting him know she’d continue the story. “Your friend, the other guard, Pat?”

  “Oh, God. What has he done now? I thought I’d saw him eyeing your young friend. He’s basically harmless, he just likes to flirt.” Bridget stepped toward him.

  “He’s a pig. He was always cheating on Rachel with whoever would have him. He needs to have his access to women restricted to like, none.” Marty stood and followed her. “Where is he?”

  “In the library. Well, almost in the library. Look, it wasn’t a problem with him hitting on Hope. He appears to be dead.” Angie thought about softening the wording, but she couldn’t think of any other word that meant the same thing. Dead was dead. Maybe she was as stressed as Ian.

  “He’s probably just playing a prank on someone.” Bridget smiled but then it dropped off her face. “Wait, you’re not kidding. You really think he’s dead.”

  “We checked for a pulse. Where’s a phone? We need to call the authorities.” Ian sounded better, stronger. They weren’t alone in the knowledge any more.

  “Pat has the phone. We only keep one phone on hand for the tour because it messes with the authenticity of the event. He’s got the key to the gate too.” Marty walked toward the door to the hallway. “We’ll just move you guys out to the courtyard and then the police can handle the investigation.”

  “There was no phone.” Angie reached out for Marty’s arm as he started past her. “What if the killer also took the keys?”

  “Then he has to be one of us. Only the guards knew about the phone and the keys. We keep them together with one person so that no one gets caught trying to Google something or sneak out to their car for a cigarette.” Marty paused. “The phone has GPS, we can track it.”

  “Okay, let’s go to the library, then we can break off and some of us can go to wherever your GPS tracker is so we can find the phone.” Angie sighed. This was getting super complicated. They weren’t stranded in a desert, but they might as well have been.

  “Sounds like a plan.” Bridget nodded at Angie. “Let’s make sure there’s nothing we can do for Pat. Close the door to the library so no one goes in, and find the GPS and then the phone.”

  Angie hoped it would be that easy, but past experience told her it was going to be a long night. “Should we wake up the others and bring them down to the common room?”

  “I’m sure we’re not dealing with some sort of crazy killer. Besides, we don’t even know if Pat is dead or maybe he just hit his head really hard. Everything could be back to normal by the time we get to the library.” Bridget held her arm out to move them along. “Let’s go.”

  Angie stepped into the hallway first and almost tripped over a portrait easel. “Who moved this here? That wasn’t here when we came into the room. Unless we left by another door?”

  Ian shined a light at the picture of Lyda Southard. “This was in the gallows room, right?”

  Bridget nodded and then realized no one but Angie, just two feet away, could see her in the darkened hallway. “Yes, the painting should be there. Someone’s definitely playing tricks on us.”

  “A trick that got someone dead.”

  Marty moved the painting over near the wall. “I’ll handle this later. Don’t get worked up, we have a man to save. I just hope I can get the warden to see what’s going on. He’s kind of black and white in his thinking.”

  “What do you think is going on?” Bridget asked Marty as he took off. They left Angie and Ian in the hallway next to Lyda’s portrait. If Marty answered her, Angie hadn’t heard it.

  She turned to Ian. “This is seriously weird. Can we even start to hope this is all a big practical joke on us? That this man is still alive somewhere?”

  “You always try to see the bright side, but no, I looked at Pat. That guy is dead. And someone in this locked facility killed him. We’re staying together and not letting anyone or anything break us up.” Ian took her by the arm and led her away from the moving art work.

  “Sounds like a good plan.” Angie heard a noise behind them and whirled to look. Nothing stared back at her, but she still had the feeling of being watched. Maybe they had been after Pat and, now that he was gone, the killer would be done as well. She knew she was a Pollyanna, but it had served her well for most of her life.

  “Marty appears to be the only one with a motive to kill Pat, right?” She asked Ian who was walking ahead of her.

  “Right, but we don’t know he was killed.” Ian muttered. “He might have slipped and fallen.”

  “And the phone just disappeared?” Angie shook her head. “Improbable.”

  Ian slowed down and looked at her. “Marty seemed to be the only person with a grudge. Who would kill someone after having a very public fight?”

  “Exactly.” Angie didn’t say anything else. She was working it out in her mind. It didn’t make sense to take the phone and the key unless they didn’t want anyone to get out. Which meant one thing to her. The killings weren’t done.

  When they got back to the common room, Estebe stood up and looked at Felicia who moved closer to Hope. It was obvious to Angie that their newest chef was having problems dealing with this death. She’d been around death before, but she’d never seen the body after life seeped out of it and on to th
e floor.

  The two guards finished examining the body, moved it inside the library and shut the door behind them. They stayed inside the room for a while.

  “What do you think they’re doing?” Felicia leaned over the table toward Angie.

  Angie shrugged. “I don’t know, but I have a bad feeling about this. If one or both of them are the killer, they could be destroying evidence.”

  “With a room full of witnesses?” Estebe scoffed. “I don’t think they are that dumb.”

  “Maybe, but I am concerned about the missing key and phone. If the killer is the only one with a phone or the key to escape, what’s preventing him from just leaving us in here forever?” She met everyone’s gaze but no one answered her at first.

  The fourth guard came out from the hallway. “I can answer that. The doors are all unlocked at six am, no matter what. It was a safety feature that the historical society insisted on setting up before the first lock in. They didn’t want something bad to happen and it be on their watch.”

  “Where have you been?” Angie asked the man. “And what’s your name? You never introduced yourself.”

  “Sorry, I’m Glen. I was getting the honeymooners settled. Did you know that both of the other couples just got married today? They’re friends and I guess they came straight from the courthouse. I don’t think we’ll see any of them until the alarm sounds for the end of the lockdown.” Glen chuckled as he glanced around the table. “Why are you guys down from your cells? Did you need coffee or something? We have several sets of cards in the library if you want to play, but the light isn’t really good here in the community room.”

  “There’s been a murder.” Hope said, her tone subdued, but at least she sounded calm. “Do you have the phone to call for help?”

  “A murder?” Glen chuckled. “Is this a game? Which one of our prisoners got it? Or were they the killers?”

  The door to the library opened, and Marty and Bridget walked out. They walked over to the table and Bridget sank onto a bench. “The key’s not with him.”

  “Wait. Pat has the phone and the key. Are you telling me that something happened to hard as nails Pat?” Glen looked from Bridget to Marty. His gaze went to Hope. “That he was murdered?”

  “He’s dead. I don’t know how, but yeah. And the phone and key are gone.” Marty studied Glen. “Unless you have them.”

  “No man, I wasn’t scheduled to be responsible for another hour.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I can’t believe the last thing I said to him was ‘Stop being a jerk’.”

  Chapter 4

  “Should we wake up the others?” Felicia glanced around the table. The remaining guards looked shell shocked.

  “Why? So they can be as scared as we are?” Glen stood and took his cup over to the coffee pot that Bridget brought out of the employee break room. He emptied the pot, then started to make a fresh pot. “I can’t believe this really happened. Especially on this night. We shouldn’t have let them schedule a tour tonight.”

  “What’s so special about tonight?” Matt played with a deck of cards he’d found in the break room. No one had wanted to go back in the library.

  “Glen, that’s just urban legend,” Bridget warned.

  Glen came back to his place at the table and pointed his cup in the direction of the library. “Tell that to Pat over there.”

  “It’s stupid.” Bridget insisted.

  “Tell us the story.” Matt pressed. “We’ve got eight hours until the doors unlock. We might as well be entertained.”

  “You might regret that statement, but I think it’s an avenue of interest.” Glen sipped his coffee. “So we told you about Lyda. What we didn’t tell you was the other story. Lyda got pregnant and delivered a baby girl in prison.”

  “You mean she was pregnant when she came into the facility?” Felicia asked.

  Glen shook his head. “Nope. She had relations with a guard. Consensual, at least that was the rumor. When she delivered the baby, someone told her she’d be able to keep it. To raise it inside these walls. But they lied. When the baby was three days old, they came for her. And Lyda threw a fit. She threatened to kill everyone if her baby wasn’t returned to her. Especially the guard who gotten her in that condition in the first place.”

  “And the baby wasn’t returned.” Hope guessed.

  “Right on the money. By that time, the baby was already with a new family. When the full moon came out that next week, the guard who’d fathered the child was found murdered. Stabbed.”

  Bridget shook her head. “They couldn’t prove it was Lyda. She was in her cell all night long according to the cell records. But there weren’t cameras back then, so the jailer could have been bought off.”

  “Okay, so that’s strange, but there must have been a lot of unexplained deaths in the time this place was open.” Ian stood. “And I agree with Felicia, we should have everyone together.”

  “You haven’t heard the rest of the story. Every year on the night before Halloween, a light is seen going through the prison. I’ve seen it when I was locking up. They had to pay us triple time to work this shift. Everyone knows that Lyda’s ghost walks these halls this night. And I guess Pat got in her way. Or reminded her of the baby’s father.” Glen sipped his coffee. “And that’s the story of our most famous ghost.”

  A bang sounded next to Matt and everyone around the table jumped. He leaned down and picked up a book. Grinning at everyone, he said, “Boo.”

  “That wasn’t nice, Matt.” Hope slapped his arm. “You scared me.”

  “Just sound effects for Glen’s ghost story.” Matt grinned.

  Just then a scream echoed from the cell bank.

  “Another sound effect?” Estebe asked.

  “No, that was a real scream.” Marty jumped up, sloshing coffee on the table. “I just can’t tell where it came from.”

  “We’ll divide into groups. I want all of you with one of us. I think the idea of waking the others has become mandatory.” Bridget stood and started pointing at people. “You two go with Marty – take the top floor of the cells. Glen, you take these two and take the middle row. The rest of you come with me. We’ll search the entire downstairs, starting with the cells.”

  Matt pointed to the library. “Don’t you think you should keep someone with the body, I mean, Pat?”

  Bridget turned to look at the closed door. “I don’t think he’s getting up to leave anytime soon, but you’re right. In case we’re all wrong and he’s not dead, someone should stay here.”

  Matt, Angie and Estebe looked at each other. They were the group assigned to go with Bridget and since there were three of them, it made sense that the person staying behind should be from their group.

  “I’ll stay. I brought it up. I’ll be on zombie watch.” Matt sank back onto the bench with a quick glance at the door. “But if I wind up dead, I think you should rename the restaurant in my honor and put up a plaque telling everyone what a hero I was.”

  Angie patted him on the back. “Done. But you know the only reason I’d agree with something like that is the chance of you dying is slim to none. I love the County Seat, just as it is.”

  Matt shuffled the cards. “Just go already. Now Glen’s story has me revisiting all my past relationships for bad deeds that someone might want to make me pay for.”

  “You did dump that girl at the fair a couple of years ago. That was cruel.” Hope smiled at him while her group was leaving. When he glared back at her she giggled, and called back, “Just trying to help.”

  Bridget motioned to Angie and Estebe to follow her and they went toward the main cell doors. “Watch your step. Some of the stone floors have settled and are uneven.”

  “Understood.” Since Angie didn’t have a flashlight like Bridget and Estebe, she fell into the middle of the two. “How long have you worked here?”

  “Since
I got out of college. I was a drama major and had big Hollywood dreams. But then I interned here and fell in love with the history of Idaho. I do several historical reenactments every year for the society so with my salary and the extra I get for the other events, I make a good wage. Not Hollywood money, but enough to live comfortably here.” She had a wistfulness to her voice.

  “Was that the only reason you didn’t try to hit the big screen?” Angie knew she was being personal but it kept her mind off of rampaging ghosts with a mission of revenge.

  “My mom was sick the last two years of college. So I stayed around.” Bridget paused at the first cell and shined her light into the emptiness. “When she passed, I had a house, a job, and a life here. I wasn’t the new kid on the block so I just stayed. Man, I haven’t thought about how pathetic my life must look for a long time.”

  “Your life is fine, if you’re doing what you want to do. I had a restaurant in San Francisco for a while and I learned that people are the same everywhere you go. So I came home. We have a crew of chefs who love food and cooking just as much as I do.” Angie wondered if it was the dark hallways that were driving her to talk about dreams and goals and life plans. Maybe it was the choices that the inmates made that imprisoned them here, and the fact that they were unable to live a life outside the stone walls that moved her.

  “I could walk away from cooking anytime and live comfortably for the rest of my life.” Estebe admitted from his place behind the women. “But I like having a purpose. I like contributing to the team where I work. I like keeping Matt in line.”

  Angie laughed at that. When Bridget shined her light into a cell, she saw something in the corner. “Wait, shine that over here.”