PART 1 — THE WOMAN IN CELL 17
The first thing I noticed about the old woman was that she kept checking the door.
Not the guards.
Not the other prisoners.
The door.
As if she was afraid that someone might come through it and take away the last thing she had left.
She arrived at Westbridge Women’s Correctional Center just after sunrise, carrying a small brown canvas bag against her chest.
She was seventy-six years old.
I learned that later.
At the time, all I knew was that she looked painfully out of place.
Her gray hair was pulled into a loose bun. She wore a faded blue cardigan over a plain dress, and she walked with the careful, uncertain steps of someone whose knees had stopped trusting her.
A guard led her into the common yard.
People stared.
They always did when someone new arrived.
But this time, the staring lasted longer.
“What did she do?” someone whispered.
“Who knows?”
“She looks like somebody’s grandmother.”
I was sitting alone beneath the concrete overhang at the far end of the yard.
Nobody paid much attention to me.
That was exactly how I liked it.
I’d been at Westbridge for eight months, and in those eight months I’d learned one important rule:
Don’t become interesting.
Interesting people attracted attention.
Attention attracted questions.
Questions attracted trouble.
So I kept my head down, spoke when necessary, and spent most of my days reading whatever books I could get my hands on.
That morning, however, I couldn’t stop watching the old woman.
She stood near the wall while a guard checked her belongings.
A comb.
Two photographs.
A small bottle of medication.
An old knitted scarf.
And a little metal box.
The guard opened it, looked inside, and handed it back.
The old woman immediately pressed it into the bottom of her bag.
That caught my attention.
Not because of the box itself.
Because of the way she protected it.
She looked terrified.
And at Westbridge, fear had a smell.
Certain people could detect it from across the yard.
One of those people was Marla Kane.
Everyone called her “Mack.”
She was tall, muscular, and had a reputation for making people regret looking at her the wrong way.
Two women usually followed her everywhere.
Dina and Coleen.
They were already watching the newcomer.
Mack walked toward her.
I lowered my eyes.
