Long Range (Joe Pickett Book 20) by C.J. Box

Author:C.J. Box [Box, C.J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781788549264
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2020-03-02T16:00:00+00:00

*

THE TALK WITH Sarah Vieth prompted Joe to make another call to check on someone he hadn’t considered earlier: Dallas’s mother, Brenda Cates.

Brenda was also in prison, but across the state in Lusk at the Wyoming Women’s Center. Brenda was a quadriplegic incarcerated for life for kidnapping and murder, and she’d almost maimed Joe a few years before with her high-tech wheelchair when he went to question her. Dallas was a chip off the old block when it came to Brenda.

Whereas Joe doubted Dallas had been behind the sophisticated shooting at the Hewitt home, Brenda was mean and diabolical enough to have arranged for something like that to happen. She’d once had a stash of money that she’d used to hire people to get jobs done, and although the account had been seized, it was possible she had more funds squirreled away somewhere to pay off an assassin.

The warden of the Women’s Center, Martha Gray, took Joe’s call. After catching each other up on their families and the weather, Joe asked, “So how is Brenda doing?”

“Not well,” Gray said. “She’s in Stage Five.”

“Meaning what?” Joe asked.

“There are five stages of isolation in East Wing,” Gray said. “One being the most lenient and five being the most severe. Brenda is the sole occupant of the Stage Five ward.”

“Like mother like son,” Joe said. “What did she do to deserve that?”

“Oh, she’s so clever,” Gray said. “You know—you’ve met her several times. She looks and acts like everybody’s sweet old grandma. After you were here and she attacked you in that wheelchair, I foolishly thought that she was getting old enough and sick enough that the fight had gone out of her. We put her back into the general population and she was a model prisoner. After a year, since she miraculously regained the use of her hands, she got a job in the kitchen because whatever else you say about Brenda, she can cook.”

Joe waited for the rest of the story.

Gray said, “Of course, that lasted until one of our girls disrespected her in the dinner line, as Brenda put it. So Brenda bribed one of the girls who works in our Aquaculture building to smuggle out some items for her. At the next meal, the girl who disrespected Brenda started choking horribly and grabbing at her throat. It seems Brenda had put a handful of fishhooks into her stew. They nearly killed that poor dumb girl.”

“Yikes,” Joe said, inadvertently reaching up and touching his own throat.

“So Brenda got moved back to the East Wing,” Gray said. “She’s had no communication with the outside world and there are no visitors allowed. We know she figured out how to thwart us before, but believe me, she can’t do that this time. We took away her fancy chair, too. She’s absolutely miserable, but at least she’s not a threat to our COs and other girls. And I’m not falling for her sweet grandma act ever again.”

“Yikes,” Joe said again.

“I’m two weeks away from retirement,” Gray said.

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