Dead Money by Jakob Kerr

Author:Jakob Kerr [Kerr, Jakob]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2025-01-28T00:00:00+00:00

She slept like shit.

Chapter 22

Six years before Trevor Canon’s death

The entirety of the visitation room at Dublin Federal Correctional Facility was beige, from the low, tiled ceilings, to the cheerless linoleum of the floor, to the faces of the guards as they watched from the corners. The room was awash in harsh fluorescent light that reminded Mackenzie of a bad dental office. The walls were bare. The air was cold, the room barely heated by a single ceiling vent.

The tables were rubber and particleboard, tops covered by faux wood veneer that peeled at the edges. The chairs were hard-backed and plastic, almost intentionally uncomfortable, as though engineered to dissuade occupants from lingering.

Two vending machines neighbored a water fountain in the front corner. Mackenzie’s typical cache sat on the table before her: two plastic bottles of Diet Coke, a bag of Doritos, a box of Swedish Fish, and a paper cup of water. She’d arrived early enough to nab a corner spot near the doors. Her leg bounced beneath the faux wood.

FCI Dublin was a low-security federal prison. It housed only white-collar criminals, all of them women. Shawshank it wasn’t. Still, Mackenzie hated the feeling she got each month when she stepped inside its walls. It was like entering another dimension.

At exactly ten o’clock a set of double doors swung open. A short line of FCI Dublin inmates entered the visitation room, each in a drab uniform of the same beige as the rest of the prison.

Janine Clyde was fourth in line.

Mackenzie’s mother had aged significantly in the last month. Janine’s dark hair was stringy and frayed. Her skin was ashen, face riddled with lines. Her features had always been pinched—like Mackenzie’s—but now they’d fallen inward, mouth growing tighter, brow contracting. Her eyes, at least, were still crackling with intelligence. Janine spotted Mackenzie and walked slowly to the table, stooping as she weaved between plastic chairs. When Mackenzie greeted her with a hug, she felt her mother’s rib cage press against her chest.

Mackenzie had the dismal sensation that her mother’s body was shrinking into itself, collapsing like a dying star.

And she knew exactly what it meant. She swelled with apprehension, trying to think how to broach the topic she knew her mother would refuse to discuss.

Janine sat and twisted the cap off a Diet Coke. “Thanks, honey.”

Mackenzie nodded, smile tight. “No problem.”

Janine took a long gulp then tore open the Swedish Fish, popping two of the small, strange red candies into her mouth. Her eyes closed with satisfaction as she chewed, body melting against the hard back of the chair.

Mackenzie chuckled. “Never understood what you see in those things.”

“It’s the way they make ’em.” Janine opened her eyes as she swallowed. “The sugar hits your bloodstream in a different way—”

Janine straightened suddenly, raising an elbow to her mouth. She coughed violently, the noise echoing across the visitation room.

Mackenzie leaned forward, putting a hand on her mother’s shoulder. “You sound terrible.”

Janine brushed Mackenzie’s hand away and resettled, grabbing another handful of Swedish Fish.

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