The Quiet Ones Read online

  Going beyond the twelve-year mark now, she thought. How long can you live with a dream deferred, girl?

  After graduating from the University of Georgia with a journalism degree, she had worked at a small-town paper for a year before getting hired on at The Atlanta Times, one of the most prestigious newspapers in the nation, advancing up the ranks from beat reporter to senior investigative journalist. In many aspects, it was a dream job. Although much of it involved online or phone-based research, she spent a significant amount of time in the field, chasing down leads and interviewing subjects for stories she had decided (with some input from her editor) to pursue. She had won multiple awards—including a Pulitzer nomination—earned a good salary that supported a comfortable lifestyle, had decent benefits, and had accumulated substantial savings.

  But working at a newspaper, even a respectable one, wasn’t the life she’d aspired to live, not by half.

  You’re gonna write a bunch of books and get rich . . .

  The supremely confident voice of her big sister, Liz, long lost, haunted her thoughts. Mallory shoved the memory out of her mind, but her disenchantment with the course of her life lingered like an unhealed bruise.

  “Time to make the donuts.” She flipped down the sun visor to check her profile in the little mirror. She looked so much like her mother the resemblance was uncanny, but these days every time she saw her reflection, she couldn’t help thinking that her mom was murdered at the age of thirty-five; Mallory had turned the same age earlier that year.

  She refreshed her lipstick, grabbed her Starbucks coffee cup, her moleskin leather messenger bag, and her iPhone, and climbed out of the car.

  She wore a lime-green long-sleeve blouse, black jeans, Nike sneakers. It was going to be a long, busy day, and she had dressed for comfort, not to earn fashion points. One of the perks of the job when she was out in the field.

  The penitentiary complex lay ahead, an immense, multi-tiered brick structure with a turret towering in the center, a design that reminded Mallory of a Medieval fortress. Coils of barbed wire glistened on the upper edges of a tall chain-link fence that boxed in the property. Gigantic searchlights mounted on poles reflected the sun’s rays and nearly blinded her, but not before she saw the guard booths manned with rifle-toting officers.

  Her editor called as she neared the visitor’s entrance. Checking in on her, “his superstar,” as he liked to say. Mallory summarized her plan for the day and at the end of the call, reminded him that she was planning to take some serious vacation time, soon, to figure out her next move. By that remark, “next move,” he thought she meant her next story, but she had another plan in mind.

  She didn’t think she could do this anymore.

  2

  The visitor’s lobby was cold and drafty, which based on her experience from prior visits, was why Mallory had worn a long-sleeve blouse. The area had cement floors, walls painted a dreary institutional gray, banks of bleak fluorescent lighting, hard plastic chairs. A fiftyish Black woman sat behind the wide reception desk, her attention riveted on her smart phone. She had hair partially dyed red and pulled back into a frizzy bun. She wore a dark blue Georgia Department of Corrections uniform.

  At Mallory’s approach, the guard put down her phone and sucked her teeth.

  Now she’s about to tell me why I don’t belong here, Mallory thought. Or she’ll assume I’m here to visit my estranged boyfriend.

  “Visiting hours start at ten, sweetheart,” the guard said. Her badge read, Vernithia Lewis. “Come back later if you’re here to see your baby daddy.”

  “Good morning, ma’am.” Mallory slid her laminated newspaper ID badge across the counter. “I’m Mallory Steele from The Atlanta Times. I’ve got several interviews scheduled here today. Please confirm with Mr. James Hartwell, Director of Public Relations, thank you.”

  “Oh.” The woman straightened in her chair. She scrutinized Mallory’s photo ID and glanced back at Mallory’s face as if unable to believe it was the same person. “You ain’t big as my pinkie finger, girl. You sure you wanna be here?”

  “It’s not my first rodeo.” Mallory shrugged. “I’d appreciate if you can buzz Mr. Hartwell, ma’am. I’m on deadline.”

  Her deadline was three weeks away, plenty of time for her to complete this piece, but mentioning it had the desired effect. The officer connected to Hartwell’s assistant, and a couple of minutes later, had returned Mallory’s media credentials and given Mallory a “Media” tag to clip to her blouse.

  Hartwell’s assistant came to the lobby to collect Mallory. She was a tall, thin, twenty-something blonde in a sunflower-yellow business suit. She had a deeply tanned complexion and bored blue eyes.

  She ushered Mallory through security, which was like passing through a TSA checkpoint at the airport. Her bag had to be scanned and she had to pass through a scanner that detected weapons and various contraband that visitors tried to smuggle into prisons: cell phones, weapons, drugs, cigarettes, liquor, food.

  “All good?” the assistant asked when Mallory reached the other side of the checkpoint. Striding down the hallway, the woman tossed back her bottle-blonde mane and reviewed her notes. “We have you talking to Inmate 1291236 at nine.”

  “Marquis Walker,” Mallory said.

  “Right.” The woman’s lips curled in a sour expression. “What’s this all about again?”

  “Mental health care in the prison system,” Mallory said. Or lack thereof, she thought but didn’t say.

  “I see. Sounds interesting.” She sounded utterly disinterested, and Mallory wondered what had brought the woman to such a position. Most likely, the job was a waystation along the path to something more prestigious, and she had no interest in the men confined in the prison that employed her.

  Mallory followed her through a series of corridors and heavy doors that required key cards for entry, until finally they reached the area where interviews were conducted in a secure environment. All the rooms had thick glass windows facing the hallway; none of them provided privacy. A couple of the chambers were occupied already: inmates in orange jumpsuits sitting at steel tables, talking to well-dressed men and women who could be only attorneys.

  “This is where you’ll be.” The assistant opened a door. “Need to visit the ladies’ room, anything like that?”

  “I’m fine for now, thanks. I’ll go in and set up.”

  “You do that. We’ll bring the inmate. Text me when you’re done with him.”

  After she had exchanged numbers with the assistant, Mallory set up her tools of the trade at the rectangular conference room table, on her side—which she knew was the side that didn’t have steel rings and a metal chain bristling from the surface. She arranged her notepad full of her prepared questions, digital recorder (the recorder looked like a plain ink pen, as if it were a James Bond gadget), her phone, her coffee cup, a couple of sharpened pencils.

  She didn’t have to wait long for Walker to arrive. Within fifteen minutes, two correctional officers bustled through the doorway with Walker in tow.

  Marquis Walker was a Black man, twenty-seven years old, serving a forty-year sentence for second degree murder: he had killed a police officer. Some people would have considered that sentence justice served, but Walker had a lifelong history of mental illness issues and increasingly violent crimes. Before killing the cop, he had been held in the Fulton County Jail for assault, and the jail’s staff psychologist had recommended that Walker be admitted to inpatient psychiatric care. That admittance never happened, due to a lack of available beds at the psychiatric facility. A month later, Walker killed the officer during a confrontation in Walker’s Adamsville neighborhood.

  The overall question Mallory’s investigative piece posed: why hadn’t Walker, and many others like him, been receiving mental health care from an early age, when as a juvenile offender he’d already displayed warnings signs of serious mental disturbance?

  “Good morning, Mr. Walker, gentlemen,” Mallory said as the men entered t
he room.

  Walker wore the orange jumpsuit like the other prisoners. He was tall, about six-three, with a broad-shouldered build, short hair, and a thick goatee. His arms were braided with tattoos. Transport restraints bound his wrists and feet, the chain links tinkling as he shuffled.

  “Goddamn,” Walker said. He had a tenor voice that didn’t fit his imposing stature at all. His copper brown eyes flashed. “You one fine-ass bitch.”

  Walker suffered from a mental health condition called intermittent explosive disorder, which meant exactly what it sounded like: he was prone to frightening outbursts of aggressive behavior that didn’t require a trigger. He also lacked impulse control in general, but his comment about Mallory’s looks was no more shocking to her than the catcalls she had heard from guys since she was a teenager.

  She didn’t respond to the remark, only looked blankly at Walker, but one of the prison guards shoved him into the steel chair on the other side of the table. The other guard attached the cuffs on his wrists to the thick metal rings on the table surface, using the heavy length of chain already affixed to the table.

  “Sit down and shut up,” one of the guards said. “The newspaper lady here wants to ask you some questions. You answer them and cut the crap.”

  “Do you know the last time I seen a sister—I mean a real sister?” Walker asked. He snickered. “Shit. I ain’t gonna be able to concentrate on a goddamn thing, man. All I can think about is you putting your lips on my dick like they been on that coffee cup.”

  Mallory noticed a smear of her red lipstick on the rim of her Starbucks cup.

  “Hey, Walker—” one of the guards started.

  Mallory raised her hand in a stop gesture. “I spoke to your mother recently, Marquis. She wanted me to tell you that your daughter Amiya knows how to ride a bicycle now.”

  The revelation altered Walker’s mood like a boot to the groin. He straightened in the chair, and a hesitant smile flickered on his lips.

  “Aw, for real?” he said. “Wow, you know I was tryin’ to teach her that before I got thrown in here. Damn, I hate I missed that shit. What else Mama say?”

  Piece of cake, Mallory thought.

  She pressed the button on her digital recorder to start capturing audio.

  “Quite a bit,” Mallory said. “Now, let’s talk like adults, shall we?”

  3

  Walker was a garrulous subject, which Mallory had expected from the background work she’d done on him. He had been shuttling in and out of the legal system since he was thirteen, and before his murder conviction he had spent more time in juvenile detention, county jails, and penitentiaries than he had anywhere else, as if time outside were nothing more than furloughs in a lifelong sentence.

  He loved to talk about himself, but every good interview required some give and take to build a deeper rapport. He clammed up when she asked about his relationship with his dad. To lubricate the wheels of the discussion, she confided that she didn’t know her own father from a stranger on the street; that her mother had been killed in front of her by a boyfriend who was convicted of manslaughter; that she and her sister had been put in foster care because they had no other family to take them in; that they were separated in the system and Mallory hadn’t seen Liz in twenty-five years.

  She recited the details with little emotion because she had told the story a million times over the years, but it did the trick. Walker straightened in his seat, met her gaze, and opened up again.

  “The system is just messed up, man,” Walker said. “My pops, the system got him too, he was in for like ten – eleven years, and it messed him up. I saw him on the street and he didn’t even know who I was, what kinda shit is that?”

  “What do you mean by the system?” Mallory asked.

  “I mean, it don’t matter how crazy shit looks, it’s all relative depending on where you at.” Walker gestured wildly, his wrist shackles clinking on the table, limiting his range of motion. “You wanna survive? You better keep your head down and keep it movin’. But if you try to beat that shit, you better get ready for a beatdown ‘cause the system ain’t lettin’ you win.”

  Mallory leaned forward in the chair, nodding and periodically murmuring uh-huh to keep him talking—rambling was more like it—but inwardly she groaned as she contemplated the work needed to shape this conversation into a coherent interview. He might have given her five usable quotes. But it came with the territory.

  She wrapped up their discussion after about an hour. At the conclusion, Walker asked if she’d come visit him again, and she paid him a plastic smile and said, “I’ll send you the story when it’s published.” Disappointment washed over his features.

  Shrugging, she gathered her things. Walker was the only inmate on her interview list that day, but there were several other persons employed at the prison to whom she needed to speak, administrators and psychologists, and for those discussions she would be taken to other sections of the facility. She sent the public relations assistant a text message, and the blonde came to collect her a short while later.

  Mallory worked through the lunch hour and didn’t wrap up her last interview until three o’clock that afternoon. By then, a freelance photographer for her newspaper had arrived, snapped several shots she could possibly use for her story, and departed. She headed out of the penitentiary and crossed the simmering parking lot to her car, her stomach rumbling with hunger.

  Reidsville was a speck of a town with few dining options. Knowing this, Mallory had packed her lunch and stored it in a cooler waiting in the cargo area of her CX-5. She popped the SUV’s hatch and climbed inside, her slender legs dangling over the edge.

  She was grateful she had parked in the shade. The day was brutally hot, the soft breeze pushing warm air toward her.

  A monarch butterfly flickered past. The sight brought a brief smile to her face. Princess Butterfly.

  Working through her salad and sipping a cold bottle of water, she finally dug into the messages that had accumulated on her phone. A text about an hour ago from her boyfriend, Ben, checking in. A voice mail from a source she had contacted in relation to another brewing story. The usual onslaught of promo emails and newsletters she would never open.

  She also had an email message from ThickerthanWater.

  The subject line read: A close family member has been found.

  Although Mallory had kicked off that morning by chatting face-to-face with a convicted killer, for the first time all day, her pulse accelerated.

  Close family. That meant a niece, a nephew, an aunt, or uncle. Someone who shared her blood. Someone who could make an impact, could possibly fill up the emptiness that had been threatening to swallow her whole.

  Heart knocking so rapidly she felt dizzy, she opened the email.

  4

  Mallory lived in Atlanta, in the Old Fourth Ward. She and Ben rented a two-bedroom, two-bath townhouse on Highland Avenue. It was a section of neighborhood cycling through the gentrification craze that had swept through the city: old properties renovated or torn down and replaced by high-priced condos, townhouses and McMansions, the prior low-income residents displaced, unable to keep up with rising property tax bills. Mallory had once written a scathing newspaper story about the disturbing trend and felt like a hypocrite for personally participating in it, but if you wanted to live in one of the city’s buzzing hubs, it was damn near inescapable.

  Ben’s Ford Expedition was already parked in the driveway when she arrived home around six that evening. He was cooking dinner, as he often did on weeknights, the aromas of simmering garlic and herbs greeting her when she opened the door.

  Mallory had been a renter her entire adult life and never invested much time or money in decorating because she believed she always had to be ready to break camp and move on. Most of the furniture belonged to Ben or they had purchased together at his insistence, but a few of her framed articles hung on the walls, the pieces that had won awards, or of which she was particularly proud. One of those first award-w
inners had been complemented by Ben’s photography. They had met on the job eight years ago; been dating for five; living together for three.

  Lately, he had been pressuring her to get married. He was ten years older than she was, divorced, no children. She knew he wanted “The Full Package” as he described it: the wife and the kids. She was content with their current arrangement.

  “Hey, Mal,” Ben said, from the kitchen.

  Ben Whitfield was a large man, six-four, two hundred plus pounds. But he was fleet of foot for his size, navigating the kitchen with the grace of a dancer.

  Despite his size, Ben had a soothing, mellifluous voice, like a quiet storm deejay. That voice, and his gentle giant demeanor, had initially attracted her. Having him in her life was a balm in a chaotic world.

  “Hey.” Entering the room, she dropped her things on the table. “We need to talk.”

  “How about a hug first?” He set down a spatula and spread his arms wide, his immense wingspan extending across the kitchen.

  “Sorry.” She walked into his embrace. His arms enfolded her, and she hugged him back hard. Often, she didn’t realize how badly she craved his touch until put his arms around her. He was an affectionate guy, unlike men she had dated in the past who touched her only when they wanted to initiate sex, pawing at her like puppies seeking a chew toy. It had taken time for her to accept his style of loving, to drop the mask she presented to the world and be her authentic self in his presence. Sometimes, it still felt foreign to her.

  “I’m glad you’re home.” He kissed her forehead. “Did you have a good day?”

  “That’s what we need to talk about. Something important happened.”

  “Is this a discussion that requires wine?” Stepping away, he pushed up his wire-rim glasses, his brown eyes enlarged behind the lenses.

  “I got a hit on ThickerthanWater, Ben. Close family discovered.”

  “Wow.” He grinned, showing a small gap in his front teeth. “Oh yes, this definitely requires wine.” He opened the refrigerator and removed a bottle of sauvignon blanc. Long-stem glasses appeared in short order. He spun off the bottle cap and gave her a generous pour. A board with hard cheese and water crackers followed.