Burn Scars by Eddie Generous (best novels for beginners TXT) 📕

until Christine stepped up through the hall, a waft of damp warm air trailing behind her.

“How’s it going?” she said, naked.

“Fine,” Rusty said.

“You figured it out?” She nodded at the computer screen and he nodded at her. He then watched her as she walked down the hallway until her bare backside disappeared through a door.

Aside from the cramped office space, her father’s house was a nice place, spacious and clean. There were pictures on the walls and the furniture was newish. The kitchen had a clean white fridge and a glass-top stove—both mid-range models; Rusty would know. A built-in dishwasher below the counter. All of this was stuff Detective Landon Lawrence had stolen from Rusty. A murderer and a thief.

The home shouldn’t exist. In fact, he could fix that with hardly any effort at all. Rusty stood…flames began licking up the walls as he dumped gasoline around the fine cherry-colored baseboards. The linoleum began to split and bubble as fire met vinyl. The barren floorboards beneath seemed to pulse, red-hot. The screws began bursting into silver dust fragments at the heat, pinging bits everywhere. Shrapnel flew in every direction, shattering the glass of the hanging pictures and the living room bay window and…the computer pinged again and brought Rusty from reverie.

“Is it done?” Christine called from her bedroom.

“Think so,” Rusty said and headed for the bathroom, that first coffee was through him. “Do you have a case for it?”

When he came out, water rushing through the pipes in the background, Christine handed him the discs—one in a case and the other in a paper sleeve—and he followed her to the door. The prison was two hours away and it was already after eight, meaning they had spare room for about twenty minutes of road irritations. With the typical sort of luck Rusty experienced, they’d likely be only a day or so late.

—

“I want to see him alone,” Rusty said, eyes hard on Christine.

“Okay,” she said, no visible emotion apparent.

“It’s just…you know?”

He had to ask the man direct questions, on a subject that might muddy things with Christine—about her father and what he’d done. Most importantly, now, he needed to know what the truth looked like after it swirled in with their relationship. He still wasn’t sure how she’d take it. It was always possible that she’d revolt, maybe against him for suggesting such a thing, even with proof. He’d seen a good many people do very strange things to protect family—an impulse he never understood, for obvious reasons.

Christine nodded to the question that was more of a statement. “I know,” she said then.

The first guard of the day stood outside the car. He was a big man with a black moustache and a tight fade leading up to a flat top. He wore a skinny gold necklace beneath the open collar of his uniform shirt, looking straight army cadet on steroids.

“Can she wait?” Rusty asked, leaning over Christine. “It’s my dad, she don’t know him.” Thinking, not that I do.

“Sure thing, but she has to stay in the car. No getting out. Not ‘sposed be any unnecessary civilians on the property, but the new warden’s a bit easier about the lot, so it’s okay, but she has to remain in the vehicle.” He said the last part like he was reading it from the memory of a memo he’d gotten in his company mailbox.

Five silent seconds passed. Rusty glanced to the mirror and the line of cars and all the others attempting to get into the prison.

Christine pointed. “So up there’s fine?”

The guard blinked. “Yep.” He reached into his booth and hit a button, kicking a motor into life that opened a gate affixed to a high chain-link fence with razor wire accents.

Christine parked, pulling up tight enough to a cement barrier for it to catch and grind against a plastic carriage guard beneath her car. She backed up, unnecessarily, and they heard the grinding again before she put the transmission into park. She killed the engine and touched Rusty’s arm. “Good luck.”

He took a deep breath, weighing having one last cigarette before he went inside, but instead got busy moving his feet. Metal detector, pat down, ID checks against records, through two heavy, barred doors, and finally to a woman at a high desk. He was robot, moving on commands.

“Identification,” the woman said to the family in front of Rusty. She was big with cheeks so puffy they seemed to eat her beady eyes.

A middle-aged woman and two boys. The boys wore cheap Sunday clothes and red bowties. Both had alfalfa shoots sprouting from the backs of their heads like stubby peacock feathers. The woman was in a drab dress, probably too light for the chill in the place. She handed up a card and then explained the kids as she signed a sheet on a clipboard.

“All right, follow that man. He will seat you. Do not wander and mind that the children don’t wander either.” The woman pushed her kids and the woman behind the desk said, “Identification,” looking somewhere in Rusty’s general vicinity.

Rusty stepped reluctantly, the floor gooey with second thoughts. Everything about the prison made him feel like he was doing life wrong, and if he screwed up too badly, they’d keep him there awhile. The stern voices and the hard surfaces, the complete lack of humanity. It was a building to make mice of men, to crush souls into subjugation, to destroy abnormalities and capitalistic pitfalls. He couldn’t imagine anyone going in and coming out shiny and new, feeling like they’d never crime it up again. No, there’d be no reformation occurring in any meaningful way between these walls, under this system of ownership. There’d be no mental betterment or correction in a place so damned cold. The only likely advantageous effect was that former inmates might fear returning.