Take the Reason Prisoner by John Joseph McGuire (books to read in your 20s female .txt) π
Number Four changed by the addition of an extra latrine for the second floor. Females on the first, juvenile delinquents on the second.
Bennington had learned to move like a ghost, move quietly or die, on the almost forgotten battlefields of a police action in Korea. He had had a post-graduate course in the South-East Asian jungles. On the Chilean desert he had added to his skills.
He moved now as he had then.
But there was little reason for caution. The guards were too busy collecting their fees, the juvenile delinquents were too busy acting as ushers, with even the sex deviates from Number Three busy.
The customers, of course, were far too interested in what they were buying.
And there was nothing to be done tonight. Bennington snarled to himself, as he carefully made his way back to the house.
But tomorrow morning....
* * * * *
A good breakfast inside of him, the early morning sun brightening the scene before him, not even combined could t
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Judkins was in jail, and glad to be in a solitary cell because he was handwriting a full confession. The knowledge of what Clarens had done during his few hours of freedom had scared the hypno-tech into almost incoherent co-operation.
The chief of Harrisburg's police was showing less signs of wear than anyone else. Scott was exulting in his position as supervisor of the city search for Giles, glorying in his position as relayer of the details of the state search for the errant politician.
Bennington opened the door into Scott's office, meditating gratefully on one blessing, that the six governors who had agreed on his appointment had also finally agreed to sleep.
Of course they had all assured him of complete concurrence with his suggested reforms for Duncannon Prison ... but what else could they have done?
Mosby was just outside the bathroom door, standing big enough to insure a half-circle of privacy between the general and the reporters.
"Had a call from Washington, Jim. That Rooney tax mess is getting top priority."
"Good."
"The AG called, too."
Bennington found himself companioning Mosby's faint smile. "You had a cigarette in your ashtray?"
"I did, and he's got six good precedents to back us up, Jim. But the next time he wants us to call him first: my men aren't the only ones who need practical training."
Bennington did not hold back his laugh and he stretched out his hand. "Thanks, Mossback."
"Hell, Jim, I owe you the thanks. That was the best training problem my men ever had, taught 'em more in one night that they can ever learn until the real stuff starts whistling around."
Bennington glanced over Mosby's shoulder at the place he was heading for: the hot seat, Chief Scott's desk chair, bright under the TV spotlights, the center of every camera focus.
"You've got work to do, I know, so where's that Thornberry?" Mosby growled. "He should be with you."
"Upstairs, asleep. He said that he was only the assistant warden, then asked Chief Scott for an empty cell and left me."
"Why?"
"It's very simple: he's still not convinced that I had to shoot Clarens."
Mosby grunted deep disgust, looked over his shoulder toward the hot seat, looked again at Bennington. "You should have shaved.
"No, wait a minute, I guess not. Just go the way you are and give 'em hell."
Bennington rubbed his chin and the bristle of his late-night, early-morning beard crackled crisply.
The problem he had anticipated was now here, as he had known it would be. And the answer was nowhere, which equally had been a matter of foreknowledge.
"What will I say, General Mosby?" Bennington murmured. "Cue me in. You were always the best public relations officer either of us ever had."
"Jim, from anyone elseβ" Mosby started, stopped, grinned. "The trouble is, you're right.
"But this time we don't need any style, this time all we need is the truth.
"Tell them why the prison wasn't running right, how the riot happened and why you are where you are tonight, and what the prisons need to make them run better...."
Mosby stopped again, and this time was very slow in re-starting.
"When you get there, I don't know, Jim. What are you going to tell them?"
I wish I could be sure, Mossback.
I know I can make that hot seat hotter by stating no one else knows either, because we've never decided what a prison is for ... society's protection, a place to put people like Clarens, where they won't affect the lives of normal folk? A deterrent, a threat, a place to point to as a warning not to break the law? Or, as Thornberry would have it, the first step to returning people to normal lives as functioning members of society again?
Dare I say that the only thing certain about prisons is that so far they haven't worked ... that stone walls, iron bars, conditioning and drugs that take the reason prisoner, none of these have kept men in ... that they would always try to escape as long as there was hope, hope of something better on the outside.
As Mosby stepped aside, Bennington considered the reverse of that last thought.
Was there an answer here, to ask his fellow-countrymen to face the immediately, perhaps the forever, impossible, that the only way to keep a man from hoping and trying to get out, was to build a society where they never got in?
Then Bennington remembered Clarens.
No, let's face facts, that till man is superman, there will always be people like Clarens, people who will never be redeemed. People, who no matter how carefully caged or watched, will ever be a potential threat, if only to their keepers. By what weird accident they came to life, well, list that among other facts as yet unknown, and consider only the end result, that there were people whose only pleasure lay in perpetual destruction.
Automatically, such people themselves must be destroyed.
He was only vaguely aware of the flash-bulbs popping as he walked to the chair behind Chief Scott's desk.
That could be an answer, a new addition to the Decalogue, a new Commandment specific to the judge giving sentence to a man like Clarens, an injunction not to jail but to destroy. Simply phrased for the judge, thou shalt not commit!
He seated himself and blinked a couple of times, adjusting to the glare.
But, beginning with Thornberry, there would be many people who wouldn't agree, who would never accept such an amendment to the Sacred Ten, people who never seemed to see that phrase in their newspapers every time a child was assaulted, "Police are questioning all known sex offenders."
Bennington looked thoughtfully around at the men ready to question him.
He, too, was ready, ready to tell them....
... Some people are a damn sight better off dead.
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