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do before I go?”
    Peyton glanced at the clock. Four-thirty already? She was so busy the days flew by. Maybe that was whyshe didn’t have much of a love life—in addition to the fact that she refused to date anyone who worked at the prison, which ruled out most of the men in Crescent City. “No, thank you. I’ll see you on Monday.”
    Shelley paused. “Uh-oh.”
    “What’s the matter?” Peyton asked.
    “You’ve got ‘the crease of concern.’”
    To keep her hands occupied, Peyton straightened her stapler, pen holder, calendar. “The crease of concern?”
    “Yep.” She pointed to her own forehead. “Right there. You get it whenever you’re worried. What’s wrong?”
    Peyton smiled to clear away that crease. Regardless of how she felt about what the department was doing, she wouldn’t risk Bennett’s life by letting on that something unusual was afoot. “Just another inmate in gen pop claiming to be suicidal.”
    “What does his psych report say?”
    “That he’s a malingerer.”
    “A what?”
    “Faking it,” Peyton clarified.
    Stepping into the room, Shelley crossed her arms over her large breasts, which strained against a dress that was far too tight, and leaned against the wall. “What’s he in for?”
    Briefly allowing herself to be distracted by the business she’d been dealing with before Warden Fischer’s little meeting eight miles away, Peyton took a sip of the coffee that’d nearly grown cold on her desk. “Molesting three boys.”
    “Then he’s in the hat, isn’t he?”
    In the hat meant he was marked to be beaten or killed by other inmates. Rapists, molesters and child murderers weren’t well liked, even in prison. “I’m not so surethat’s the only reason he’s saying he wants to exit the land of the living,” she said.
    Bracelet jangling as she walked, Shelley approached the chairs on the other side of Peyton’s desk. “Come on, you know how many of these guys try to get themselves into the Psychiatric Services Unit. But with only one hundred and twenty-eight beds, you can’t send them all there. I’d put him back in gen pop.”
    “Without a second thought?”
    She adjusted her dress, which had started to ride up. “Why not?”
    “What if he really goes through with it? What if he hangs himself in his cell? Would you want to be responsible for that?”
    “No.” Straightening, she hitched up her giant handbag. “That’s why you get paid the big bucks.”
    Big bucks? Peyton made $120,000 year, but money didn’t help her sleep at night. She’d been so idealistic when she’d chosen this profession, so certain she’d be able to make a difference. But, more often than not, there wasn’t a good answer to the dilemmas she faced. She couldn’t put this guy, Victor Durego, in the SHU. The SHU was reserved for behavioral problems; keeping inmates in total isolation cost taxpayers an exorbitant amount of money. If Victor had no mental disorder, she couldn’t keep him in the PSU, either. It didn’t make sense to waste the valuable time of the mental health professionals who worked there or take up a slot that was legitimately needed by someone else. For a week or two, she could move him into the Transitional Housing Unit, where they put the gangbangers who decided to debrief, but returning Victor to general population would leave him vulnerable to what had made him claim hewas suicidal in the first place—probably another inmate who’d threatened him.
    “There’s always the other philosophy,” Shelley said.
    Peyton pushed the coffee to one side so she wouldn’t be tempted by it. “What philosophy?”
    “That a guy who molests children deserves whatever he gets.”
    She knew Shelley wasn’t alone in her ambivalence toward Victor’s safety. But Peyton believed it was humanity that separated the caregivers from the inmates. If the caregivers appointed themselves judge, jury and executioner, they were no better than the people they imprisoned. “As far as I