The Body and the Blood Read Online Free

institution are understaffed—at least one area nearly every shift. There’s not an incident every time, but nearly every incident occurs in one of these areas. You can only get away with it for so long, and then . . . . Tonight felt like one of those “and then” times.
    “I’m over here,” Potter continued. “Officer Pitts is counting the other quads. He’s gotta be able to get back in the wicker after he counts.”
    Wicker is the term used for the officers’ stations inside the dorms, and though everyone referred to it as such, no one had ever been able to tell me why.
    “He’s out of the wicker and the goddam door is unlocked?” Daniels yelled.
    “What would you do?” Potter asked. “We’re undermanned.”
    “You damn sure are. Wherever you’re assigned always will be.”
    Standard procedure called for a sergeant and an officer in the officer station or wicker, as well as at least one officer in each quad—and with a volunteer down here to conduct a religious service, there really should have been two.
    “In case you didn’t know,” Potter continued, “there’s a shortage of correctional officers.”
    I looked at Daniels. “There’s an even bigger shortage of good correctional officers.”
    Potter glared at me.
    I tried not to quake.
    “Soon as Pitts is back in the wicker,” Potter said. “I’m gonna call for Catholic Mass. That okay with you?”
    Daniels didn’t respond.
    Across the quad, an inmate walked into the dorm and Potter nodded him toward his cell, which clicked open.
    “Menge,” he explained. “Had a visit tonight.”
    I glanced over to see Justin disappear into the third cell from the entrance on the bottom just on the other side of the stairs, and felt relieved that he was safely back inside.
    Daniels shook his head in confusion. “Who unlocked his cell?”
    “Pitts—” he began when a yell from one of the cells stopped him. The acoustics were so bad it was impossible to know exactly where it came from. “Shut the hell up,” he yelled back toward the cell. Then looking back at Daniels, said, “Pitts must be back in the wicker.”
    “Must be?” Daniels asked. “ Must be? What the hell kinda half-ass Mickey Mouse operation are y’all runnin’ down here?”
    “We’re doin’ the best we can.”
    “Oh, I don’t doubt that.”
    Potter looked at him for a moment, but didn’t say anything, then radioed Pitts, confirmed that the count had cleared, and advised him that he was about to call for Mass.
    As Potter yelled that it was time for Mass and for those inmates wishing to attend to call out the number of their cells, I walked over to speak to Father James.
    One by one, inmates called out the number of their cells. Potter radioed the cell numbers to Pitts, and they were buzzed open. Slowly, from every direction, inmates began making their way toward the folding chairs.
    “I knew it wouldn’t be well received when I did it,” Father James said, returning the flyer to me. “But it got everyone’s attention, didn’t it?”
    Father James was tall and thin with wispy white hair that had receded to about the half way point on the top of his head. Age, back problems, and perhaps the enormous dogs he seemed to be perpetually walking around town, caused him to bend forward slightly and made him look stiff and brittle and far more feeble than he really was.
    I nodded and frowned. “It did. But not all of it was good. Look at this.”
    I unfolded the second flyer—the one claiming a murder would take place during the Mass—and handed it to him. His thin, slightly deformed hand shook as he read it.
    “I didn’t do this one,” he said, his pale blue eyes narrowing as he looked up at me.
    “Any idea who did?”
    “None at all. You think it’s announcing an actual murder?” He looked around at the inmates moving toward him.
    I shrugged. “That’s what I came to find out.”
    He studied the flyer some more. “It’s nearly identical to the one I made. Could an