Page 12 of Guess Again
Francis’s obsessive personality wanted to point out that nearing the stroke of midnight, it was no longer “evening,” but, instead, the very definition of night. And that Monroe’s presence in his cell was sure to make the night very muchunpleasant.
“Good,” was all Francis said.
Monroe’s hands were behind his back, as if the man were standing calmly at church service. Francis assumed he was hiding his baton so that the first strike, likely across Francis’s temple, would come blindly.
“I heard some disturbing news,” Monroe said. “You arranged a swap, of sorts, with Craig Norton?”
Francis swallowed but said nothing.
“Contraband of any sort is forbidden in my prison.”
“Yes sir. But it wasn’t contraband. It was—”
Monroe lifted his hand from behind his back. He held a manila folder from which several pieces of paper protruded.
“Yes,” Monroe said. “You’ve never been one to partake in drugs. I’ve watched you closely. But just the same, offering favors to guards in exchange for information from the outside is not permitted.”
Francis nodded. “Yes sir.”
“However,” Monroe said, walking closer to where Francis sat on his bunk. “If, in the future, you tellmewhat you need, then perhaps you and I could come to the same agreement you had with Norton.”
In that moment, Francis understood that Andre Monroe was not going to beat him to within an inch of his life, as he had done to other inmates over the years. Francis’s arrangement with Craig Norton had been exposed, and now he’d have Andre Monroe as a constant visitor looking for the same thing Francis gave Norton for the occasional outside-the-prison luxury item. Francis’s formulaic mind spun with what this meant, and he calculated that he’d have to find a way to accelerate his plan.
“Well?” Monroe said. “Do we have a deal?”
Francis nodded. To say no would be a death sentence.
Monroe dropped the documents onto the bed. Francis quickly paged through them and saw everything he’d asked Norton to find for him. On top of the stack was a copy of theMilwaukee Journal Sentinelopened to an article about Callie Jones. Francis took a moment to skim the story. It was true. With the election of Governor Jones came the rebirth of a new investigation to find his daughter, and the governor had tapped Ethan Hall—a former renegade investigator with Wisconsin’s Department of Criminal Investigation, as the article described him—to lead the investigation. Francis closed his eyes. For the first time in many years, he allowed himself to believe that the walls that held him would soon fall.
When Francis opened his eyes, he noticed that Andre Monroe had inched closer and was now looming over him.
“It’s everything Norton said you needed,” Monroe said.
Monroe’s domineering tone had softened to a more hopeful one. Nature funneled all species to the same place in the tunnel of existence. Still looking up at Monroe, Francis nodded. Reality dictated that he had no other choice.
Monroe smiled, reached for the front of his trousers, and pulled down his zipper.
CHAPTER 12
Nekoosa, Wisconsin Monday, July 7, 2025
EUGENIAMORGAN ARRIVED HOME AND WENT STRAIGHT TO THEbathroom. She took her time under the cool water of the shower. She’d had a busy evening and an equally eventful weekend. She felt like she was dreaming. In fact, ever since his letter had arrived in her mailbox, she woke each morning worried that her mind had tricked her into believing it was really happening. But this was no fantasy.
Francis’s handwritten letter arrived the week before. She had written to him many times over the years but had never received a response. Until last week. His letter was the first true piece of him she’d ever received. Everything else Eugenia had collected were trinkets and distant items of him—photos, videos, high school yearbooks, hats, and pieces of clothing others told her had once belonged to him. But the letter was the first thing producedbyhim. She’d smelled it and touched it and took in as much of him as the single page had to offer. She’d read the letter over and over again, hundreds of times until the sentences had imprinted themselves on her mind and she could recite the entire thing from memory.
In his letter, Francis had explained why he had not answered Eugenia’s many correspondences over the years. The prison had allowed him to receive mail but had denied him the right to send mail. Only recently, with years of good behavior and a push by the ACLU, had Francis been granted the right to send letters through the U.S. mail. The first letter he penned was to her. And the news he delivered with his words had her positively giddy. He’d placed Eugenia on his approved visitor list and had requested her presence in Boscobel. It was a dream come true.
At the end of her shower, she twisted the faucet to cold and stood for another minute as the icy water cascaded over her body. When she stepped from the stall, she drip-dried as she ran a brush through her jet-black hair and admired her body in the mirror. She was thirty-two years old, tall, and firm. She longed for the day when she could give herself fully to him.
She dressed in silk sleeping shorts and a tank top before heading down to the kitchen where she grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and then opened the door to the basement cellar. She clicked on the stair well light and headed down the creaky wooden steps. When she purchased the home, the realtor had tried to avoid showing Eugenia the basement, which consisted of a large unfinished area and a small connecting bedroom. But Eugenia had immediately seen its potential.
She had spread a plush area rug over the concrete floor in the main area and hung a colorful blanket over one of the bare cinder block walls. A massive flag covered the second wall. She’d had the white flag with a single black heart in the center custom made as the perfect complement to her shrine. The third wall, however, had always been her focus when she came down to the cellar. Covering that north wall were hundreds of photos of Francis Bernard, along with news articles about the Lake Michigan Massacres from decades before. Mixed in amongst the photos of Francis were the faces of the women who had been killed. There was also a photo of Henry Hall—the police detective Francis had been convicted of killing.
Situated in front of the wall was a desk with a computer. Eugenia took a seat and shook the mouse to wake the monitor.
“Oh, hello handsome,” she said when the wallpaper—a close-up image of Francis—popped onto the screen. “I can’t wait to see you tomorrow.”
She moved the cursor onto a file folder and opened the document to fill out the Wisconsin Department of Corrections forms that were required for visiting inmates in state penitentiaries. Now that Francis had added her to the list of approved visitors, she should have no problems. Still, she was meticulous as she filled out the forms. Prisons were notorious for denying visitation for the smallest infractions, and she was going to make sure nothing stopped her from seeing him.
