Page 19 of Endangered Species
Cy stood there, poleaxed at Nicky’s words. Cy understood what it was like to crave that kind of connection. But it was impossible there. Was that what Nicky meant? Or did he feel those things on the outside, too? Unwanted? Alone? Disconnected?
“I told you it was stupid,” Nicky said, dipping out from under Cy’s now slack arm to go to the sink to clean up.
“It’s not stupid.”
“It is. This whole situation is. I’ve known you my whole life, but I’ve really only known you a year at most and—what?—three days in here? But I feel closer to you than I have with any other person I’ve ever known. What is that? Some kind of weird variation of Stockholm Syndrome? Like you and I feel so strangely real in a situation that is more surreal than aBlack Mirrorepisode.”
Cy cleaned himself up as he thought about Nicky’s words. When they were both no longer sticky, he dragged Nicky back to the mattress and under the rough sandpaper-like brown blanket. Nicky tried to turn away from him, but Cy once more held him prisoner in his arms. “What does it matter, Nicky? We’re both here. We’re both doing the best we can in a bullshit situation. Maybe you feel close to me because we only had each other for that whole year? Maybe because I always wanted to protect you, even if I didn’t do a very good job. I like taking care of you, keeping you safe. It’s the only thing I’ve ever known how to do.”
“I wish you’d met me as a grown man on the outside instead of in here. I have a life. I protect people for a living. Yeah, I usually do it with computers, but I can fight. I am an expert marksman. Hell, I have a certificate in Israeli street fighting for fuck’s sake.” Cy smiled, still baffled about Nicky’s impromptu listing of his resume. “But, suddenly, I’m stuck in here with you, and I feel like I’m six years old again and you’re the only one who can save me. It’s fucking insane. I can protect myself. If you weren’t here, I’d find some way to survive, but I see you and I don’t want to be alone. I don’t want to fight alone. I see you and I just…want you.”
Cy’s heart jackhammered in his chest at Nicky’s confession. Cy understood Nicky’s confusion, though not exactly his frustration. “It’s okay to not want to be alone. It’s okay to not always want to take care of yourself. We spent our childhoods learning how to be alone, and live alone, and survive alone. There’s nothing wrong with letting somebody else in. With letting me in.”
“There is if letting you in makes things harder for you. You spent a year making life easier for me, and now, here you are again. I don’t want it to end like it did last time. I can’t be the reason something else bad happens to you, not after I’ve spent the last ten trying to figure out how to get you free.”
Cy’s blood pounded in his ears. “What?”
Nicky looked up at him. “Yeah, it’s how I spend my free time. I’m so well versed in jailhouse law, I could probably sit for the bar exam. But no matter how many times I go over your file, there’s never anything that would warrant a new trial. Dooley and Phoebe did a great job of framing you.”
Cy felt dizzy. “Is… Were you looking into my case when you got put in here?”
“Well, yeah. Sort of. I created a program that would look through California cases and identify any types of patterns or similarities to your case. I figured Dooley must have done it before. He wasn’t always a small town California sheriff.”
Cy shook his head, dread settling in his gut. “You really, really shouldn’t have done that, Nicky.”
The look of dread on Cy’s face chilled Webster to his core. “What? Why not?”
Webster watched as several expressions played over Cy’s face. Eventually, he shook his head and met Webster’s confused gaze. “Look, people talk in here. You’re right about Dooley having done this before. But it’s not just him…”
“Meaning…?” Webster asked.
Cy shook his head. “It’s bigger than that, Nicky. Dooley and Phoebe framed me for murder because I was the only one in the house old enough to have killed my father other than her. But Dooley knew he could make it stick because he’d done it before. And not just him. It might have started out as just a bunch of cops using their power to get away with murder, but it’s way bigger than that now.”
Webster tried to make sense of what Cy was telling him, but he wasn’t exactly sure what he meant. “What is going on?”
Cy rolled onto his back to stare at the underside of the top bunk. “There was a reporter. Her name was Maia Andrada. She showed up around three years ago and began to systematically start visiting certain prisoners here. Asking about their cases, their public defenders, their judges. Inmates started talking to each other, trying to piece together what was similar about their cases. Then Maia ended up dead.”
The pieces started to fall into place. “So, Maia was doing the same thing I asked my computer program to do. Look for a pattern. Only I was just focused on Dooley.”
“This is bigger than Dooley. For profit prisons are the new cotton fields, Nicky. And just like back then, there are a bunch of greedy men holding the whips. But this goes beyond racial bias and profiling. Here, they don’t care what color you are, they just need worker bees to keep their operations profitable. Look around, there are prisoners doing customer service, fighting fires, doing laundry for corporations. We make less than a dollar a day. Who do you think is getting rich off this? I think Maia thought she could prove there was more to it, a pipeline that takes kids like me and orchestrates their movement from arrest to conviction to keep their business profitable. And they killed her for it.”
“Jesus.”
Webster curled into Cy, lying his head against his chest, listening to the rapid beating of his heart as he contemplated Cy’s words. It wasn’t that much of a leap to imagine a network of dirty cops and even dirtier judges. Hell, the way some judges unfairly pardoned rich criminals was part of the reason Webster had started helping abused children in the first place. But a ring that large would take massive planning. Not just cops and judges but everybody from the clerk who sets up the judge’s docket to the attorneys on both sides of the aisle. If that were the case, Webster’s program would have started to show patterns of overlap with Dooley’s arrests. Something occurred to him then.
“So, why not just put a bullet in my head? Why send me here? To you? Why go to all this trouble?”
“If I had to guess…Dooley doesn’t want me to leave this place. He’s probably worried I’ll come after him. If I do his dirty work for him, I don’t get early release next year. I end up in here for life. He made the mistake of thinking I would choose revenge over self-preservation.”
Webster threaded their fingers together. “He clearly doesn’t see the kind of person you are, that you’ve always been.”
“What kind of person is that?”
“A protector. A gentle giant. You hated even killing bugs. How many strays did we rescue and hide in the attic until they were healed?” Webster asked.
Cy smiled. “More than a few.” He dragged a thumb over the bruise on Webster’s cheek. “I hate hurting you.”
Webster shook his head. “I hurt me. I did this. The other stuff…the other stuff was hot. I’m not fragile, Cy. I like when you’re rough with me. I like when you hurt me just a little. I meant what I said… I want you to use me. It turns me on to know it makes you feel good. I like being the one who makes you feel good.”
