Chapter 7 - The Missing Women
The infirmary smelled of rubbing alcohol and boiled coffee. Rosa stitched Valérie's arm while Lucie held the gauze. Neither nurse nor patient bothered pretending they liked each other.
"That cut could've been worse," Rosa said.
"I've had worse," Valérie muttered.
"And you keep making sure other people do, too."
Valérie looked away. Lucie thought the insult would start another fight, but the woman said nothing.
Rosa locked the supply cabinet and lowered her voice. "Denise Bell was one of six women marked 'released' in the last year. I checked. Three were serving sentences that couldn't end. Two had no court orders. The sixth had been dead for a month before her supposed release date."
"Who signed the paperwork?" Lucie asked.
"Somebody using Mercer’s initials. I need the original orders. Everything on our system can be changed."
"Where do the transports go?"
Rosa wrote an address on a bandage wrapper and slid it beneath Valérie's dressing: Cedar Ridge Depot, County Route 11.
"What is it?"
"Vale Transit's old freight center. The state stopped using it twelve years ago. It's still billing for secure transport."
Valérie reached for her sleeve. "Don't say that name out loud."
Rosa's voice hardened. "I listened to a woman beg me not to put her on one of those buses. I told myself it wasn't my department. She disappeared. I won't do that again."
When Lucie and Valérie returned to the tier, June was waiting beside the laundry bins. Her face was gray.
"They called me into classification," she said. "I heard two officers talking about a van leaving at three in the morning."
"Maybe it's a normal transfer," Lucie said.
May you like
June lifted a stamped paper. On it, under an official seal, was the word RELEASED.
Her sentence still had twenty-six months left.
