6
Vera couldn’t stop staring at the body.
The corridor felt alternately cold, then hot. She thought she could detect the stench of death, although she forcefully told herself that it was too early for the body to putrefy. Still, the reek filled her nostrils, threatening to suffocate her as its tendrils cloyed their way through her body. She gulped, trying to find clean air.
No such air existed in a prison.
As her anxiety rose, Vera felt the desperate need to get away—to run. She crossed her arms, willing the sensation to dissipate, forcing herself to look at Will. “What did you tell her?” she asked, her voice shrill. “How much does Proctor know?”
“Nothing!” Will exclaimed tiredly from where he had fallen. “I didn’t tell her anything!”
Vera placed her hands on her hips. “Well, she certainly thinks that you know who killed Smith!” She cautiously walked around the body, kneeling in front of Will. “Do you understand,” she stated slowly, carefully, holding Will’s gaze, “just how much trouble we would get in if anyone found out?” She pushed him. “Do you?”
“I understand!” Will exclaimed. “Vera, I get it! But that doesn’t make it right!”
“Will, we’re kneeling next to a dead body!” Vera exclaimed in exasperation. “Nothing makes this right!” She stood, taking a few steps. Turning back, she added, “but we have to save ourselves now.” She cocked her ear, listening hard.
Distantly, from outside the walls of Wentworth, came the screech of sirens.
Time was up.
***
Joan crossed the street, pausing for the smallest of seconds as the ambulance turned into Wentworth’s main entryway, behind her. She allowed the barest smile to cross her face. Tightening her grip on her bag, she turned down the cuff of her blazer, hiding the dried blood that covered her hand.
Her red right hand, she thought amusedly to herself. What would Kaz think?
She stumbled slightly.
Kaz.
She straightened. Now was no time to think about Proctor. She had to focus.
First she needed to clean her hand. Then she needed to get home—back to Shayne, if he was still there. She needed to know if Franky had gotten to him, somehow. She needed to make sure that he never told anyone about her original plan.
But first, she had to clean her red right hand.
***
Kaz screamed at the walls of the slot containing her. She beat at them with her fists, throwing the bedding to the ground, kicking the bedframe.
No one saw or heard.
Eventually, she leaned her head against the dirty window, her fingers absently tracing the names and initials of the many previous residents of the slot.
Bea Smith was dead.
It was unreal, somehow, except that she had seen Bea’s body up close. She had seen the blood staining her ripped, tattered sweatshirt.
And she had seen Will Jackson kneeling over Bea’s body.
She signed, turning away from the window. She had hated Will Jackson for such a long time, and yet, in this moment, she believed him.
Will Jackson hadn’t killed Bea Smith.
But he knew who did.
Pulling the mattress back onto the bed before lowering herself onto it, Kaz vowed one thing: she would find out who had murdered Bea Smith.
And she would make them pay.
***
Vera watched from the sidelines as the ambulance crew confirmed Smith’s death, and then departed. She watched as the police surveyed the scene, snapping photographs, searching for evidence. She was helpful, providing them with a list of potential inmate enemies to Smith, allowing them full access to the camera systems, apologizing profusely when the system-wide camera failure was discovered.
She cooperated fully in every aspect except one: she didn’t reveal how Smith had actually died.
It was surprisingly easy to lie. Technically, it wasn’t even lying—it was simply omission. She had responded to Will Jackson’s call. She had placed the prison into lockdown. She had found Bea Smith’s body on the ground in the corridor, obviously stabbed to death.
All of that was true.
She simply left out what had happened before the code black came across her radio—just as she left out the bloodied screwdriver, still wrapped in her handkerchief, hiding in the back of her desk drawer.
Hiding, in fact, under a box of red pencils, one missing.
The parallel frightened her.
She shook her head, trying to clear it. She looked into her own office, watching from her assistant’s desk outside the windowed barrier as a police officer questioned Will Jackson.
A single question continued to rise to the forefront of her mind: could she trust Will not to reveal the truth?
She had often thought of Will as her friend, especially in these last months when he had become her deputy. Certainly, they had butted heads—particularly when it came to Joan and Proctor—but she had always believed that she had had his support.
And yet, and yet… there had always been some kind of bond between Will and Smith—even given the number of times that Bea had screwed him over.
What if he ultimately chose to side with the dead woman? What if he saw it as the honorable thing to do, rather than saving himself? Vera couldn’t ignore the fact that he had often displayed both a tendency toward the noble and a disturbing willingness to sabotage himself.
Watching as Will grew angry under the officer’s questioning, Vera accepted the inevitable: if Will chose to sacrifice them all, she needed a plan.
She would have to save herself.
***
Far away from Wentworth, from her friends behind bars, from her lover who even now was being transported to the coroner, Allie lay still in her narrow bed.
Unaware of the beeps of machines or the brightness of the lights, she dreamed. She had no body, but she felt the anxious sensation of reaching for something. There was something important out there—something that she had lost. If she could just get back to it…
But the machines continued to beep.
Allie’s eyes remained shut.
And Bea Smith’s body traveled ever father away from her.