Page 101 of Kill For Me Kill For You
‘He might not. He’ll need to trust us. Dr. Marin knows Scott. He visited him, to discuss Ruth – get a better insight into what happened to her so he could deliver the best treatment. He told me himself. So if the visit comes with an introduction from Marin I think we’re halfway there. He’s our last shot. If anyone knows how to find her, it’s Scott.’
‘And what if he won’t help?’
Billy took a bite out of his toast, chewed it thoughtfully, swallowed and said, ‘Then we’ll probably never find her. We need a game plan. He’s still her husband. His first instinct will be to protect her.’
‘We could use that. Lean into it,’ said Amanda. ‘He has to trust that we’ve got her best interests at heart.’
She paused, took a moment to stare at Billy and asked, ‘Do we have her best interests at heart?’
‘I can only speak for myself. She’s done terrible things, but maybe that’s because terrible things have happened to her? Ruth is sick. She needs help. That’s the way I see it. How about you?’
Amanda put down her fork, drank some coffee, thinking it over.
‘I’m not a social worker and I’m not a cop,’ she said. ‘Part of me feels sorry for her, despite what she’s done. When I get arrested, I’ll need her. I don’t want to hurt her. Not any more. I want to stop her from hurting anyone else. Scott just needs to believe we’re trying to help her.’
‘A lot will depend on who he is now. Before this, he was a young lawyer and an upstanding member of society. He has a conscience. Remember what it said in that article, Scott called the police, confessed to Travers’s murder and then jumped out of a window. If there’s still any of that man left, we have a shot.’
‘What makes you think he’s changed?’ asked Amanda.
‘The head injury and ten years in Sing Sing. If any two things could change somebody, those are at the top of the list.’
Amanda and Billy sat on a steel stool in front of a steel-framed booth in Sing Sing Correctional Facility. A thick pane of Perspex glass separated them from the prisoner area. It was one booth in a line of twenty. All occupied. The other visitors were already talking on the phone to the prisoners they’d come to see.
The stool on the other side of the glass was still empty.
The phone in the corner of the booth on their side remained in its cradle. There were large, fierce-looking corrections officers all around. The way Billy had described Sing Sing didn’t do it justice. Amanda had left her phone and personal belongings in a locker at the visitors’ entrance, then she had been searched, passed through a metal detector and even been sniffed by drug-enforcement canines. She brought three pieces of paper with her. No pens. And she was warned not to try to pass anything to the prisoner.
Zero chance of doing that when he was on the other side of a glass partition.
There was tension in the gray corridors. Almost a sound. As if a steel cable was being pulled taut and could break at any moment. And every time she heard a metal door slam behind her she jumped. When this happened, a half second later, she felt Billy’s strong hand on hers. Just a light touch, and then he let go. It was reassuring, just to know he was with her.
She could be entering a place like this, maybe soon. Only this time it would be as a prisoner. Locked up for attempted murder.
Not if she could help it.
A thin man in an orange prison uniform, with a graying moustache, walked towards their booth from the other side of the glass. He stood before the stool on his side, eyeing Amanda and Billy before he sat down. She wasn’t scared of him. He looked like he didn’t belong with the rest of the prisoners, who all seemed large and imposing, with keen, shifty eyes.
He sat down, picked up the phone.
Amanda picked up the phone on her side.
‘Scott?’ she asked.
He nodded. Didn’t say anything. He was close to her now. Not more than three feet away, behind the glass, and now she saw some resemblance to the picture of him she’d seen on the news sites. There were changes, of course. The moustache, and a long thin scar that started on the left side of his forehead and disappeared into his hair line, and behind his ear.
He’d fractured his skull when he tried to take his own life by jumping from a window.
‘Thank you for seeing me,’ she said. ‘My name is Amanda White. This is my friend, Billy Cameron. We met your wife, Ruth. That’s why we’re here. We’re worried about her and we want to know if you can help us to help her.’
‘Are you reporters? Cops?’ he asked.
It reminded her of the first conversation she’d had with Ruth. Back then she was Wendy. She’d told a convincing story about being wary of reporters delving into her life.
‘Neither. We’re just friends. We both met Ruth in a counseling group. We don’t know where she is, and we’re real worried.’
Scott’s eyes narrowed. He looked confused.
‘What do you mean you don’t know where she is? She’s in Kirby, right?’
