Bull's Eye: Confessions of a Fake Psychic Detective #3

Chapter 4

As with every other evening behind bars after the lights go out, Zandra stares out into the gray of the world beyond her cell and waits.

I wasn't imagining things. I saw him. I saw David.

That brief encounter upon her original arrival at the jail would be her last no matter how hard she squints to morph the outlines of shadows against the concrete.

She tries to run the heart beat test, but her pulse runs too ragged. She needs more time to recuperate from walking to meet with the lawyer, and that's why she knows there's something wrong with her lungs. The feeling drives a nail into her chest with each breath.

It takes more effort than it should, but she manages to empty the black and red curdles from her throat into the sink, adding to the fetid cocktail simmering in the depths of the drain.

Really should get that checked out.

She stares into the sink while she catches her breath. It comes in spurts, throwing her balance off as she teeters on her one good ankle. Her ears pick up the sound of laughter coming from outside the jail, presumably from one of the bar-and-grill joints across the street.

But what's so great about staying alive?

Zandra's eyes fall to the footstool the guards left in her cell "by mistake" after the latest random inspection for contraband. It's coincidentally beneath a thick pipe on the ceiling. It's too high to reach on her tiptoes, but Zandra's hands could wrap around it with help from the stool. There's just enough of a gap above the pipe to slip a bed sheet through.

I don't remember seeing exposing pipe in any of the other cells when I got here.

The guards, so keen on watching her during the day, slip away at night for periods much longer than a smoke break.

I wonder if they'd pull on my shoulders before cutting me down when they find me, like the executioners used to do when the audience got bored at public hangings. Anything for a pretty picture.

Zandra stumbles back to the bed and stares at the pipe. Her breathing becomes slow, and she resists the urge to blink when the guard taps on the bars.

"You alive in there?" the guard says.

"No," Zandra says.

The guard chuckles and walks away, but not before Zandra catches a glimpse of his face.

No way.