REAPERS - Book Two: The Hunger and the Sickness

9

Stave 9

"You're sweating, Skinner. Yet the night is cool and pleasant." Warden Hotch regarded the inmate seated opposite him with stern eyes. "I hope you aren't afraid." The guards had been dismissed and it was just him and his guest in his sober office now. Warden and jailbird, lawman and criminal. "If you're nervous, rest easy. Unlike most prisoners who step into this room you have nothing to fear."

"Ain't scared, beak." Skinner was a lean scoundrel. His hair long and stringy and he stunk of his own juices. The repeat offender had been thinned by a hungry life in Camshire's bitter streets and further shaped by the addict's appetite. The lockhouse skilly, a thin and odorless gruel, did little to fatten him, either—nor did the occasional rat or cockroach Skinner managed to catch in his filthy cell. "Maybe I jus' heard the rumors about what you do to the inmates you summon up here. How they walk crooked in the yard the next day." Skinner shuddered again and coughed.

"You sick, then?" asked the Warden. "Dungeon lung?"

"Sick of this place." Skinner habitually rubbed his palm with the other thumb, his heavy iron shackles clinking and chafing. "Sick of these walls."

"Then the stars are with you today," Hotch proclaimed, "for I have a proposition."

"Then get to your knee, hardstick," returned Skinner. "And let's see the ring."

The Warden laughed and rose from his seat. He walked to a window looking down on Gallowshade, the squalid and steaming district of Camshire that sat in Fetterstone Prison's enormous shadow. A hard rain pelted the glass, blurring the erratic skyline of crooked peaks and chimneys. The Warden's face darkened as he spoke his next refrain: "The blood of children runs in our gutters and nothing is done to stop it. Forgotten minnows plucked from life's stream too soon, helpless lambkin snatched right from under society's skirt. Strotham Yard's hands are full in this city of horrors and so the cuntlickers turn a blind eye." Hotch's fists pumped with anger. He grit his teeth and his eyes were bitter slits. "If some thirty or more younglings were to vanish from the noble houses of Sablewood, I assure you the streets would immediately be crawling with bloodhounds and searchmen armed with lamps and clubs—and a suspect in shackles before the next tide rolled in. But why bother with orphans spirited from our streets and rookeries? They only mean more mouths to feed, more future criminals on the streets. So many of the prisoners in these halls started as innocent, unloved lambs, too, until they were hardened by the world."

"Look, I don't know nothin' 'bout no gone urchins, beak," said Skinner, "And I don't appreciate the fingerin'. I may be a reputed screwster and snakesman but I isn't no damned kidsnatcher."

"I don't think you're the culprit, Skinner," said the Warden. "I want you to help me catch the filthy cunt. I've studied your file. Picked you from many candidates. You've the perfect skill set. And a deep familiarity with the killer's territory. Your military training, however brief, could be of use here as well. Hunt the child-hunter, in your own way. Or send him here, to my domain—where I can exact justice on the bastard as I see fit. In return, I will expunge your records. Set you free with your scales emptied."

"And once these ruffles are off me—" said Skinner, raising his cuffs, "—how can you be so sure I won't jus' split town?"

"Because I believe you are a good man and more importantly a smart man." Hotch turned back toward Skinner. "I believe that given the choice between a life on the run marked as a fugitive and the chance to bring justice to whoever harmed those helpless boys and girls, you will do the prudent and wise thing, the right thing. I know that you spent time in Camshire's orphanages as a boy. As did I. Either of us could have been one of these victims in a different time."