The Scrubs (3 page)

Chapter Two

Cady’s Cover

As Cady watched Keeler step on to the ledge created by the Rift, the urge to yank the inmate back from the brink almost overwhelmed him, but curiosity prevented him from doing the right thing.
 
He wanted to see what would happen as much as O’Keefe and his team of lab coats, even if it was at Keeler’s expense, so he let the man step through.

There was a surface tension to the Rift’s shimmering haze that prevented one world from pouring into another and Keeler had to push against the shimmer, stretching it, before he punctured it.
 
The Rift sealed itself the moment Keeler was through.
 

Cady couldn’t believe what he’d just witnessed—and neither could Keeler by the look of him.
 
The inmate simply stood a few feet from where he’d entered this new world.
 
Cady thought it odd.
 
Essentially, Keeler was only a short distance from him, but in actuality, who knew how far he’d traveled?
 
Cady found the notion both mind bending and frightening.
 
He felt O’Keefe’s shadow fall across him and turned.
 
O’Keefe smiled at him.

“I told you that you’d be impressed.”

“Are you going to tell me what the hell is going on?” Cady demanded.

O’Keefe looked Cady up and down.
 
He smiled, seemingly approving of the outburst, and stretched out an arm, turning Cady around.
 
“Let’s find a quiet corner to ourselves to discuss matters.
 
We can leave the boffins to do their thing.”

O’Keefe led Cady to an abandoned console, one of many, stashed far from the North Wall.
 
The console had given its life in the pursuit of science in some incident not unlike tonight’s with scorch marks chasing up the sides and melted wires dangling from a shattered monitor.
 
O’Keefe pulled up a pair of swivel stools and sat.
 
Cady’s seat creaked when he put his weight on it.

“I suppose it’s time I brought you up to speed,” O’Keefe said.

Although Cady was the deputy governor, he hadn’t been party to any developments inside the North Wing.
 
He’d tried to ingratiate himself with O’Keefe to learn more, but had been unsuccessful up until tonight.
 
The invite to join in the festivities came out of the blue, although it had smacked more of a summons than an invite.
 
O’Keefe had wanted him there tonight for a reason.
 
Instead of being brought into the fold, Cady suspected O’Keefe had found out about him.

“That would be nice,” Cady replied, doing little to hide his contempt.

“Don’t use that tone with me.
 
You’re not the only one who’s been keeping secrets.”

Cady’s stomach knotted.
 
O’Keefe had found out.
 
Dammit, they’d promised him that his cover was airtight.
 
He knew he should have refused the assignment when the Home Office had offered it to him.
 
He wasn’t built for undercover work.
 
He was a pen pusher not a spy.
 
They should have sent in a cop, a trained professional, not him.
 
Well, it was too late now.
 
Play dumb, that was all he could do.
 
It was something he could do well.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

O’Keefe wrinkled his face and raised a hand.
 
“Let’s not insult each other.”

Cady swallowed hard.

“I’ll make it easy on you.
 
I’ll tell you what you are and if you’re honest about it, I’ll tell you what’s going on here.
 
Deal?”

“Deal,” Cady replied after only a flicker of hesitation.

“You’re a Home Office mole.
 
They’ve got itchy feet over this project and they want to make sure that their investment doesn’t take a one-way trip to turd town.
 
More importantly, the Home Office wants to make sure it doesn’t get tainted with any splash back.
 
Am I right?”
 

The bastard knows everything
, Cady thought.
 
He wondered who’d being talking and more importantly, who’d screwed him.

“Come on, Cady.
 
We had a deal.
 
Pin the tail on the donkey for me.”

Cady knew there was no way of bluffing his way out of this.
 
O’Keefe had the intel—and a gun judging from the bulge under his jacket.

“Okay.
 
You’re right,” he admitted.

O’Keefe smiled.
 
“Who’s your contact—Saunders?”

“Yes.”

“What a prick.
 
He needs to grow a backbone.”
 
O’Keefe gave a parental glance over at the Rift for a moment before returning his focus to Cady.
 
“Tell him everything’s okay and not to worry.
 
Just leave me to manage this.
 
We are progressing and we should be online before the end of the year.”
 
O’Keefe stared at the Rift.
 
He swelled with pride.
 
“Tell him we’re on the verge.”

“On the verge of what?”
 
Cady didn’t feel the same swell of pride.
 
What he’d seen of the North Wing Project scared him.
 
“What is going on here?”

“We’re on the verge of something fantastic, Matt,” O’Keefe said.

Cady had glimpsed only a fragment of the fantastical and didn’t disagree.
 
“You know more than you let on to Keeler just now.”

O’Keefe nodded.

“You lied to him.”

“He didn’t need to know.
 
He’s not important.
 
He’s an inmate.
 
A convicted killer.”
 

“He’s a human being.”
 
Cady pictured Jeter in his Throne.
 
“If he’s in any sort of danger, he has a right to know.”

“He deserves nothing of sort.”
 
O’Keefe fixed Cady with a stare that sparkled with contempt.
 
“He’s a guinea pig.”

Cady saw the futility of the argument.
 
They were poles apart when it came to the treatment of inmates, so he let the subject drop.
 
“A guinea pig for what?”

“Do you know what wormwood is?”

“You mean the prison?” Cady asked, puzzled.

“No, the herb.”

“Never heard of it.”

“Wormwood is the core ingredient of absinthe.”

Cady shrugged.

“Absinthe used to be all the rage until it was found to be a poisonous hallucinogen.
 
The drink is outlawed in the States and watered down in Europe.”

“All because of its wormwood content?”

“Yes.
 
This prison is built on a particular variety that doesn’t exist anywhere else in nature.
 
It’s extremely potent and virulent, like a weed.
 
That’s where the prison got its name, Wormwood Scrubs.
 
Before the prison, this place used to be a scrub of wormwood.”

“The prison has been here over a hundred years.”

“Yes, and the wormwood has never stopped growing.
 
We’re forever having to do construction work to prevent the foundation from collapsing.”

“You’re saying that the wormwood created that?”
 
Cady pointed at the Rift.

 
“In part—yes.
 
Jeter is doing the rest with a little help from the electronics here.
 
How much do you know about Jeter?”

Cady remembered the sickening violence.
 
At the time, television and newspapers had played down the degradations he’d committed, but even that was too much.
 
Not a discriminating killer, he’d mutilated men, women and children by turning them inside out, literally, as if he was looking for a lost keepsake hidden inside his victims.
 
It was a surprise that he was tried as sane.
 
“Nothing other than what I saw on telly or read in the papers.”

“You should really read our inmates’ case files.
 
There’s a wealth of knowledge to be had.”
 
O’Keefe took out a cigarette and lit it.
 
“Jeter killed at least twenty-six people over a five year period.
 
In actual truth, no one knows how many he killed or even when he started killing.
 
During his interrogation, he alluded to others and made reference to a boy he’d abducted.
 
He claimed he’d swiped the kid the day before the Met arrested him.
 
No one ever found the boy he mentioned.
 
Personally, I think he was playing with his interrogators to keep them off balance.”

“So what has that got to do with what’s happening here?”

“Do you know why it took Scotland Yard so long to catch him?”

Cady shook his head.

“Foreknowledge.”

“Foreknowledge?”

O’Keefe nodded.
 
“Foreknowledge.
 
The third eye.
 
A six sense.
 
ESP.
 
Whatever you want to call it, he has it.
 
Jeter’s wires may be crossed, making him fucking lethal, but it also makes him remarkable.
 
You really should read his file.”

“So what is the point of all this?”

“The Scrubs has the highest rate of psychiatric and psychotic episodes in the prison service.
 
We outstrip Broadmoor for fuck’s sake.”
 

O’Keefe had Cady’s attention.
 
He couldn’t deny his own fascination and he couldn’t imagine how the Scrubs could be worse than Britain’s premier facility for the criminally insane.
 
There was a lot more information to be had and he didn’t want to be given the mushroom treatment like Keeler, so he asked a stupid question to tempt O’Keefe into spilling the truth.
 
“Isn’t prison overcrowding and an outdated facility to blame for the problems here?”

O’Keefe sneered.
 
“Don’t give me that college sociology crap.
 
We discovered the incidents were due to the wormwood.
 
Basically, inmates have been tripping.
 
The guards too.
 
It’s the reason why staff work six-hour shifts and not eight.”

“You can’t afford to have wardens losing it, I suppose.”

O’Keefe nodded and took a deep drag on his cigarette.
 
“Nobody really knows what the detrimental effects of wormwood are, so the Home Office asked us to find out.”
 
He glanced over at the distortion in the North Wall.
 
“Jeter’s been an interesting side effect.”

Even with what he’d seen tonight, Cady still didn’t know whether to believe O’Keefe, but there was something odd about the Scrubs.
 
He’d experienced some abnormalities of his own during his short time at the prison.
 
Headaches were one symptom that plagued him.
 
They were coming much more regularly now and he wasn’t the only one.
 
He’d noticed most of the wardens popping Paracetamol during their lunch breaks.
 
There’d been other symptoms too.
 
Occasionally, he would have sworn he’d seen inmates walking through locked doors like they were ghosts, but this had only occurred when he’d worked late.
 
Inmates from different wings claimed attacks after nightly lockdowns.
 
Cady knew of one suspicious death that had been put down as a suicide when evidence failed to support foul play.
 
Inmates also claimed they’d seen Jeter in their cells, although the duty wardens confirmed he hadn’t left his own cell.

“What’s the government’s interest?” Cady asked.

“At first, it was psychiatric and psychological research, to see if the wormwood theory had any merit.
 
They couldn’t let this place remain, if it were true.”