Prologue: His Buddy Gilley

Buelly Knox, studied the make of the vehicles below. He placed one of his hamhock forearms atop the other and nodded to himself as if saying, “well done.” The parking lot was his lot. And those parked in it were his people.

He watched his staff make their way in, most, eyes cast down. When he’d assumed the high post lording over the state’s expansive prison system 15 years earlier, the lot had only a scattering of high dollar SUVs. Now, it seemed everyone had a new glistening model of this or that.

A young woman slid out of her maroon-colored Ford Edge, her shoe heel momentarily caught a crack in the concrete, enough so she grabbed onto the door handle to stop herself from a fall. Her skirt slipped up showing her thighs. She held onto her briefcase as if she was carrying the King’s papers. She quickly looked upwards at the tinted office window, which ran the length of half of the south 9th floor high rise, realizing the papers in her briefcase were those Buelly Knox sent home with her the night before.

She had been a good hire. Her name was Bernice. His name for her was Bernice the Buxom, something he only shared with his small group of trusted confederates, good ol boys he'd also hired who had worked their way up the system. She was one of those country girls who started working several years out of high school as a corrections officer and caught the attention of prison higher ups due to her thoroughness in report writing.

He let the matters of the parking lot go, and walked across his office to his desk, an expansive oak, thinking the bland institutional carpeting laid some years ago had a tired appearance and should be replaced for a hard-wood floor look. His second wife, Clarice, a dark eyed, sultry looking 35 year old, who he’d plucked from the Tonopah facility had told him so. She was a former social worker, who now was a stay-at-home mom, raising her first child, but Buelly’s fifth, and his fourth son.

He settled into his ergonomic chair, fitted for his girth, and checked his apple iphone for messages, then pulled out a manila folder from a stack entitled Classified Activity. He zeroed in on a blue tag on one of the folders labeled Tonopah, or TRAC, one of twenty plus prisons in the state. TRAC, short for Tonopah Receiving and Assessment Center, is where men are processed into the behemoth system.

He let the chair do its trick adjusting to his move, pulling the report closer for better reading, noting a paragraph about federal law enforcement covertly placing prisoners in state facilities. “For the suits,” he said out loud. “But I owe my ol Fed buddy Gilly, the favor.”

He shot a look at the double wide mahogany door, the passageway into his chambers, a horseshoe pitch away from his desk. Charlotte, his secretary, hadn't stuck her cherry cheeks in like she did in the early morning asking, “More coffee, Chief.”

Yesterday she’d bolted in and come to a screeching halt at his desk, disturbing his morning reflection time.  “Look at this Chief,” she said, breathing heavily, “don’t know if it will fall under your bailiwick, but Arnold Hoister is running for a second term as Attorney General.” She laid down a copy of the small town weekly paper on his desk. He’d glared at the above-the-fold headline which read, “Hoister to seek second term.”

She’d crowded in next to him, hovering over his shoulder, enough that her perfume, an extract which reminded him of his old aunt, almost made him sneeze.

Buelly skimmed the three graf story, which recapped Hoister’s win of three years ago as Attorney General. He recalled something his buddy Gil Cummings had told him about a rumor concerning Hoister when he was a county prosecutor in a rural white county, west of KC, of being overzealous in prosecuting a black man. The defendant was given 25 years for a minor drug charge, under the state three strike statute. Some drug lawyer represented the defendant.

Yesterday, he had thanked Charlotte and waved her off to her station just outside his office, saying, “Thanks Charlotte, good information to know.”

Confident she wasn’t going to disturb him today, he eased himself back in his chair and zeroed in on the 8 by 5 photo of him smiling with a-then governor, when Tonopah was opened. A cutline below the picture read, Director Buelly Knox, gladly endorses naming the state's newest prison, Tonopah. An accompanying story said that Tonopah was a Shoshone name meaning, greasewood water.

Buelly eyeballed the picture of an aerial view of the prison and made a mental note to call the warden there about his buddy’s Gilley’s request. Somewhere on the 1500-man prison roster was an inmate his buddy Gilley was investigating.