Ties That Bind by Kathryn Shay

“Warden, do you think Anna Bingham committed suicide?”
    Lauren Evans sat back in her chair. She folded her hands over the gray suit she wore. “Hard to say. Prison does things to people’s minds. You can never rule out ending all this.” She gestured toward the window where cinderblock buildings with bars, surrounded by barbed wire, could be seen. Inmates dressed in khaki milled about the recreation yard, some smoking cigarettes, some tossing a ball. An occasional bark of a guard could be heard. “And Bingham was inside twice before, but in a prison camp or low security facility. This is the first time she’s had to deal with being in a cell, with razor fences on the ground keeping out the world.” Evans’s gaze transferred from Kate to Reese, back to Kate. “But my gut tells me she wasn’t the type to take her own life.”
    “What type is that?” Reese asked.
    “I’ve had suicides on my watch before. The prisoners who try it or accomplish it are usually depressed, sullen, introverted. They don’t participate in any part of prison life. They’re…waiting to die, I guess.”
    Kate and Reese exchanged a quick glance. This had come up on their way to see Sofie. “And Bingham wasn’t like that?” Reese asked the warden to confirm their previous speculations.
    “No, she wasn’t. Her cellie said she was the belle of the prison ball, so to speak.”
    The warden’s phone buzzed. “Hold on a second.” She spoke into it. “Yes, Mary. Wait just a minute though.” She faced them again. “To speed the process along, I thought you’d want to talk to the cellmate, Lena Parks, as the police did. I sent for her.”
    Marcia Schmidt exchanged glances with Carl Wakefield. The latter asked, “Warden Evans, you’re being very cooperative. It strikes me as odd. If Bingham didn’t commit suicide, then you’ve had a murder in your prison. That would be far worse than the suicide, wouldn’t it?”
    Evans leaned forward, her expression hard. This was a glimpse at the warden inside the woman. “I don’t give a rat’s ass what would be better. I want the truth, and if the truth is murder, I’ll deal with it. Besides, all this is conjecture. Let’s see what Parks has to say.”
    o0o
    LENA PARKS WAS a diminutive woman with straight black hair dyed blond and looking worse than Sofie’s; she had a bony frame on which her drab prison khakis hung. She entered the warden’s office as if she was coming to a party. “Hey, Warden Evans.” She scanned the room, let her gaze linger on Reese, like most women did, and finally looked back to the warden.
    “Hello, Lena. Sit down.” When the woman took a chair, Evans addressed her. “These people want to talk to you about Bingham.”
    Immediately, Lena’s shoulders tensed. “Like I told the cops, I didn’t do nothin’ wrong. I didn’t see nothin’, either. I was working in the laundry when she offed herself.”
    “We know that,” the warden told her. “These are the people named in the note, Lena. They want your opinion on the type of person Bingham was.”
    Relaxed by the warden’s easy manner, Lena sat back. She addressed her comments to Reese, of course. “She was a pistol, that one. Always organizing things. Always talkin’ about what she was gonna do when she got back in the free world.”
    “Did the other inmates like her?” Reese asked.
    “Most of ’em.”
    “She have any enemies?”
    An almost imperceptible hesitation. “Don’t know of any.”
    Kate knew there was a strict prison code on ratting. You never did it. Lena Parks wouldn’t let slip if Bingham had enemies.
    “Did she have a lot of visitors?”
    “Yeah, I guess.”
    “Men?” Reese continued with a syrupy smile on his face. “Or women?”
    Parks laughed. “Men. She was real popular.”
    Marcia intervened. “Why do think she’d commit suicide?”
    “Maybe ’cuz her walkaway date was years from now.” She picked at a patch on her khaki pants. “That’s alotta hours down,