Shattered by Jay Bonansinga Page A

compulsion had washed over him again. But unlike his previous kills, this time he decided to bury these subjects in sealed oil drums in the barrens along the Mississippi south of Carbondale. Splet could no longer afford to play games with the media, or leave his victims in plain sight. He felt the heat of law enforcement on the back of his neck like the breath of an avenging angel.
    It was time for drastic measures.
    Now Henry Splet approached the outer security gate at Fenster with heart thumping, palms clammy, and knuckles white against the steering wheel. He pulled up to the guard booth, which was fortified with riveted steel framing and razor-wire borders. He rolled down his window and stuck his head out. “WJID Action News.”
    The guard, a pear-shaped black man with a bald head like an artillery shell, shot a look out the pass-through at the van’s empty passenger seat. “Just one this time?”
    â€œYes, sir.”
    The guard looked nonplussed. “You got clearance from the warden’s office?”
    Splet had been there only a month earlier, but that time he had accompanied the lovely and annoying reporter, Anna Fong, on a routine background piece. Splet now gave the guard a cursory nod. “Just a follow-up with Milambri.”
    A long pause. The guard shrugged and vanished back inside the booth.
    The gate groaned open. Splet eased the van through the opening, then putted across the staff parking lot, searching for a parking place.
    The granite edifice rose in the middle distance like some funereal pueblo, casting its sullen shadow everywhere you looked. A massive U-shaped fortress, it was like some great and hellish oven into which society’s rejects had been shoved to stew in their own juices. Chimney stacks gurgled black smoke from its many corners, and not a single window adorned its Gothic ramparts. Concertina wire gleamed dully along the imposing outer fences like desiccated spun sugar. There were no sinister gun turrets, no potbellied guards out of central casting, just a general stillness born out of soul-numbing despair.
    Splet parked near the service entrance, got out, and carried his briefcase along the east wall, walking with an officious-looking posture and gait. He wanted to give the impression that this was just another ridiculous follow-up assignment, an errand so ephemeral and routine that the station hadn’t even bothered to send talent—only a lowly cameraman serving as an ersatz stenographer.
    Inside the main entrance—a moldy-smelling foyer painted baby-vomit green—an obese black lady guard in cat’s-eye glasses stopped Splet with a ham-hock arm. Splet told her whom he had come to see. The lady cast an incredulous glance down at Splet’s laminated press card. “Y’all talked to the warden about this?”
    â€œYes, ma’am.”
    The lady guard kept staring at that ID tag as though it might blink with subtitles. It was true— technically —that Splet had talked to the warden’s office. Maybe that was four weeks ago, and about a different matter, but he had indeed talked to them. Today, however, Splet was banking on the fact that this heavyset woman in the horn-rims was too lazy to get on the bitch-box and confirm things.
    A big sigh from the fat gal. “Alright…I’m gonna need ya to step over to the window. Remove all metal objects, your shoes, and your belt.”
    Splet did as he was told. Another guard, a middle-aged man with a buzz cut and hulking shoulders, came out of an inner office and patted Splet down. Meanwhile the fat lady opened the briefcase and made a feeble search. She looked at the notepad, the carton of cigarettes, the tape recorder, then sniffed absently and latched it shut.
    â€œGonna have to meet in the general population,” she informed Splet with a nod toward the corridor to the left. “Visitation block.”
    â€œThat’s fine. Thank you,” Splet said and