The Man She Once Knew by Jean Brashear

staring into the empty distance.
    Then she roused herself and went to dress.
     
    H E’D BEEN TAKEN all the way to the county seat forty miles northeast, population fourteen thousand. The county jail was small and unaccustomed to housing hardened criminals.
    Getting in required some fancy talking, but Callie persuaded people for a living. She’d thought a simple reminder about the perils of questioning a prisoner who wanted legal counsel would do the trick, but she hadn’t counted on a pro bono attorney already having been appointed. Apparently the local judge was on his toes.
    Callie got the lawyer’s name and nearly left then. David wasn’t alone in this, after all; she could go in good conscience.
    Halfway to the door, she remembered the angel. Maybe David didn’t need an attorney, but a familiar face might be welcome, even if it was hers. Anyway, she had some questions to ask him—or some appreciation to extend, at the very least.
    She retraced her steps and requested to meet with the prisoner, then held her breath. At last, the deputy on duty reluctantly agreed to go get his newest inmate.
     
    I N PRISON , at least you had a space to retreat to. No real privacy, but the back and side walls of your cell were solid. No such luck here.
    “Heard you killed somebody,” said one of the inmates in the general holding cell next to him.
    David, as an ex-con and convicted murderer, had been put in his own separate cage, no doubt for the sake of the petty criminals, all three of them.
    “You don’t look so good,” said a second man.
    David sought the invisible shield every prison inmate quickly acquired. He said nothing, partly because his ribs hurt too much to speak unnecessarily.
    Inside, David was hanging on by his fingernails. I can’t be locked again. Can’t do it.
    “Man don’t want conversation,” observed the third. “Murderer too good for us burglars and drunks, I guess.”
    He closed his eyes and breathed deep—until his ribs kicked up a ruckus. Shallow breaths, remember. Thepain had one benefit—it distracted him. Forming a clear thought was hard.
    Except one. It’s happening again.
    “Langley,” interrupted the deputy who’d come for him last time, when his so-called lawyer had shown up. “Got a visitor.”
    Not his mother, surely. He’d used his one phone call to tell her to stay away. Finding him like this might finish her off. He would have to see her eventually, but not beaten and bloody. And not in cuffs, if he could help it.
    He almost laughed at that. What in sweet hell had he been able to control in the past fifteen years? Once he’d confessed to killing Ned Compton, his life had been over.
    “Langley, come on.”
    “Who is it?”
    “Good-looking woman, says she’s your friend.”
    Hoots from next door greeted the news. “Hot damn, Killer’s got a woman come to visit!”
    He shot them a look that shut them up. Could it be Callie? No other woman in Oak Hollow would come within a mile of him, except a couple of skanks at the bar who were titillated by the notion of getting it on with a murderer. He didn’t think they’d drive an hour through the mountains for him, though.
    He started to refuse, but then he remembered that Callie Hunter held the power to render his mother homeless. If he was going back to jail, he couldn’t leave his mother defenseless.
    God, he hurt. He wanted to lie down and sleep. To forget. To be left alone just for a little while before hehad to descend into hell again. He didn’t kid himself that he wasn’t going back to prison.
    Instead, he rose unsteadily, like an old man. Holding his ribs, he walked slowly to the door and extended his hands through the opening provided for cuffing him.
    Then he shuffled along down the hall to the dingy, cramped visiting room to see a woman he’d just as soon never lay eyes on again.
     
    H OW MANY TIMES had she been in a room like this? Callie glanced around the concrete block walls with paint peeling in splotches and