vulnerability that she identified with. She didn’t believe for a minute that he was smart enough to engineer the murder in the prison exercise yard. And she didn’t think prison admin believed it either.
More than that, Cole didn’t have the passion for murder. She’d never known a person so apathetic, as if he’d given up on life.
Although the official medical file didn’t contain the entire inmate history, she convinced Officer Jake Turner in records to make her a copy. Jake had a crush on Frankie – unfortunately, one she didn’t reciprocate – and easily bought her story about needing to look at some family history to complete her medical report – stave off liability, you know.
She flashed her brightest smile, feeling only a little guilty for the subterfuge.
After finishing her shift, Frankie made her way through security to her little Toyota Corolla, threw her briefcase into the back, and left the prison grounds. She drove the winding road north to an isolated acreage where she rented a small house close to the ocean, just outside the Crescent City limits and very close to the Oregon state line.
It was old and cheap, but she loved the view and felt, if not content, at least stable there.
Kicking off her shoes, she fingered the now-dried note from Cole, but left it in the jacket pocket when she hung it up. She poured a cup of tea, flipped on the television for some background noise, opened the copied medical file of Cole Hansen, and began reading.
After pulling double shifts, however, even the hot tea couldn’t keep her awake.
Frankie danced that night. Deep in her dreams she danced with her father. She was homecoming queen her senior year. She and her father led a waltz during the Homecoming Dance – a daddy-daughter tradition.
She felt his broad, steady arms around her, his smoothly shaved cheek lightly touch hers, and the slight hint of the aftershave she’d given him for his birthday the week before. He was so proud of her, and that excitement showed in his stormy gray eyes and mobile mouth, so like her own. People often claimed she was a mirror image of him.
She was happy because he was so pleased with her.
Roger Franklin Milano was thirty-nine and that night was the last time Frankie saw her father outside a prison cell.
Chapter 16
The kite from Anson Stark startled Frankie.
It lay on the top of her incoming documents like a snake, a menacingly pale green color with black stripes of words running horizontally across the form. She poked it with a tentative finger. Silly, they were only words on paper, nothing more.
Still, the uneasiness lingered and she shoved the stack of kites aside, ignoring them while she entered medical details into the patient database on her computer. The unit was secure, as protected as any device these days, at any rate. Even the nurses weren’t supposed to access the electronic medical files.
But Frankie kept another set of files where she changed the password every two weeks and didn’t write it down anywhere. She strained to remember the current password – so many of them whirled through her head – and finally recalled: Fr5th1*1995.
She always coded the passwords so that it was nearly impossible even for someone who knew her well to figure them out, but also was something she wouldn’t likely forget. The current one was for Freddy Mesmer, her fifth grade boyfriend, from whom she’d gotten her first kiss in 1995.
She kept notes on written patient charts, of course, but they were brief comments about blood pressure, heart rate, meds prescribed – all the mundane data concerning the mostly terminally-ill inmates. These records were kept in her locked filing cabinet, and copies scanned into the prison network database. All administrators had access to these records because they might be necessary in a court of law, for example.
The more detailed records which she kept for her private study were maintained in a separate database on a
More than that, Cole didn’t have the passion for murder. She’d never known a person so apathetic, as if he’d given up on life.
Although the official medical file didn’t contain the entire inmate history, she convinced Officer Jake Turner in records to make her a copy. Jake had a crush on Frankie – unfortunately, one she didn’t reciprocate – and easily bought her story about needing to look at some family history to complete her medical report – stave off liability, you know.
She flashed her brightest smile, feeling only a little guilty for the subterfuge.
After finishing her shift, Frankie made her way through security to her little Toyota Corolla, threw her briefcase into the back, and left the prison grounds. She drove the winding road north to an isolated acreage where she rented a small house close to the ocean, just outside the Crescent City limits and very close to the Oregon state line.
It was old and cheap, but she loved the view and felt, if not content, at least stable there.
Kicking off her shoes, she fingered the now-dried note from Cole, but left it in the jacket pocket when she hung it up. She poured a cup of tea, flipped on the television for some background noise, opened the copied medical file of Cole Hansen, and began reading.
After pulling double shifts, however, even the hot tea couldn’t keep her awake.
Frankie danced that night. Deep in her dreams she danced with her father. She was homecoming queen her senior year. She and her father led a waltz during the Homecoming Dance – a daddy-daughter tradition.
She felt his broad, steady arms around her, his smoothly shaved cheek lightly touch hers, and the slight hint of the aftershave she’d given him for his birthday the week before. He was so proud of her, and that excitement showed in his stormy gray eyes and mobile mouth, so like her own. People often claimed she was a mirror image of him.
She was happy because he was so pleased with her.
Roger Franklin Milano was thirty-nine and that night was the last time Frankie saw her father outside a prison cell.
Chapter 16
The kite from Anson Stark startled Frankie.
It lay on the top of her incoming documents like a snake, a menacingly pale green color with black stripes of words running horizontally across the form. She poked it with a tentative finger. Silly, they were only words on paper, nothing more.
Still, the uneasiness lingered and she shoved the stack of kites aside, ignoring them while she entered medical details into the patient database on her computer. The unit was secure, as protected as any device these days, at any rate. Even the nurses weren’t supposed to access the electronic medical files.
But Frankie kept another set of files where she changed the password every two weeks and didn’t write it down anywhere. She strained to remember the current password – so many of them whirled through her head – and finally recalled: Fr5th1*1995.
She always coded the passwords so that it was nearly impossible even for someone who knew her well to figure them out, but also was something she wouldn’t likely forget. The current one was for Freddy Mesmer, her fifth grade boyfriend, from whom she’d gotten her first kiss in 1995.
She kept notes on written patient charts, of course, but they were brief comments about blood pressure, heart rate, meds prescribed – all the mundane data concerning the mostly terminally-ill inmates. These records were kept in her locked filing cabinet, and copies scanned into the prison network database. All administrators had access to these records because they might be necessary in a court of law, for example.
The more detailed records which she kept for her private study were maintained in a separate database on a
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