Page 17 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

The gates opened electronically at eight, and they were ushered inside to a waiting area where they each showed their identification and turned off their electronic devices before surrendering them, along with their valuables, to a grim-faced African-American woman seated at a desk behind thick glass. Her hair was white and close-cropped, her eyes dark with suspicion. Her ID tag read Officer M. Ulander, and she didn’t so much as crack a smile as she received the items passed through the two-sided drawer. Asking for their signatures, she returned visitors’ passes with dexterity, if not pleasure.

Nikki hoped to be the first person allowed inside, but she was disappointed. She was third, behind Lynnetta Ricci and a man she didn’t recognize, who had introduced himself as Ryan Nettles, a twentysomething, eager stringer for a newspaper in Atlanta. DeAnthony Jones had to settle for fourth.

She fidgeted on the padded bench in the anteroom, all the while cognizant of the cameras that were filming this sterile room along with all the other corridors and common areas of the new prison. The gates were electronic, the guards stern, the air inside the prison filtered and yet stale-feeling.

Her claustrophobia was trying to raise its ugly head. She hated the idea of being locked away, be it in a closet, a prison cell, or a damned casket.

The reporters before her filed in and out, and finally she was led by a guard through a series of electronic gates that hummed and clanged, her footsteps echoing on concrete floors as she was guided to an office on the first floor.

“Wait here,” the guard instructed, pointing to another small, windowless office, where a receptionist/secretary was hard at work on the keyboard of a computer. A heavyset woman with streaked hair meant to conceal her gray, she wore a telephone headset and glasses balanced on her pert little nose. A nameplate announced that she was Mrs. Martha Watkins, and several plaques that had been proudly hung on the walls led Nikki to believe Mrs. Watkins had been an excellent employee in the service of the state of Georgia for thirty-plus years.

“Warden Billings will be with you shortly,” the woman said, not missing a beat in her typing, though she did slide a quick glance as Nikki entered and the door closed behind her, clicking loudly, as if it too were locked.

Nikki fidgeted in her seat for almost ten minutes before the inner door opened. A tall, serious woman in a slim skirt and collared sweater introduced herself as Warden Jeanette Billings, then asked Nikki into the inner sanctum of her office. A large window allowed sunlight into the room, where a Thanksgiving cactus was starting to show orange buds, and Nikki breathed a sigh of relief.

The warden’s desk took up most of the office, where shelves of books and framed black-and-white photographs lined the walls. A laptop computer was open on one side of the desk and a tablet on the other. As if to add some age to the room, an antique globe, circa 1920, was positioned on a stand in one corner.

“Please, have a seat,” the warden offered, and Nikki dropped into one of the two visitors chairs. “I received your e-mail about an interview with Ms. O’Henry,” she said before Nikki could ask about it. “I did write you back this morning to let you know that Mrs. O’Henry is seeing no visitors.” Her features were sharp, her demeanor that of someone who was used to being in charge. “Obviously you, and the others, didn’t receive it or chose to ignore it.”

“I was on the road.”

One of the warden’s slim eyebrows arched as if she doubted Nikki’s word.

Nikki hadn’t driven for over an hour to end up empty-handed. “If you read my e-mail, then you know I’m not just here for a quick article or even a series of articles for the Sentinel. I’d like to write a book, tell Blondell’s side of the story.”

The warden’s smile was tiredly patient. “Again, Ms. Gillette, you’re not the first. Ms. O’Henry has been approached many times by different authors interested in her story.”

“But that was before. Now it looks like she could be released, a free woman for the first time in nearly two decad

es. I’d think she’d want the world to know how she feels, what really happened that night.” Nikki was on a roll now, but she could see the censure in Jeanette Billings’s eyes.

“I’m sorry, Ms. Gillette. There’s nothing more I can do. I’ve passed your request along, with all the others, and Ms. O’Henry, under her lawyer’s advice, will decide if she would like to contact you.” She started to rise, as if the short interview was over.

“But I really would like to speak with her,” Nikki argued, not budging. “I was a good friend of her daughter’s. Amity called me the night she was killed, and I feel like I’m connected to it all in a more personal way.”

Little lines of disbelief puckered the warden’s eyebrows. “As I said, Ms. Gillette, I’ll relay the information. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.”

“I’ve met Blondell O’Henry. Spent the night in her house. Amity stayed at mine. My uncle was her defense attorney.”

“Was?” She picked up on the one word she apparently considered a weakness in Nikki’s campaign.

“Yes. Alexander McBaine.”

“But he is no longer representing her.”

“My uncle was forced to retire due to health issues, but I’m sure Blondell—er, Ms. O’Henry—will remember him and me as well.”

The warden walked around her desk. If Nikki had made the slightest inroad past the woman’s steely resolve, she couldn’t see it.

“Thank you,” Billings finally said, just as the door opened and the guard who had escorted her into the office was ready to usher her out again.

Great.

Just flippin’ great!

She walked back through the series of gates to find DeAnthony Jones glancing up expectantly as the doors opened and she stepped through. By this time there were two more people waiting, and Nikki would bet her next advance that they were reporters as well. “Good luck,” she said to DeAnthony as he rushed past and she stopped to collect her things through the drawer of the glassed-in desk.

Officer Ulander, seated behind the thick glass, didn’t seem any happier now than she had been when Nikki had arrived. “Sign please,” she said in a raspy voice before she slipped another form through the drawer. Five minutes later, Nikki was out of the prison, walking through the cool morning sunshine to her car.

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