“Like in ‘The Pit and the Pendulum.’”
“You’re familiar with it?”
Leaning his head back on the seat, he closed his eyes. “‘I was sick—sick unto death with that long agony; and when they at length unbound me, and I was permitted to sit, I felt that my senses were leaving me. The sentence—the dread sentence of death—was the last of distinct accentuation which reached my ears.’”
“I’ll take that as a yes.” The fact that he’d memorized the opening suggested he’d identified with the story in some way, but that came as no surprise, considering his situation. She turned down the radio. “That must’ve been uplifting material to read in prison.”
“I read it in high school, too.”
“So…you graduated?”
“I would have if my murder trial hadn’t interfered,” he said dryly. “I was in my senior year when they carted me off.”
Because it’d grown dark, Peyton had less fear that they might be spotted by someone who would later point a finger at “Simeon” and blow his cover. His glasses sat in his hat on the console between them. She was glad he could relax, but the quiet of the countryside they passed on their way into town made her feel as if they were just as isolated as they’d been at her house. “Did you get your G.E.D.?”
“Not for several years. I was too busy trying to get myself D.O.A.”
“D.O.A. is dead on arrival.”
“I know.”
She slowed for a traffic light. “You were suicidal?”
“Not in the classic sense. Just self-destructive, fatalistic. I was looking for trouble, and I expected the trouble I found to be the kind that would put me out of my misery for good.”
“It wouldn’t be easy to deal with being falsely imprisoned.”
“I was consumed by rage.” His hand curled into a fist. Obviously the rage hadn’t left him. But if his mother and uncle had betrayed him as badly as it appeared, he had every right to feel angry. Peyton couldn’t think of anything that would cut a child more deeply. “Is that when you joined The Crew?”
“Yes.”
The light turned green, so she gave her SUV some gas. “Why’d you pick them and not some other gang, like the Aryan Brotherhood?”
He stared out the window, toward the whitecaps of the sea. “The Crew is an offshoot of the AB. My first cellie was a member.”
“Thanks to the Hells Fury, The Crew doesn’t have much of a presence at Pelican Bay.”
“I know. You’re lucky. They’re worse than all the other gangs.”
“I doubt any gang could be worse than the Hells Fury. They live for violence. But I’ll take your word for it.” Peyton found herself less than eager to reach the motel. “So did your cellie actively recruit you?”
“He didn’t have to. He knew, once I’d had enough ass whippings, I’d come to him. And he was right. After a few months, I was burning to take out a few of the bastards who’d jacked me up. The Crew seemed the perfect network to help me do that.”
“The other inmates were giving you trouble?”
“That’s a euphemism if ever I heard one,” he said with a laugh. “I was getting the shit kicked out of me almost every day by big gorilla-like guys who were at least a decade older and had been pumping iron for years.” His lips slanted in a bitter smile, as if he was picturing it all. “That was quite a rude awakening after attending a nice suburban high school. But it wasn’t until one guy—a deviant called Bruiser—tried to make a bitch out of me that I actually joined The Crew.”
Making a “bitch” or a “punk” out of him was basically turning him into a sex slave. His youth and good looks would’ve made him particularly vulnerable to such “daddies,” and every prison had them—men who used sex to punish or control. Peyton did her best to keep that type of behavior out of Pelican Bay. The entire staff did. But she knew it went on despite their efforts. Too many inmates pretended that whatever relationships they had were mutually agreeable. Reporting the abuse could get them maimed or killed, so they refused to take the risk, which made it very difficult to punish the offenders. Virgil was telling her that, at eighteen, he’d chosen to die fighting rather than become someone’s “bitch” or “punk.”
They’d arrived at the street where she had to let him out. “The ‘blood out’ thing didn’t bother you?”
“I thought I was going to die either way. And I was getting used to blood, mine and everyone else’s. Being able to fight was all there was to take pride in. Once I learned how, I decided to be the best, the one everyone else feared. I didn’t think about the future. As far as I was concerned, I didn’t have one.” She stopped when she reached the corner and he opened his door. “I wish I’d considered what my actions would mean to Laurel. But I was so…in the moment. Venting my anger and taking revenge—that was all that mattered.”
Now that he’d matured and calmed down, he’d do anything to change that; she could tell. But even if he could go back, she wasn’t sure he’d be able to take a different path. Not with his temperament and determination. “You’re still here, right? The Crew must’ve given you the protection you needed.”
“They did at first. But after a while protection wasn’t the point. My reputation was enough to keep me from being ambushed. It was the friendships I enjoyed. They were my only family for fourteen years. That’s what I’ll miss.”
If he thought she’d be shocked to hear him speak kindly of men who belonged to a violent criminal organization, he was wrong. She knew why gangs formed, how close they could become. It wasn’t always for nefarious reasons. Some poor souls simply had nothing else, nothing better, anyway. “What will they do when they realize you’re out?”
“It’ll be a hell of a lot worse than a B.O.S., if that’s what you’re thinking. I know too much.”
“A B.O.S.?”
“Beat on sight. I’ve been gone almost a week. They’re probably already on my trail.”
Peyton let the car idle. “Some people don’t understand how you can love someone who does terrible things. They don’t understand the complexity of human nature, on both sides of a relationship like that.”
“Most of the men in The Crew are the worst people I’ve ever known. I hated them then. I hate them now.” He put on the hat and glasses, even though he was unlikely to run into anyone who’d be able to see him clearly enough to identify him later. “But there were a few others—” his voice changed, grew soft “—men I admired and considered my brothers.”