“I’m not sure I understand, Mr. Marlin. I thought you’d be happy. If you’re worried about losing the case, we can still plead “No Contest.”
“No,” George Leroy answered automatically, his mind elsewhere. “I’ll just have to think of something else, that’s all.”
“Think about pleading guilty, Mr. Marlin,” the attorney said as he left.
Dread dogged George Leroy the rest of the day. That night, restless with worry, he came to a desperate decision. For Sunny’s sake, George Leroy began to consider the weak points of jail security.
He immediately dismissed the idea of grabbing a guard’s weapon and forcing his way out at gunpoint. He’d be no match for the trained and muscled jailers. No, he’d rather just slip away unnoticed, long gone before his absence was discovered. Sneaking fish out of the lake was one thing; sneaking out of a jail was quite another.
“Hey, kid,” he whispered. “You awake?”
“You’re keeping me awake, tossing and turning like that. And my name’s not ‘kid.'”
“What is it, then?
“T.J.”
“What kinda name is that? What’s it stand for?”
“Thomas Junior,” the boy answered with disdain. “I’m named for my dad. I don’t like Tom or Tommy or Junior, so I’m T.J.”
“You don’t like carryin’ your daddy’s name?” George Leroy had never considered whether his Junior minded being Junior.
“He never carried me. Split when I was a baby. Whaddya want? I want to get to sleep.”
“If you were gonna get out of here,” George Leroy whispered, “how would you do it?”
“You mean bust out?”
“More like sneak out. I promised my little girl I’d be home for Christmas, but my trial’s not ’til January. She’s already real mad about the other things I’ve missed.”
“What a surprise,” T.J. said dryly. “You could always plead ‘No Contest,’ like me.”
“I told you,” George Leroy whispered fiercely, “I wasn’t fishin’.”
“Okay, okay, Lemme think.” Silence reigned for a few moments. “Okay, I been thinking the air vent over the john would be a good place to hide stuff. Somebody would have to stand on the john and give me a boost. The vent could lead somewhere, though. You could follow it to the part of the jail that’s not in the lock-up and get out the air vent on the other end.”
That’s exactly what they did as soon as the guard went by, before George Leroy could lose his nerve. T.J. stood on the back of the toilet and unscrewed the vent cover with his fingernail. He stowed it under George Leroy’s mattress and put the screws in a shadowy corner under the bunk. He boosted George Leroy into the vent.
“You want to come with me?” George Leroy offered.
“Nah, I’ll take probation and get on with it. I just won’t get caught next time.”
George Leroy pulled himself through the ductwork on his stomach as quietly as he could. The snores that came up through the vents he crossed told him he was still in the lock-up. Finally, right when the ductwork came to a dead end, he saw light shining through the last vent. George Leroy inched up and peered through the slats.
There was a desk directly beneath him. At the desk, a man in uniform was working his way through a pile of paperwork. When the man leaned back to stretch, George Leroy read his nametag: Pritchard. Lord have mercy, it was the warden.