A Day In The Life

Minor Investigation

It was Mother’s Day. I was the Visiting Room Officer. AT A FEMALE CAMP!

I work there enough that the inmate’s families know me. So it isn’t surprising when a 9 year old comes over to my desk and wants to tell me something. This young guy is the grandson of an inmate and he visits often. He comes up and tells me he saw something bad.

Bad?

Yes, he says he saw bad cigarettes.

I ask him where and he says it is over near the vending machines.

The room is packed. I clear the vending area to a few grumbles so he can show me what he found. He squeezes his tiny body behind the machine and pulls out a bag. There are two packs of cigarettes and what appear to be snack wrappers. They turned out to be full of pills. Nyquill Liquid Gels from what I could tell.

I take these to the officer’s station and call the lieutenant. Then I ask this bright young man how he happened to find that bag way back there.

Well, he tells me it wasn’t behind the machine when he first saw it. That he saw a man in a red shirt drop it under the front of the machine. And he picked it up and put it way back there so little kids couldn’t get it, because it was bad. Then he came and got me.

The man in the red shirt?

There was only one visitor wearing a red shirt, the husband of an inmate sitting at a table.

The lieutenant comes and ends their visit. Not a whole lot that we could do after that though. The inmate was released the following day. Perhaps that was her one last hurrah.

Too bad my tiny detective was on to their scheme and busted her. He told me when he grows up he is going to be a detective. I bought him a candy bar.