There were always some lights left on in the infirmary in case of an emergency. You couldn't have doctors stumbling around with needles in the dark if some guy's heart decided to stop after lights out. Still, there was enough darkness to satisfy the more lucid patients who couldn't take the glaring over-head lights twenty-four hours a day. Even their brothers-in-incarceration, cramped in their crummy cells, got the gift of darkness at night.

The moment Biondo woke up after his stroke, he had demanded to be moved to one of the dark corners of the prison infirmary. The light seemed too bright in his good eye. Being a patient of low threat, seeing as the old man could no longer sit up by himself, made his bed transfer go smoothly.

It had been long months of staring at the same wall, but Biondo figured it could be worse. The doctors were professional and the nurse that cleaned and fed him was ugly as sin but as gentle as an angel. The fear of a hit had gone down as well. His enemies seemed content to let the old man grow senile in a hospital bed, far from doing any harm again.

Biondo woke up late at night. His eye cracked open in confusion. He was awake for a reason but he couldn't figure out what it was. He usually slept into the morning with no restlessness. The drugs saw to that. But here he was, awake in the night and straining to discern why.

It was then that he noticed the woman sitting beside his bed. She sat on his bad side and he had to struggle a bit to turn his head enough to see her.

"Who're you?" he slurred through the good side of his mouth. "How'd ju git in?"

"I'm an old acquaintance. And with quite a bit of effort," she was sitting very still and he could make out nothing but the length of her dark hair and the slimness of her body. "It's rather funny that the easiest part was getting the night nurse to leave. Flashed a badge and he took himself right out of here."

"You'a cop?"

"I was," the woman said very softly.

"Whad'ya doin' here?"

"I have a couple questions to ask you, Mr. Biondo."

"No' wit'out muh lawyer ya don'."

The female cop who was no longer a cop didn't seem to hear this. "I'd like to ask you for some important information about the murders of police officers Callahan, Bateman, Fulton, Mendoza, Brinker and his family."

Vincent Biondo's eyes gleamed in the dim light and strained harder to make out the face of his interrogator. He tried to swallow and a little string of drool slipped from the dead side of his mouth and down the stubble of his cheek. He gurgled a bit before he could force his throat to answer, "dunno an'thin' 'bout that."

"That's a bold claim, considering all these murdered police officers was on the team that landed you here in Jackson."

"Neh . . . unfort'nate coincidence."

"Unfortunate indeed. But what if I said that there was an eyewitness who can describe three men of Italian-American background? A strong man with a bald head. A skinny man with a penchant for saddle shoes. A tall man with a goatee and a steady trigger fingers. And a positive identification by these very men that a Mr. Vincent Biondo was the man who hired them."

"Who's th' witness?" Biondo scoffed but it was clear that the descriptions of the men disturbed him.

"Me," the woman smiled.

"An' who're you?"

She leaned forward then and the light from a few beds down brought her face into focus above him. "Just a cop who enjoys her job more than most."

Biondo was old and crippled, but his mental facilities were completely intact, including his memory. His brain immediately recognized this woman as the one who had been his arresting officer. The one who had pointed a gun at him and snapped her gum with a delighted smile at her job well done. The same one who he had hired three men to kill, along with the rest of her SWAT team. A woman who, by report of his own hitman, was most definitely dead from multiple stab wounds and a gunshot to the head.

Biondo opened his mouth and took in a quick breath to scream out for help but Officer Mendoza's hand snaked out faster than he could act. She shoved all four of her fingers into his mouth, pressing his tongue down, and used her thumb to clamp his jaw into stillness. Her face was now inches from his and the whiteness of her face seemed to glow in the dim light. "Don't scream, sir. That will only make bad things happen."

The heart monitor was beeping faster now. It didn't seem to concern her. Her black eyes seemed to grow and shrink and he had trouble looking away from them. He tried to bite down on the fingers in his mouth but her grip was so hard and firm that his jaw was completely locked.

"I'm going to need you to do a few things for me, Mr. Biondo. Holding your mouth like this will not make it easy, so I'm going to let you go. If you try to scream, I will stop you again and break your good hand. Do you understand?"

He nodded, gagging weakly around her fingers.

She withdrew her fingers and stood up straight above him. "First I need some information. I need the names and locations of your three hitmen."

The man's jaw quivered. "I don' know . . ."

She placed her hand gently over his hand. She didn't squeeze, but the action was threatening enough.

"Okay," he growled quickly. "Okay. Strong man's name's Val'tine Costa. He's livin' wit' Vic'r Ventimiglia, the guy wit' th' stupid shoes. Dunno where'ey live. Ventimiglia work fo' his father in butcher shop. Dow'tow' 'Troit. Ventimiglia Meats. Early mornin' shift."

"Valentine Costa and Victor Ventimiglia. Good. And what about the man with the goatee? They called him Nico. Nico what?"

Biondo squirmed, "Dunno 'im. They brought'im in on their own. Dunno."

"Are you sure about that?"

Biondo nodded.

Emirene calmly grabbed his pinky finger and slowly started to bend it back. Biondo's body struggled pathetically and he cried out weakly. "DUNNO!"

She let his finger flop back to the bed. Fine. She'd just ask Mr. Costa and Mr. Ventimiglia when she got around to visiting them. "All right, Mr. Biondo. I need you to do one more thing for me and then I'll leave you in peace."

"Ww-hat?"

She reached behind her and pulled out a folded piece of paper. She held it in front of him and he could read large capital letters neatly written across the page. They read: I MURDERED BATEMAN, BRINKER, FULTON AND MENDOZA. Under the words was an X and a line. "I need you to sign this confession for me."

Biondo's red face went livid with anger. He sputtered in rage as she pulled out a ballpoint pen. He went dead silent when she clicked the pen open and drove it toward his face, stopping the point a centimeter from his eyeball. "I'd really appreciate if you'd sign this confession, Mr. Biondo."

He stared up at the pen tip that filled his entire vision and swallowed. "...okay."

The pen left his vision and he felt in being placed into his hand. She put the confession on his stomach and then lifted his hand to it. Slowly and painfully he scrawled what could just barely be recognized as his signature on the paper. When he was done, she took the pen back and placed his hand back at his side. She clicked the pen closed and it disappeared back into a pocket. She left the wrinkled confession note on his stomach. She then found the panic button by his hand and pulled at it until it was hanging out of his reach off the side of the bed.

Biondo opened his mouth to tell her to get the fuck out now, but as his teeth parted, her hand was there again, her fingers inside his mouth, choking off all movement and sound. She didn't say anything else to him but was calmly looking at his heart monitor screen. The beeps were rapid but steady. Not knowing what was happening, Biondo began to struggle weakly beneath her.

Emirene watched the monitor patiently. She watched it until she could feel the pulse inside her own body and echoing through her mind. When she truly knew his pulse intimately, she delivered a swift and severe elbow to his chest, directly between heartbeats. The next beat didn't come and the screen flat lined. Biondo was no longer trying to bite down on her hand but was gurgling and gasping around it, eyes wide and startled. His old muscles spasmed in shock and shook tremendously. But soon the shaking slowed and stopped. Emirene pulled her fingers from the dead man's mouth and wiped them across his arm.

After waiting by his side for another five minutes, she turned toward the infirmary doors. On her way out, she told the nurse reading a book outside that one of his patients seemed to be having a problem. When the man hurried into the infirmary, Emirene disappeared down the hall.