Page 11 of Guess Again

Boscobel, Wisconsin Sunday, July 6, 2025

THE WISCONSIN SECURE PROGRAM FACILITY, ONE OF WISCONSIN’S highest security prisons, was quiet as the clock ticked toward midnight.

Francis Bernard lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling.

His cell had no bars.

Instead, there was a thick, impenetrable door with a small rectangular window and a slot through which his meals were delivered.

This was life in solitary confinement at the WSPF. It was miserable. It was brutal. And for most, it was inescapable. But Francis Bernard believed he had found a way out.

Francis had been an exemplary inmate, and his good behavior earned him luxuries other prisoners could not dream of.

Included in the spiffs was an old Howard Fast paperback with a ratty cover and crumbling spine.

Despite the book’s decrepit appearance, the words on the pages worked just fine and helped pass the time.

The other extravagance was newspapers that allowed Francis to keep track of the world outside the prison.

The books came as a reward for good behavior. The newspapers had to be earned.

He lay awake because he was after something specific on this night.

He needed to know if the story was true.

If his plan had any chance of working, it had to be.

In fact, his entire life and existence depended on it.

When he heard the locking mechanism on his cell door disengage, he sat up in high alert. The door opened and Mr. Monroe appeared in the doorway. Andre Monroe was the head guard at the WSPF and was a no-nonsense man who enforced the rules of the prison with brutal authority. To cross Monroe meant to bring a world of pain that no prisoner wanted and only a few could withstand.

At the sight of Monroe in the doorframe, Francis knew he was in trouble.

The deal he had made was with Craig Norton, a lower-level guard.

But somehow, Monroe had sniffed out the arrangement.

Francis took a deep breath to prepare for the punishment—typically a stern beating from Monroe’s baton.

Francis nodded.

“Mr. Monroe.”

“Francis,”

Monroe said in a careful, almost jovial voice.

“How are we on this pleasant evening?”

Francis’s obsessive personality wanted to point out that nearing the stroke of midnight, it was no longer “evening,”

but, instead, the very definition of night.

And that Monroe’s presence in his cell was sure to make the night very much unpleasant.

“Good,”

was all Francis said.

Monroe’s hands were behind his back, as if the man were standing calmly at church service.

Francis assumed he was hiding his baton so that the first strike, likely across Francis’s temple, would come blindly.

“I heard some disturbing news,”

Monroe said.

“You arranged a swap, of sorts, with Craig Norton?”

Francis swallowed but said nothing.

“Contraband of any sort is forbidden in my prison.”

“Yes sir.

But it wasn’t contraband. It was—”

Monroe lifted his hand from behind his back.

He held a manila folder from which several pieces of paper protruded.

“Yes,”

Monroe said.

“You’ve never been one to partake in drugs.

I’ve watched you closely.

But just the same, offering favors to guards in exchange for information from the outside is not permitted.”

Francis nodded.

“Yes sir.”

“However,”

Monroe said, walking closer to where Francis sat on his bunk.

“If, in the future, you tell me what you need, then perhaps you and I could come to the same agreement you had with Norton.”

In that moment, Francis understood that Andre Monroe was not going to beat him to within an inch of his life, as he had done to other inmates over the years.

Francis’s arrangement with Craig Norton had been exposed, and now he’d have Andre Monroe as a constant visitor looking for the same thing Francis gave Norton for the occasional outside-the-prison luxury item.

Francis’s formulaic mind spun with what this meant, and he calculated that he’d have to find a way to accelerate his plan.

“Well?”

Monroe said.

“Do we have a deal?”

Francis nodded.

To say no would be a death sentence.

Monroe dropped the documents onto the bed.

Francis quickly paged through them and saw everything he’d asked Norton to find for him.

On top of the stack was a copy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel opened to an article about Callie Jones.

Francis took a moment to skim the story.

It was true. With the election of Governor Jones came the rebirth of a new investigation to find his daughter, and the governor had tapped Ethan Hall—a former renegade investigator with Wisconsin’s Department of Criminal Investigation, as the article described him—to lead the investigation. Francis closed his eyes. For the first time in many years, he allowed himself to believe that the walls that held him would soon fall.

When Francis opened his eyes, he noticed that Andre Monroe had inched closer and was now looming over him.

“It’s everything Norton said you needed,”

Monroe said.

Monroe’s domineering tone had softened to a more hopeful one.

Nature funneled all species to the same place in the tunnel of existence.

Still looking up at Monroe, Francis nodded.

Reality dictated that he had no other choice.

Monroe smiled, reached for the front of his trousers, and pulled down his zipper.