Almost Midnight (24 page)

So where was the message coming from? As far as Roscoe was concerned, there were only two possibilities. Best deal with them one at a time, he thought. Pressing his Bible against his chest, he spoke quietly but firmly: “Satan, in the name of Jesus, I rebuke you. In the name of Jesus, depart from my life.” Then, lowering his head and closing his eyes, he prayed: “Jesus, if this message truly is from You and not from Satan, give me a sign. Make these Scriptures clear to me.”

Almost at once, as he would recall years later, Roscoe was filled with “a sense of peace and resolve.” He returned to his Bible and the Scriptures were suddenly as plain as day. Convinced that the message he’d been hearing was “truly from God,” he stayed up reading until three in the morning, all the while “feeling a powerful infusion of the Holy Spirit” compelling him to visit Darrell.

Over breakfast Roscoe told Wanetta and their thirty-nine-year-old daughter that he’d be visiting Darrell Mease in the county jail later that morning. They pleaded with him to reconsider.

“Dad, don’t go there. You don’t have to do this,” his daughter said.

“Remember Folsom,” Wanetta said. “After Folsom you promised you’d never go into a prison again.”

It wasn’t likely Roscoe would ever forget Folsom. In 1968 he and Wanetta were living in Sacramento where Roscoe was working in mining manufacturing and playing bluegrass on the side. He’d always loved bluegrass, long before it was even called bluegrass. He’d developed a passion for its sweet clean sounds while growing up in the hill country outside Forsyth and he’d bought his first guitar for thirty-three dollars at a music store in Springfield when he was thirteen. Since moving to Sacramento he’d started up his own group and he’d also kept some impressive company emceeing fiddle contests and country music festivals throughout the region. Bill Monroe,
Merle Haggard, Earl Scruggs, Lester Flatt, Bob Wills: at one time or another Roscoe had rubbed shoulders and traded riffs with just about all the big-time players.

So it was 1968 and Roscoe and his group had been invited to give a gospel concert in the chapel of the maximum-security unit at Folsom State Prison. They’d just gotten through their second number when a riot broke out. At the height of the action a prisoner was killed with a homemade shiv. This was the same prisoner who’d chatted with Roscoe just prior to the concert and insisted on plugging in his Fender Stratocaster for him. The guy responsible for the stabbing then tried to herd Roscoe and his group into a little room off the chapel. “Get in there, punk,” he said to Roscoe.

When the smoke had cleared Roscoe swore he’d never go into a prison again. “That’s it for prisons,” he said.

But now, more than twenty years later, he’d had a change of heart.

“I remember Folsom,” he told Wanetta. “But I’ve got a burden from God to go see Darrell in jail.”

After breakfast he phoned Chuck and said that he was heading over to visit Darrell. Chuck said that he’d be in Springfield on business most of the day and that Roscoe should check in with the jailer, Kenny Hicks.

At the jail Kenny told Roscoe that he couldn’t see Darrell. “I’m sorry, Roscoe,” he said, “but your name isn’t on the authorized visiting list.”

“I’ve got to see him, Kenny. Jesus told me to go visit Darrell Mease.”

“All right, come with me and we’ll see what we can do.”

Roscoe had assumed he’d talk to Darrell through the bars of his cell but Kenny set them up for a private chat at a small table in the jail’s kitchen. Darrell had no idea who Roscoe was, this gangly old-timer in boots and jeans with a friendly weather-beaten face. Just about everybody who’d visited him so far, family members mainly, had come into the jail with their features frozen tight, somber, whispering, mourners-in-waiting. But here was Roscoe, somebody
Darrell had never met, traipsing in like it was the first day of spring, big smile, happy to be there.

“Darrell,” he said, “I was up past two this morning waiting on the Lord and I’ve got a burden to talk to you.”

Darrell suddenly felt self-conscious about his long, unkempt hair and two-week growth of beard, wishing he were more presentable. He apologized to Roscoe for his appearance.

“You don’t need to be concerned about that,” Roscoe said. “God doesn’t care how long your hair is.”

Roscoe then said an impromptu prayer—a good strong prayer, Darrell thought. They chatted for a while, so casual and unforced they could have been old hunting buddies.

Finally Roscoe came to the point.

“I’ve got a message for you, Darrell,” he said. “You have nothing to worry about. You’ve got the best lawyer in the world.”

I wonder if F. Lee Bailey’s taken me on
, Darrell thought, still not exactly sure what to make of this unexpected visitor.

“Listen to me, Darrell,” Roscoe went on. “You have absolutely nothing to worry about. God is your lawyer and God can’t be beat. This is the message I was called to bring you.”

Darrell looked at Roscoe, looked right into his big open face, no trace of irony, all warmth and sincerity, a face telling no lies.
God is your lawyer
. Darrell didn’t know whether to take this literally—it sounded too far-fetched to be true—but there was one thing he did know for sure: Roscoe was no ordinary visitor. He’d been especially chosen to deliver this message.

Darrell broke down crying.

“You know, Roscoe,” he said. “I was called to be a preacher when I was fourteen years old, before I started running with Satan and his bunch. The past couple of days I’ve been praying for God to take me back.”

“Keep praying,” Roscoe said. “And remember what I’ve been telling you. God is your lawyer. You’ve got nothing to worry about.”

The next two days Darrell did little else but pray. Pray and fast and chain-smoke. And write Mary. He’d been writing Mary daily
since first arriving in the Taney County jail. He still hadn’t heard back from her but in his present circumstances a one-way contact was better than no contact at all.

Late evening the second day, January 19, he felt his world turn. Lying in his bunk, his face pressed against the cement-block wall, he pleaded with God to forgive him and take him back. Suddenly, he knew it had happened. Twenty-plus years of wandering, he’d returned home. He’d been restored to God. As he would tell his mom the next morning, he went from “intense agony and despair to total joy in a split second.” Lying there in his bunk, he experienced a “soft velvety feeling” washing over his entire being. His fears and hatreds, his longstanding resentments, they had been broken into tiny bits and cast into the ether, vanished, gone. In their place was an “unspeakable sense of peace and happiness and spiritual fullness.” It was as if he had never sinned, never gone astray. His slate was clean. He was convinced, utterly convinced, that there was now nothing standing between him and God.

It took a while longer for Roscoe’s message to sink in.
God is your lawyer
. Several days after his conversion Darrell still wasn’t entirely sure what this meant. One evening, praying in his cell, he whispered: “You know what I want, God. I want to be freed from prison and married to Mary. If you truly are my lawyer, I know you can make this happen. But whatever you decide, I’m with you all the way. I’m absolutely through with Satan.”

A week or so later it struck him. Nothing dramatic—no bells or whistles, no voices from on high. He just knew. One second he didn’t know, the next he did. As simple as that: a gift of faith. He knew that Roscoe was right. He had nothing to worry about. He knew, strange and baffling as it might sound—that God was on his case. He had never been more certain of anything in his life.

E
ARLY AFTERNOON, FEBRUARY 11
, Michelle Beth Katzenell dropped by the Taney County jail in hopes of finagling an interview with Darrell Mease. As a regional reporter for the Springfield
News-Leader
,
Michelle was always nosing around the jails and courthouses of the so-called Tri-Lakes area, keeping tabs on local murders, drug busts, and political scandals. The death-and-destruction beat of southwest Missouri: that’s what she half jokingly called it. She’d started at the
News-Leader
just a few months earlier, after graduating from Northwestern with a bachelor’s in journalism. It was her first reporting job, her first
real
job of any kind, and she’d taken to it with gusto, chasing down stories in the Ozarks like she’d been working the area with a pencil and notepad all her life.

Some of Michelle’s more veteran colleagues at the
News-Leader
enjoyed kidding her about her early successes as a reporter. At five four and barely a hundred pounds, with long brown hair and matching brown eyes, she looked so sweet and innocent, they’d say, that she generally caught folks off guard. She’d have her story in the bag before anyone even realized she was after a story.

Michelle knew there was more to it than this, of course, but right now she certainly appeared to have caught the Taney County jailer off guard.

“Could I talk with Darrell Mease?” she asked Kenny Hicks.

“All right,” Kenny said, and a few moments later, just like that, she found herself seated in a tiny visitation booth with Darrell facing her behind a partition of bulletproof glass.

Ever since the media crush at the airport in Springfield, Darrell had made no secret of his distaste for reporters. He’d refused all requests for interviews and he’d even enlisted the help of his jailers in keeping the press at bay. Michelle hadn’t really expected to get in to see him just now but here they were, facing each other through the glass, and Darrell seemed to know exactly who she was.

“You’re a reporter,” he said, casual, no edge to it.

“Yes.”

“And a born-again Christian, too, aren’t you?”

Michelle was taken aback. She tried putting on her best poker face, not wanting to lose control of the interview, but it was tough not giving away some of her surprise. It was true. She’d been raised Jewish in New Jersey and had converted to Christianity at the start
of her senior year in college. How in the world had he suspected this? It wasn’t something she was in the habit of talking about—not even with colleagues at the newspaper.

Don’t let this thing get sidetracked, she thought. After all, she was here to find out about Darrell, not the other way around. She knew that with a preliminary hearing scheduled for March 6, he still didn’t have a lawyer. The public defender’s office in Springfield had bailed out on him, pleading inadequate resources for handling a first-degree murder case, and his prospects of landing a half-decent private attorney seemed grim at best.

“Your hearing’s coming up, Darrell, and so far no one’s stepped up to bat for you,” she said.

This was all the opening Darrell needed.

“I’m not worried about getting a lawyer,” he said. “I’m not putting my faith in man.”

Michelle waited, already happy she’d taken the trouble to drop by.

“God is my lawyer,” Darrell went on. “He’s the best lawyer in the world. Whatever God wants, it will be. God can do anything.”

He then talked about the crucial events of the past few weeks: the fasting and praying, the unexpected visitor with the strange message, the conversion, and the conviction of salvation.

“I turned to God in desperation in trying to help my best friend,” he said. “I wanted God to take care of her. I ended up saving myself.”

He showed Michelle several religious booklets that he’d been reading for spiritual sustenance.

“People who talk to me act like it’s doomsday,” he said, “but I’m in better shape now than I’ve ever been in my life.”

Michelle tried nudging the conversation toward more mundane matters. She asked about his onetime friendship with Lloyd (“Lloyd didn’t have any friends,” he said) and the relative ease with which the murder weapon had been recovered (“This was all part of God’s plan. I’m not that stupid”). But that was as far as it went. Darrell obviously had his own agenda for the interview and he wasn’t about to be budged.

After fifteen minutes a detention officer told Michelle that her time was up. Darrell thanked her for coming by.

Michelle was impressed. Darrell had been exceedingly pleasant throughout the entire exchange, not artificially chummy but pleasant and polite, simply laying it out for her. Pleasant and polite and tranquil—unbelievably tranquil, she thought, for someone in his circumstances. It wasn’t a judgment she’d want to make as a journalist, but as a woman she believed he was perfectly sincere. His conversion wasn’t a front; it was genuine.

She went to her car, furiously scribbled everything down in a notebook, then found a phone and called her editor. The editor was excited. An interview with Darrell Mease—quite the scoop: How in the world had Michelle pulled it off?

The next day the story appeared in the
News-Leader
, under the banner headline
MAN IN MURDER CASE SAYS, “GOD IS MY LAWYER.”

Darrell’s mom phoned the newsroom and told Michelle that both she and Darrell loved the article. They were convinced that Michelle had been called by God to help spread the message.

CHAPTER TEN

P
EOPLE IN LAW
enforcement are understandably cynical about jailhouse conversions. Criminal investigators, detention officers, county prosecutors: they see it happen all the time. The murderer, the rapist, once arrested and thrust behind bars, his wild times brought crashingly to a halt, as often as not becomes an entirely new man. Deprived of fresh opportunities for violence and mayhem, he is reborn as a sweetly innocent child of God. Betrayed by the flesh, incarcerated in the flesh, he finds his victory and his true identity in the spiritual realm. Listen to his testimony and he’ll tell you: he isn’t merely reformed but utterly transformed, with only an accidental biological relationship to his previous self, the old dead self that rampaged and grimaced its way to imprisonment.

People in law enforcement are mostly unimpressed. So many
convicts suddenly finding God, so many convicts experiencing last-ditch transformations of the heart and the spirit. It seems somehow too convenient, somehow too tidily packaged. Why now? Why all this converting and spiritual awakening after the throats have already been slashed, the bullets dug out of the bodies? It would have been nice, law enforcement people say, if some of these guys had seen the light a bit earlier. Prior to their hurting sprees perhaps, or at least prior to their arrest and imprisonment. A religious conversion after the damage is done, when there is possibly nothing left to do but convert—this seems less a genuine change of heart than a gesture of expediency, a culturally scripted maneuver calculated to assuage guilt and enhance survival prospects down the line.