Beyond Justice (22 page)

Unfortunately, the appeal had been denied.

"Maybe it's time you moved on," I said.

Rachel looked up at me through the protective glass.  Her eyes—today violet, courtesy of those whimsical colored contact lenses—shimmered and she pushed a stray lock of raven hair behind her ear.  "Sam..."  I could tell she had been at least considering it.

"You've done your best," I said.  "It's time to get your own life back on track." 

"If I'd tried harder," Rachel said into the handset, her eyes welling up.   "If only I'd found something, anything."  She studied the polished chrome around the Plexiglas window and ran a finger along its edge. 

"No.  Rachel, don't blame yourself."

"You were framed."

"Say that in here and I'll get more than a couple of laughs and snorts."

"Do you have any idea who could have... who would have wanted to do it?"

I'd only been thinking about that for the past year.  "Lots of people had access the days before the murders," I said.  "The killer got past the security system."

"Logs show that it was disarmed, with the manufacturer's default passcode at 10:30 PM.  A half hour before you came home."

I was the only person in the house who even knew the manufacturer's passcode, used to reset the unit.   I turned my palms upwards and shrugged.  "There are only two possibilities," I said, so weary at this point that I wondered if death by lethal injection might be more merciful.  "One:  someone committed the perfect crime, or two—"  She blinked with a puzzled look.  "Two:  I did it."

"Come on, Sam.  Don't even think that."

"Hell, the whole world believes it.  The evidence points to me.  Maybe I did it and just can't remember.  Maybe I went crazy and blocked it out."

Rachel rose from her chair, leaned in close to the window.  Her eyes swept around and she whispered.  "Do
not
repeat what you just said.  Not ever, not to anyone.  Someone in here could twist it into a confession and—-"

"And what, send me to jail?  To death row?" I snorted.

"Sam, listen to me!  If there's ever going to be a chance for another appeal, you cannot, I repeat, can
not
be going around saying things that a paid snitch can use against you."

"You're assuming there's hope." 

For a moment, not a word came out of her lips.  Her poignant eyes glistened. "So that's it, you've given up?"

"I don't think...  I just can't go through it again.  Raising my hopes, only to have them crushed."  Rachel had done an amazing job during the trial.  At several points, I really thought the jury would turn an N.G.  I was wrong.

"We've got to keep fighting," she said.

"What's the point?"

"Aaron."

What I said next, I'd regret for years to come.  I was so rapt in self-pity that I hadn't realized just how low I'd sunk.  "For all we know, he's not going to make it."

Rachel's eyes widened.   It was as if someone had told her that a nuclear warhead had detonated less than a mile away.  "How—?  Sam, of all people.  How could you?"  Defensiveness would have been my default reaction—shifting the blame to her for goading me into it with her incessant exhortations of hope since we first met.

But it was all me.  I knew it.  "I....I didn't mean that."

"No, I don't believe you did."  I couldn't face her."I have to go," she said.  "Anything develops, I'll let you know."

I nodded, still avoiding her eyes.   She tapped the window.  "Sam."

"What?"

"We're all still praying."

"Thanks."  It was the furthest thing from my mind.  If there even was a God, he'd let me down, big time.

Rachel left and I felt like I'd just handed my son over to an executioner.  How could I even think that he wasn't going to make it?  Self-contempt prompted a decision.  From that moment on, I would never entertain the thought that Aaron might not make it.  Never mind what the doctors said, I would not live my final years resigned to the death of my son. 

From that moment on, I'd be a fighter.

Chapter Thirty-Eight

I returned to my cell and found it now occupied by another inmate.  When he saw me at the door, he leapt to his feet and hit his head on the metal bed frame.

"This your bunk?" He rubbed his fuzzy head, eyes shifting from side to side like some kind of rodent.  His considerable front teeth and pointy nose, which wiggled like he was sniffing around for something, did little to counter that image.

"It's okay," I said, reaching out to shake hands and introduce myself.

"NO!"  He cringed, covered his face and fell onto the floor in a fetal position.

"What —?"  A loud buzzer sounded and all the doors in our block slammed shut.  My cellmate was now lying in a foul-smelling puddle he'd just made.  I let out a sigh and stood away from him, leaning against the wall until he seemed ready to get up.

"You okay down there?"   He finally looked up and decided I wasn't about to kill him.  I grinned at him with a, "what is your problem?" look.

He beheld his urine soaked pants and groaned.  "Aw, man!"  He got up and smoothed out his pants, realized he just got his hands wet and sighed.

"What's your name?"

"Artie," he said.  "Pleased to meet you."  He extended his hand but I graciously declined to shake it.

"Yeah, well.  I'm—"

"I
know
who you are," said Artie, his beady eyes swiping around the cell.  I straightened up.  Right away, he cringed and covered his head.  "No, please!"

"Would you stop that!  I'm not going to hurt you."  That only made him cower again.  It took another ten minutes before he stopped knee-jerking at my slightest move.  So rather than talk, I threw down a used towel and with my foot, mopped up the yellow puddle.  When I was done I kicked it under the bars of our cell.  "You can have the bottom bunk if you like," I said.

"You sure?"

"Yeah."

"In exchange for what?"

"Nothing, what are you talking about?"

"Nothing."

Artie was the last person you'd expect to find in Salton.  He'd pass out if he saw a mouse.  I sat on a stool on the opposite side of our cell and waiting for him to stop pacing.

A female C.O. stopped outside the cell and tapped on the bars.  Artie whooped with a start. 
Great he's going to wet himself again
. 

"Hey Possum," she said, peering through golden bangs that peeked through the rim of her cap.  "Welcome to B-block." she kicked the soiled towel away".

I regarded my cell mate with an ironic smirk.  "Possum?"

"Yeah."

"Why do they call you that?" I asked.

His eyes were shiny ball-bearings, his ears stuck out of the sides of his head.  "No idea." Regarding the officer, he said, "Hey Gracie, thanks for giving me a celebrity cellie." At once, I noticed her unusually kind demeanor.  Unusual for a C.O., anyway.

"Celebrity?" I said to Possum.

"Everyone knows you.  Superdad turned—"

"You're Sam Hudson, aren't you?" she said, lifting her eyes to meet mine.  There was a melancholy look in those sapphire eyes, the corners of which wrinkled as she smiled.  Though she must not have been much more than thirty-five, it made her appear a decade older.

"I'm afraid you have me at a considerable disadvantage."

"Sergeant Sonja Grace," she said.  "I'm one of the C.O.'s here in B-Block."

"Yeah, well.  Nice to meet—"

"I read about you in the papers."

With a deep breath in, a sharp one out, I said, "Who hasn't?"

"No, I mean I remember your picture out in front of the School Yard during the hostage crisis.  You know, the one with you facing off with the officer, with his rifle in your chest?"

"Oh, Coyote Creek Middle School."  Seemed like ages ago, and certainly eclipsed by the tragic events of that fateful night, only weeks later.

"Bubba's got some
cajones, muy grandes,
" Possum said.  "He was a real hero."

"Hero," I scoffed.  "Right."

"Until your conviction, anyway," Possum said.

"And your boy?" Sergeant Grace said, completely catching me off guard.  Her smile dissolved.

"Excuse me?"

"Your son.  Did you get to see him before....?"

"No, I didn't."

A pained expression filled her eyes.  "Sorry to hear it."  What was it to her?  She stared down the tier and sighed.  "Anyway, like I told Possum, welcome to B-Block.  Keep your nose clean, your cell clean and we'll get along just fine.  Got it?"

"Yeah."

"I'll be seeing you." Sergeant Grace tapped on the bars of our cell with her nightstick and left.

"Seems nice," I said to Artie.

"Absolute doll."

"So," I said, "What's your story?"

He crinkled his nose, examined our cell.  "I ain't got one."

"Everyone's got a story," I said.  I would learn later, that Artie "Possum" Castigliano had been an accountant for a large seafood import corporation.  He was doing time for participating in a State tax scandal.  Could his company have been a client of my firm—that is, former firm, Lewis, Garfield & Brown?

Of course, he was innocent and had been set up.  But no one in Salton was stupid enough to belly ache about stuff like that.  Most of the cons saw Salton as a promotion, a place to hone their criminal skills.  Complaining of a wrongful conviction was not just showing weakness, it was a disgrace.  Then again, Artie the Possum had just peed in his pants a few minutes ago.

"Okay, so what are
you
?" Possum asked.  "Psychopath?  Sociopath?  Plain old nasty guy?"

"What?"

"Everyone knows what you're in here for.  You got issues, man."

"That's what I was convicted of," I said.  "We've all been convicted.  Whether we did it or not is besides the point."  This Possum might actually be a rat.  No way I'd say anything snitch-worthy.

"True.  True-true," he said, bobbing his little round head and looking around the cell.

"So, how much?" I said.

Possum's eyes zipped around the cell.  He answered in a hissing whisper.  "Nine-point-two-five."  Nearly ten million dollars in evaded state taxes was plenty motive.  And he made an easy scapegoat.  Poor guy. 

"How long've you been in?" I asked.

"Five years." 

I'd have figured five days, maybe.  "How'd you manage to—?"

"Killed my cellie."

"You?"  An unintentional laugh erupted from my belly.  "Good thing I wasn't eating, I might have choked."

"All right, all right, all right.  Show a little respect, will ya?"

"Sorry."

"It was an accident," he whispered, looking over my shoulder.  "My cellie in A-block was trying to shank me.  I ducked, he slipped on one of my Accounting Times magazine covers, fell and landed with the shank in his neck.  Sliced himself in the jugular."

"So how'd you convince everyone that you did it?"

"Before anyone saw anything, I jumped on his body, grabbed his shiv and started slashing him, shouting all kinds of crap.  They were all too surprised to question whether I'd actually done it."  Possum explained that it had been the most horrible thing he'd ever done, but it probably saved his life.  He now had a reputation for being unpredictable and a surprisingly skillful killer.

He couldn't kill a germ with Lysol.

But I wouldn't betray his secret.  The prevailing wisdom in Gen-Pop was that, despite his appearance, Artie the Possum was dangerous.  And because his dead cell mate had been a lieutenant in
La Fraternidad
, Salton Sea's most violent prison gang of Northern Mexicans—whose tendrils of crime reached far beyond the confines of the supermax—there were no charges brought upon Artie.  It had been recorded as self-defense.

"Five years and still kicking," Artie said as he spread out his belongings.  He stopped at a photo of an attractive young woman holding up a baby.  "That's Jack," he said, handing me the picture.  "He'll be five in November."

Right away, my thoughts went to Aaron who was about the same age.  It had been such a long time.  I missed him terribly and wondered if I'd ever see him again. "Lovely family," I said, returning his picture.

Possum stared at me and swallowed.  "Don't worry, I ain't telling anyone," he said, softly.  "Promise."

"Telling anyone what?"

"Look, that columnist—what was his name, Brent Stringer...?"

My stomach clenched.  "Yeah."

"He wrote some pretty nasty crap about you in the Tribune that biased the jury.  And I don't care if he's a bestselling author, he screwed you." 

"The jury agreed with him.  So what are you
not
going to tell anyone about me?"