Key Witness (45 page)

Brown took a suck of oxygen from his mask. Then he reached into his shirt pocket and took out a pack of cigarettes, the generic brand you buy in the supermarket. He flicked his Bic and lit up, inhaling deeply. After he exhaled, he took another hit of oxygen.

Wyatt watched in disgust. The man was deliberately killing himself.

“I’ve got terminal emphysema,” Brown said as if reading Wyatt’s thoughts. “No point in stopping now, it would only prolong the agony.”

“Isn’t it dangerous, lighting up around oxygen?” Wyatt asked.

“Not if you’re careful.” He took another drag from his cigarette, then another from the oxygen. “Don’t worry, I didn’t ask you to drive all the way up here so I could blow you up, not to mention my neighbors. That Jaguar you drove up in isn’t a rental, is it? Sure is a pretty vehicle.”

“It’s mine,” Wyatt confirmed.

There was a folding chair leaning up against the far wall. Wyatt picked it up. “Do you mind?”

“No, I got it out for you.” Another cigarette drag, another oxygen drag. “I don’t have much company, so I don’t keep it out.”

Wyatt unfolded the chair. He sat facing the fat emphysemic. “What prompted you to call me?” he asked. He’d been pondering that question since five minutes after he’d hung up after his first cryptic conversation with Brown.

“A little birdie sang in my ear,” the large man said.

“Who was he?” Wyatt persisted.

“Could’ve been a she.”

“Someone who has it in for Dwayne Thompson?”

“That would be three-quarters of the English-speaking population, but yes, that would be true. And don’t chase that anymore,” Brown went on, “it doesn’t matter and I’m not going to tell you.”

Wyatt let that pass. If later on he felt it was important, he’d try to get the information some other way. “What can you tell me about Doris Blake?” he asked. “And Dwayne Thompson.”

“I was a guard at Durban for twenty-six years before they cut me loose, on account I couldn’t walk one length of a cellblock without stopping for breath,” Brown said. “A sergeant. Bastards retired me on only thirty-five percent disability. Said I brought it on myself by smoking.” He coughed: a deep, rattling gasp, sounding like his lungs were on fire. “It was job-related stress,” he complained. “That’s why I started smoking in the first place, ’cause of the stress of working in that shithole. Everybody who works there comes out of it sick, if they don’t die first.”

“So you were at Durban while Dwayne Thompson was an inmate there? Part of this stretch he’s doing?”

Brown nodded. Cigarette puff, oxygen puff. It was painful to watch, but the man did it with aggressive defiance. “Three years.” A moment’s pause for another deep intake of oxygen. “Two years while Blake was there,” he added.

“Doris Blake was a guard at Durban?”
Son of a bitch!

“Yep. We served together.”

“And she knew Dwayne. He knew her.”

“Yeah, they knew each other.” He paused. Then, with relish: “In the biblical sense, so the rumors go.”

Wyatt reeled. “Dwayne Thompson had a sexual relationship with a corrections officer? Who’s now working at the same jail he’s in?”

Brown shrugged, took a last hit off his cigarette, dropped the butt into a coffee-can ashtray that had an inch of water inside. After another breath of oxygen, he said, “I don’t have firsthand knowledge, of course. I doubt anyone does. But it was a known thing.”

“By the administration?”

“Some of them. Not the top tier; they don’t know what they don’t want to know, deliberately. But it was talked about.”

“What about the inmates?” Wyatt asked. “Did they know?”

“Some, I imagine. No one ever talked about it openly.”

“Jesus.” Wyatt thought for a moment. “Who else besides you could I talk to about this?”

Brown stared blankly at him. After another cigarette and cigarette-oxygen combo, he intoned, “Nobody.”

“You said others knew.”

“Knowing and saying are two different things, Counselor. That’s a felony, what Blake and Dwayne were doing. Anybody that knows about it and doesn’t report it is aiding and abetting.”

“What about other inmates? Do you know any of them who might talk about this?”

“Sure, there are some that might. But they’re cons. People have a hard time believing a con, especially with a story like that. Besides, when this trial’s over down there, Dwayne’s coming back up here. He’d kill anybody ratted him out about that.”

“Why?” Wyatt asked. “She’s the one who would get into trouble, not him. I’d think it would be a point of pride, a convict having an affair with an authority figure.”

Brown’s laugh was a wheeze that turned into full-on hacking. “You’ve never had the pleasure of making Doris Blake’s acquaintance,” he managed to cough out.

“Not yet. I’m going to call on her when I get back.”

“After you meet her,” Brown said, “you come back and tell me if you think Dwayne would want it known that he was fucking her.”

“She isn’t lovely?”

Brown’s laugh-coughing almost got out of hand. He had to grab for his oxygen to steady himself.

“How unattractive could she be?” Wyatt asked. “For a man stuck inside without any women, for years?”

“You be the judge of that. I wouldn’t have, and I’m no God’s gift.”

It was becoming increasingly hot in the little trailer. “Maybe you can answer this question,” Wyatt said, leaning forward and pulling the damp shirt off his back where it was sticking. “If sleeping with her was that big a burden, what did Dwayne get out of it?”

“Everything.”

“Everything?”

“Everything you can do inside the walls. Blake did everything she could to make Dwayne Thompson’s life as comfortable—and as profitable—as it could be.”

“I
APPRECIATE YOUR SEEING
me on such short notice.”

“You’d driven all this way anyway.” The warden, a man named Bill Jonas, sat at his desk. Wyatt sat across the desk in the supplicant’s chair. “I’m a public servant,” the warden continued. “Your taxes pay my salary, pay the bills at Durban. And I’m not going to tell you any secrets, so why not meet with you? Besides, if I didn’t, you’d find a way to use it against me in the media. I know how you guys think.” There was no humor backing up these opening remarks.

Who are “you guys” and how do “we” think? Wyatt thought. He kept the thought to himself.

“You’re here regarding one of our inmates, Dwayne Thompson, who is going to be testifying against your client,” the warden said as statement, not question. “There’s nothing I can tell you that isn’t part of the public record.”

“Still, for the record, there are some questions I want to ask you.”

“Fire away.” The man had the demeanor of an ex-Marine Corps officer, and the brush haircut and stiff posture to match. He had retired after twenty years as a light colonel and after getting his Ph.D. in criminology at Indiana University had found his true calling in the administrative side of the penal system.

“There was an officer working here during part of Thompson’s current incarceration who is now a deputy sheriff in the county jail where Marvin White is presently housed. Did Doris Blake know Dwayne Thompson during her tour of duty here?”

Jonas’s eyes narrowed for a moment. “I’m sure she knew who he was.”

“How well did they know each other?” Wyatt continued, pressing easily.

“How well?” Jonas shrugged. “Why don’t you ask her? You know where to find her. You didn’t have to drive all the way up here to ask me that.”

“Actually, I didn’t drive up here to see you,” Wyatt corrected him. “I was here already, talking to another former employee of yours. Lamar Brown.”

Jonas shook his head in disgust. “Don’t believe anything Brown tells you,” he said. “He’s a liar and a malcontent. He’s committing suicide and claiming we drove him to it. It’s pure fantasy. If you met him you know you saw a man with no respect at all for his body, for keeping himself in shape. He’s brought every calamity he has on himself, with his own negative behavior.”

“He told me that Doris Blake and Dwayne Thompson were lovers while Blake was a guard here, and that the administration knew and turned their face away from it.”

The only sign that Jonas was agitated was the knuckles of his hands gripping the front of his desk. They were drained of blood. His response was cool, flat to a monotone. “I don’t know anything about that. And I would have a very hard time believing it.”

“You’d swear to that?” Wyatt asked.

“I said I don’t know anything about that. I don’t have to swear to anything, Mr. Matthews, I’m not in a court of law.”

“But if and when you are, you’ll swear to that?” Wyatt pressed. “That no one in this prison had any knowledge of a tryst between Blake and Thompson. No rumors, innuendo, gossip?”

“Are you going to subpoena me?” the warden asked, unable to not show alarm. He looked at his watch, made a performance of standing. “I’m busy, Counselor. I think I’ve given you enough time.”

Wyatt remained seated. “If I feel I have to subpoena you, Warden, I will,” he told the man calmly. “And other members of your staff, if I feel it’s necessary.”

Jonas exhaled. He sat back down. “It was alluded to, rumors went around.”

“Did you do anything about it? Try to check it out?”

“No.” He was back in military mode again, staring Wyatt square in the face without blinking. “You have Lieutenant Blake right there, where you are,” he said. “Why don’t you ask her?”

“I’m going to.” He stared back at Jonas. He had almost been killed by a mob of teenage gangbangers. Facing this man’s stare was no threat to him.

Jonas smiled, breaking the Mexican-standoff ice. “That’ll be an interesting conversation,” he said.

“Everyone talks about this Blake like she’s … I don’t know what. She must be some piece of work.”

Jonas massaged his temples. “Look, Matthews. I have no love lost for Dwayne Thompson. He’s a reprehensible human being. Using him as a state’s witness isn’t my idea of good jurisprudence. That’s off the record,” he said hastily.

“Fine by me,” Wyatt answered him. “I’m not after you. I want to find out whatever I can about Dwayne Thompson, and where he might be dirty.”

Jonas leaned back, eyes ceiling-bound. He has something to tell me, Wyatt thought, looking at the man’s body language, and he’s trying to decide whether or not he should.

The warden made up his mind. “Has Dwayne Thompson had access to a computer since he’s been down there?” he asked Wyatt.

The question caught Wyatt completely by surprise. “A computer? In the jail?”

Jonas nodded. “Dwayne Thompson is a computer virtuoso. He got a college degree in computer science while in prison, and he was the residential computer pro here for years. He used to run our law library’s computer program; he even wrote his own programs. He was the most valuable inmate in the prison system.”

“Dwayne Thompson? A computer whiz?”

“Don’t let his looks deceive you,” Jonas warned. “He has a near-genius IQ. If he had any social or emotional skills, he’d be a force to reckon with in the real world. But he doesn’t, so he’s only a force to be reckoned with in this constricted world.”

Wyatt took a shot. “Is he a hacker?”

“The best,” Jonas said grimly. “Which is why he is denied any access to computers in here anymore. We found him manipulating the system in a major, major way.”

“How bad?”

“Getting into inmates’ files and rewriting them. Changing sentences, release dates. We let two hard-core cons out early because of Dwayne’s hacking.”

“You’re kidding!” Wyatt couldn’t contain himself. “I can’t believe what you’re telling me.”

“This is a huge institution, Mr. Matthews. There’s no way we can keep on top of everything. So we did the next best thing—we cut off Dwayne’s access, like I said. For the past two years he hasn’t been allowed anywhere near a computer. No law library, nothing.”

“Isn’t that illegal?” Wyatt asked. “To deny an inmate access to the legal system?”

“The law doesn’t say we have to give him computer access. We bring him books.” He smiled grimly. “He took us to court on it. Fortunately, we prevailed.”

“This woman Blake. Is it possible she could have given Thompson confidential information?” Wyatt asked. “That would have helped him?”

The warden shook his head emphatically. “No. We had to check that possibility out, so we looked into that—thoroughly. She had no access to the files. It would have been completely impossible.”

“Had to ask.”

“I understand.”

He escorted Wyatt to the front entrance. “Thanks for your help,” Wyatt said, shaking the warden’s hand. “You were more helpful than you had to be. And don’t worry,” he added, “I’m not interested in subpoenaing you.”

“Thompson’s a piece of shit,” Jonas said contemptuously. “That he can help convict another piece of shit doesn’t mitigate his worthlessness.”

“About Doris Blake,” Wyatt began. “I’d appreciate it if—”

“I’m not going to call her and warn her off,” Jonas said, anticipating the question. “She’s made her bed, so to speak, and she can take … whatever comes. It’s a shame,” he continued. “When you meet her, you’ll understand.”

“So you’re saying they were lovers,” Wyatt pressed.

The warden paused. “I don’t know what was really going on between Thompson and Blake. Maybe nothing more than a wily con being friendly to a woman who has no male friends. Looking back, I should have done something, gotten her some counseling. But by then she was gone, and the problem didn’t exist anymore, since they were physically separated.” He shrugged. “This is a maximum-security prison. Every prisoner in here is hard-core, a threat to society who has to be closely watched around the clock. In other words, we’re up to our ass in alligators. We have enough trouble here without manufacturing more.”

Wyatt was in a state of quiet ecstasy as he cruised down the interstate toward home. What a day this had been! He kept asking himself, over and over again: How could Dwayne Thompson have gotten access to a computer in the county jail, and more importantly, what could he have done with it if he had?

Doris Blake, former Durban prison guard, now a ranking officer in the sheriff’s department, was the key.
If
she was in a relationship with Thompson,
and
had fed Thompson information,
and
he, Marvin White’s lawyer, could figure out how—it would be adios Alex Pagano, hasta la vista Helena Abramowitz, sayonara Dwayne Thompson. Say good night to your case against my client, Marvin White.