Lake Charles (8 page)
A short while later I sat on a bunk, hugging my knees, before I fell into a trancelike rocking. Echoes clanged off the hard prison walls. Light through the cell’s front bars striped me in zebra shadows. The stink of Pine Sol and urine sickened me. A nearby cough surprised me, but my shouted “hey, yo!” got no response, so I went back to my rocking.
Sheriff’s Deputies Wines and Ramsey had booted me into this shark cage, and left for the Elks Lodge to tie on a beer buzz. The next duo of sheriff’s deputies slated to take a whack at me hadn’t yet polished off their drip coffee and Krispy Kremes. Tired, I flumped back on the bunk too hard for sleep and tried to piece together last night. If only I’d planned my strategy at the motel instead of rushing out to call the sheriff. I bolted up from the bunk, paced three steps ahead, pivoted, and took two baby steps to the wall. The white blitz of images hurtled by in me. Okay, channel it, Brendan.
I saw Ashleigh and me in her red Jaguar skidding into the Chewink Motel’s parking lot. Right, sure. I remembered “OFFI’E” and “VA’AN’IES” sizzled on the orange neon signboards. What did I smell once out of her Jag? Quince in bloom spread the grapy aroma. Details, my man. Bury these peckerwood sheriff’s deputies in an avalanche of the details. What came next?
I skulked into the motel office. Again, what smells? Liver and onions had been sautéed on a hotplate or a Sterno can. Damn, I was getting good at this. I’d looked behind a waist-high beaverboard counter. More details. The signs of habitation included a cigarette butt left smoldering in an empty tuna fish can, a plastic spoon stuck in a cottage cheese tub, and a fizzy, half-empty bottle of Tab diet soda.
I cadged a complimentary green matchbook with a gold bird icon from the Bell canning jar. Later we’d use the matches to light our spliffs. My fingertip tapped the stem to the gizmo that dinged a bell. Nobody came out. Wrong signal, so I did two bell rings. No response prompted me to tap out a series of bell rings.
A chunky woman knotting the belt to her fuzzy bathrobe hulked in the rear doorway. “You ring once. I’m a one-woman crew, and I can’t run as fast as most can.”
“Sorry, lady. You got a room?” I asked.
“Surely and it’s Mrs. Cornwell to you.” Her lumbering steps halted at the counter. “I just accept cash. No checks or plastic.”
“I’ve got the money.”
“Single or double? Smoking or nonsmoking?”
“Double,” I replied. “Smoking will do.”
“With tax, that’s forty-four dollars,” she said without a trace of humor.
“That’s kind of steep, isn’t it?”
“What say?” She canted an ear at me. Seeing the wires to her hearing aid, I repeated it, only louder. She leaned her pudgy forearms on the counter edge. Slivers of coppery hair framed her meaty face. The five-and-dime store glasses dangled on a bead chain at her neck, and her smile turned mercenary.
“Let me guess. Your hot-to-trot filly sits out in your ragtop, but you’ve nowhere to race her except in the rear seat. Only your filly won’t have any of that. She has some class. Now here you be, your conundrum for me to solve. So, using my racetrack will run you forty-four dollars.”
“Fine, you leave me no choice.” I culled out two twenties and a ten to stack on the countertop. “I’m in a rush. Keep the change.”
Mrs. Cornwell scooped up the three bills to fold and tuck under her watchband. “Unit Seven will get you to heaven,” she said, flicking a room key at me. She cackled at her double entendre or my dour frown. I cut out of the lobby back to Ashleigh in her red Jaguar. Too amped, I couldn’t fit the key into the door lock. She did it. We reeled inside the sin pit, shucked down, and set the sheets on fire …
Moaning, I sat on the bunk. No, in retrospect, our sex wasn’t that memorable. Our mad dash to the finish tape had to be kids’ stuff. I ran out of gas, crashed, and we fell asleep, hers a permanent one. When had she died? Scarier even, who’d brought in the angel dust? Who administered it to her? Big gaps broke up my memory. Filling in the big gaps was sure to make my life into a living hell.
* * *
The clack of metal on metal startled me. Keys twisted and doors dragged. Hearing the shoes scuffle heightened my awareness. My heart thudded behind my eyes focusing on a pair of men watching me behind the zebra stripes. One was a uniformed meatball, and the civilian came in woodsy Eddie Bauer.
“Is this the punk ass?” asked the civilian through his Van Dyke beard. Gray eyes alit on me as his fingers combed down the beard. His droopy lower lip quivered as if something mean and nasty gave him a hard on.
“Ready and waiting, Mr. Sizemore,” replied the sheriff’s deputy, a big fan of the Krispy Kremes Club.
“You got no confession yet, eh?”
“Not yet but we’re softening him up for you.”
“Much obliged.” Sizemore jerked a hand. “Cuff his ass.”
Eager to please, the sheriff’s deputy tromped into my prison cell and manacled me to the bunk’s steel frame before I could react. “Just bang his skull on the wall if you want out.”
“If anything is left, I’ll do that.”
“He’s all yours. There’s no hurry. His bail hearing isn’t until Tuesday.” The sheriff’s deputy stitched on a sadistic leer before he turned and huffed down the hallway.
Ralph Sizemore, Ashleigh’s angry father, poured through my cell door. I coped with the same meltdown of fear as the residents at Three Mile Island must have on that scary day last March.
“You’re my little girl’s killer.” His eyes skittered left to right. We had no eyewitnesses here.
“Look, I only reported her death. It’d be stupid for me to kill her and then tip off the authorities.”
“Nice try but I’m a trial attorney.” He hulked inches away from me, and I recoiled from the whiskey rancid on his breath. “You phoned the sheriff to make it look good, but I can see through it.”
My babbling was uncontrollable. “Some physical evidence is there to prove my innocence. Fingerprints were left on the doorknob maybe.”
“You wiped down Room 7.”
“I did no such thing. I woke up, and Ashleigh was dead. I made a beeline to the phone outside and notified the sheriff. It even cost me two dimes. I returned and waited until the law showed and pounded on the door.”
“Touching. Why didn’t you fetch an ambulance?”
“I thought of it, but she’d been a goner for a while.”
His lip quivering, he tugged out a palm sap from his hip pocket. “I won this in a stud poker game at Fort Hood.” He gave the palm sap a practice swing and grinned like a giant raptor down at me.
I shifted, the handcuffs biting into my wrist.
“Better say your prayers.” He stepped into me, his arm slinging the palm sap with his weight hefted behind its swat.
I grunted at the monster pain exploding in a galaxy of pinwheels behind my eyes. The harder blows pummeled me. Maybe I heard a snicker. Then it was lights out. My splashdown into the inky black ocean of unconsciousness didn’t resurface to daylight.
No, I weathered a concussion in a Yellow Snake hospital bed. It was some hours before I saw daylight again. At an agonizing turn in the bed, I spotted the two shiny dimes left on the bed table. I’d had a visitor. He’d reimbursed me for the phone call I’d made to report his daughter’s death to the sheriff. I didn’t appreciate his perverse sense of humor.
Against all odds, I bonded out of the Yellow Snake prison with Herzog as my counsel. First, the intern doctor discharged me with a whopping bill, and I arrived early at the Yellow Snake courthouse for my bail hearing. A nickel-plated bracelet hogtied my wrists. A bulkier one reduced my ankles to an old man’s waddle. A belly chain jangled around me modeling the penal orange. A furtive peek at the courtroom’s Peanut Gallery revealed we played to a packed house. Pain ravaged my swollen head, and my lower back muscles felt tied in knots from the tension.
Sheriff’s Deputies Ramsey and Wines deposited me to sit at the defense table. A brass desk lamp illuminated it. Herzog wore his customary ashen gray poplin suit and hangdog look. Neither inspired a lot of confidence in me. Waiting, I sized up the oak jury and witness boxes before the elevated bench—they all looked empty as a coffin, me soon to fill it.
“What happened to your head?” asked Herzog, seeing my lumps.
He was my lawyer and didn’t know of my concussion and hospital stay? “I tripped on a bar of soap in the shower. That’s the official reason. Anyway, did Mama Jo and Edna ride up with you?”
“Yes, they’re sitting three rows back. Don’t gawk at them. Exercise some restraint.” He made a fussy adjustment to his necktie’s knot.
“Did Cobb and his dad Jerry come?”
“Yes, I topped off my tank at Kuzawa’s A-frame, and we rode together. He shared his ultra-liberal politics with me. He’s opinionated.”
“He’s a warrior,” I said, proud to defend Jerry Kuzawa before a fear hit me. “Did the guards screen you with metal detectors?”
Herzog blinked. “Why should they?”
Sweat oozed under my orange jumpsuit. “Cobb and Mr. Kuzawa strap Glocks. I guarantee it. I just hope this deal goes in our favor.”
“They brought Glocks into a court of law?” Herzog massaging his temples sighed. “This is bad—very bad.”
“Maybe not so much,” I lied. “We’ll see.”
“At any rate, your muster of support is impressive. Your popularity, however, doesn’t ensure your freedom. Do everything I tell you.”
“I got you. Who is this judge?”
He crooked a finger behind his necktie and loosened it. “Judge Yarrow has the reputation of a maverick. She always speaks her own mind.”
That didn’t bode well for us. “Did you say you’ve defended a murder case?” I asked him.
“Um, well, I . . .”
“All rise. Court is in session,” said the bailiff.
He prodded me in the ribs, my cue to stand. The punctual judge sashayed through a portal door marked as “Private.” She hitched the folds to her black robe, and I saw her red sneakers climb the carpeted steps to the dais. She liked comfort over formality. Judge Yarrow was also a fright. Her face was a peened triangle of tin. My closer look saw her scar tissue came from old second-degree burns. Despite confined by her court’s chains, I felt sympathy for her.
“Be seated and quit ogling,” he told me. I resented his bossy attitude.
“Just mind your shit, and I’ll watch mine.”
“Counselor,” said Judge Yarrow, cutting our sidebar short. “Is your client prepared to post bail at this time?”
His chair scraped over the floor as he arose. “Good morning, Your Honor. Yes, he is.”
Judge Yarrow’s stare gravitated from him to me. Fright welled up behind my breastbone. “Have you run afoul of the law before, Mr. Fishback?”
“Nope,” I replied.
Her frown stamped the crow’s-feet at the corners to her eyes and lips. He leaned to me, his whispering mouth at my ear. “It’s ‘No, Your Honor.’”
“Now you tell me.” I looked back at her. “I mean no, Your Honor.”
“That’s infinitely better. How do you plead on the count of first degree murder?”
“Not guilty.” He elbowed me, a not-so-subtle reminder on courtroom etiquette. “Your Honor,” I added.
“Do you deny Ms. Sizemore died in that sleazy motel room?” Judge Yarrow’s scars compressed into a truculent glare.
“Ashleigh was still breathing when we fell asleep, Your Honor.”
“No doubt she was. Are you mocking the Court?”
“Your Honor, permit me to clarify,” said Herzog. “Mr. Fishback means Ms. Sizemore had no reason to fear for her safety. After all, they were friends.”
“It seems to me they were more than friends.” Judge Yarrow’s scowl berated him as I heard a titter circulate through the Peanut Gallery.
Things had already run to shit. Bail was a pipe dream. Judge Yarrow the maverick had all but shipped my ragged ass back to the jug. Resigned to my fate, I listened in on Herzog.
“They both indulged, and it was consensual. He didn’t force her to go there.”
“How do you know? Were you also in the room?” Judge Yarrow sounded more clipped and impatient.