Suspicion of Vengeance (18 page)

Gail commented on that fact. The guard told her she wouldn't see any population inmates wandering around. This was a maximum security prison, and all one thousand prisoners were on permanent, twenty-four-hour lockdown.

A man proud of his work. He might have given her the tour if she'd asked.

He showed her to a small, narrow interview room and told her to sit on the other side of the desk. It was attached to the wall, and half of it folded down. The guard dropped it into place. Gail waited, staring at a door with a window in it.

A few minutes later she heard the rattle of chains and saw movement through the glass. The door opened and they brought in Kenny Ray Clark. His wrists and ankles were cuffed, and chain clattered on the floor as he walked. He wore blue cotton pants and sneakers. His shirt was the same bright orange she had seen on the death row Web site, a vee of white at the neck. One of the guards pulled out the chair, and Kenny Ray sat in it, leaning a shoulder against the wall. Tattoos of naked women and snakes climbed up his arms and vanished under the sleeves.

He was giving her the same close inspection. She had dressed carefully: a navy pantsuit, flat shoes, and a shirt that buttoned at the neck. No makeup, no jewelry except a watch. Her hair was brushed smoothly behind her ears.

"Hello, Mr. Clark. I'm Gail Connor."

He had to lift both hands to take hers. "Hi. You don't have to call me Mr. Clark. It's Kenny." He turned his head and sniffed through his nose as though he might have a cold.

"I talked to Ruby," Gail said. "She sends her love. She has faith everything will work out for you."

He nodded but said nothing. Hazel eyes stared dully out between ridges of cheekbone and brow. A memory flickered in her mind. "We met when we were kids. Do you remember?"

"Sure. It was at your folks' house. Ruby brought me over there." Kenny slouched further into the chair. "So you turned out to be a lawyer. I'm not surprised. And you have a daughter. Right?"

"Her name is Karen. She's eleven."

"Eleven. Hey. Same number of years I've been a resident of the Hotel FSP." He coughed to one side.

Gail opened her portfolio and rummaged around for the crumpled pack of tissues she had seen among the various junk at the bottom. "Here."

"Thanks." He blew his nose. "I get a cold every winter. Clockwork."

"Will they give you something?"

"By the time they get around to it, I'm over it."

"How are you otherwise? All right?"

"A little tired. They moved me yesterday, so I didn't get my usual beauty nap."

"Moved you? Oh, yes. To Q wing." The other name for it circled in her mind: death watch.

"It's not bad. The cell's bigger. The TV works. But if I want the channel changed, I have to ask the guard to do it. That's a drag."

Gail's ignorance must have been written on her face. Kenny smiled. "The TV is outside the bars. Right now I've got all my other stuff with me, but pretty soon, they'll take it away. My magazines, my photo album, my extra shorts. It's a psychological thing. Cut the ties, get you ready to go. They've got a moke sitting out there twenty-four hours a day, keeping an eye on me, in case I try to off myself before they can do it. I'm not used to so much personal attention. They aren't the same guys as over on G wing. The guards on G wing know me pretty well, and the prison likes to put you with strangers."

She listened with agonized fascination. He leaned on his forearms, and chain rattled across the desktop. "I was about to ask for a new room anyway. Accommodations here aren't the best in the world. In the winter there's ice in the toilet, and in the summer we sweat like pigs. It can be up in the nineties, even at night, but they don't allow fans. The room service sucks, and all the maids look like men. The cell on Q wing is a little warmer. They gave me an extra blanket last night. Another good thing is, there's a friend of mine over there, Lucius Brown. But they're going to kill him next week."

Gail reached into her portfolio. "I— I wrote out some questions for you."

"What kind of questions?"

She opened the folder. "About your background, your family, and so on. I've read the psychological reports and the transcripts from your sentencing hearing, but they don't tell me enough."

"You know my family. Ask Ruby."

"I'd rather hear it from you." She took out six pages held together with a paper clip. "Please finish this as soon as possible. Don't mail it. Denise Robinson says the liaison with her office can pick it up and fax it to me."

Kenny Clark pushed the questions back across the desk. "Not interested."

"What do you mean?"

"I wrote you a letter over the weekend. I want to drop my appeals."

"Why?"

"I guess you got to be in here to understand why."

"You can't do that."

"It's my decision, not yours."

As if she had not heard him, Gail said, "Tina Hopwood wants to testify at your hearing. You can't give up now. You might get a new trial."

"Yeah. Chances are I'd be convicted and sentenced to death like the first time, and here we go again."

"Not if you had a competent attorney. Meadows bungled your defense. You shouldn't be here."

"So what?" He put both hands on the desk, and the chain rattled across the edge. "Don't you know anything? Innocence don't mean nothing. The system don't give a crap. All they care about is, Did the innocent person get convicted according to the rules? If so, he stands a snowball's chance in hell. I know the law, okay? They never admit they made a mistake." Kenny Ray flipped the stack of questions with one finger and sent them into her lap. "Whyn't you go on back to Miami?"

Gail caught the pages before they fell to the floor. "Yesterday you told me to come see you."

"The warden handed me the phone and said call your lawyer."

"I didn't come all this way for you to tell me to turn around and go home."

"If Ruby had wanted to save my ass, she should've hired somebody who knew what they were doing."

Suddenly angry, Gail leaned across the desk. "It's true that I haven't done a capital appeal, but I'm a damned good lawyer. Denise Robinson is guiding me every step of the way."

"Oh, Jesus. Most of those people over there are former prosecutors, don't you know that? They're on the state payroll. I should've fired her too. I'd be better off handling my own damn case."

"It's a little late to start now, isn't it? You're under a death warrant."

"The old reaper gets
all
of us sooner or later. Maybe it's my time."

"I refuse to accept that."

"Christ almighty." He leaned against the wall again and let his head fall back against it. "I'm tired. I'm tired of being in a cage twenty-four, seven. Tired of being in this place. The food is the worst they can get. They make money from what we don't eat, 'cause they sell it for slop to the farmers. They don't allow carbon paper, to keep us from filing motions. That's their game plan, to wear you down, and it gets to a point, you don't care. By the time they take you to death watch and put everything you own out there in the hall, and a stranger watching over you, making notes on when you take a piss and when you fall asleep, you're ready to check out. Some guys are bugged up, and maybe that's a good thing. The prison sends these quack doctors around to say they're sane enough to be executed, and they die laughing."

Gail's words stumbled over each other. "All right. Look, I'm going to try the best I can. Everything that can be done. Denise said— Maybe we can get you resentenced. Not to risk another trial."

"Sure, that'll work. Get me life without parole. They'll make me sign a confession to something I never done. This way the state don't admit they screwed up, and I get to live. What a deal. I won't take it."

They stared across the desk at each other. He took a breath, snuffling again. "You know what my sister said when I called her yesterday from the warden's office? She said, I hope you ask forgiveness for what you done. I hope you find peace. Man. What a shock. I told her, hey. You're not coming to my party next month. How about if you come, Gail? You ever see a man get the needle? They say it don't hurt." He held out his arms, and the chain slid across the desk. Each wrist was enclosed in pitted black metal. He closed his hands tightly. The veins stood out clearly under his tattoos. "They stick one here, one over here."

"Stop it."

"I'm gonna have me some fried eggs and bacon. Hot biscuits. And some fresh-brewed coffee. All we get is stuff that tastes like they washed socks in it. You make sure I get real eggs, not that powdered shit." "I won't let you give up."

"You got nothing to say about it. Would you be a witness? Would you be there?"

"Yes. If you want me to. But it isn't going to happen, so stop whining. We have a lot to do."

He looked at her and shook his head. "You're nuts."

"I promised Ruby."

"Ruby's nuttier than you are."

"If you gave up, it would kill her too."

Head against the wall, Kenny closed his eyes. For a long time he was silent, and Gail could think of nothing to say. When he spoke again the defiance was gone. "What I don't want is, I don't want to think that some miracle will happen and I'll walk out of here a free man. I don't want to start believing that."

"Don't, then."

His eyes came open. He jerked his chin toward the papers. "It would take me past my execution date to answer all them questions."

"Write fast."

"It's hard to write with the pens they make us use. Flex pens. They're a bitch to hold."

"Do you complain about everything?"

"Yeah." He grinned. Gail put her own pen on top of the papers. "Forget it," he said. "They do a strip search before they put me back in my cell, and they'd take it away."

"That's ridiculous. You need a good pen."

"You be sure and tell the warden for me."

"I will."

Kenny's laugh turned into a cough. He took a breath. "Well. What's Tina up to these days?"

"She grooms dogs for a living. Clip 'n' Dip Grooming Service. She bought a house. Her boys are sixteen and fourteen now, doing well in school. She wanted me to tell you she's very sorry."

"A little late for sorrys. That's good about her boys, though. And her house. Yeah, she always wanted a house for the kids. What happened to Glen?"

"She divorced him. He's in prison for armed robbery."

"That's no surprise. Glen was always kind of wild. Well, me too. Young and wild and stupid. I must be stupid to be in here." He smiled, ducking his head to hide the stains on his teeth. "You don't have to agree with me."

Gail returned the smile, then said, "Can we talk about your case now?"

"Aren't you the workaholic? That's okay with me. I'd rather spend the time with a pretty lady than back in my cell. You think I don't remember you, but I do. Always ordering the other kids around. The girl who made up the rules." Kenny Clark's smile told her he meant no offense. "Is Karen as tough as you are?"

"I'm afraid so."

"Too bad you got divorced. I mean, I guess it's too bad. Have you got somebody new lined up?"

"Sort of. His name is Anthony Quintana. He's a criminal defense lawyer."

"Yeah? Is he any good?"

"He's brilliant."

"Is he helping you out? I hope?"

"He gives me advice." Gail forced herself to smile. "We should get started. I need to ask you some things. The first question isn't about your case, but I need to know. Tina Hopwood told me that on the Fourth of July weekend in 1988, you went along with her husband, Glen, to chase some Mexican migrants out of an orange grove. She said something terrible happened that night, but neither of you would talk about it. What was it?"

"I don't remember that."

"You have to be straight with me, Kenny. I don't want any surprises if we get a clemency hearing."

His bony shoulders lifted and fell. "Don't worry, nobody busted any heads. They'd moved into this old vacant house on some guy's property, so we told them to clear out. Except they weren't Mexicans, they were Guatemalans. They got in their car and that's the last I saw of them."

"Whose property was it?"

"I don't know." He added, "I swear."

"All right." Gail clicked her pen a few times, eyes on her notes. "We need to locate new witnesses, people never called before. There has to be someone."

He rolled his head back and stared up at the ceiling. "Check with Lougie Jackson. His house is where I was at after I left Tina's. He had some of his friends over, and they might remember me. My trial lawyer never asked them to testify. I told him to, but he didn't."

"Okay, I'll look for them. Do you know their names?"

"No. Lougie might know. If you can find Lougie."

Gail wrote it down, then said, "The snitch who testified against you was Vernon Byrd. You shared a cell with him. He said you told him about the victim's red underwear and the clock cord around her neck. How could he have known about that?"

"From me." Kenny grinned at the surprise on Gail's face. "I found out from the cops. When they were interrogating me, they gave me a lot of details about how Amber Dodson was killed. I talked to Byrd about it, but I never said I killed her. I never said I stabbed her to stop her from screaming. He made that up. The son of a bitch lied because he wanted to get out of jail. I could have explained that to the jury, but my lawyer told me not to testify. He said the jury wouldn't believe me, and I'd only make it worse."

Gail bounced her pen on her legal pad, thinking of the many ways in which Walter Meadows had screwed his client. "I'm going to find Byrd and talk to him."

"Hold a gun to his head. That's the only way he'll come clean."

"I'll have to buy one. What do you recommend?"

"Hey, I was kidding. Keep away from guys like Vernon. You hear me? Don't make me come after you, girl."

"I hear you." With a smile Gail turned a page in her notes. "You and Amber Dodson were both working at River Pines, but you never met her."

"Never. She was in the office. That was off limits to workers."

"Do you ever recall seeing the developer? His name is Whitney McGrath. Blond hair, good-looking? He'd have been around thirty."