by Tom Swyers
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Yeah, pretty sure.”
“That’s nuts.”
“That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Hypothetically, what would you say if I told you that he thinks he may have killed that police officer after all?”
“Right, and I murdered the Pope. So he killed that cop and they just let him walk? He’s nuts, I tell you. The entire place here is nuts. I think I’m going nuts.”
“Don’t let them take you too, Johnny. It isn’t worth it. It isn’t too late for you to get out and find another career.”
“I’ve got too much invested in this to just walk away.”
“You be careful, Johnny.”
“Yeah, I hear you.”
“Have you heard anything more about Edith Nowak?”
“Nope.”
“What do you know about her?”
“She’s single, lives alone around here somewhere.”
“Did her husband predecease her or something?”
“Never married. I saw a picture of her in her desk and I can see why. Fell outta the ugly tree and hit every branch on her way down.”
“No family, then?”
“She evidently has a daughter.”
“Really? How do you know?”
“I saw some pictures of them both in her desk drawer. My guess is that the girl’s her daughter. She looks so much like Edith.”
“How old would you say the supposed daughter is in the photo?”
“I’m not sure. I’d guess mid-twenties. You know, she doesn’t look too much younger than her mom—she’s the spitting image of her too.”
“Who’s the father then?”
“Who knows? Maybe she’s adopted?”
“Or maybe this Boris Dietrich guy is the father.”
“Yeah, whoever the heck he is.”
“She knows Boris Dietrich. That’s for sure. There’s copies of letters from her to him dated in the 1990s.”
“What do they say anyway?”
“She says over and over how she loves him and wants to marry him like he promised her.”
“I still don’t get the connection between this guy Dietrich and Phillip Dawkins. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe these letters were just misfiled in a file with Dawkins’s name on it.”
“I suppose you might be right, but something is going on here. You have to admit it, Johnny. Dawkins and I are being targeted.”
Johnny sighed. “Yeah, you’re right.”
“How old do you suppose Edith is?”
“She looks young in the pictures. I’ve never seen her before. She worked in the administrative building. Not a place I’d go in making my rounds.”
“Younger than fifty-five?”
“For sure.”
”That’s odd then, unless the photo you saw was old.”
“How so?”
“I thought the earliest she could retire as a New York State employee would be fifty-five.”
“Maybe so, but you can take an early retirement if you know you’re going to die.”
David’s eyes popped and his heart pounded. It was beginning to add up. Edith’s abrupt and early retirement was likely because she was going to die. The clock was ticking now. David knew he had to see her before she passed on and, for all he knew, she could die any time—she could be dead already. She was the only one who definitely knew Boris Dietrich and how he might be tied to Phillip. David knew that if she died before he talked with her, she’d take that secret to her grave. If that happened, David saw the writing on the wall: Edith would seal his fate and Phillip’s too. And they’d be the next ones in line to die.
Chapter 15
After David visited him to retrieve the vitamins and the radio that morning, Phillip went back to bed to stare at the ceiling. He couldn’t imagine what his friend wanted with the only two things he had carried out of Kranston besides the clothes on his back.
He hadn’t slept last night, but it wasn’t because of the State Police raid on his shop. After about a half hour, the shock and terror of the raid became yesterday’s news to Phillip. There might be a twenty-four-hour news cycle on the outside, but in Phillip’s head and in solitary the cycle was more like twenty-four minutes. In Kranston, there was no point in dwelling on yesterday’s calamities because the next day always brought a new set of challenges to face. Sure, Phillip knew he could have been killed during the raid. But woulda died, shoulda died, and coulda died had been on his daily menu for thirty years. The raid was now nothing more than a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that was the unfinished picture of Phillip’s life.
Staring at the pattern of cracks in the motel ceiling, Phillip daydreamed about his past in solitary. Long-forgotten events swam to the surface, but he felt like he was experiencing them for the first time, or like they were someone else’s memories. Yet he believed they really were his because they all felt right, and they meshed well with his core memories—the ones he knew were true to him.
Phillip worked to dredge up more recollections about his life in solitary. It wasn’t nostalgia that drove him. He was trying to imagine what his life would be like once the system realized its error and stuck him back in the box. He knew that he was the one who killed Officer Pete Carlson. That hadn’t changed since the raid. If anything, he was more confident than ever that he was the killer.
Digging back into his mother lode of thirty years of tribulations, he recalled a sweltering hot summer day in 1990. For no apparent reason, two COs showed up at Phillip’s cell. “Put on your shoes, Dawkins, and let’s get you cuffed up. You’re going to see Superintendent Kleinschmit.”
Phillip recalled his surprise at the sudden meeting. It didn’t usually work that way. If the superintendent wanted to talk to you, he’d stop at your gate during his weekly rounds. You’d chat with him and every con or CO within earshot would overhear it. A private get-together was highly unusual.
One CO put cuffs on Phillip through the meal tray opening. When they opened the cell door, they wrapped him in a waist chain then shackled his legs. Phillip shuffled down the corridor; the clanking of his multiple chains echoed off the walls and floor with each yard of progress away from his cell. As always, his escorts stayed close—one CO at his side, one behind—until they reached the sergeant’s office. Superintendent Kleinschmit was at his ease, sitting on the edge of the desk. The COs set Phillip on a chair, closed the door behind them, and took up guard outside.
“You wanted to see me, Phillip?”
“Yes, Marty—”
“I’ve told you before to address me as Superintendent Kleinschmit.”
“Sorry. Bad habit. I try to call everyone by their first name.”
“Why did you want to talk to me, Phillip?”
“I want to know when I can get out of the box.”
“I don’t know. It’s in the hands of someone in Albany. You’re a central office case and they call the shots.”
“This is crazy. I don’t belong there.”
“You missed the count.”
“I was a few seconds late returning from the yard to my cell. I was new here. There were a bunch of cons in front of me that moved too slowly. I’ve told you all this before—”
“And I’ve told you that the count is king here. You miss it and it’s considered an escape. That’s why the CO wrote you that ticket. If you didn’t like it, you should have appealed it.”
“I didn’t know any better way back then. You know appeals to the hearing officer are a waste of time. They always back the CO. Anyway, I did miss the count. But I wasn’t escaping. I was late.”
“After that, you started acting up in the box. Got more tickets for speaking out of line.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I should’ve behaved better while you were torturing me—”
“Don’t be a wise ass. You were deemed a safety and security risk. You made your bed, you get to lie on it, though I feel bad for you.”
“But you have some say. I mean you as the superintendent know
what’s best for your prison, as far as safety and security goes.”
“Yes, that’s true.”
“So have you asked them to let me out, to give me a chance with the general population?”
“You don’t think I have?”
“I don’t know. Have you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“What did they say?”
“They don’t want to let you out of the box.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t have any idea. They won’t say.”
“I don’t understand. How much longer do you think I’ll have to stay here? I’ve been in the box five years already.”
“Five years is not a lot of time.”
“Maybe not, if you’re looking to do forty, get paid, spend eight hours per day here, and get benefits and a pension. It’s been five years. Do you think it’ll be another five before I get out?”
“No, no. It won’t be that long.”
“What’s Commissioner O’Neil’s problem with me anyway? Cop killers are a dime a dozen in the general population.”
“I don’t know.”
“What can I do to get out of the box? If I follow the rules, it makes no difference.”
“I give you things you want if you follow the rules—a pair of long johns, commissary buys of coffee, some sugar. You wanted special music pumped into your wall headphone jack and I made it happen. I do what I can.”
“And you do a lot, for sure. I don’t know how you can break the directives on my account alone.”
“I’m the superintendent and people respect me. It’s that simple. They know the consequences of failing me here in my house.”
“I appreciate your efforts. I really do. But you didn’t answer my question. I asked what I can do to get out of the box. Why not put me on some performance plan? If I meet certain goals, then you’ll let me out of the box.”
“The system doesn’t work that way.”
“How does it work then? What can I do?”
“Nothing. Just wait. Time changes things.”
“I haven’t noticed any change from where I sit. The faces change every couple of years. But I’m still sitting in the box with no end in sight. Same as it ever was. Have you ever spent time in the box?”
“No, and I’ve never murdered anyone either,” Kleinschmit snapped.
“I think that every CO, prison official, judge, district attorney, needs to spend time in the box. Just a month. If five years is not a lot of time as you say, then a month is nothing. If they’re working the system, let them experience it in all of its glory. Let them go sleepless—cons screaming, crying, pounding on the cell doors. Let them live on the slop they slip us in those Styrofoam trays. Let them smell the body odor, the blood, the feces, the urine, the cleaning chemicals. Let them see the bug-outs 24/7. Why not give them a taste of the medication too? Let them live without natural light, get their days and nights mixed up. No visits from the family. Let them forget, like I have, who they are and where they’ve come from. Let them see inmates cutting themselves just to prove that they’re still alive. Let them see the cons hanging by a bed sheet from the ventilation grates overhead. Watch the corpses gently twist in the air currents like wind chimes. Once they do their month in this hell, then maybe they’re qualified to work in the system.”
Then Phillip’s memory got fuzzy and faded. Still, the part he had just relived felt fresh even though it happened twenty-five years ago. Phillip thought it must have been an important memory because he could recall it after so many years. He figured its importance must have to do with the commissioner.
When he wondered why the commissioner had it in for him, Phillip had asked a loaded question. By failing to dispute the premise that the commissioner had it in for him, Martin Kleinschmit had put a face to his incarceration in solitary. No more blame Albany or blame the central office nonsense. Commissioner O’Neil was the culprit, the guy keeping him in the box, confirming Phillip’s suspicions.
At the same time, Phillip knew he was cornered now. The system was going to get him one way or the other. There was no escape, ever.
He thought he would have a chance on the outside, but he was wrong. Life on the outside, as it stood now, was not an option. The system was going to toy with him before gunning him down—like a cat plays with a field mouse while killing it, slowly, slowly. Phillip lay in awe of the system’s wicked ways. The system knew it couldn’t break him on the inside, so it transferred him to the outside to finish him off. Brilliant.
Instead of wasting him, he thought that the system might decide to lock him up in the box for the murder of Officer Carlson—again. Phillip knew that this time the box would triumph if this option played out. The hope Phillip had nurtured for a better life on the outside or even on the inside with the prison’s general population had given him the strength to survive the torture he had endured at Kranston. But hope had been swallowed whole when he realized the reality of the system’s reach on the outside. The system had trumped the hope in Phillip’s life just as it does for everyone it touches at some point. Without hope, Phillip knew the box would be his coffin in the making.
He thought about fleeing New York to start a new life someplace else. But he realized he’d fail without a support network. People like the Thompsons were like a life jacket to Phillip, keeping him afloat in rough seas. He didn’t know or trust anyone else. He didn’t have the skills to go it alone in a place and time that was still alien to him. His life experience outside of the box was limited. The one time he’d crossed the New York border was a disaster. That was when he was captured in Scranton, Pennsylvania after the murder. Other than this single occasion, he’d never stepped out of New York State his entire life. The apartment in Syracuse, juvenile detention centers, and the state prison system were all he knew. The thought of crossing the state line once more paralyzed him.
Trapped. The walls were closing in on him again; the ceiling was descending; he couldn’t breathe. His relaxation exercises didn’t cut it any more. As hope circled down the drain, he saw his entire life flushed in a flash. Phillip suspected he had to create a viable option on his own, in this situation where none seemed possible. He knew he had to come to grips with his fears before a way out could occur to him. He realized he had to put a face to the system for that to happen. Humanizing the system was his last best hope. And the face of the system could only be Commissioner Edmund O’Neil.
Chapter 16
David tried to locate Boris Dietrich himself, but a quick Google search for his name and a search of the white pages website yielded nothing. At that point, he decided to call his attorney friend, Jim Fletcher, to track down Dietrich. He realized he had too much on his plate to deal with locating both Dietrich and Nowak. Locating the woman before she died needed to be his top priority.
So David told Jim to first contact the Allan Memorial Institute to see if they could provide any information on Dietrich. Then he took the vitamins and the radio that he picked up from Phillip and delivered them to Julius. He begged the agent to have some FBI techies run tests on them. Julius was hesitant, but once David explained that it was a matter of life or death, he grudgingly gave in and said he’d see what he could do.
As soon as David located Edith, he would do whatever it took to talk with her. He was that desperate for answers. He had to solve Phillip’s issues so he could save himself and his family. If he didn’t, he felt it was just a matter of time before Phillip lost control and lashed out at one of them. But locating Edith turned out to be a problem. There were no Edith Nowaks listed in the phone directory in New York State.
Next, David proceeded to call every hospital and hospice in the area to see if Edith was on her deathbed somewhere. But he couldn’t locate anyone registered by that name. Then, he combed through the file that Johnny had given him to find her home address. One of her letters to Boris mentioned meeting her “a few blocks away” at the Hoosick Tavern. On a hunch, he searched for any Nowak in the village of Hoosick
Falls, New York and hit pay dirt. The computer came up with an “E. Nowak” on Church Street.
A phone call out of the blue from some unknown lawyer to Edith wasn’t going to get it done, in David’s estimation. He knew that a face-to-face meeting was his best chance of getting her to talk. So he hopped in his Mustang for the hour-long trip to Hoosick Falls. The tiny burg was located close to the New York-Vermont border and an hour south of Kranston. This person was within commuting distance of Kranston, which made it all the more likely that E. Nowak was Edith.
It was a nice drive from Indigo Valley, once you passed the urban clutch of Albany and the down-at-the-heels sprawl of Troy. Route 7 wended its way past farm fields and budding suburbs interspersed with piney woods on the way to Hoosick Falls. At 11 a.m. the village’s largest employer—a plastics factory—was in mid-shift, so David’s Mustang was the only car motoring on Church Street. David thought there’d be a church on Church Street, but he didn’t spy one. However, he did drive by three of them on Main Street. The churches were the best-looking buildings in the village.
While Church Street didn’t have any churches, it did have two automotive repair garages, a tractor service and sales business, and two convenience stores. Church Street had more active businesses than Main Street did. David thought the two streets ought to switch their names.
The architecture in the village could be politely described as mixed. In the center of this village of thirty-four hundred residents, the storefronts were a mix of businesses, vacancies, and boarded-up buildings. Houses in the nearby neighborhoods ranged from the well-maintained Victorian to a ramshackle farmhouse. Building parcels were of every shape and size. Three things tied the style of all the village homes together: each house sported at least one TV satellite dish, window-mounted air conditioners, and roll-out containers from the same trash company on the curb.
David parked in front of 195 Church Street, the possible home of Edith Nowak. It was a one-story bungalow with a gable over the front porch. The white paint had faded and chipped off, exposing blackish cedar clapboard. The small front lawn didn’t look like it had seen a mower yet this season. Dandelions were in full bloom, the crabgrass was starting to overtake what little grass was left, and fluffy white poplar tree seeds floated in the breeze like snow flurries. Fair weather clouds rolled over the village, lending a genial air as the sun popped out in between them. There was a woman rocking on the sagging porch.