Caged to Kill

by Tom Swyers

  “I’m very worried about Phillip,” Annie said.

  David replied, “Yes, you’ve mentioned that before—”

  “Why doesn’t he reach out to us?” she asked.

  “Maybe it’s for the better,” David said. He saw his opportunity to plant another seed of doubt that he could draw upon later, if needed. “I got the DNA report back from Julius Moore, my FBI contact. He confirmed that Phillip did kill that police officer.”

  “Really?” Christy said.

  “Yeah, really.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Annie said. “I’m still worried about him.”

  “I figured that—”

  “Why do you say that, David?” Annie blurted.

  David’s instinct was to compliment her while defusing her. “Oh, it’s just that you’re such a giving and caring person…”

  “Unless you’re Martin Kleinschmit,” Christy cracked.

  David chuckled. “Yeah, never get on the wrong side of your mother.”

  “So I’ve learned,” Christy said, smiling.

  Annie shook her head with a grin. “You two . . . but I still think Phillip’s a different person than he was thirty years ago. He didn’t kill you, David.”

  “Yes, I can personally attest to that.”

  “You know what I mean. He had those thoughts in his head about killing you—the ones you told us about that were implanted and inflamed by messaging and drugs. Yet he fought them off. He tried to protect you. I think he’s trying to protect you and all of us right now.”

  “Mom makes sense,” Christy added.

  “Yes, she does. That’s why I married her.”

  David’s cell vibrated; he plucked it from his rear jeans pocket and began reading a text to himself. “Oh my God, it’s Phillip!”

  “What does he say?” Annie pleaded.

  “He wants me to meet him tomorrow morning in the Pine Bush at 6:30 a.m.”

  “Is he okay?” Christy asked.

  David’s thumbs were already at work texting him a message. “I’m asking him, right now.”

  “Can we go too, David?” Annie asked.

  David now regretted saying anything about the text. “He sent the text to me. I’m not sure you should go.”

  “Does it say we shouldn’t come?” Annie asked.

  David took a deep breath. “No, it doesn’t.”

  “I want to go,” Christy said. “If he’s hurt, I can treat him. I’ll bring my EMT bag with me. You can’t bring him to a hospital.”

  David hated to admit it, but the kid made sense. Out of the three of them, as someone with emergency medical training, he was the only one who could care for Phillip. If they had to bring him to the hospital, they’d have to identify him. If they lied about his identity, the authorities would find him out soon enough. It would be game over for Phillip and they’d all be caught up in the mess.

  David first needed to find out if Phillip was really hurt before putting his family at risk. If Phillip was in good shape, David would tell Christy to stay home. David picked up his cell, pulled up the contact number for Phillip, and dialed. But Phillip didn’t pick up and he couldn’t leave a message because the voicemail feature still hadn’t been activated.

  Over the next few hours, David continued to frantically text Phillip, but he never got a response.

  “If he’s not responding, he’s probably hurt,” Annie worried.

  “I don’t know, Annie. Maybe he just turned off his cell to conserve his battery or to prevent them from tracking him.”

  “Dad, they can’t track his burner phone. They don’t have his number. He probably paid cash for it.”

  “Yeah, but he doesn’t know that. Phillip isn’t tech savvy and he’s paranoid. But you’re right, you should come if we don’t hear from him by tomorrow morning. Besides, if I have to carry him, I’ll need your help.”

  “Well, if Christy is coming with you, then I’m tagging along too,” Annie insisted.

  David knew he wouldn’t be able to keep Annie home short of locking her in the closet if her teenage son was going.

  The Three Musketeers had been reunited again. One for all, all for one.

  Chapter 34

  Dawn was breaking when David, Annie, and Christy rolled into the Pine Bush parking lot in Annie’s Prius wagon. On the way over, David had kept an eagle eye on his rearview for anyone who might follow them. But there wasn’t any traffic around this early. It was 6:15 a.m., so the parking lot was empty. The visitor center didn’t open until 10 a.m. on Sundays.

  The three of them entered the trailhead at a fast walk. Christy was carrying his EMT bag, just in case.

  “Where is he, David?” Annie asked.

  “He said to meet him near a tree.”

  “There are a lot of trees here, Dad.”

  “Don’t worry, I know the tree. Phillip and I hiked here once, so I know the tree he’s talking about. When we get to the top of this dune, it will come into view.” The text told David to meet Phillip under the pitch pine where they found the baby bird. It was a spot he would always remember.

  The sun popped above the horizon, piercing the morning mist as they reached the top of the dune and stopped to catch their collective breath. Walking in sand, even on a trail, is harder than it looks. As they stood in the stillness a breeze shimmied the blooming lupines in the valley below. The season’s second and final brood of Karner Blues was about to hatch. David looked toward the base of the designated tree, about thirty yards down the trail. But there was no sign of Phillip standing there.

  “Do you see him, David?”

  “No, but I see the tree. Let’s keep walking.”

  As they moved down the dune, the bole of the tree came into clear view. But Phillip was nowhere to be found.

  “What’s that?” Annie asked, pointing to the base of the tree trunk.

  “It looks like there’s a knapsack on the ground, leaning up against the tree,” Christy said. “It probably belongs to Mr. Dawkins.”

  “But where is he?” Annie asked.

  The three of them stood under the tree’s sparse canopy turning in circles, searching in the cover provided by the scrub oak for some sign of him.

  “Phillip!” David whisper-shouted. “Phillip, are you here?”

  But there was no sign of him. The breeze gathered strength into a wind gust. As it blew, the pitch pine branches above them creaked like the worn hinges on an ancient door.

  When the gust subsided, much of the creaking stopped. But above the trio the rasping persisted, like the ghostly sound of a barely moving rocking chair.

  When David looked up toward the source of that sound, he saw a wrapped purple bedsheet suspended from a branch directly above him.

  David backed away to get a better view. The bedsheet was hanging by a rope and swayed in unison with the creaking sound that was now fading. David figured that something was wrapped in the sheet, weighting the rope down, causing it to stretch and creak. Just then, David made out the soles of a pair of men’s shoes hanging above him followed by the shape of lower legs wrapped tightly in that sheet. “Oh my God!” he screamed.

  Annie and Christy looked up and gasped. Something in the shape of a person gently twisted in the dawn air above them.

  Annie rushed into David’s arms. She hid her face in his neck and began to cry. “David, please tell me it’s not Phillip. Please tell me it’s not him.”

  David stared in shock at the figure, and felt moisture began to gather in his burning eyes. His throat closed so tight that he couldn’t immediately answer his wife. He simply wrapped his arms around the most important thing in his life and embraced her.

  As a ride-along volunteer EMT, Christy had been to grisly crime scenes before, but a body hanging in a tree was a first. He ripped open his EMT bag and grabbed his rescue knife—the same knife he used to smash car windows and cut seat belts off crash victims. Within seconds, his lithe young form went into monkey mode scaling the trunk of the tree. When he inched out on the limb
and reached for the rope, he called down, “Dad, can you try and catch it?”

  “I’ll try,” David said, wiping the tears from his eyes. He released Annie and gently moved her out of the way, sitting her down on a fallen pitch pine. She was openly sobbing now. “Hold on a second,” David said, quickly scraping leaves, branches, and pine needles into a pile with his feet.

  “Hurry, Dad! I’m not sure if he’s still alive.”

  “Okay, I’m set. Can you tell if it’s Phillip?”

  Christy started to saw at the rope with his blade. “No, I can’t see his face. It’s blocked by the sheet.”

  David stood on the impromptu brush pile, hands extended up over his head, feet shoulder length apart, looking up at the grotesque shape hanging ten feet above him. Maybe it’s O’Neil? Did Phillip somehow kidnap O’Neil and hang him?

  “Here it comes,” Christy shouted, as the rope fibers frayed and then snapped.

  The body dropped straight down and David did his best to grab it around the middle as it hit the ground. He laid his burden down on the pile of brush as gently as he could and peeled back the sheet around the head.

  “Is it him, David? Please tell me it’s not him.” Annie had her hands over her face and her shoulders shook from the stress.

  David’s face fell as a man’s eyes came into view. They were open, bloodshot red, with no sign of life, looking right through David. Then the rest of his face came into view. “NOOOOO!” There was a hangman’s noose wrapped around Phillip’s neck. “It’s Phillip!”

  “Oh, dear God!” Annie wailed.

  David tucked his fingers under the rope and furiously tugged at the noose, trying to loosen it. Christy scurried down the tree and took Phillip’s hand to check for a pulse. David’s eyes locked on Christy’s but Christy shook his head. They both yanked the noose until it came loose, then pulled it off over his head.

  David put his palm on Phillip’s chest. There was no discernable heartbeat, so he began thrusting it down every few seconds.

  Christy gently touched Phillip’s eyelids, then his jaw, then his neck. Finally he stood up and turned to his father as tears began to slide through the emerging beard shadow on his young face.

  David glanced up at Christy “Come on, Christy. We can’t give up so easily.”

  “It’s no use, Dad—”

  “Why not?”

  Christy wiped his nose with his sleeve. “There’s rigor mortis in his eyes, his jaw, and his neck. He’s been dead for a few hours.”

  David stopped, threw his head back with his eyes closed and fists clenched. He dropped to his knees on the forest floor and let the tears of frustration and sorrow leak onto the hands that were now in his lap.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” Christy whispered. He sat down next to his father and put an arm around his shaking shoulders. Annie stumbled to David’s other side and put her arm around him too. David hadn’t seen her cry so hard since the day her favorite aunt died ten years earlier. The three of them embraced for what seemed an eternity until Christy pulled the sheet back over Phillip’s head.

  David rubbed his eyes and face dry. Then he cleared his throat of gathering anger and spat out, “Those bastards killed him.”

  Annie and Christy exchanged confused glances. “What are you talking about, David?”

  “They tracked Phillip down and captured him. It was them who used Phillip’s phone and texted me last night to come get him this morning. They strung him up; they murdered him. They tried to make it look like a suicide, an accident.” Suddenly, David stood up and scanned the woods and the fields around him. He knew they were somewhere spying on his every move. But there was nobody in sight. The Pine Bush was quiet except for the wind and the birds.

  “Who’s they?” Annie asked.

  “The CIA. That’s what they do, you know. It’s called the Frank Olson treatment. When an operative is of no use to them anymore, they terminate them and make it look like an accident. Look at Martin Kleinschmit. Slip and fall? I don’t think so.” David hated himself for bringing Annie and Christy with him. Now the CIA would know they were all involved with Phillip. The Three Musketeers had all just become potential targets for termination.

  “What do we do now, David?”

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know.” David knew he and his family had left DNA all over the scene. He shouldn’t have cut Phillip down and touched his body. If he had known it was Phillip and was sure that he was dead, David would have just left him hanging there and walked away with his family. He could have reported the accident anonymously. Woulda, shoulda, coulda. But it was too late.

  Christy stood up and went to where Phillip’s knapsack leaned against the trunk of the tree. There was an envelope duct-taped to the side of it. David’s name was handwritten on the front. “Dad, you need to see this. There’s an envelope with your name on it.”

  “Really? Bring it over here.”

  Christy peeled it from the knapsack and handed it to his father.

  David opened the envelope. “It’s a letter to me. It looks like Phillip’s handwriting.”

  Annie sniffled and took a shuddering breath. “Could you read it to us, David?”

  “Okay. Here it goes.” David had no way of knowing that in his goodbye note Phillip had written a manifesto for lost souls.

  Dear David,

  I’m so sorry to leave you and your wonderful family. I didn’t decide to take my life on a whim. It was something I’ve thought about long and hard over the past month. The way I see it, I really don’t have any choice.

  I apologize that you’re finding me this way and for handing you this mess to clean up. I wish I could have somehow done this without involving you. But it seems you can’t clean up after yourself if you take your own life, no matter how much you want to.

  Whoever is pursuing me now has been relentless. I’ve been camped out in the Pine Bush since I left Kleinschmit’s home. I disguised myself as best I could and walked through the woods to the same Stewart’s store on the corner every morning to get the paper. My story hasn’t dropped out of coverage. Every day there’s something about me in the news. A few days ago, I saw a leaflet with my picture thumbtacked to the Stewart’s community bulletin board. Yesterday, when I got to Stewart’s, I saw a black SUV with its emergency lights flashing. I sensed they were getting close. Even if I moved on, it was just a matter of time before they tracked me down and cornered me. I know they wouldn’t stop until they had me, and I could not let them take me alive.

  There is nothing more of any meaning to my current life on this planet. I can’t change what I did to that police officer thirty years ago. It was wrong and I’m sorry. I feel horrible about what I did to him and his family. I’d like to show that I’m not the same man any longer. I’d like a second chance to prove myself. I think everyone should get a second chance. I thought this country was all about second chances. But I guess that idea doesn’t apply to me. I’ll forever be judged by that one day.

  I’m not saying I should be a free man. I did wrong and I understand and accept my life sentence. For me, my second chance was in the opportunity to join the general population. But if by some small chance they took me alive, you know as well as I do that I’d be back in the box, especially now that Kleinschmit is dead. I cannot and will not go back to the box. I know I’d end up killing myself there, if they didn’t kill me first.

  I learned long ago that while I have very little control over my life, at least I have control over my death. You can’t worry about what you can’t control. There’s no point in it. So I’ve been less and less concerned about my life as they have pursued me on the outside of Kranston. Some days I was downright apathetic about my life, and I know you commented about my bad attitude on more than a few occasions.

  Ever since I killed that police officer, I have lost control of my life. You know they put me in a box and tortured me for decades. I guess they figure two wrongs make a right. I died a little every day, inch by inch, and it was constant tormen
t.

  The people who are politically and morally against the death penalty have no idea they live in a state that has something worse than the death penalty. They have a system that tortures its prisoners in solitary until they are either thrown into the streets or they die in prison. The first outcome is downright dangerous to everyone. The second outcome is a waste of resources and a waste of a life.

  THEY SHOULD TERMINATE US INSTEAD OF TORTURING US. The unstated goal of this day-to-day torture is for us to kill ourselves. You know, to do the state a favor. They want us to execute ourselves in our sealed boxes—our coffins—because they can’t do it alone, although they’ve been known to do their best to help out. All this happens while the people on the outside live in ignorant bliss. They believe they live in a state that doesn’t have the death penalty, so they feel good about themselves. This goes on in far too many states today.

  I understand that some prisoners need to be in solitary. Maybe I needed to be in solitary, for a time at least. But as I learned, once I was in the box for me there was no way out.

  As I’ve told you I was not allowed to attend my administrative segregation review hearings. I’m not allowed to have an attorney there either. Under the law, the reviews are supposed to be every sixty days—maybe it’s every thirty days now. It doesn’t matter. They view the review process as a joke because they have skipped doing them altogether recently for long periods of time.

  Now they’ve taken back the bare due process bone they tossed us with these reviews. They don’t follow their own rules. You know, a review every 120, 240, 480 days—it’s all the same to them because they know the results will be the same. They just rubber-stamp my solitary sentence, regardless of whether I’ve been clean of disciplinary tickets for five years or if I’ve had hundreds of tickets. It makes no difference. There is no program designed to reward good behavior with release to the general population.