Infinite Hope
Page 3
The voice behind the steel door belonged to the local jailer. He wasn’t one of the Rangers who had been interrogating me. He was from Somerville, where the crime had taken place. At more than six feet tall, he towered over me. He must have weighed three hundred pounds, or so his stature suggested. His uniform fit tightly, his big gut straining the buttons of his shirt. On the top of his head was a large cowboy hat that proclaimed him ready for action.
As the local jailer opened the cell door, Officer Lou Larson made his introduction by roughly grabbing hold of my arm. I remember thinking that he wasn’t going to be easy to get along with. The sun was still shining as we left the building, but I could tell that quite a bit of time had passed since I’d been taken in for interrogation. Larson had pulled his patrol car up to the curb as close as he could get to the front door. Jerking me to the right side of the cruiser, he opened the back door. I slid into the backseat and settled in for the ride to Houston, seventy-five miles away. Officer Larson sped down Highway 290 at what felt like ninety miles per hour.
We arrived at Houston’s Department of Public Safety only to find the parking lot empty. This shouldn’t have been surprising given that it was a Sunday afternoon, but it caught me off guard. Officer Larson spoke through his radio to someone who must have had access to the building. A Ranger emerged to escort me inside. The scene was serious, but I wasn’t nervous. The only reason I was there was because I wanted to cooperate fully with the investigation. I wanted all the authorities to know that. I desired vindication, for the officers and Rangers to acknowledge my innocence after a successful polygraph test. The way I envisioned it, I would pass muster with no problem, everyone would apologize for the inconvenience, and they’d take me home.
A Ranger led me into the room where I would test the ability of a machine to determine if someone was telling the truth. Once in the polygraph room, Officer Larson removed the handcuffs from my wrists in what was likely another police tactic to ease me into some confession, any confession. Operating the machine was a black man who must have been pushing sixty. He greeted me pleasantly. I felt comfortable with him, just as I had with Lieutenant Pearson. I thought that, being black, he would understand my situation—that we always seem to get caught up in the system despite what the evidence shows. I smiled at him as he offered a handshake. “How are you doing today?” he asked as we exchanged pleasantries better suited to a ballpark than the innards of a police station.
He told me his name, and he billed himself as little more than a modest test administrator. I didn’t know at the time that he too worked for the Rangers and that his easygoing approach was part of a larger plan to make me comfortable enough that I might talk.
As the polygraph operator explained the test, his instructions were clear and direct.
“Make sure you respond only with a yes or no answer,” he admonished.
At the Ranger’s request, I sat down in a hard chair that faced a closed door. He attached clips tightly to my fingers and affixed a complex contraption to my chest. His questions were simple and relentless. I was mystified as he continued, asking the same questions in as many different ways as he could.
Q: Were you involved in killings of the Davis family?
A: No.
Q: Were you at the home of the Davis family when they were murdered?
A: No.
Q: Is your name Anthony Graves?
A: Yes.
Q: Is Anthony Graves your name?
A: Yes.
Q: Did you murder the Davis family?
A: No.
As he administered the test, the Ranger had positioned himself behind me, where my peripheral vision could pick up only the slightest glimpse of him. I had wanted to see his reaction as I answered the questions, to gauge whether he believed me or, more importantly, whether the machine did. I heard its clicks and zips and hums as it made its strange recordings.
The test lasted nearly fifteen minutes. I was relieved to be done, to have the questions stop. I hadn’t made any mistakes, answering in a clear yes or no to everything I’d been asked. Now, I thought, these people can apologize and get me back home. During my interrogation at the Washington County Jail, I’d told the police where I was on the night of the murders and who was with me and at what specific times. Curiously, the lie-detector test never addressed whether I had an alibi; it sought only a yes or no, never an explanation. Later, I would recall this as an odd omission, but I would come to realize that no one cared about my alibi, or my fate. They wanted someone to blame, and here I was.
The Ranger removed the clasps from my fingers.
“Well, I can finally go home now,” I said to him with a smile.
He furrowed his brow as the edges of his mouth turned down slightly. “Not so fast,” he said. “You didn’t pass the test.”
“How did I not pass the test?” I asked in disbelief.
“You failed, son.”
My heart sank. I’d come to Houston eager to prove to the Rangers I was telling the truth, but I quickly realized they were not interested in the facts. I would understand later that the test had been a sham, designed to manipulate me into making a false confession. Their past experience in law enforcement had taught the officers that if I believed I had failed a lie-detector test, I might be more likely to tell the Rangers what they wanted to hear.
On cue, it seemed, the Rangers seized their chance. Six uniformed agents piled into the polygraph room, like ants pouring from a newly kicked cone. They escorted me into another room. There, they became aggressive.
I was seated at a large steel table in a room just big enough to accommodate the Rangers surrounding me, who demanded that I admit my involvement in the crime. From every angle, officers charged in and out of my personal space, one getting so close I could feel his breath on my skin. Up to that point, I’d been composed. Finally, I broke, tears of frustration rushing uncontrollably down my cheeks. It was at this point that Ranger Miller, one of the authorities who had driven down separately from Brenham to the Houston facility, instructed the others to leave the room.
“I just want to have a little private conversation with Mr. Graves,” he told them. I would later come to recognize his maneuver as part of the Good Cop, Bad Cop routine frequently dramatized in the movies. In this song and dance, one officer uses scare tactics to shake your resolve and frighten you. Another pretends to come to your rescue, swooping in at the last possible moment to relieve the manufactured tension.
“I drove all the way down here just so I could talk with you, Graves,” he said, summoning a friendly and understanding demeanor. The change in tone was a welcome respite, but again, it was just part of the game. Later I would see it as an effort to solicit my gratitude by confessing.
By then I was confused, shaken by their tactics, and visibly distraught. The tears that covered my face weren’t just in response to the trauma of that interrogation. They were, in part, a delayed response to Officer Larson’s manhandling. When the officers came into the polygraph operator’s room after the test, Larson had grabbed me by my right arm and twisted it so far behind my back, I thought he was going to break it. I was literally on tiptoe trying to ease some of the pain as he ushered me forcefully out of the room. Then, too, Ranger Miller had appeared out of nowhere to interrupt Officer Larson’s aggressive tactics. I was angry that they were treating me like a guilty man, like they truly believed I’d committed that heinous crime. My mounting disorientation gave Ranger Miller the slight opening through which he jammed his oversized cowboy boot.
“Graves, let’s try to do this again,” he said in a reassuring voice. “Listen, son, you are in serious trouble here, and I want to help you. But you have to cooperate with me. Just tell me what Carter did.”
“I don’t know what he did because I wasn’t there,” I said yet again, fighting a sense of despair. I felt like I was banging my head against a wall.
“You’re just going to let him get away with putting everything on you?” he asked.
“Sir, I don’t know why this man lied on me,” I started. “I don’t know anything about this crime, and quite frankly, I’d rather you caught the person who did that to those people.”
After a while, with Good Cop Miller’s attempts to pull a false confession out of me yielding nothing new, some of the other Rangers, including Ray Coffman, the lead investigator on the case, returned to the room.
My interrogation lasted well into the night; it was nearly two in the morning when they finally relented. I had eaten nothing and had only a few sips of water, and nothing was ever offered since I’d arrived for another round of police tactical maneuvering. They wanted me weak to break me under their pressure. Ranger Coffman walked up to me and looked me in the eyes. “Graves,” he declared, “I don’t believe you did this. But if you don’t give me anything on Carter, then we’re going to put this whole thing on you. And if you’re telling the truth, then don’t let no grass grow on your grave.” I wondered if he appreciated the irony of his words.
“I don’t know anything about this crime, and I don’t know this man,” I repeated.
“Have it your way, Graves,” Ranger Coffman said. “Go ahead, Larson. Take him back and lock him up.”
AUGUST 23, 1992:
BURLESON COUNTY JAIL
INSTEAD OF GOING BACK TO the Washington County Jail in Brenham, I was taken to a different jail in Milam, a neighboring county about sixty miles north of my hometown. Officer Larson only knew one speed, and he drove it on our way north.
When we arrived, I immediately asked to use the phone. I knew my mom was probably out of her mind with worry. Officer Larson gave the on-duty local officer the OK for me to make a call. I felt an instant sense of relief hearing the phone keys beep as I pressed each number.
“Hello?” she answered wearily, since it was after 3 a.m., and she was worried sick about me.
“Hey, it’s me,” I said.
“Boy! Where in the world you at?” Her voice held a combination of panic and relief.
“These police got me in some small town in Milam County,” I explained. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
“What? Why in the hell are they arresting you?” she asked, her voice rising. She wasn’t making me feel any better, but I didn’t expect her to. I could feel the tension rising in my own voice as I told her what I had gathered from the day’s events. “They say that Cookie’s husband said I did the crime in Somerville with him,” I told her.
“You don’t even know him,” she said, the same response I’d given under questioning by the police.
“I know, Momma. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell them. They had me in Houston all day asking me about this crime.”
“You don’t even know Bobbie and ’em!” she yelled, referring to the Davises. “Why would that boy put you in this mess?”
I didn’t know, and I didn’t know what to tell her. All I knew, from what I could piece together from the various Rangers grilling me, was that Robert Carter had decided to lie. The reality began to hit me that I was going to have to spend at least some time in jail while the mess got sorted out. It was hard to accept that someone’s lies alone were enough to hold me there.
My mother tried to reassure me. She believed, like me, that the Rangers couldn’t pin a crime on me that I knew nothing about. They certainly wouldn’t be able to do it on the word of Robert Carter alone. Perhaps my mom had convinced herself of that over the course of what had to have been a very long day, carrying over to the darkest hours of morning. I’d learn that her neighbor Mike had told her what happened. She had gone so far as to call the police station in an effort to find out what was going on. I wasn’t surprised to learn that they wouldn’t tell her anything.
“Man, Momma, this is a crazy nightmare,” I said. I asked about Yolanda. Mom told me she hadn’t seen her. And then our time was up.
“Hopefully this will all be over by tomorrow,” I said. “I’ll call you the first chance I get.”
“All right, son,” she replied, her voice trembling. “Don’t you worry. They can’t put nothing on you like this.”
A jailer escorted me to an empty cell, closed off from the rest of the facility. There were other cells, communal cells, even, where people waited together for their appearances in court. But again I found myself in solitary confinement; a steel door closed behind me with the pan lid covered so that I couldn’t look out. It was almost dawn. I sat there with only my thoughts, a thin blanket, and a plastic pillow, trying to make sense of it all. But I was too physically and mentally exhausted to make much progress.
Eventually I drifted to sleep on the butcher-block bed. A few hours later, a jailer and a jail trusty woke me up with breakfast. Trusties, also known as porters, are inmates assigned various tasks along the jailhouse runs, the walkways that stretch in front of a row of cells. It’s considered a privilege to be able to mop, sweep, and buff these runs, partly because of the freedom of movement it provided and partly because everyone could see you move around while they were locked in their cells with no place to go. In some jails, the trusties look out for other inmates, helping them pass notes and such. This particular trusty asked if I wanted a broom and mop to clean out my cell. His question suggested that he thought I might be there long enough to call the place home. I had no such plans.
“Nah, man, I don’t need that,” I told him. “But say, could you ask the jailer if I could use the phone?” The trusty didn’t seem interested in my question, so I asked another.
“Any chance you can let me have a cigarette?”
“Let me see if I can find you one,” he said. “But I’m not supposed to give you nothing.” He leaned closer as his voice dipped to a whisper. “Look, dude. I don’t know what you’ve done, but they told us not to talk to you and not to pass you anything.”
I wasn’t sure how to take his response. Why were they keeping me in isolation?
“I’ll try to get you one,” he continued. “But don’t let them catch you smoking it.”
I thanked him as I noticed a jailer approaching my cell. I called out to him about needing a phone.
“Sure, I’ll get it back here for you,” the jailer told me.
Fifteen minutes passed before the trusty returned with a cigarette and slid it through the small slot in my door. He was discreet as he gave me a light. I took the cigarette between my fingers and brought the stiff paper end to my lips. I puffed once and inhaled deeply.
“Thanks, man,” I said. “I appreciate this, big time.”
“No problem,” he said with a nod before making a quick exit, not wanting to be seen talking with me. Hours passed as it became clear that no one was going to bring me a phone.
I was growing increasingly frustrated and angry. I wanted to talk to my mother again; I needed to vent about this situation that I had to believe would be straightened out at any moment. But a few hours later—and still with no phone call home—an officer came to move me to another jail. My situation seemed only to be getting worse.
At the new jail, I was put in the showers for sanitizing, and as I undressed, the officers asked to take all my clothes. Apparently they wanted to test what I was wearing for traces of evidence connecting me to the murders, despite those horrific events being more than five days ago now. I gave them all I was wearing, as I would do anything to help them solve their case and get me back home. After the shower that did little to make me feel clean, I was given a new uniform. It looked like a Halloween costume. They’d scrapped the traditional black-and-white stripes in favor of an orange getup. The black letters across the back told everyone that I was a ward of Burleson County, which is where I was headed, apparently.
“We’re transporting you to another jail,” Officer Larson explained, his tone no different than it had been the day before. “It won’t take us but thirty minutes.” I wondered to myself whether tho
se thirty minutes took into account Officer Larson’s now notorious driving. He slapped handcuffs to my wrists, their grasp tightening with each click, then collected my personal property from the main desk and stuffed it in a bag, escorting me back to the same police car I’d gotten acquainted with the night before. It was another sunny day, hot, as if the Texas summer was making its last stand. All I could think about was going home. I didn’t know where I was being taken, or why, but I was hopeful that the mess would be sorted out that day. Looking back, I find it remarkable that it still hadn’t occurred to me that I should have an attorney. It may sound naive, but I still believed my innocence would be enough to see me through.
The Burleson County Jail, located in the town of Caldwell, looked like an old Victorian-style house and was the old Caldwell jail. Off-white stone rose high above the ground, culminating in rounded pillars like those of the state’s famous painted churches. Meals were cooked in a small adjoining house and walked over to the jail by the jailer on duty. The day we arrived, the gravel parking lot was mostly empty. Officer Larson led me inside to the head jailer.
“Here’s Graves,” Larson said. “All you have to do is book him in and place him in his cell.” I couldn’t help thinking that he had described me like a dog being dropped off for boarding by someone about to go off on a weekend getaway. I followed the new jailer into what might have been a front living room but served as the booking office. A surge of voices collided with a clanging sound, disrupting the silence. I traced the source of the noise to the loudspeakers in the office. I realized that I was hearing a mass of jumbled conversations coming from different jail cells. It was hard to make out what the inmates were saying. It was even harder to determine which cells the noises were coming from.
The booking formalities done, the jailer placed me in cell number 2. Though the jail was small, it was packed. It felt like a scene from a high school cafeteria, with each person outshouting the next until the noise reached an indecipherable buzz. Adding to this commotion was a television, way down the hall, and a loud fan that rattled helplessly against the oppressive August heat.