by Craig Larsen
“Has he been seen by a doctor?” Nick asked the officer on his way back out through the jail.
The officer shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know anything about that, sir.”
“Has he been like this for long?”
The officer didn’t acknowledge Nick’s question.
A few hours later, Nick was on Highway 18 in Wisconsin, skirting the edge of Madison, keeping the white Ford Taurus he had rented at the airport in Milwaukee at a steady seventy-five, heading for the prison at Boscobel.
It was a bright autumn morning, and the trees along the highway were laced with gold. This was the first time Nick had been back to Wisconsin since he had followed Sam to Seattle over a decade before, after his parents had died. Nick’s thoughts, though, were elsewhere. As he made the turn from Highway 12 onto Highway 18 through Madison, something in the back of his mind was troubling him. Something particular about Henry Dean in his cell in New York. Something Nick had seen but couldn’t quite define.
Nick pulled the Taurus to a stop in front of the huge concrete prison at Boscobel just before noon. He glanced down at the green digits of the clock before switching off the engine. He had made good time. He sat for a moment in the driver’s seat, staring up at the looming maximum-security facility. The atmosphere was deceptively peaceful, almost sterile. At last, Nick opened the door onto the newly paved parking lot and stepped from the rental car. A cool breeze touched his face, carrying with it the indistinct sound of a voice issuing commands over the static of an industrial intercom from somewhere behind the prison walls. Nick gathered his jacket around his shoulders and headed for the entrance.
The prison guard who led Nick from the carpeted front offices to the interview rooms was solicitously helpful. “I haven’t had much contact with him myself,” he was saying to Nick. “But from what I hear, he’s been no problem at all inside. Keeps to himself. Doesn’t make no noise. Stays outta trouble.”
“Tell me about the trial,” Nick said.
“What trial?”
“You must have heard about it on the news.”
“There weren’t no trial. Warren pled guilty.”
“I see.” Nick tried to remember what he had read. “I thought the two Gilbert boys were arrested for the murder.”
“That’s almost right,” the guard confirmed, continuing down the wide corridor. “The police thought they killed their parents in their sleep. Like them boys out in California who killed their parents for the inheritance.”
“The Menendez brothers.”
“That’s it, the Menendez brothers. The police didn’t arrest them, though. It didn’t go nearly that far. They found Warren after a day or two, on the street. Wearing some of their clothes.”
“He confessed?”
The guard shook his head. “He didn’t have to. They found his blood in the Gilberts’ house.” They had reached the interview room, a stark, white-walled room furnished with a single table and two metal chairs. “Warren’ll be cabled and locked to this here chair.” The guard pointed at one of the painted gray chairs, and Nick noticed that it was bolted to the floor and a heavy link had been welded onto its sides to accommodate the prisoners’ cables. “Sometimes when they’re with their lawyers, we let their hands free, you know? So they can use a pen or whatever. With the press, it’s different. We leave you alone in the room with them so you can talk, but we keep them cabled.”
A few minutes later, James Warren was led hobbled into the austere room by another guard. His hair had been cropped short, but Nick recognized him from the articles he had read online. He moved as though his limbs were heavy as lead, like he had to control each movement independently. The guard shackled him into the chair opposite Nick.
“I’ll be just outside the door if you need me,” the guard said, straightening back up. “You won’t be able to see me, and I won’t be able to hear you. But I’ll be watching everything that goes on in here.”
When the guard closed the door behind him, its glass panel became a bright mirror, and, catching sight of himself, Nick was surprised by how disheveled he appeared. He had boarded the plane to New York without a change of clothes, and he was dressed in the same jeans he had been wearing for a couple of days now, the same wrinkled shirt. James Warren and he could easily have exchanged chairs.
“Thank you for agreeing to give me this interview,” he began. “My name is Nick Wilder. I’m with the Seattle Telegraph.”
Warren raised his eyes. Nick understood from his expression that the man was perplexed by the distance he had traveled for the story.
“There’ve been a few crimes committed recently,” he explained, “in New York and Seattle, that are pretty similar. Like the one you’re in here for. I’m just following up leads.”
“I don’t remember doing it,” the prisoner said. His voice was sluggish, so deep it sounded like it was being played back too slowly on an old vinyl record.
“You don’t remember committing the murder?”
“I can see the bodies,” Warren said. “But it’s like I’m looking at a photograph. I don’t know. Maybe it was a photograph.”
“Do you think you’re innocent?”
Warren shook his head. He didn’t know how to answer.
“Why didn’t you ask for a trial? Why would you enter a plea if you don’t know that you’re guilty?”
“They don’t try people like me.”
“It’s your right.”
“Do you really believe that?”
Nick looked at the man, struck by his apparent intelligence. “Did you know the Gilberts? Before, I mean.”
“I never saw them once.”
“What were you doing in their neighborhood? Mequon is a pretty wealthy suburb.”
“I don’t know. I don’t remember how I got there.”
“Does this happen to you often? Do you black out like this sometimes?” Nick realized that he was holding his breath. After the blackouts he had himself experienced recently, he wanted to hear Warren’s answer.
Warren didn’t respond. His face had gone unnaturally still. He closed and then opened his eyes. A slow-motion blink, Nick thought.
“Are you mentally ill, James?” Nick asked him.
“You always call me Jimmy,” the prisoner said.
“What?” It felt to Nick as if he had been slapped in the face. “What did you say?”
“You know all this already.”
“Do I know you somehow?”
Warren tipped his head back. “Come here, Doc.”
Nick didn’t move.
“Come closer, Doc,” the prisoner said again, lowering his voice nearly to a whisper. “I don’t want them to hear.”
Nick waited, then rose from his chair and leaned closer to the prisoner. Warren pulled away, drawing him backward like a magnet. “How’d you get those cuts and bruises on your face, Doc?”
“What?”
“Come closer so you can hear.”
Nick moved close enough to smell the man’s sour breath.
“You’re the one who told me to do it.” Warren spoke the words like he was imparting a secret.
“What?”
“Aren’t you, Doc?”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“Come closer. Let me tell you something.”
There was a loud rap on the door’s glass panel: the guard warning Nick to keep his distance from the cabled prisoner. Nick looked toward the mirrored door just in time to catch sight of Warren’s head rushing toward him. He shrank from the man’s teeth, his gaping mouth, but Warren’s head still grazed his own, hammering him in the forehead where he was already bruised. The room was filled with Warren’s unrestrained laughter.
The door swung open and the guard rushed in. “That’ll be enough, Warren,” the guard said, shoving him backward in the chair. “You okay?” he asked Nick.
Nick took a deep, measured breath, shaken. “Yeah,” he said. “Fine.”
“I gotcha, Doc,” Warren said.
>
“That’ll be enough, Warren,” the guard repeated. “The interview’s over.”
“Sorry, Doc. You heard the man. The interview’s over.”
“I’m going to take Warren out of here,” the guard said to Nick. “I’ll be back for you in a few minutes.”
“Listen, Doc,” Warren said as the guard unshackled his cables from the chair’s arms and legs. “How is it back in Seattle? It starting to rain yet?”
A flash of recognition went off in Nick’s head, blinding him—an image of Henry Dean, sitting like a statue, cabled to the chair inside the holding cell at Riker’s Island. The collar of a dark blue T-shirt had been visible at the top of his orange jail-issue coverall. Nick hadn’t paid attention to it at the time. It struck him now what had been bothering him since seeing Henry Dean. The T-shirt.
“That rain gets to you, doesn’t it, Doc?” Warren’s face rearranged itself into a broad smile. “After a while, it really starts to get inside your head.”
Nick recognized the T-shirt. He had only been able to make out part of some green and white lettering on the shirt, but he knew the typeface. Henry Dean, arrested for murder in New York, had been wearing a Seattle Mariners T-shirt.
“It gets to where a man can’t see, it rains so much. It gets to where a man has stars in his eyes all the time.”
You got stars in your eyes, Jerome?
Nick felt his blood turn to ice. “Wait,” he said.
The guard had unfastened the locks from Warren’s chair. He was helping the prisoner to his feet, beginning to lead him from the room.
“Just one more question.”
The guard stopped, holding Warren still next to him. The prisoner sagged on his feet.
“You’re from Seattle. Aren’t you?”
Warren didn’t respond. Another smile spread across his face. He tugged on his cables and lifted his feet, step by lethargic step, leading the guard out of the room.
chapter 23
Nick was sitting in the shade of the birch trees in front of the house where he and Sam had grown up just outside Madison, on the short set of stairs where he had waited past midnight for Elizabeth to come home from the dance. He hadn’t thought about exiting the highway at the interchange. His flight to Seattle was leaving from Milwaukee in another few hours, and he should have been on his way to the airport. He had pulled the Taurus off the freeway without thinking, wending his way down rural streets crowded with memories, following the familiar path back to his childhood home. Passing in front of Lake Issewa, he had slowed the car nearly to a stop, peering through the trees down the hill to the still pool of water. A vision of the lake frozen in winter flashed in front of his eyes. He could hear Sam shouting at him and laughing, the scrape of their skates on the ice.
Behind him, his family’s old, three-story brick house was empty at midday. Nick had knocked on the Munroes’ door, too, but no one had been home there, either. The fall landscape was vivid with color. A light northern breeze was blowing, rustling the leaves of the birch trees high above his head. Nick, though, was unaware of the breeze and the sounds. Caught up all at once in the currents of a memory, staring down the gently sloping green lawn toward the street, he was blind to the tableau in front of him.
You boys don’t have to be skerred.
“Go!” Sam shouted to Nick. His voice sounded weak across the flat plane of the snowy, frozen lake. Nick was too afraid to move. “Go!” Sam shouted again. “Run!” Nick remained transfixed, looking back at Sam. He opened his mouth to speak, but his voice had deserted him. He leaned down, resting his hands on his knees and panting, trying to keep from vomiting. He couldn’t figure out what his brother was doing. Why had Sam stayed behind? Sam glanced over his shoulder at him. “Run, Nick,” he shouted. “Run!”
“Come with me!”
Nick watched as the man caught up to Sam. Nick’s face was squeezed into a small red ball, and he couldn’t think. His cheeks were wet with hot tears, and he realized he was crying. “Come on, Sam,” he said under his breath. “Come on. What are you doing? Come on!”
Then the ice broke. It happened so quickly Nick couldn’t figure out what he was seeing. The man had just reached Sam. He was grabbing him, about to wrestle him to the ground. The two of them went down into the water together. Nick remained where he was, motionless, unable to move.
Sam shouted for help as he plunged into the freezing water, before his head was submerged, and the sound of Sam’s voice woke Nick. He skated as fast as he could back in the direction he had come, toward his brother. Closing the twenty yards between them in a matter of seconds, he didn’t come to a stop until he was nearly in the water himself.
The ice began to crack underneath him, groaning beneath his weight, but Nick ignored the danger. He dropped to his knees, lay down on his stomach. Cold water seeped up onto the lip of the ice, soaking through his clothes, scalding him with its frozen heat. The hole was about five feet in diameter, and its surface had grown still. The lake was murky, opaque. “Sam!” Nick shouted. There was no sign of his brother or the man. He pulled himself forward, all the way to the very edge of the hole. “Sam!” He looked down into the water, but he couldn’t see anything at all.
Moments later, when the man broke back through the surface, the sudden torrent of movement and sounds made Nick yelp. It took him a few seconds to realize that the man was more scared and disoriented than he was. The man was gasping for air. His face had turned blue and his lips had turned purple and his eyes were wide with terror. Ignoring him, Nick pulled himself back to the edge of the hole, realizing with growing horror that his brother had gotten trapped under the ice.
Becoming aware of a thumping noise and a slight vibration underneath him, Nick twisted around, then was able to make out the shape of a hand where the ice was nearly translucent, about two feet back from the hole.
Nick didn’t consider his next move, he merely reacted. He crawled forward, thrust a hand into the water and, reaching back, caught hold of the sleeve of Sam’s jacket. The ice bent dangerously beneath him, but he strained with all his might anyway, dragging his brother’s limp body through the freezing water.
At first, there was no reaction from Sam. His body could have been a bundle of rags. All at once, though, Sam clasped Nick’s arm, sending a wave of shock coursing through Nick like a bolt of electricity. This burst of adrenaline was quickly followed by another when Sam also began to pull. The wet surface of the ice was slippery, and, suddenly terrified—fighting frantically to find some traction—Nick felt himself being drawn into the water. He gritted his teeth and planted his free hand into the ice and spread his legs out behind him. Finally, he was able to hold his position.
Despite the lethal cold, Sam did the rest. Taking hold of Nick’s hands and then hoisting himself on his brother’s arms, he climbed up out of the water.
Nick had never seen his brother cry before. He had never seen Sam show a single sign of any weakness. He was crying now. He crumpled onto the ice next to Nick, coughing and shaking, sobbing, a huge, slick trail of snot seeping out of his nose and bubbling over his mouth. Nick, too, lay back on the ice, exhausted by the near disaster.
The man was still thrashing in the water in front of them, trying to pull himself up the way that Sam had. Without the benefit of anything to hold on to, though, he was being held back by the weight of his heavy coat and sweater and boots. In the freezing water, his muscles were stiffening, locking as he went into shock.
Sam was first to recover himself. “Come on, Nick,” he said. “Let’s go.” Wiping his face clean, he clambered to his knees, then, shaking, stood up onto his skates. “Let’s get out of here.”
Time had slowed down for Nick. From his prone position, he watched his brother getting up, then pushed himself onto his knees and stood up as well. Next to him, Sam was moving in a panic. Nick recognized that he should have shared his brother’s alarm. The day had taken on an unreal quality, however. Like he was standing back somewhere safe, watching all this f
rom a distance.
“Now, Nick,” Sam said, tugging Nick’s sleeve. “We’ve got to run.” When Sam skated off, however, rather than follow him, Nick turned back toward the man. They couldn’t simply leave him there, could they? He picked up his hockey stick where he had dropped it, then, once again ignoring the ice threatening to break underneath him, reached toward the man with the taped blade of the stick as if he was trying to fish a piece of trash out of the icy water.
“Hey, mister,” Nick said. “Hey!” The man struggled to face him, and their eyes met. Without articulating the thought, Nick understood that the man was too crazed to see him. The man’s lips were so dark they were black. His eyes were so red that Nick thought maybe they were bleeding. Nick had the impression that the man’s skin had shrunk. That it had been stretched taut over the skeletal frame of his face. The man’s jaw was quivering with a mechanical intensity, like a machine plugged into a socket, syrupy spittle drooling out of his mouth.
Maybe it was because the man had wanted to rape them. He was getting what he deserved. Or maybe it was simply that, at ten years old, Nick couldn’t envision what might happen next. But Nick made no effort to rescue the man. He didn’t try to hook him with the blade. Despite the man’s distress, Nick simply stretched the stick out toward the man as though he had all the time in the world, waiting for him to react. He didn’t reflect that the man was practically comatose from the subzero cold.
When the man did reach for Nick’s hockey stick, he moved spasmodically. His body twisted ineffectually in the water, and he overshot the blade. The agitation destroyed his equilibrium with the water, and he sank. Nick leaned forward on his skates to watch him disappear, stunned by the abrupt silence, tracking the man’s movement beneath the turbulent green-black surface. When the man broke back through, gasping, screeching for air, the explosion made Nick jump. He wasn’t ready for it when the man grabbed hold of the stick. Suffocating, unable to control his muscles anymore, the man yanked so hard that Nick lost his balance.