by Chris Carter
‘All “Condemned” visits take place in a secured booth and involve the prisoner being escorted in handcuffs,’ Alice explained.
‘Visits to death-row inmates are restricted to availability; usually one visit every three to five months,’ Garcia carried on. ‘They can last from one to two hours. We have Ortega’s entire visitation history here. Every time Sands visited him, he stayed for the maximum duration.’
‘OK, anyone else visited Ortega?’ Hunter asked.
‘When it got closer to Ortega’s execution date, then he got the usual visitors – reporters, members of capital-punishment abolishment groups, someone wanting to write a book about him, the prison priest . . . you know how it goes.’ Garcia flipped another page on the report. ‘But during his first eleven years of incarceration, Sands was his only visitor. Not a single other soul.’ Garcia closed the file and handed it to Hunter.
‘We could’ve guessed Sands would have visited Ortega,’ Hunter said, leafing through the pages. ‘From Alice’s research we knew they were like brothers, so that was expected. Is that all we got?’
‘Ortega’s visitation files simply serve to confirm that Sands kept in contact with him for all those years,’ Alice said from the corner of the room, sipping her coffee. ‘Visitations are supervised, but the conversations are private. They could’ve talked about anything. And no, that’s not all we got.’ She moved her gaze from Hunter to Garcia as if to say ‘show him’.
Garcia reached for the second file and flipped it open.
‘This is Ken Sands’s prison file,’ he explained. ‘And here is where it gets a lot more interesting.’
Fifty-Five
Garcia pulled a new A4 report sheet out of the second folder and handed it to Hunter.
‘Sands’s prison-visitation file is pretty unimpressive. He received four visits a year during the first six years of his jail sentence, all by the same person.’
Hunter checked the report. ‘His mother.’
‘That’s right. His father never visited him, but that isn’t surprising given what their relationship was like. During the remaining three and a half years of his prison term, Sands had no visitors whatsoever.’
‘Not a very popular guy, huh?’
‘Not really. His only real friend was Ortega, and he was in San Quentin.’
‘Cellmates?’ Hunter asked.
‘Yep, a hard-as-nails guy called Guri Krasniqi,’ Alice replied.
‘Albanian, kind of a big ringleader,’ Hunter said. ‘I’ve heard of him.’
‘That’s him, all right.’
Garcia chuckled. ‘Well, we have a better chance of stepping on unicorn shit on our way out of the office than getting an Albanian crime lord talking.’
Despite the joke, Hunter knew Garcia was right.
‘Sands’s life received a double hit during his sixth year of incarceration,’ Alice said. ‘First, Ortega’s sentence was carried out and he was executed after sixteen years on death row – lethal injection. Sixth months later, Sands’s mother passed away from a brain aneurysm. That’s why the visits stopped. He was allowed to go to her funeral under a heavy guard escort. There were only ten people there. He didn’t say a word to his father. And apparently he showed no emotions. Not a single tear.’
Hunter wasn’t surprised. Ken Sands was known as a tough guy, and to tough guys, pride is everything. He would never have given his father, or his guard escorts, the pleasure of seeing him crying or hurting, even if it was over his dead mother. If he cried, he did it on his own, back in his prison cell.
Garcia stood up and moved to the center of the room. ‘OK, all that’s very interesting, but not as interesting as this next part.’ He nodded at the report in his hands. ‘You do know that the state penitentiary, as a rehabilitation institution, provides its inmates with courses, apprenticeships and work experience when possible, right? They call it educational/vocational programming, and according to their mission statement, it’s designed to encourage productivity, inmate responsibility and self-improvement. It never quite works that way, though.’
‘OK.’ Hunter folded his arms.
‘Some inmates can also, by request, and if approved, take a correspondence course. Several US universities have joined this program, offering inmates a vast choice of higher-level degrees.’
‘Sands took one of those courses,’ Hunter deducted.
‘He took two, achieving two university degrees while inside.’
Hunter’s eyebrows lifted.
‘Sands obtained a degree in psychology from the College of Arts and Sciences, part of the American University in Washington DC, and . . .’ Garcia stole a peek at Alice, holding the suspense, ‘a minor degree in Nursing and Patient Care from the University of Massachusetts. No practical experience with patients is needed to graduate, but the course would’ve allowed him to request medical study books. Books that weren’t available in the prison library.’
Hunter felt a tingle run through him.
‘Remember . . .’ Alice asked, ‘. . . when I said that Sands’s school grades were much better than one would expect from such a disruptive student?’
‘Yeah.’
‘He aced both courses. Honorable mention at the conclusion of his psychology degree, and outstanding grades throughout his nursing degree.’ She started fidgeting with the silver charms bracelet on her right wrist. ‘So if it’s medical knowledge we’re looking for, Sands sure as hell fits the bill.’ Alice sipped her coffee while holding Hunter’s stare. ‘But that still ain’t all.’
Hunter questioned Garcia with a look.
‘Spare time in prison . . .’ Garcia read on, returning to his desk, ‘. . . is very rarely spent at an inmates’ own leisure. They are all encouraged to do something useful with their time, like reading, painting or whatever. Several –’ Garcia made quotation marks in the air with his fingers – ‘“personality-enhancing activities” are organized by the California State Prison in Lancaster. Sands read a lot, checking books out of the library on a regular basis.’
‘The problem is,’ Alice joined in, ‘the library-book register isn’t online, and frankly that doesn’t surprise me. But it means that there’s no way I can get that list by hacking into the system because it doesn’t exist in electronic form. We’ll have to wait until Lancaster sends it to us.’
‘Sands also spent a lot of time in the gym,’ Garcia said, returning to the notes. ‘But when he wasn’t reading or studying for one of his long-distance courses, he was dabbling in his hobby. One he picked up inside.’
‘Which was?’ Hunter crossed to the water cooler and poured himself a cup.
‘Art.’
‘Yeah, but nothing to do with painting or drawing,’ Alice noted, her demeanor urging Hunter to take a guess.
‘Sculpting,’ he said.
Both Garcia and Alice nodded.
Hunter kept his excitement at bay. He understood California’s psychological approach to its rehabilitation institutions very well – encourage every inmate to guide their negative emotions into something creative, something constructive. Every prison in California has an extensive arts program, and they urge every inmate to take part. The truth is, the great majority does. If nothing else, it helps pass the time. The three most popular arts activities in Californian prisons are painting, drawing and sculpting. Many inmates take up all three.
‘And we still have nothing for a possible location on Sands?’ Hunter asked.
Alice shook her head. ‘It’s like he’s vanished since he left prison. No one has a clue where he is.’
‘There’s always someone who knows something,’ Hunter countered.
‘That’s for sure,’ Garcia said, clicking away at his computer. The printer next to his desk kicked into life. ‘This is the last list you asked for,’ Garcia said, retrieving the printout and handing it to Hunter. ‘All other inmates housed in the same facility block as Sands during his entire prison term. There are over four hundred names in that list, but I’ll save you the t
rouble. Have a look at the second page. Recognize anyone?’
Alice threw Garcia a surprised stare. ‘When you read through the list earlier you never told me that you recognized a name.’
Garcia smiled. ‘You never asked.’
Hunter flipped the page and his eyes sped through the names, stopping three quarters of the way down. ‘You are kidding.’
Fifty-Six
Thomas Lynch, better known as Tito, was a scumbag, small-time junkie, who got busted seven years ago after a grocery-store armed robbery went terribly wrong, producing two fatalities – the store owner and his wife.
Though neither masked men’s faces were ever uncovered during the whole robbery, when analyzing the CCTV footage, Hunter and Garcia had identified a slight, nervous head movement from one of the men. A tic brought on by stress. It took them three days to get to Tito.
Tito was just a petty criminal. That had been his first armed robbery. He was talked into it by the second man, Donnie Brusco, a lost-case crack-head, who’d already killed twice before.
It took Garcia less than an hour to get Tito talking. From the CCTV footage they knew Tito hadn’t pulled the trigger. In fact, he’d even tried to stop the second masked man from shooting the old couple. Garcia convinced Tito that if he cooperated, because it had been his first serious offence, they could plea with the DA for a reduced sentence. If Tito didn’t cooperate, he would certainly get death.
Tito talked, and Donnie Brusco was arrested and sentenced to death by lethal injection. He was now sitting in San Quentin’s death row, waiting on his execution date. Tito got ten years for armed robbery and accessory to murder. Hunter and Garcia kept their side of the bargain and pleaded with the DA, who recommended early parole. After serving six years of his ten-year sentence, Tito had been released under the supervision of the California Probation Department and a parole officer eleven months ago. He served his time in the California State Prison in Lancaster – Inmate Facility A. The same facility where Ken Sands had served his sentence.
Fifty-Seven
The fact that he was under the supervision of the California Probation Department meant that Tito wasn’t hard to find. His registered address was a small apartment in a public housing project in Bell Gardens, East LA. His probation officer told Hunter over the phone that Tito was as good as they got when it came to paroled inmates. He was always on time for their scheduled meetings, held a steady job at a warehouse, and he hadn’t missed a single weekly group session with the assigned psychologist.
Hunter and Garcia’s first stop was at Tito’s workplace, a privately owned warehouse in Cudahy, southeast Los Angeles. The owner, a short and very round Jewish man who never stopped smiling, told Hunter that Fridays were Tito’s day off, but he would be in tomorrow, if they cared to come back. Saturdays he worked the nightshift, from nine in the evening to five in the morning.
Tito’s housing project was a redbrick, square-box monstrosity just west of Bell Gardens Park. The building’s metal entrance doors clanged like prison gates behind Hunter and Garcia as they stepped into the dingy ground-floor hall. The small space smelled heavily of urine and stale sweat, and there wasn’t an inch of wall that wasn’t graffitied. There were no elevators, just a set of dirty, narrow stairs going up five floors. Tito’s apartment was number 311.
Graffiti followed Hunter and Garcia all the way up, as if the stairwell was a colorful psychedelic tunnel. As they reached the third floor, they were greeted by an even more sickening smell than the one at the entrance hall – something like sour milk, or old, dried-up vomit.
‘Damn,’ Garcia said, bringing a hand up to cover his nose. ‘This whole place stinks like a sewer.’
In front of them, a long and narrow corridor in semi-darkness. Halfway down it one of the few working tube florescent lights that ran along the ceiling was malfunctioning, disco dancing on and off.
‘All we need is some music,’ Garcia joked. ‘And a whole cleaning squad with disinfectants and air fresheners.’
The door to apartment 311 was directly under the flickering light. They could hear Spanish dance music coming from inside. Hunter knocked three times. Instinctively, both detectives positioned themselves to the left and right of the door. There was no reply. Hunter waited about fifteen seconds and knocked again, placing his right ear closer to the door. He could hear movement inside.
A couple of seconds later the door was opened by a five-foot-three Latin woman with dark hair and in her early-twenties. She was beyond skinny. Her olive-tanned skin clung to her bones as if they were the only things left to cling to. Her pupils were dilated to the size of coffee beans, and her stare was distant and dopey. She was naked except for an ill-fitting Chinese-style robe draped over her scrawny shoulders. She didn’t bother closing it.
‘Oh, sexy visitors,’ she said with a Spanish accent, before Hunter and Garcia could introduce themselves. ‘We like visitors. The more the merrier.’ She gave them a cigarette-stained smile and pulled the door fully open. ‘Come in and let’s partyyy.’ She blew Hunter a kiss and started swinging to the sound of the music.
‘What the fuck are you doing, bitch?’ Tito stepped out from the bedroom, wearing nothing but a pair of lacy purple panties. ‘Get back in here and . . .’ He choked mid-sentence when his eyes rested on the two new arrivals. ‘What the fuck?’ He tried covering himself up. Hunter and Garcia were already inside the apartment, both staring at Tito – a six-foot-one, two-hundred-and-ten-pound man with a pear-shaped body, wearing a pair of women’s panties.
‘That’s not right,’ Hunter whispered.
Garcia’s headshake was barely noticeable. ‘So, so wrong.’
‘We’ve got some more people for our party, Papi,’ the woman said, closing the door. ‘Let’s get naked and daaance.’ She let her robe drop to the floor and reached for the buttons on Hunter’s shirt. He gently moved her hands away.
‘No, unfortunately we’re not here for the party.’ He collected her robe from the floor and helped her back into it.
‘Ai, chingado. Stupid bitch, get back in the room,’ Tito said, walking over and pulling the woman by her arm before wrapping himself in a white bath towel.
‘Thank you for covering yourself, Tito,’ Garcia said. ‘I was starting to feel queasy.’
‘Tito, waz going on up in there?’ a new female voice called from the bedroom. This one sounded very young.
‘Nothing, girl. Shut the fuck up.’
Garcia kept a smile locked. ‘How many people have you got in there, Tito?’
‘None of your goddamn business, cop.’
The Latin woman seemed to sober up instantly. ‘They’re cops?’
‘What do you think, you dumb ho? They sure as hell ain’t pizza-delivery boys. Now get back in there and stay there.’ Tito pushed her into the bedroom and slammed the door shut. ‘What do you guys want? And why are you inside my apartment without a warrant?’
‘We don’t need a warrant,’ Garcia replied, looking around the room. ‘We were cordially invited inside by your . . . girlfriend.’
‘She ain’t my girlfriend . . .’
‘We need to talk, Tito,’ Hunter cut him short. ‘Right now.’
‘Screw that, cop. I don’t need to talk to you. I don’t need to do shit.’ He opened a drawer on the wooden sideboard next to him and quickly reached inside for something.
Fifty-Eight
In a blink of an eye, both detectives sprang into synchronized action, Hunter moving left and Garcia right, widening the distance between them, and drawing their guns at the same time. Both of their aims dead on Tito’s chest. They moved so fast that it made Tito freeze in place.
‘Easy there, lacy panties,’ Garcia called out. ‘Let me see your hands, nice and easy.’
‘Hey, hey,’ Tito jumped back and lifted his hands high up in the air. He was holding a stereo remote-control unit. ‘Holy shit, homes. What the hell is wrong with you all? I just wanted to turn down the music.’ Almost imperceptibly he jerked his chin tow
ards his left shoulder. The same nervous tic that gave him away in the CCTV footage from his armed-robbery adventure seven years ago.
Hunter and Garcia thumbed their safeties back on and holstered their weapons.
‘What the hell is wrong with you?’ Garcia replied. ‘You should know better than to make sudden moves like that in front of cops. You’re gonna get yourself killed.’
‘I’ve done OK so far.’
‘Tito, sit down,’ Hunter said, pulling a chair from the round wooden table that occupied the center of the small living room. Tito’s lounge/diner was dull and dark, decorated by someone with no taste and probably half-blind. The walls were a dirty shade of beige, or maybe they were white once. The laminated wooden floor was so scratched it looked like Tito wore ice-skates in the apartment. The place reeked of pot and booze.
Tito hesitated, trying to look hard.
‘Tito, sit down,’ Hunter repeated. His tone didn’t change, but his gaze demanded obedience.
Tito finally had a seat and slouched back on the chair like an angry schoolboy. His flabby bare torso was covered in tattoos, as were his arms. His shaved head displayed several scars. Hunter guessed he’d acquired most of them in prison.
‘This is bullshit, man,’ Tito said, nervously fidgeting with a yellow plastic lighter. ‘You guys have no right to be here. I’m as good as gold. You can ask my parole officer. He’ll vouch for me.’
‘Of course you are, Tito,’ Hunter said, staring directly at him and softly tapping the tip of his nose three times. ‘White gold, you mean.’
Tito pinched his nose then looked at his thumb and forefinger. A white powder residue clung to them. He quickly re-pinched his nose four or five times, snorting with each pinch to clear away what was left. ‘Oh man, that’s horseshit. We were just having a little fun in the room, you know what it is? Nothing heavy, man. Just something to liven us up. It’s my day off. We were just letting off some steam, you feel me?’