by Blake Crouch
"I need to speak to a detective," he said as she stared incredulously into his eyes.
Clearing her throat, she glanced warily behind her at the corridor. She was pretty, I thought, plain but pretty in her long, plaid dress. "What is it regarding?" she asked.
"Are you a detective?"
"No, I’m a…"
"Then quit asking me fucking questions. Get me a detective right now."
"Just a moment," she said. She picked up the phone and dialed an extension. "Roger, are you busy?… Okay… There’s a man here who wants to speak with you… I don’t know… He’s being rude… I don’t know… I’m fine." She hung up the phone. "He’ll be right with you," she said. "You can wait over there." She spun around quickly in her swivel chair and began typing at a computer. Orson stood by the desk, tapping impatiently on the wood.
Less than a minute had passed when a tall, thin man in a dark blue suit emerged from the corridor. He stopped behind the desk and nodded to Orson and me.
"You asked for a detective?" he said, and Orson nodded. "Come with me," he said, and we walked past the desk down the hallway on the right. The brick walls were drab and undecorated. I followed behind Orson, watching his feet pound softly against the thin, hard carpet.
"I’m Detective Hartness," the man said without turning around. "Why were you rude to Jennifer?" He glanced at Orson, fire in his bleak, white face. His brown hair hung just above his eyebrows, and his ears were large and grotesque, like an old man’s.
"It doesn’t really matter," Orson said. "You’re about to become famous."
If Hartness heard him, he didn’t show it. He kept walking, into a large, bright room full of desks and computers, where several men typed furiously, filling the room with a nervous, staccato pattering like raindrops hitting a hot microphone. We proceeded through the dark corridor on the other side of the workroom, and I could see the end now. There were three vending machines for coffee, soft drinks, and snacks lined up against the brick at the terminus of the corridor. But we stopped long before the end when Hartness turned suddenly and opened a plain, black door on the left wall. He held it open for us while we filed inside.
A boring little room with bare brick walls, a table stood in the center with four chairs slid underneath it. I thought it strange that a single, unshielded light bulb burned brightly overhead. We pulled out the chairs and sat down, Orson and me on one side, facing Hartness. The detective was removing his jacket when Orson broke the tense silence.
"Get a tape recorder," he said. "I’m only doing this once."
Hartness hung his jacket on the back of a chair and began unbuttoning his cuffs. He was already sweating as he rolled up his shirt sleeves. "We’ll get to that," he said. “Why don’t…"
"Get the tape recorder or I say nothing," Orson said, rage buried in his voice.
Hartness sighed and slid back in his chair. He got up and left the room.
"Orson…"
"Not a word, Andy."
We sat in silence, and I drummed on the table until Orson glared at me. I wondered if there was really a dead police officer in the trunk of our car. After two minutes, the detective returned carrying a large tape recorder under his arm. He set it down on the table and plugged the long, black cord into a socket in the wall. Sitting down, he lit a cigarette and pressed a red button.
"Your name?" Hartness asked.
"Orson Thomas."
"Well, Mr. Thomas, what do you wanna tell me?"
Orson had been leaning forward with his elbows on the table. Now he leaned back and removed his blood-stained fleece jacket. He threw it into a corner and smiled at the detective. Then he tossed the manila envelope onto the table.
"Have a look," Orson said, his voice cold and emotionless.
The detective lifted the envelope and tore it open. Withdrawing a quarter-inch stack of photographs and newspaper clippings, he gazed down at the photographs, and his skeptical face turned immediately into shock. He laid a picture on the table and stared down at it, taking a long draw from his cigarette.
I managed to see the picture upside down--a five by seven, color photo of a woman lying naked on the ground, a gaping hole in her chest and a bloody mass in the palm of her hand. It could’ve been Shirley. It could’ve been any of them.
Hartness spread a dozen similar photographs across the table, and I could see him fighting to retain composure. He blinked more than usual and swallowed hard several times. I watched Orson watching the detective. There was a sick gleam in my brother’s eyes, as if he'd waited for this moment his entire life. The detective looked back up at Orson when he'd finished thumbing through the newspaper clippings.
"So," Hartness said. "What do you want me to do with this?"
"Are you a complete fucking idiot?"
Hartness said nothing. He just stared at my brother.
"You watch the news?" Orson asked, his voice more courteous.
"Yeah."
"And you don’t know who I am? Washington D.C. Thirty-seven boxes. Ring a bell?"
"Look, I know what a crank is. I know when I’m being lied to. The FBI sent out a memo to every police station in the country. They receive around 90 cranks a day relating to the Heart Surgeon case. We’ve had one over the phone already this week."
"That’s funny," Orson said, livid. "I had a feeling you wouldn’t take me seriously."
"Good instinct," Hartness said, rising to his feet. "You just committed a felony, and I’m gonna arrest…"
"Barry Johnson’s in the trunk of my car you prick."
The detective placed his hands on the table and leaned towards Orson. "I don’t think you wanna take the credit for kidnapping that police officer," Hartness said with a smug grin.
Orson reached into his jeans' pocket and tossed a shiny badge and a driver’s license onto the table. "I killed him, too."
The cocky, wise-ass smile vanished from the detective’s face. He looked down at the badge which rested face-up on the colorful photographs. Lifting the driver’s license, he stared at it a moment, then looked back down at the pictures. The burning cigarette fell from his lips, and he drew his gun. He pointed it at Orson, but my brother only laughed, nodding in approval.
"Stay right there," Hartness said, his voice low, filled with malice, his hands shaking. He edged to the door and opened it.
"Want the car keys?" Orson asked. "So you can get that smelly body out of my trunk. I waive my rights."
"Take them out slowly," Hartness said, and I reached carefully into my pocket and withdrew the keys. I tossed them to the detective and he caught them in his left hand as he pointed his 9mm at Orson. Then he slammed the door and locked it.
# # #
The detective had been gone two minutes when Orson straightened himself in his chair and turned towards me. He put his face into his hands and ran his fingers through his greasy hair.
"Andy," he said, lifting his head, his eyes alive again, a smile edging across his lips. "Now I've gotta let you in on something."
My head ripped apart. Involuntarily, my eyes closed and when I opened them again, I was walking towards a woman, chained to the pole in the desert shed. I held a hunting knife in my hand, blinked, and was on her. Her screams were strangely pleasing, like I'd acquired the taste of a long-despised food. I stared down at her face as she exhaled her last bloody breath. It contorted into another, and this face breathed its last, gurgling breath, too, replaced by another, and over and over again I watched the men and women die.
I stood on the desert in the dead of night. All around me, there were open holes in the sand. I walked beside each one, and peering down inside, saw the heartless bodies, their eyes open, staring at me with a hollow rage, though they were not alive. The horrible scream rang out, inhuman, eternal. It was always there, in the back of my mind, as loud as I'd let it be.
Like movie frames passing in slow motion, a surge of images engulfed me. Standing at a podium and lecturing to fifty students. Running through a city street at night toward
s a railroad car. Fire in a rusted oil drum. Pounding rock into skull. Driving a black prostitute out of south Charlotte towards my lake house. Burying her in my backyard. Waiting on the shoulder of a dark highway for someone to pull over and help me with my car. Leaving boxes in Washington before dawn. Strangling my crying mother in her bed, her wide, confused eyes as the pantyhose tightens. Walter begging for his life and screaming why in the cold woods. Dragging a police officer from his car across the road. Shoving him bleeding into the trunk. Writing letters to a man named Andrew Thomas, who had no idea what he'd done or what he was.
I opened my eyes. My heart pounded, but the screaming had stopped. In the interrogation room, the tape recorder still running, the light bulb burning quietly above my head, I sat alone.
# # #
I leaned against the cool, metal fence and stared across the prairie. It was late in the day, nearly six o'clock, and though it was early August, the sky remained flawlessly blue. I liked standing here looking through the fence, because I could've been in my own backyard, in my own clothes, deciding which restaurant I'd dine in tonight. I could almost forget the four guard-towers, the high-powered rifles, and the icy men who held them.
Sick of the prairie now, I’d memorized the contours of the land, how it gracefully descended for six, gentle miles into a valley of pines, and how those pines adorned the lower slopes of the sharp, brown mountains. From the prison yard, I could see the skylines of the three ranges that surrounded Montana State Prison--the Big Belt Mountains to the east, the snowier Swan Range in the north, and the jagged, wild-looking Bitter Roots, west and south.
Normally, on a summer evening, I’d take my hour of exercise around eight o’clock. I liked to come out late to see the sunset, though the guards would never let me stay for its entirety. Prisoners aren’t allowed out after dark, but it was worth it just to see the sky turn red and purple for a short time. It made me feel normal again to know that at that moment, when the sun had almost slipped away, everyone watching it fade felt the same sense of loss as me.
But it was not a normal evening. I turned away from the fence and walked back across the parched, yellow grass towards the prison. Two guards waited for me on the steps, smoking cigarettes and talking. When they saw me approach, they instinctively put their hands on their holstered pistols, watching me warily. Seven years of perfect behavior had taught them nothing. They treated me fairly, but beneath their professional exteriors, I had no doubt that every guard who'd ever watched me despised me. I sensed that loathing in everyone, even the doctors and psychologists who wanted so desperately to study me.
Near the steps which ascended back into the prison, I stopped several feet from the guards. I wasn't allowed to be within six feet of prison staff without handcuffs. I'd forgotten that rule once five years ago and surprised a guard coming in from the yard. He beat me unconscious with his nightstick, and I stayed in the hospital for two weeks. The warden determined the guard’s actions were justified. I had fucked up.
"Turn around," Haywood said, slowly descending the steps. He dropped his cigarette on the ground and stepped on it, twisting the toe of his shiny black shoe on the dying ember. A short, stout white man, he moved quickly. He stepped forward, holding a pair of handcuffs, and in an instant he'd cuffed me. Then he took my right arm and escorted me up the nine steps, through heavy, black double doors. Jerry, the other black guard, walked close on my left side.
As we headed through the dull, gray corridors towards the showers, I stared straight ahead, listening to our footsteps echo down the long, empty hallways, and the distant ruckus of other inmates. Muffled excitement pulsed inside of me, a rare emotion within these walls. I'd waited a long time for this night.
# # #
I sat in a hard chair, in a small room with white, windowless concrete walls, my feet chained together in leg irons, my hands cuffed behind my chair. Two guards stood behind the cameras, watching me. I could still smell the fragrant prison soap in my hair, and I wore a new, bright orange uniform. Across the large rectangular table sat Dr. Richard Goldston, a handsome, sharp-witted man. He may've been over fifty, but his face was smooth, without wrinkles, and his hair space black. He wore silver-framed glasses pushed down on the bridge of his nose, and when he looked at me, his smoky-brown eyes were penetrating but kind.
The woman who had wanted to do the interview stood beside the cameraman in a conservative yellow suit. She reeked of poignant questions, a zombie for her network. Though one of the top journalists in the nation, intelligent and savvy, she was utterly incapable. When I agreed to do an interview with the network, I had one condition. Dr. Goldston, a former FBI agent in the Behavioral Sciences Division, would conduct the interview. Regarded by his peers and colleagues as the sharpest, most qualified criminologist in the country, he'd dedicated his life to understanding and tracking serial killers, not to becoming a media whore. I respected that, and I respected his books. I wanted to meet him and feel his probing intellect.
Goldston laid a bulging, cream folder on the table and opened it. It was full of crime scene photographs, forensic reports, and several documents I'd never seen before.
He looked back at the woman and her cameraman. "You ready, Laura?" Goldston asked.
"Yes, we can start now," she said.
Goldston lifted a tape recorder off the floor and set it on the table. "I’m recording this for my file, too. Is that all right with you, Andy?"
"It’s fine," I said.
He pushed the record button and holding up one finger, spoke into the air: "August 17th, 2003. Eight p.m. Montana State Prison. Deer Lodge, Montana. Subject: Andrew Thomas." He cleared his throat and withdrew a sheet of paper from the folder covered in indecipherable cursive. Goldston looked up from his notes and smiled. He didn’t fear me.
"I want to first thank you for doing this. I appreciate the opportunity to talk with you."
"Certainly," I said. I was nervous about the cameras and kept looking directly into them.
"When we spoke on the phone, I asked if anything was off limits, and you said there wasn’t. Is that still the way you feel?" he asked, and I nodded.
"This is the first interview you’ve agreed to do since your incarceration in 96'. You’ve remained silent, refusing to speak even at your own trial. Why have you waited until now?"
"I’ve been dealing with things. Privately."
"Are you responsible for the killings at the Blue Sky Motel?" he asked. There was no emotion in his voice. He was interested solely in obtaining information, not judging or condemning me. He put me at ease, and I could see why he was so well-respected.
"No."
"The Washington boxes?"
"No."
"Are you responsible for the bodies found at your cabin in the Wyoming desert or at your lake house north of Charlotte?"
"No."
In the thick silence, Goldston swallowed. "You consider yourself innocent?" he asked.
"I do."
Goldston reached into his briefcase and took out a small tape player. "I want to play something for you," he said, setting the tape player on the table. He pushed play and for several seconds the speakers crackled. Then, through the softer static, I heard his voice:
"Barry Johnson’s in the trunk of my car you prick… I don’t think you wanna take the credit for kidnapping that police officer… I killed him, too… … … You stay right there… Want the car keys? So you can get that smelly body out of my trunk. I waive my rights… Take them out slowly [Door Slams]… … … … Andy… What?… Now I’ve gotta let you in on something… Oh God… … … … [Door Slams] Where’s Officer Johnson’s car, Orson? Where is his car? Oh, you don’t want to talk to me now. Piece of shit… Where’d he go?… Where did who go?… My brother… What the fuck are you talking about?… Shit. Oh, shit… Where’s the car, Orson?… Oh God… Tough man doesn’t wanna talk now. Well, that’s okay, cause you’re fucked. Why are you crying, Orson? Huh?… That’s not my name. Where is he?… Who are you talking
about?… The man I came in with. Where’d he go?… You’re out of your fuckin’ mind… Where’d he go?… Calm down… Where is my fucking brother?!!!"
Goldston stopped the tape. My hands shook, and I felt very cold. He could sense my discomfort, so he remained quiet for a moment, allowing me to regain my composure. I took deep breaths and closed my eyes. When I opened them again, I looked around the room, at the guards, the cameras in front and behind me, at Laura Webber, and then back to Goldston.
"Andy, I’ve literally spent hours going over what I just played for you. I’ve probably listened to that tape a hundred times, and for the life of me I can’t figure out what happened in that room. I even had several psychologists listen, and they were baffled. I interviewed the detective who questioned you. He said you were a different person when he came back into the interrogation room." Goldston removed his glasses. "What’d you feel hearing that tape?"