A River of Silence

by Susan Clayton-Goldner

  Outside Ashland holding, Radhauser excused himself to call his wife. Sergeant Leonard walked Bryce through two thick steel doors into the booking area that looked more like a hospital nurses’ station.

  He stood next to Leonard until they were waved up to the desk where he explained Bryce’s hearing issues.

  With exaggerated mouth movements, the guard behind the desk, a man who weighed at least three hundred pounds, requested Bryce’s full name, date of birth and SSN, then asked Leonard about the charge.

  “Caleb Bryce is charged with one count of child abuse of four-year-old Scott Sterling and the first-degree murder of nineteen-month-old Skyler Sterling.”

  The guard shot Bryce a disgusted look.

  Bryce dropped his gaze to the floor.

  The next thing he knew, Sergeant Leonard left and Bryce was flanked by two guards who were even bigger than the one behind the desk.

  They fingerprinted him. Took his mug shot. Bryce stumbled through both procedures in a daze. He continued to be dumbfounded that he was charged with Skyler’s murder.

  One guard ran a chain around his waist and shackled his legs in irons, then attached a chain to his handcuffs, ran it through an O-ring on his waist chain, and then did the same thing with the leg irons.

  An hour or so later, Bryce was taken into a shower room. Three more guards stood watch. Once inside the room, they removed the cuffs, unshackled him and told him to strip. They took each piece of clothing as he handed it to them, inventoried it and put it inside a cardboard box. They asked him to remove his watch and the gold band he now wore on his right hand in memory of the child who’d come from that long-ago union with Valerie.

  Once completely naked, the biggest of the guards told him to open his mouth. He looked inside with a flashlight and then asked him to run his hands through his hair as if he expected tiny bags of heroin to fall out. The worst humiliation came when they demanded he bend over and spread his butt cheeks. Bryce’s entire face grew hot. He and four other prisoners were led into a huge locker room. “Hit the water, boys,” the guard snapped.

  A short, stocky, white man with a brown crew cut and tattoos of naked women covered in snakes on his chest scooted over on the bench to make room for Bryce. “Yo, man,” he shouted loud enough for even Bryce to hear him above the sound of the showers. “What ya in here for?”

  Bryce kept standing. Unable to bring himself to answer the question, he clutched his soap and stepped into the communal shower, raising his face toward the water’s spray.

  The man, who now stood behind Bryce, jerked his shoulders and flipped him around. “You mother fuckin’ deaf, man, or are ya just plain dumb?”

  Water cascaded down Bryce’s back. “I'm hearing impaired,” he said, pointing to his ear. “You have to talk loud or face me so I can read your lips.”

  “I said,” he shrieked the words slowly, exaggerating the movement of his lips. “What are you in for?” He leaned toward Bryce, waited for an answer.

  “They claim I abused one child and killed another one.”

  The tattooed man stepped back. He shaped his open mouth in an O and took a step back. “Naughty, naughty. Shame. Shame.” He rubbed one index finger down the other, then pointed at Bryce, wagged his finger up and down, clicking his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “That ain’t good, man. Take it from me, I been in the joint enough times to know the guests don’t take kindly to kiddie fuckers. That how you get your rocks off, pretty boy?” He grabbed at the air in front of Bryce’s genitals. “Are you guilty?”

  Bryce pulled back from the shower’s spray and covered himself with a towel. “I’m not ta...ta...talking sexual stuff. I...I smacked him on the backside with my hand for biting me, then spitting in my face. If that’s abuse,” he looked away for a moment, “I guess I’m guilty all right.”

  The man faced Bryce and whistled Rock-a-bye Baby. He grinned, a big missing-a-tooth smile, then walked away.

  When Bryce finished with the shower, the guard handed him another threadbare towel, some clothes that looked like surgical scrubs, and a pair of slippers. Bryce dried himself off, then slipped into the faded blue shirt and cotton pants, drawn with a string at the waist. The crotch hung just above his knees and fabric puddled in loose layers atop the elastic bands at his ankles. Once he was dressed, they replaced all his restraints and put a band around his wrist with a prisoner identification number.

  Another prisoner, in a sweat-stained T-shirt stretched tight across his belly and chest, lingered outside the showers. He curled his top lip, hawked up a wad of spit and deposited a slimy gob on the concrete floor at Bryce’s feet. Already Bryce felt the numbness and maybe it was best that way.

  An hour or more passed. With his handcuffs removed, Bryce crouched on the edge of a steel bench in the holding tank with about ten other men. He and the four other prisoners who’d showered were the only ones in prison garb. The only ones who looked as if they’d bathed in the past week.

  Sometime later that morning, a uniformed guard slid trays of scrambled egg sandwiches into the rank-smelling room.

  A drunk, in a filthy white suit, kicked his tray across the yellow-tiled floor and screeched, “I ain’t eatin’ that garbage. It’s poison, I tell ya. Poison. Jesus will provide the only food we need.” His chalky, blood-veined eyes roamed across Bryce’s face and locked. The drunk held his own, waited for Bryce to break the silence of their stare. And when he didn’t, the man continued to look directly into Bryce’s eyes, as if he had insights into the future that his fellow inmate did not.

  The cramped room grew uncomfortably silent. Finally, a black guy wearing a faded blue tank top with so many holes it looked as if it had taken a shotgun blast, and a pair of blue jeans riding low on his bony hips, picked up the extra tray and scraped the food onto his own. “Jesus said I could have yours, too,” he muttered, bits of green-tinged scrambled egg dropping from his mouth.

  Bryce couldn’t stop shaking his head, couldn’t stop thinking this was a mistake, but with none acknowledged, he was thrust into a nightmare that stretched out in front of him like a balloon blown up way beyond its limits.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Four hours later, Bryce and the four other prisoners he’d showered with were taken through the double doors to the outside and loaded into a white van. They were chained to steel rings and taken to the Jackson County Jail, where a new nightmare awaited.

  Once they’d made the short trip to Medford, Bryce’s shackles were detached from the ring inside the van. He was led out into the fresh air for a moment, then quickly through another set of double security doors he learned from one of the other prisoners was called a sally port. Once inside the jail, he was led to a desk where he was given a thin foam mattress, a sheet, a threadbare blanket and a paperback copy of the Bible.

  After he was checked in, two more guards arrived. They each took one of Bryce’s arms and escorted him down a long corridor until it ended in front of a steel door. Bryce sensed the vibrations of the guards’ boots as they echoed off the ceiling and walls.

  One guard pushed a button. A few seconds later, a lock buzzed, reverberating inside Bryce’s damaged eardrums, and the steel door retracted.

  It opened into a huge, square room with rows of gray metal cell doors along each wall. Every door had a Plexiglas window, about twelve inches square and sixty inches off the ground. In almost every cell, there was a curious face looking out the window.

  Though Bryce couldn’t always make out the words, the halls resounded with numerous shouts and screams—prisoners yelling to each other and jeering at the guards. Bryce wished he could put his hands over his ears to stop the vibrations.

  They stopped in front of a cell marked 156-B. One of the guards stepped up to the window, looked inside and shouted, “Step back, Poncho. Company’s coming. You know the drill.”

  The guard next to Bryce turned to him and said, with exaggerated mouth movements, “You’re going to love Poncho. He’s a real stand-up guy.” A moment la
ter, the shackles were off and Bryce was inside a seven-by-ten-foot cell. “Turn around and face the door,” the guard demanded.

  When Bryce didn’t hear the command, Poncho jerked him around by the shoulders. “You hard a hearing, asshole?”

  There was a very loud, metal against metal sound as a tray about two feet long and four inches high appeared through the door.

  “It’s called a pie hole,” Poncho said. “And I plan to teach you to keep yours shut.”

  “Put your hands through,” the guard ordered.

  Bryce did as he was told. A moment later, he was free of the cuffs. He pulled his hands back into the cell and the drawer slammed shut.

  “You boys play nice,” one of the guards said.

  Poncho, a young Hispanic man, was squat, hard, and leathery and because he arrived in the cell first, he’d already claimed the bottom bunk.

  Slouched over, like someone punched him in the stomach, Bryce dropped the Bible, foam pad, sheet, and blanket the guards handed him onto the top mattress. He didn’t say a word, but paced the small room, then looked out into the corridor where two armed guards walked so close together their black-shirted shoulders touched.

  The room held nothing except the bunks, a stainless steel toilet and a sink. Poncho had taped a few photographs on the wall above his bunk.

  “So, what d’ya do?” Poncho asked, then wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

  After the scene in the shower, Bryce feared answering his question. He tried to maintain both his stare and an air of toughness while he attempted to size up his cellmate.

  Poncho didn’t ask his question a second time.

  When Poncho stepped over to the commode and urinated, Bryce moved to the small window on the back wall of the cell. He stood on his toes to peer through a pane of filthy, shatterproof glass, inlaid with wire mesh. Nothing made sense. But one thing was certain. He was in for the fight of his life. If he was convicted of murdering Skyler, he would rot in this or some other prison.

  And no one would care.

  After losing his daughter, and his divorce from Valerie, he turned his back on what was left of his family and friends—convinced the only way to survive was to start over. In the years that followed, he tried to live a good life. He bought and remodeled the house in Ashland, volunteered to coach area Little League teams, and rocked babies in the hospital nursery. He had almost given up on having a family again. And then he met Dana. She and the boys were his fresh start.

  Outside, a few prisoners kicked a soccer ball while others marched on the dirt track. Like refugees from something, they paced the long, oval road surrounding the prison, over and over, shoulders slumped, heads bowed, their hands stuffed into their pockets.

  * * *

  In downtown Ashland, wedged between a lesbian bookstore and a New Age coffee shop, The Office of Public Defense occupied the first floor of what used to be a hotel. As always when the weather was warm enough, Main Street was alive with people, most of them women.

  Kendra Palmer, her heels clicking on the linoleum floor, hurried down the corridor to the small office suite she shared with Maria Fernandez, an older woman who’d worked as a public defender for more than three decades. She was a few inches shorter than Kendra and about twenty pounds heavier. Maria had a freckled nose, inquisitive black eyes and long, dark hair streaked with silver that she wore braided and piled on top of her head. She was a fixture in the department and as well-loved as anyone Kendra had ever met. Maria had two grown children, a husband who cooked, vacuumed, and came by the office once a week to take Maria to lunch, always bringing a bouquet of fresh flowers with him. She was the kind of woman Kendra hoped to someday become.

  Through the window blinds, morning sunlight painted dark and light gray stripes across the metal desktops. An array of unmatched file cabinets lined the back wall. Kendra smiled at the irony and tried not to compare it to the office her father had decorated in celebration of her joining his firm. The room smelled, as it always did in the morning, of yeasty cinnamon rolls and freshly ground coffee from the shop next door.

  For most of the last week, she’d shadowed Maria, following her to the courthouse for arraignments, preliminary hearings, jail visits with defendants, and a felony assault trial that only lasted one afternoon. Kendra was learning the ropes. And for the most part, she was loving every minute.

  Maria dropped a manila folder on Kendra’s desk. “You ready to fly solo?”

  Kendra opened the file. A thirty-five-year-old hearing-impaired man accused of one count of child abuse of a four-year-old boy, and the first-degree murder of a nineteen-month-old toddler. Holy crap. Her first case. A child abuser? A kid murderer? A deaf man? Maria must be kidding.

  Swallowing back the lump of anxiety that seemed to have taken up residency at the base of her throat, Kendra glanced over at Maria. Sooner or later she was going to have to get a grip on herself and perform. She was a Harvard-trained lawyer, prepared to handle this or any other case the judge appointed to her. “I don’t know sign language,” her mouth said, though her mind had meant to assure Maria she could handle herself in court.

  “No one here does. But you’re in luck. He suffered an injury as a child so he had already developed speech. It’s muddled, but understandable. And if you look at him when you talk, he will read your lips.”

  “This is my first case.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.” Maria shrugged. “The investigating officer is Winston Radhauser—one of the good ones.” She paused and smiled. “Easy to look at, if you like cowboys. He’s happily married and a little old for you. Almost everyone finds him instantly likeable. You can trust what he says.”

  “Do you think I’m ready?”

  Maria gave Kendra a big smile. “I do. But I probably wouldn’t have assigned you a murder.” She shrugged. “I guess the boss figures you must have learned a few things from your old man.”

  Her father was almost as well known throughout the world as F. Lee Bailey. Nearly everyone had heard of him and his reputation for winning. Kendra had hoped Ashland was a place where she could escape being her father’s daughter. It looked like she was wrong.

  “Mr. Bryce refused to talk to the arresting officers and has asked for a state-appointed attorney,” Maria said. “I suggest you get over there as quickly as you can. They’ve already transferred him from Ashland holding to the Jackson County Jail in Medford.”

  Kendra was packing her briefcase when a man ducked his head to get through the old, six-foot doorway into their office. In his jeans, cowboy boots, and western cut jacket, he looked like a handsome cattle rancher. With his gray Stetson dangling from the index finger of his left hand, he stopped in front of Maria’s desk and dropped a manila folder of his own.

  Maria looked up at him and smiled. “We were just talking about you. If it isn’t my favorite cowboy detective.”

  He ran the fingers of his right hand around the edge of the cowboy hat. “Has the Bryce murder case been assigned yet?”

  Maria nodded toward Kendra. “You’re looking at her. Detective Radhauser, meet Kendrick Huntington Palmer IV. She’s a Harvard graduate, passed her bar on the first go around. And clerked for Judge Wallace Turnbough up in Portland.”

  The cowboy raised his eyebrows.

  “And yes,” Maria said. “She’s his daughter.”

  A red-faced Kendra offered her right hand. “Please call me Kendra.” His dark blue eyes were striking in their sapphire color and reminded her of Crater Lake in the sunlight. But he couldn’t hide the disappointment in them. He wanted Maria, or someone more experienced, to handle this case.

  He turned back to Maria and confirmed Kendra’s suspicions. “No offense to your no doubt brilliant young colleague, but I was hoping you’d handle his defense.”

  “What’s so special about this one?” Maria asked.

  “He’s innocent.”

  She shrugged. “Aren’t they all?”

  “This one is different. I’d bet my badge on it.”
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  Maria shook her head. “It’s your case. If you’re so sure he’s innocent, how come he’s in the pen?”

  “I wasn’t ready to make the arrest. Murphy ordered it. I told him he was pulling the trigger too soon, that the case was thin. But you know how he can be when the press is on his tail. Despite the circumstantial evidence against Bryce, I’m certain he didn’t do it.” He paused and smiled. “Come on, darlin’. I need someone with experience to work with me on proving it.”

  “Don’t try that country boy charm routine on me. I know you have the instincts of a bloodhound and are probably right, but it wasn’t my decision,” Maria repeated. “Give the kid a chance. She may be new, but she’s brighter than most.”

  Kendra suppressed a smile. For a moment, she stared at Radhauser’s hands. They were the calloused hands of a working man with nails that were clean, but slightly uneven. A nice person’s hands. Even though the detective was very good looking, he was somehow regular and approachable.

  Radhauser picked up the manila folder and handed it to Kendra. “This is everything I have so far connected to Bryce’s case. Be sure to read all of these reports before you see him. I made extensive notes on everyone I’ve interviewed so far.”

  “I was headed over to County when you got here,” Kendra said.

  “Where are you parked?”

  “In the lot behind the theater.”

  After he ducked through the doorway, he put his hat back on. “I’ll walk you to your car. I can fill you in on the way.”

  As they walked down Main Street, with its green and gold Shakespeare banners flapping in the wind, Radhauser told her everything he knew about Bryce, Dana and Reggie Sterling, and their four-year-old son, Scott. The summer tourist season was over and the streets finally belonged to the residents of Ashland again. “You’ve come here at a good time,” he said. “It’s always a relief not to have to dodge window-shopping tourists and hundreds of high school students bused in for the theater.”