As Luther finished sorting some books on his cart, a short, bald man who worked for the state walked into the large hallway with a six-foot folding ladder in his hand. He turned toward Luther and smiled as he set up the ladder next to him to check a fluorescent light in the ceiling. The man’s white shirt had the letters DMS across the left chest, with the name Marty underneath. He scooted the ladder back and looked over his shoulder.
Luther watched Inspector Chin turn and head out the end of the hallway, apparently to greet the FDLE agent he’d seen walking toward the front. When the hallway was empty, Luther said to the man, “Did you find it?”
The man nodded and smiled as his hand came from his pocket and he opened his fist, revealing the small, silver key Luther had asked his girlfriend to drop in the grass after her last visit.
Luther said, “Not here. They’ll search me when I head back into the facility.”
The man put his hand back in his front pants pocket. “No problem. I gotta check the AC unit in Dorm A. I’ll leave it on the fuse box next to the dorm. You know where I’m talkin’ ’bout?”
Luther nodded. “Mr. Nance, you have done a fine job. Thank you, my man. You just earned your cousin another six months’ free rent.”
The man seemed satisfied and headed up the ladder as Luther strutted toward the service main gate to the facility. Everything was coming together.
sixteen
Bill Tasker sat in one of the bare closet-sized rooms attached to the main lockdown area inside the fence at Manatee State Correctional Facility. There were four empty, doorless rooms containing a simple metal table and two chairs. One office sat at each corner of the wide, empty entryway to the secure lockdown area. Renee Chin had told him that the thin green carpet throughout the lockdown facility had been Captain Norton’s idea. Another tribute to Stephen King. Tasker figured if the place needed a carpet, why not make it green.
The correctional officers used the small rooms, like the one where Tasker now sat, to write up paperwork or take a break from the constant noise of the inmates. He was looking at photos taken after the murder and making rough sketches of the lockdown facility, which took up most of the building. He always made notes and sketches on cases and rarely had to refer to them. Once, in court on a drug case, he’d brought his sketch of an arrest scene to the trial. When he’d looked at the two-year-old picture of a house off Seventh Avenue in Miami, he hadn’t been able to make any sense of what he had written. He still did it on every case, though.
The eight single cells in lockdown were under constant observation, and were used to keep troublesome inmates in complete isolation. There were ten more cells farther from the control /observation room in which prisoners were separated but could still talk through the bars. This part of the facility was personally supervised by Captain Norton, and it showed. The place was clean, the officers right on top of things, and it looked like the extra security area ran smoothly all the time. Norton was expected back tomorrow after his mandatory three days’ administrative leave following the shooting of the escaped inmate the Friday before. He could have used up to ten days of admin leave and sick leave after that if he wanted, but Tasker didn’t think the sour captain was too broken up over the shooting.
Shooting incidents affected everyone differently. Tasker had been told to take the full ten days off after the bank shooting, but some of that had had to do with everything that had happened to him in the last six months.
After the FBI had investigated him for the bank robbery that first put him in contact with Cole Hodges, he’d thought he’d never recover. He’d been back in five days. After he’d stopped Daniel Wells from blowing up half of downtown Miami, he’d been out a month, but that had been for physical injuries, not emotional. The director had told him to look at his assignment out here as an extension of that rehab. But the image of the dead robber still popped into his head once in a while. Just like the mental picture of the pretty bank manager lying still on the marble floor with the small hole in her forehead. Maybe he’d snap one day. No one had any way of knowing what trauma would haunt you the rest of your life. Maybe he’d dream about them every night. Now it was just part of his world. One more thing he had to deal with day to day.
Right now he was using his assignment as a way not to think about someone shooting Warren Kling. He focused on his drawings of the facility and his stick figure representing Dewalt’s body. He had to remember that this was a homicide, too, and that Dewalt’s family was still grieving.
Tasker had been fully briefed on the building. He needed the info for his investigation into the murder. He had been told that the lockdown area was attached to the housing for mentally disturbed inmates. This was technically a role for the medical unit, but for safety reasons an inmate deemed unstable was housed in one of the comfortable holding cells with a simple pad for a bed. If the condition was determined to be chronic, the inmate was transferred to a facility better equipped to handle a case like that. The prison located the two units together so correctional officers could move between the units if there was a problem.
Tasker paused and found himself staring out the door at the reflected sunlight entering through the only barred window in the common area of the lockdown and psychiatric area. He wasn’t sure if it was the gloom of this place or his shock over Professor Kling’s murder, but he couldn’t concentrate and his mood was extremely somber. He’d felt like this quite a few times since his unceremonious transfer from West Palm Beach to Miami four years ago after a questionable shooting incident. An incident that had indirectly led to his divorce. But over the last few months he’d felt like the clouds were lifting and he was regaining his old, more positive outlook. Although he was still a little hung up on his ex-wife, Donna, he could admit it and deal with it. Besides, only a dead man wouldn’t be attracted to her. He had moved past her and started to date. He used to think these dark moods were acceptable, but now he resisted them and realized they would pass.
A shadow passing across the light snapped him back to the present. He blinked his eyes and looked into the dark common area. He figured the lights were low to keep everyone calm. It took him a few seconds to realize that someone must have been moving outside the little room, must have cut across the square of sunlight. He peered out into the area, then stood and stretched. He kept looking outside, but saw no more movement.
He felt an odd tingle, though, and stepped around the small table with his notebook on it, then to the doorway. As he took the first step out into the common area and turned his head to the left, he suddenly felt someone grip his right shoulder with incredible pressure. In pain, he turned his head just enough to see the white gown of an inmate from the medical facility and a black face with large brown eyes. The man was taller than he was, maybe six-foot-three, and his fingers dug in like a set of pliers. He felt himself start to lose consciousness and fought it as he tried to call out for help, but as he opened his mouth, the man’s other hand closed around his throat. This sucked.
Luther Williams found the key right where the DMS man had said he’d leave it. The small silver key used for the car trunk of his—he hated to think it—girlfriend’s Cadillac CTX. The thin key was easy to slip into his sock and soon would be hidden in the metal frame of his cot. The metal detectors at the front gate might have picked it up. He’d probably have been able to explain why he had it, but they wouldn’t have let him keep it.
He walked down the breezeway toward his dorm like a man who just won the lottery. It wasn’t what you had in life, it was what you did with it. He intended to use the little key, in conjunction with a number of other things, to turn around this set-back in his life.
Billie Towers pulled out her clean University of Florida T-shirts and slammed them into her open duffel bag. She’d stopped crying, but was still deeply troubled by Professor Kling’s death. She wanted to get out of this shitty little town and never think of it again.
As soon as she had that thought, she plopped down on the edge of her bed
and started sobbing again. She knew she couldn’t leave yet. If she did, she’d keep thinking about some of the better aspects of town. She really did have friends here, not like at UF where the stuck-up sorority girls ignored her because she wasn’t white. They didn’t even know what her ethnic background was—most people assumed she was Cuban—but they knew she wasn’t white.
She’d also miss out on a chance to make enough money to start a new life. She dried her eyes on the bedspread and sniffed as she calmed down. The old-style rotary phone on the nightstand rattled and dinged its quirky ring. She picked it up
“Hello?”
“You all right, baby?” said a man’s voice.
“What do you think?”
“I think you need to stay right there until we can talk.”
“I’m packing.” She made her voice sound firm even though she wasn’t.
“Then unpack.”
She hesitated.
The voice said, “Be there in a few minutes. Don’t worry, I just want to see you happy.”
Tasker felt his legs start to give out from the lack of oxygen and the pain. He knew if he hit the ground, it would be all over. He blinked hard to clear his head and tried to gasp for oxygen so he could think. Eleven years as a cop and he couldn’t get out of this? He took both his hands and grabbed the large, strong hand on his throat. He could block some of the pain in his shoulder, but he needed air and needed it right now. He peeled back the man’s fingers first, then, once the hand was off his windpipe, twisted the wrist, making the man’s palm turn completely around. He could feel first the tendons, then the wrist bones, pop and crack as he kept the pressure up.
The trauma of having his wrist snapped caused the man to loosen his grip on Tasker’s shoulder enough so that he could back away from the attacker.
He turned to face the man and saw something that really did surprise him. The loose hospital gown on the large black man was only partially tied in place. He stood tall staring at Tasker. Poking out from below the gown was his long, dark, erect penis.
Tasker realized that this was one of the mental detainees and didn’t want to hurt him, almost as much as he didn’t want to have contact with the man’s giant penis. The man stepped forward and Tasker stepped back, holding up his hands. “Whoa there fella, look at your arm. Let’s call it quits.”
The large black man was not finished. After inspecting his hand briefly, he dismissed the injury, even though his hand hung uselessly at an odd angle from the end of his right arm. His eyes cut from his hand to Tasker and he smiled as he started to spring toward the panting state cop.
Tasker sidestepped back from the lunging man and yelled out for the correctional officer in the control room. “Hey, control room, look up!” He dodged the man again. “Little help here!”
Now he had room to maneuver in the center of the common area for lockdown and the mental ward. He took a second to regain his composure, controlling his breath and clearing his head. Through hard experience he’d learned what jumping into a fight without calming down a little can do to you. The scar on his shoulder was from a rotator cuff surgery after a fight in which he’d gotten winded and, when taking the man down, hadn’t had the energy to keep himself from flopping on the ground next to him. His resulting shoulder injury had calmed him way the hell down.
Tasker stole a quick glance around the place and saw no one was coming to help. He couldn’t dodge this guy forever. The man stepped forward and paused, gripping his own penis and stroking it a couple of times. Tasker took that moment to creep to his side and deliver a devastating knee spike into the man’s leg. He aimed for the peroneal nerve running down the side of his naked leg, and apparently hit it because the man dropped straight to the ground.
Tasker saw he wasn’t getting up anytime soon and decided to let the control room monitor know he was there. He took one of the metal chairs from his small room and flung it as hard as he could at the grating above the window to the control room. The young man in the room snapped his head up from his magazine, and seeing the man sprawled on the floor, sprang to his feet with a radio already in his hand. Tasker leaned against the bars and slid to the floor, gasping as he heard doors clang and men running.
seventeen
Tasker sat in the warden’s office with ice around his bruised neck as he listened to the warden and Renee Chin apologize for the hundredth time.
The warden leaned on his desk, his face creased with worry lines. “Agent Tasker, believe me, this sort of thing is not common here at Manatee.”
Tasker replied, “Forgive me, Warden, but I’m here because of the same thing, aren’t I?”
Renee said, “Bill, what can I do?”
Tasker spoke quietly because his throat still hurt. “Nothing. I’m gonna head to the apartment for now. Can we discuss it tomorrow?”
The warden said, “Captain Norton will be back. Whatever Inspector Chin and the captain want to do is fine with me. We’ll investigate this fully.”
Tasker’s head pounded and his throat burned. He nodded as he stood, still holding the clear bag up to his neck, and headed for the door. In the hallway he kept moving toward the main door, as Renee trailed trying to see what she could do.
At the door he faced her and held up his free hand. “I’ll be fine. Just need some sleep.” He opened the door and stepped out onto the small concrete landing. “Tomorrow we’ll figure this shit out.” He turned without another word.
Luther Williams had some of his belongings out on his cot as he contemplated his plans. The dorm was empty right now, as a class on “developing a spiritual mind” was being offered for the inmates in the small chapel in the center of the complex. Only a few of the dorm’s residents cared about any form of development, but everyone wanted a few minutes in the cool chapel with padded pews.
Luther liked the time to himself. That was one of the worst parts of being in a place like this: you were never, ever alone. He had liked his solitary existence prior to his arrest. As chief counsel for the Committee for Community Relief, he had handled day-to-day affairs from the comfort of his Brickell Avenue office. He’d lived alone for the most part and enjoyed the quiet, private life. Unfortunately, like with so many other times in his life, he hadn’t appreciated what he had until he’d lost it. Now he was thrilled to be alone in a large empty dorm room kneeling next to a creaky metal cot with an air conditioner that didn’t cool the room past eighty-three degrees.
He found his trunk key and held it up to the light, admiring the beauty of the small mechanical wonder. As he was about to clean up his stuff, he heard a voice say, “Whatcha got, old man?”
Luther didn’t turn, not wanting to give the man the satisfaction of acknowledging the insulting name. He knew it was Vic Vollentius, the dope dealer who fancied himself a white leader. The muscular, bald man had a crazy look in his eyes most of the time, but had never bothered Luther until recently. Now he felt like the Aryan Knight was around every corner. Like all the white supremacists, this guy was a bully. Luther was just surprised that he’d try to bully him without any help.
Luther stood and turned toward the man, who was several inches shorter than Luther’s six feet one.
Vollentius said, “Looked like a key. We’re not supposed to have anything like that in our personal belongings.”
Luther remained silent, assessing the man and his intentions.
“What else you got that you’re not supposed to have? What if I told?”
Luther didn’t have the patience for games. “What do you want, Mr. Vollentius?”
“What do you got?”
“A short temper. Now get to the point.”
“How ’bout some of that powder you bring in once in a while. The coke you wouldn’t give me to find out why the Aryan Knights are right around the corner every time you go out.”
“Yes, I remember your offer and I’m as interested now as I was then.”
“But I need some coke to shut my yap about the key. What about it?”
&
nbsp; Luther thought about it and said, “That’s fine, Mr. Vollentius. You will receive one quarter of one ounce upon my next delivery.”
“Now.”
“What?”
“Now, you cocksucker. If you use that key to escape or something happens to you, then I’m out my dope.”
Luther smiled. He never would’ve thought this poor excuse for a biker would have the brainpower to think that all the way through so effectively.
Luther said, “Fair enough, Mr. Vollentius. I will access my inventory tonight and make payment tomorrow. Is that satisfactory?”
The bald man smiled. His pale forehead reflected the light as a bead of sweat formed from the warm dormitory air. “Okay, Williams, you got till tomorrow.”
Luther nodded and said, “Meet me in the rear of the kitchen right before lunch tomorrow. Just you, none of your racist friends.”
“I’ll be there alone if you will.”
Luther didn’t telegraph a single thought. “You have my word.”
The late afternoon sun cut through the pine trees on the western edge of the apartment complex, throwing a series of complex shadows across the empty rear yard. Bill Tasker sat in an Adirondack chair, just letting his mind wander. Instead of looking at clouds and making up shapes in his mind, he looked at the shadows dropping across the scraggly grass. Unfortunately, most of them reminded him of long, erect, dark penises and he had to find something else to occupy his mind. The low sun, time of year and slight breeze made the outside temperature perfect and the clear sky like an oil painting.
The experience at the prison that afternoon had definitely shaken him. He’d been in dozens of fights over the years, winning most but recognizing you were always bound to get clocked once in a while. That was the price of going out in the street every day. He shuddered at what might have happened to him had he been beaten today. He was also curious as to what Captain Sam Norton would have to say. Although the burly captain was still on leave, Tasker had the feeling that not much went on out there without Norton’s knowledge.
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