Escape Clause

by James O. Born

  Tasker hadn’t told anyone about the lab results on Dewalt’s pendant. No one would expect that it had already been processed. Right now his problem was who to trust. If the only fingerprint on the silver pendant was a DOC sergeant named Janzig, there was no telling who else might know about it. The question that kept popping into Tasker’s head was why there was only one print on the pendant. Maybe Baxter had shown it to Janzig? He’d eventually ask the sergeant after he had checked him out through Renee Chin. Now he let his concentration go back to Captain Norton.

  The thick captain kept reading a report of the attack on Tasker the day before. The warden had turned the entire matter over to Norton, and the captain of the correctional officers didn’t seem too worried about the run-in.

  Norton’s small brown eyes looked up at Tasker. “So you met old Linus the hard way.” He chuckled and added, “No pun intended.”

  Renee spoke up. “Sam, you know this isn’t a joke.”

  He held up his hands. “Hold on, hold on there, Renee.” He used a warmer tone when talking to the prison’s inspector. “Linus done this before and every time the most that happens is he messes on someone’s leg.” He looked at Tasker. “I heard you got blood on my green carpet in there.”

  Tasker didn’t acknowledge the question, as he tried to figure out where this guy was going.

  Norton tried to look serious. “After something like this, Linus gets on his medicine right and goes back to the general population. Shit, they sent him back so many times from Chattahoochee that it’s easier just to keep the man locked down in Psych till he’s back on track. He’s never hurt nobody. He’s here on a serial burglary rap.”

  “He had a pretty good grip of my throat.” Tasker opened the collar of his polo shirt to expose the purple stain of broken blood vessels that clearly showed finger marks.

  Norton leaned closer for inspection. “That he did, Mr. Special Agent, that he did. But you must’ve gotten in some good shots, too. Linus’ leg is swollen up like a watermelon and his right arm has a compound fracture with ligament damage.”

  “Next time one of your inmates tries to kill me, I’ll try to go easier on him.”

  “I been tellin’ you he didn’t try to kill you.” He sat back in his leather chair and ran his hand over his face like he was frustrated. “Look, things happen in prisons. People get hurt. That’s why none of ’em is manned by the Boy Scouts.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you? Do you really? Just since I been gone—that’s three days, mind you—we got a dead Nazi that looks like he slipped and hit his head, a shiv attack on a inmate in Dorm H, a domestic between two officers that got the husband locked up at the county jail, and this shit that happened to you. Some events that don’t concern you, but I still gotta make sure you’re safe while you look at another death. I still gotta keep things runnin’ here. I don’t see the governor sending people to help us with them problems.”

  Tasker kept his cool. “I know things happen you can’t control. I just want to know if this could’ve been controlled.”

  Norton stared at him and a complete change in mood came over the captain. “You think someone let him loose on you on purpose?”

  “That’s one conclusion I came to.”

  “That’s a mighty serious conclusion.” He looked at Renee. “That’s something Inspector Chin would have to look into, and if it’s true I’ll personally twist the balls off of anyone involved.”

  Tasker stood. “I appreciate that attitude, Captain. Hope I’m wrong, but if not, Inspector Chin will find out the truth.”

  Norton softened slightly. “You find out who killed Rick Dewalt and head on home and everyone’ll be happy.”

  Tasker looked at him, using his best cop street sense to see if the guy was on the level. It troubled him greatly that he couldn’t tell with this joker. The captain was either a great guy or a total lying psychopath.

  Renee Chin walked with Bill Tasker to a small office in the admin building where he could look at the time sheets and write his reports on the investigation. Tasker was very quiet, just asking Renee as they walked into the office, “No one works in here, do they?”

  “No, why?”

  “I could use a desk until I’m finished.”

  “How long will that be, do you think? I mean, it looks like Baxter might have done it.”

  He looked at her and hesitated. Then he said, “I looked briefly at Dewalt’s personal effects a few days ago.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “Something in the back of my mind keeps telling me I had seen that pendant before.”

  “Where?”

  “Let’s have a look at Dewalt’s personal effects and I can either confirm this feeling or dismiss it.”

  “Let’s go.”

  Renee didn’t know what was on the state cop’s mind, but she was fascinated with the process. She looked into deaths and thefts and everything else that went on at the prison, but this was a different perspective.

  In a room next to her office were shelves of evidence and contraband she had taken from inmates. It took only a second to find the plastic bag with Rick Dewalt’s personal items in it.

  Tasker took the bag and looked in the open end. “This is everything?”

  “We disposed of any clothing and turned any cash into a check. When everything is resolved, the family will get the bag. No one keeps much around here.”

  “Was the bag always open?”

  She nodded. “I have a small safe to lock up anything real valuable.”

  “Is there a log of what was in here?”

  She reached over and pulled a single sheet off the shelf. “Anything else?”

  Tasker looked down the short list. He looked at Renee and said, “Item eight says small medallion with face on the front. Think that a medallion and a pendant are the same thing?”

  Renee looked at the log. The officer on duty in the dorm the day Dewalt died had filled it out. What was Tasker getting at?

  Tasker said, “Show me that medallion or pendant in this bag.”

  She took the bag and emptied the contents out onto an empty shelf. There was no jewelry of any kind.

  She looked up at him. “I don’t mean to sound stupid, but what’s this mean? Someone took it after it was stored here?”

  “And then planted it in Leroy Baxter’s stuff.”

  “But why?”

  “To make us think we had found our killer.”

  She considered this and then, before she could stop herself, asked, “Who?”

  “The only print on it was of a sergeant here named Henry Janzig.”

  “I don’t understand that at all. Why would Henry want you to think Baxter killed Dewalt?”

  “First I’d check to see if Janzig was in a position to kill Dewalt. Then work from there.”

  Renee didn’t hesitate. “Believe me, I’m on it.”

  Luther Williams had been a successful attorney as Cole Hodges. He had raised money by the carload for the Committee for Community Relief, even if they had only received about twenty percent. He had been a successful armed robber in St. Louis years before, until his unfortunate arrest when a patrol car had rear-ended his parked getaway Trans Am and the fat uniformed patrolman had called for help because he thought he was paralyzed. Every cop in the city had responded only to find Luther backing out of the large grocery store with a pistol in his hand and the cop’s giant gut stuck under the wheel of his patrol car.

  Luther had been a success at the Missouri State prison, running the gambling and homemade liquor concession for three years until the chance to ride a laundry truck out the gate had come up. Now he found he was a success again. He had a nice cocaine distribution network, as well as a small protection racket worked out to keep some of the brothers safe who were hooked up outside but didn’t have enough horsepower to scare anyone in a place as pleasant-sounding as Manatee Correctional.

  His successful elimination of Vollentius proved he could get things done. Vollentius had
been discovered a full two hours after his unlucky slip in the prep kitchen. By the time he’d been found, his face was scaled half away, his skull was fractured and he had drowned in a mere eight inches of water. Luther chuckled out loud.

  Walking down the main breezeway toward his job in the administration building, Luther passed Robert Moambi, the dishwasher on duty the day before when the Aryan had had his accident. Luther nodded.

  Moambi stopped briefly and mumbled, “They’re calling all the staff together to ask us about what we seen.”

  Luther said, “And what did you see?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Good. I’ll remember that.” Luther patted the thick, dark young man on his arm and continued on his way.

  Once he was through the main gate and in the admin building, he saw the lovely Renee Chin. He heard her say to the officer closest to the door, “I’ve got to run over to the medical examiner for Vollentius’ autopsy. Should be back in a couple of hours.”

  The seated officer nodded, but Luther took note. He’d watch for her return and see if her face gave anything away. She was one of the few who knew her shit around here. He’d hate to have to change his plans almost as much as he’d hate to eliminate that ebony beauty. But he knew he’d do what he had to do.

  Renee Chin wasn’t sure if she was sorry or relieved when she discovered that Henry Janzig had been in Tallahassee the day Rick Dewalt was killed. She had confirmed it with paperwork and phone calls to the training coordinator in the state’s capital. It left questions but didn’t point to the funny-looking old man as a killer. She sat on Tasker’s new desk and finished telling him, then asked, “Where does that leave us?”

  “Nowhere, really. Eventually I’ll have to interview Janzig and see if he has a good excuse for why his print is on a pendant that should have been in that plastic bag.”

  “This means you’ll be here awhile.”

  Tasker shrugged. “Unless someone confesses, it’ll take me a couple of weeks to check out everything and write up the investigation. There’s not much to work with.”

  “Unless someone talks.”

  “Right. Unless someone talks.”

  “Someone always talks in here. It just takes time.”

  “Time isn’t an issue with me. I’m here. This is my assignment.”

  She couldn’t hide a smile. “In that case, I have a key for this office. Use it until you’re done. I’ll even get you a name tag.”

  He smiled as he settled in behind the desk, his notebook and some papers on his right. “Will you visit me occasionally? I feel like I’m in lockdown now.”

  “The warden doesn’t want to risk another incident. You can bet you’ll be safe here.” She checked her Timex. She never wore anything expensive to the facility because sometimes it seemed like she was surrounded by thieves. “I’ve got to view the autopsy on the inmate that died, Vic Vollentius. Make sure it really was an accident. Then I’m gonna check out the mental ward and lockdown to see if I can get a handle on what happened yesterday. Can I buy you an early dinner?”

  “You bet.”

  twenty

  Renee Chin made the long drive into the Palm Beach County Medical Examiner’s Office in the correctional facility’s five-year-old Ford Taurus with questionable air-conditioning. She found her mind wandering as she drove east on the boring, straight US Highway 80. The endless fields of cane waved in a decent breeze from the east and few cars passed her going toward the Glades. She fiddled with the air-conditioning controls and then cracked the window to supplement the substandard Freon.

  She pushed the rattling older Ford a little for a couple of reasons. It was warm inside the mildew-smelling vehicle and she wanted to get back for dinner with Bill Tasker. A smile crept across her face as she thought about him in the small office, so concerned about doing a good job and studying photos and interview reports.

  As she came within sight of Lion Country Safari, a sure sign of the civilization to come, she noticed another car behind her. It was a Florida highway patrol trooper in a brown-and-tan Crown Vic. Where’d he come from? Then the light bar on his roof came to life and she pulled onto the shoulder of the road with her rearview filled with the whirling blue lights.

  She cranked down the window as the tall, white trooper with a wash-and-wear haircut lingered at his open door, speaking into the radio mike clipped to his shoulder. He reached back into his car and pulled out a giant Wendy’s soda cup and took a long slug, replaced the cup in his car, then started his slow stroll up to the car with his metal ticket book already out. Renee wasn’t certain, but thought the Taurus had a state tag on it. The trooper stopped belt-high in front of her window.

  “What’s the problem, Officer?”

  “Do you have any idea how fast you were going?”

  “Maybe eighty-five?”

  He paused. “Seventy-nine.”

  “Is that all? Good, I wouldn’t want to be unsafe.” She looked up at his boyish face and cut loose with the best smile she could.

  The trooper said, “License and registration.”

  She would have to step out of the car for her feminine side to be more obvious. She reached across to the glove compartment and found, like any other vehicle from the prison, that it had no paperwork. She turned back.

  “Sorry, this is a pool car from Manatee Correctional. The registration is probably in an office. You know how the state is.”

  He barely acknowledged her as he stepped to the rear of the car and started to write in the ticket holder.

  Renee opened the door and was standing outside the car before the trooper could protest.

  She smiled as she eased back toward him. “C’mon, you’re not gonna write another law enforcement officer, are you?”

  “You’re a cop? I thought you worked for Corrections.”

  She threw out a little laugh and touched his arm. It was only a matter of time, she figured.

  The trooper, a couple of inches taller than her, looked her straight in the eyes. “Save it. You were speeding and I own this highway. My job is to make sure people drive safely and don’t get killed between here and Belle Glade.”

  She thought about turning on her female charm to full blast, but that went against her grain. She’d had enough of this redneck.

  “Look,” Renee said in a calm, firm voice. “I’m on my way to the ME’s office for an autopsy. I’m sorry I was speeding, but the state has not seen fit to fix the air in that piece of shit.”

  “So that gives you the right to speed?”

  That was it. Renee took a step back in case she wanted to punch the smug trooper. “I just explained my situation. If you’re gonna write me, write me, but I’ve got a lot to do and talking to an arrogant, self-important asshole is not on my schedule.”

  “You blew it.”

  “I blew it? What did I blow?”

  He held up his ticket book and showed her a note he had written out on a plain sheet of paper. It said, Dinner Friday night? Tom Miko. Then it had his phone number.

  She stared at the trooper. “Oh my. I . . .” She really didn’t know what to say. She was away from the prison and not on her usual guard.

  The tall trooper said, “I just thought you were cute. You’ll never know what you missed.”

  He simply turned and walked back to his police car.

  Renee watched him walk away and thought, Damn, he does have a nice ass.

  Luther Williams made sure everyone who had to talk to an investigator about the Aryan Knight’s death saw him walk by and noticed he knew who was in the group. He had already made arrangements for the dishwasher, Robert Moambi, to get full trustee status and a job in the administration building with him, starting that afternoon. They were going to need the help after he left. Luther smiled at the thought of his freedom. It was almost as sweet as his plan to live on the outside. After a few errands, he had a lot of plans. He’d finally visit Tallahassee and make the visit he’d put off for fifteen years. All he needed first was a stop in Miami
. There were people who owed him money in Miami, but more important, there was a man who could work miracles. If you needed a new identity or a place to start over, Mr. Neil Nyren was as good as any saint in performing miracles. And unlike some saints, Nyren knew how to keep his mouth shut.

  After making sure the kitchen staff saw him, he kept his casual pace as he walked past D Dorm where there were always four Aryan Knights sitting at the small picnic-style table. If more than four inmates gathered, they were in violation of the facility’s rules. The Aryans were dumb-asses, but at least they were smart enough to work around the system.

  Luther turned and made a show of nodding to the four surly-looking young men. All were, no doubt, mourning the loss of their comrade. None of them returned Luther’s pleasant greeting. Their usual distaste for anyone without white skin prevented normal social interaction. But there was something more behind the ice wall. The way all four sets of eyes followed him made Luther realize he was being sized up. Was Vollentius planning his own hit when he went to the kitchen? Luther decided not to put off any plans he had already set in motion.

  As much as Tasker wanted to focus on the six-week-old homicide, his mind kept drifting. He thought about Renee and her new death investigation. He’d like working on that with her, but Captain Norton had made it clear he didn’t want Tasker tied up in it. He didn’t think the governor would order the FDLE to investigate a Nazi’s death. He thought about the professor’s homicide investigation. He really wanted in on that, too. But Rufus was actively opposed to help. He was stuck on this. There was no lack of death investigations out here in the quiet countryside. Tasker hadn’t been close to this many homicide investigations since a gang war in Liberty City. But right now it was time for lunch. That was the one thing he was sure of.