CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Aaron stared at the drab walls. So gray, so stereotypical. The prison looked like one from an old movie. Metal bars, large guards, overcast skies. It wouldn’t have surprised him to see someone digging a tunnel under the exercise yard.
Forensic accountants didn’t fit in at a place like this. What did he know about prison?
The small waiting room contained three stiff metal chairs, all facing a poster of the ten most wanted people in the county. Aside from the buzzing of a soda machine, the place didn’t make a sound. A guard sat behind a little desk ten feet away, typing something into his computer. Fifteen minutes of waiting and still no progress.
No matter. He only watched these walls for a few minutes. Rollins probably stared at them for weeks. At least Aaron got to leave and go back to the accounting center. Though his new glass walled office sometimes seemed like a prison cell, it felt like a luxury hotel in comparison to this.
The guard waved Aaron over to his low steel desk and pointed at a clipboard. Aaron signed his name and the time.
“How’s he doing?” he asked, deepening his voice. Why did he feel he needed to impress this guy? Because the guard’s neck was thicker than Aaron’s waist?
The guard fished through his keys. “Rollins?”
“Yes. I’ve heard he hasn’t done well.”
“He’s dying." The guard sighed. “Sleeps all day, can’t sit on his own. You’re the only visitor he’s had.”
The large man found his keys, stood, and unlocked the entrance to the cellblock. They stepped inside, the guard slamming the door shut. White walls with a clinical green stripe on the left, bars on the right. Also stereotypical. Weren’t the inmates supposed to lean out and taunt him, make fun of his suit? Instead, the place appeared empty, not a soul in sight. They started walking.
“The others are in the yard,” said his guide. “Rollins hasn’t wandered outside since he got here. Countless doctors examined him, shining lights in his eyes. He’s a mystery. They’ve never seen anything like it. It’s like his skin lost contact with the rest of his organs and is trying to reconnect itself. Surprises everybody. There’s talk about pulling the plug on him, but the doctors are intrigued. They want to know what’s wrong with this guy so they keep him around. Personally I think he’s going to pull through. I got twenty bucks that says it.”
Aaron pulled a picture from his briefcase as they walked. The photo was of his wife and a dark haired young man, locked in an embrace. Adrianna denied having met the man, but Aaron maintained his doubts. Police investigators identified the location as The Blue Room, a dance club in Indianapolis. If the handwriting on the back was an indication, this clown’s name was Carter. Police officers pulled the picture from a large filing cabinet inside the machine. They gave him a copy as part of the investigation.
Nobody knew who this man was, but Wade sure took plenty of pictures of him. Stacks of prints of Traci, Adrianna, and a host of others around town were there too. In every case there was an unidentified person photographed. Nobody knew who they were. Either a lot of witnesses lied or Wade was an expert at photo manipulation. The police pointed to the darkroom in Wade’s kitchen as proof that the guy knew his way around Photoshop. Still, Aaron doubted. How do you fake a photograph of someone hugging a stranger’s wife? And why?
If she cheated on him he ought to know. It was the last missing piece.
His watch beeped. One o’clock in the afternoon. The watch was a nice gift from the department, thanking him for using math to bag a criminal. They said he saved Wade’s life. Since the government scientists could not figure out how to use the machine, they classified it as a suicide contraption. Not a satisfying diagnosis, but nothing he could disprove.
Then people started calling Aaron a hero because he “predicted” the issue. He wasn’t a hero. The attention was nuts. Newspapers called at all hours for interviews. The department got their scandal to trumpet on the news, even if it meant he had to disconnect his phone lines to go to sleep at night. Aaron got a watch and a promotion, and O’Malley got fired for impeding the investigation. Justice for sure. That part worked out fine. But it meant nothing if Adrianna cheated on him.
The guard swung his keys around his forefinger. “They got anything else pinned on him?” They descended a set of concrete stairs. “I follow it a little.”
Aaron debated touching the handrails. What bacteria lurked on them? “Charges about his suicide machine. That’s it.”
There was more, but he wasn’t about to tell it to this guy, lest it end up on the evening news. He couldn’t tell him about Traci’s tape recorder mysteriously getting lost, or how the video camera pointed in the wrong direction and failed to capture anything useful. After all of that trouble, Wade was only held for his machine and the few improper expenditures on the books of the Department of Defense, the ones they confidently established as false.
The papers sensationalized it of course. The DOD wanted a whipping boy and they got one. But they lacked enough evidence to get a strict sentence against Wade. And what jury could inflict a harsh penalty on a dying man?
The cops were still unsure about the stalking charges. Wade obviously followed the Dublins. The pictures proved that. But, to Rollins’ credit, Aaron followed Wade as well. In that they were even. It would be unjust to press charges unless he also did it to himself.
The guard pointed for Aaron to watch his step and they ascended another set of cement stairs. Outside the barred windows the inmates paced around the yard. Some of them played basketball, others lifted weights. Clouds obscured the sun. Winter was coming, you could feel it in the air.
The walls echoed their voices. Ceilings dipped down low, made out of the same concrete as the floors. The guard was visibly excited to talk to the famous Aaron Dublin. Out of respect, Aaron listened.
“Rollins opened his eyes last night. A real breakthrough. He is so weak we rotate his body on a regular schedule to prevent bedsores. No matter how much we turn him he still gets bruised. At night he moans. Sometimes we get a doctor to prescribe something. Sometimes there’s nothing we can do. I don’t care what he did. I can’t stand to see a man in that much pain.”
Aaron’s eyes itched. He rubbed them, though the doctor told him not to. The light from the machine had burned his retinas. Both Adrianna and Traci wore dark glasses and spent a lot of time indoors with the lights low in order to cope. If only he’d remembered his sunglasses.
Four minutes into their journey they stopped inside the clinic. The muted lime green color covered all of the walls. Hospital gurneys rested in the far corner. Machines beeped and tweeted. Long white counters lined the room.
Only one holding cell was occupied.
Bars, painted white instead of black, also lined the rectangular recovery bays. Floors clean, tabletops empty, the place was immaculate. Five small holding cells were crammed together, all getting their light from the windows set high in the walls across the room.
The guard showed Aaron in and locked the door behind him. “Give me a signal and I’ll come right over.”
The clanking of the guard’s boots echoed down the hall. He exited the infirmary, closing the door behind him, a small window the only exit that connected Aaron to his freedom.
He stood alone in Wade’s cell.
After countless hours searching through piles of numbers, peering through a camera, and participating in endless discussions, he finally got to meet the man himself. Aaron walked further into the cold cell, surprised at how small Wade appeared in the lumpy jailhouse bed. A light blue blanket covered his body. Hopefully he was awake. Hard to tell. He had to be, Aaron needed this opportunity to get some clarity about the pictures. Though his work life was a success and his passion for his wife grew ever stronger, there were still those images of her kissing another man. They haunted him. This old man knew the answers.
The room was so still. The only movement came from the heart monitor at the head of Wade’s bed. A toilet and a littl
e sink occupied the wall opposite the bars. A small doctor’s stool rested against an extra bunk opposite Wade’s. What did a guy have to do to get some architectural variety in this place?
Aaron sat on the spare bed, facing Wade. Two bloodshot eyes stared at him from under the government blanket, following him across the room as he sat down. Aaron exhaled. “Hello, Mister Rollins.”
No response, no movement from the bed, though the eyes seemed to recognize him.
“My name is Aaron Dublin. I’m sure you already know that. I work for the Department of Defense. You may remember me as the man who discovered you on the machine a few weeks ago.”
A stir from under the covers, Wade shifting his hand.
“I know who you are,” the voice croaked, no louder than a whisper. A chill ran up Aaron’s spine as he heard Wade speak. It was like talking with a thing so fragile it might blow away with a light breeze. Wade’s cheeks sank in, large bags drooped under his eyes. His cracked lips glowed blue, veins jutted out through his translucent skin. Wade looked terrible.
“Wade, the FBI is almost ready to close its case against you. You’re in prison until they decide what to do. I’m afraid your health is not….” Aaron’s voice trailed off, waiting for some sort of affirmation that Wade heard him.
Outside, a flock of geese flew by on their migration route, breaking up the flat sky with the dark masses of their bodies. Winter came so quickly. Aaron exhaled again and did his best to press on.
With trembling hands he raised the photograph of Adrianna clinging to Carter. The photo was worn from constant inspection, its edges browned and curling in. It haunted Aaron.
“You probably don’t care to speak with me, Mr. Rollins. I can appreciate that. It’s because of me that you’re here today, behind bars. But I needed to come. Not as an investigator, but as one man speaking to another. I need to know who this is. I have to know…, I need to know.”
A long pause. A stirring under the blanket. A whistle blew out in the yard. Aaron cracked his knuckles to have something to do. The silence ate at him. It wasn’t supposed to happen like this.
Wade's mouth opened. “Your wife loves you very much. Leave it at that.”
“But…,” Aaron protested, a lump forming in his throat. No, he could not get emotional. Focus on the mission. He pointed to the handsome man in the picture.
“Who is this? What was he doing with my wife?”
Wade coughed, grunting. “She loves you. You’re a blessed man. You need to trust her. She's done nothing wrong.”
“But…, this photograph. She’s kissing the stranger.”
“You don’t have to worry about him anymore,” muttered the patient.
Of course he did, he was her husband. His marriage hung in the balance. What kind of man ignored adultery?
“Tell me.”
“You don’t have to worry about him anymore. He’s gone now. Love your wife.”
Wade coughed several times. His unkempt gray hair lay plastered against his scalp, a muted shade of silver, almost blue under this light. The thinness left Wade’s scalp exposed underneath. Spots appeared on his skin where the bruises came and went. The machines around his tiny bed beeped and twinkled.
Aaron did not belong there; Wade was dying. What right did he have to question someone on his deathbed? But jealousy demanded answers.
“What do you mean, ‘don’t worry about him anymore’?” Aaron’s voice dropped low, quiet. He stared at the concrete walls, searching for answers. A lump blocked words from escaping his throat.
“I took care of it,” whispered Wade.
“But—”
Wade erupted, roaring at the young man. “I’m telling you, he isn’t going to bother you any longer. He doesn’t exist. There’s nothing he can do to you.”
Aaron struggled for a breath, not sure what this apparition had told him. “Are you saying you killed him?”
“I’m saying he never existed. He’s something evil I allowed to fester inside of me, unchecked, for decades. Don’t be so obsessed with my sin that you forget to be thankful for what you have. Don’t abdicate your responsibility to love the woman in your life because you are haunted by something in the past.”
“But I—”
A low rumble accompanied each syllable from Wade. “If you are the man she needs, she will never seek anything else. A man who is loved is blessed, a special man. Not everyone has what you've got.”
Wade coughed again, louder this time. “Go with God.”
Another burst of hacking and he went silent, his energy spent. His eyelids sank. Intense stillness settled into the jail cell. Aaron stood and kicked the doctor’s stool against the wall, shouting. All of the pain in his heart boiled over in one violent outburst. He wanted to break everything in sight, to yell at the old man.
Who was this criminal to speak to him like that? All he’d ever done was talk in riddles, to lead the authorities on countless wild goose chases after people who never existed. Names didn’t match up. Dates were incorrect. Piles of paperwork discovered in the belly of the machine did not mesh with public records. It was an elaborate, aggravating work of historical fiction. They included intense details about the private lives of real citizens, but also invented material about husbands, wives, and children that never existed.
There were no connections between these people. None expected to turn up in the files of this recluse. Only a trail of unsatisfying answers.
Aaron glared down at the old man who lay crippled by the very air he breathed. Wade could not raise his arms to signal the guards or to feed himself. With one look, Aaron lost his anger and reverted to pity. In all of their investigations they only drummed up three people who admitted having contact with Wade in over a decade, one of which was his own disgruntled ex-girlfriend. This corpse knew no love. No next of kin tried to see him, no pastors or community members stopped by. He was profoundly alone. Outside the prison the world moved, full of love and relationships, comedy and tragedy. But inside this pale green jail cell, a man’s life turned cold, unnoticed.
The only visible part of Wade was his head and the top of one brittle hand. The skin lifeless, dry and flaking. He might not make it to the next day.
Pity morphed into heartache. Who was Aaron to rail against a man so obsessed with the lives of others? Wade lived vicariously through strangers, watching as a scientist observes a rare species. Aaron enjoyed a beautiful wife, a blossoming career, and freedom to come and go as he wished. Most of his life lay ahead of him, but he’d let another man rob him of his love for his wife.
Aaron still yearned for Adrianna, despite the photographs. He loved the way she looked at him each night before bed, the way she arranged their kitchen after he made a mess cooking. She had a rapport with children, a fondness for the simple things in life. Her pervasive beauty still made him wonder how he managed to marry her.
His heart raced at the thought of seeing Adrianna again, of telling her of his need for her, and his desire to renew his promise to be hers forever.
Gasping, crying, Aaron knelt next to the old man. With one quick motion he tore the picture of his wife and the stranger in two and threw the pieces behind him. He sucked in air, held his hands out before him, and hung his head low.
“God,” he said, choking on his own words. “Please, God. Forgive me for letting this man steal my love for my wife. I want to honor her, to trust her. She is so special to me. Teach me how to love her, to let her know that I love her.”
He leaned against Wade now, his arms resting on the old man. “Father, if you see it fit to work a miracle, raise this man from the dead. Don’t let him die alone. Give him the chance to see one more spring day. Let him know the love of a woman like I have with Adrianna. God, nobody should go like this. Nobody. Heal him, Lord. Please.…”
He sat in the peace of the moment. It was in God’s hands now. His life waited to continue and another waited to end. He brushed off his pants, stood to his feet, and signaled for the guard to give him bac
k his freedom.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
A miracle happened at the prison, though few bothered to pay much attention. The prisoner in recovery room 102 saw fit to pull himself to a standing position for approximately three minutes. He remained on his feet long enough to look out the tiny window across the hall from his cell and stare at the gray autumn sky. Another week and the old man requested an extra measure of green beans with his evening meal.
As time went by, the doctors wondered at his progress, equating it to the burst of life often granted to cancer patients before the end. But Wade proved more robust than even they predicted, limping to the recreation area during free time and even stepping into the cold evening air to gather a few dried leaves in the palm of his hand. He held the frail, dead objects, running his fingers across their veins.
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