Unmanned

by Lois Greiman

  We entered a brick building, followed a colorless hall, took a right, and continued on.

  “Maggie.” My guide rapped on a counter the color of bleached sand. A pretty, fresh-faced young woman appeared, hair pulled back in a spunky ponytail. “We got a visitor.”

  She scowled. Her face remained entirely unlined. “It’s not Saturday.”

  “She says she has a special appointment.”

  “I’m a therapist,” I said. “A friend of mine called you.”

  She blinked at me.

  “A Mr. Micky Goldenstone,” I added, heart stalled, muscles aching with tension.

  “Visiting hours are on weekends,” she said.

  It wasn’t the last time I heard that, but finally, after dropping Micky’s name about fifteen more times, I was approached by a man of fifty hard years. He was a little taller than myself, built broad but solid, and bald as an onion.

  “I’m Mr. Rawlins. You Christy McMullen?” he asked, reading from a blue form.

  “Christina,” I said.

  “What?” He glanced up, mildly irritated.

  “Yes,” I said, “Christy McMullen. I have an appointment to speak to Dr. David Hawkins.” My knees still felt a little like Jell-O.

  He nodded. “Why’d you want to see him?”

  I didn’t know what it said on the form. “I’m a psychologist,” I said, lifting my chin a little and pursing my lips. “I’m doing a study on violent behavior of seemingly successful members of our society.”

  He was nodding again, but when he raised his gaze back to mine, his eyes were narrowed. “Says here you’re a victim.”

  My throat started closing up. “What?”

  “Says you was the one Hawkins attacked. That means you’re the victim.”

  “Was.” I gritted my teeth at him and the world in general. “I was a victim. I’m not anymore.”

  His lips were no more than a line in his face. “Sorry,” he said. “I still can’t let you in. We handle victims different than the general public. You’re going to have to meet with mediation. They’ll walk you through the system, then maybe in a couple months you can meet with him.”

  “I don’t think you understand,” I said. “I’m a trained psychologist myself and certainly don’t need—”

  “I don’t make the rules.”

  “Please…” The word sounded wobbly suddenly. I tried to make my voice stronger, but it had been kind of a bad week. “He tried to kill me.” I straightened my back and took a deep breath. “Why would he do that?”

  He was frowning, scalp shining in the fluorescent lights. “Look, lady—”

  “I thought we were friends.” My nose was starting to run a little. “I thought…”

  He rummaged around in his pocket and came up with a tissue. It looked relatively unused. “Wipe your nose.”

  I did as told.

  “You in love with him?”

  I blinked. “What?”

  “Hawkins. You carrying some kind of torch?”

  I tried to process his question, but it wouldn’t really compute. “He tried to kill me.”

  He snorted. “Stranger things happen in this hellhole every single day,” he said, and stared at me for another several seconds, then: “We don’t usually let visitors wear brown—color of the guards’ uniforms. But you don’t exactly look like one of the guys. Give me your purse.”

  I did so. He rummaged around, came up with my wallet. “How much money do you have with you?”

  “Ahhh…” I was trying to think. Honest.

  “You can only take in thirty bucks.”

  “Okay.” I would be lucky if I had half that.

  “I’ll have to take a look.”

  “All right.”

  He rummaged through the bills, then glanced up like I might be pathetic. “You carrying any cigarettes?”

  I shook my head, but he searched anyway, and came up empty.

  “They’re crazy for smokes. California banned ’em, you know. Pack can go for more than a hundred bucks.”

  “Oh.”

  He set my purse aside. “Remove your jacket.”

  I handed it over. He checked the empty pockets, felt along the seams, then set it beside my purse. My shoes were next. I stepped out of them, showed him the soles of my feet. He took a cursory glance and handed back my pumps. “How ’bout your waistband?” I was getting good at blinking. “Run your hand along the inside.” I did. “Got any wire in your bra?”

  Blink. Blink. “No.”

  He nodded, stared at me. “He ain’t in love with you, you know.”

  “What?”

  “We get women like you in here all the time. Young, pretty…” He shook his head. “Don’t know what they see in these guys. Maybe it’s a thrill or something. Maybe—”

  “Did you know a Will Swanson?” I asked.

  He canted his head, squinting a little.

  “Will Swanson. He also went by the names Elijah Kaplan and Wally Hendricks.”

  Another head shake.

  “He was imprisoned here not so long ago.”

  “Don’t recall.”

  “He was shot in my backyard. Died by my garage.” I was feeling a little shocky, kind of surreal.

  “You shoot him?”

  “No! No.”

  “You got some bad luck, girl.”

  I nodded. Couldn’t argue with that. “I thought maybe David could tell me why.”

  He sighed deeply, as though he couldn’t figure out if he should believe me or send me packing, but finally he motioned toward my shoes. I put them back on, slipped into my jacket, and followed him down another endless hall.

  A minute later, he opened a door and nodded me inside. I stepped in slowly. It was about the size of my bedroom, almost square, with cream-colored walls, three chairs, and no windows.

  “You sure you want to do this?”

  No. “Yes,” I said, and nodded once for emphasis.

  He shook his head. “Sit down,” he said, and was gone.

  I sat fidgeting and shifting. The room was almost entirely empty. A camera was mounted on the ceiling in a corner.

  I was examining it when the door opened and David Hawkins stepped inside.

  My heart slowed to a crawl. He smiled a little. I couldn’t have smiled back on a bet. My face had frozen in some kind of hideous grimace.

  “Thank you, Mr. Edwards,” he said to his blank-faced guard, and proceeded to the chair opposite me. “Christina McMullen,” he crooned. “Pit told me to expect you.”

  I scooted my feet up against my chair, and stared. “Hello, David.”

  He sat down, settled back, and steepled his fingers like I remembered him doing a dozen times in the past. “You look well.”

  The world felt tipsy and somewhat short on oxygen. “I’m fine. How are you?”

  “I’m locked in a cage like a rabid wolverine,” he said. His smile broadened. He looked little changed from the day I’d met him at a posh luncheon in Beverly Hills. But maybe there was an edge of feral anticipation in his gaze. Or maybe it had always been there. I’d just been too enamored to notice.

  I glanced toward Mr. Edwards. He had remained inside, back to the door. He wore a brown uniform from which dangled a menagerie of tools that looked like they’d stop a charging bull. In that moment I loved Mr. Edwards more than life.

  Still, I was having a little trouble breathing.

  “How’s your practice doing?” David asked. “Well, I hope.”

  I opened my mouth to answer him, but stopped myself and cleared my throat. “I’d like to ask you a few questions.”

  He lifted a hand. The gesture looked as elegant and graceful as I remembered, the sage practitioner educating a neophyte. “Certainly. How may I help you?”

  My stomach twisted. “Did you send Will Swanson to kill me?”

  He sat perfectly immobile, staring at me. “Dating still not going well, Christina?”

  “You paid him, didn’t you? You paid him when you knew he was goi
ng to be released.” I felt frantic and terrible, but his expression remained serene.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know anyone by that name, my dear.”

  “You’re lying.” I leaned forward. Mr. Edwards was watching me. His eyes were neutral, but his hand was on the butt of some weapon I couldn’t identify. I briefly hoped it was a bazooka. “He was here in prison. There are no coincidences. You told me that. You knew he was going to be getting out. You sent him to find me, didn’t you?”

  Hawkins watched me for a moment, then tilted his head back and laughed quietly.

  Goose bumps rippled across my skin.

  “Why are you laughing?”

  “This Mr. Swanson,” he said, “can you describe him for me?”

  “You know how he looked.”

  “I believe I might, but I knew him by a different name.” He blinked. “You don’t have any cigarettes with you, do you?”

  I shook my head.

  “So you’ve kicked that nasty habit again. Good for you. But as it turns out, Hollywood’s portrayal of inmates’ tobacco lust is quite realistic. They’re rather desperate for it.”

  “Did you pay him?” I asked.

  He leaned back and crossed one leg smoothly over the other. He may have lost a little weight, but he was still an attractive man—urbane, sophisticated, handsome. I wished to hell I’d never been attracted to him. “I knew him as Wires,” he said, and smiled. “It is quite sophomoric, really, but here in Lancaster many have interesting sobriquets. There’s an African American gentleman called Ivory. A young Latino named Spade, and me…” He motioned gracefully toward himself. “They call me Doc. Not very inspired, I’m afraid, but it shows a certain amount of esteem, I think. Did you have a nickname as a child, Christina?”

  “Did you pay him to kill me?”

  His eyes were laughing. I felt sick to my stomach.

  “Pay him? No,” he said.

  “But you suggested it to him.”

  He uncrossed his legs, leaned forward, expression sober, eyes kind. “Now, why would I do such a thing?”

  Because almost two years ago I had figured him out. Had learned his true nature. Had realized, to my horror, that he had killed his wife and others. It was my fault he was here, locked up like an animal. “He knew I was from the Midwest. Knew—”

  “I believe his given name was Elijah. Elijah Kaplan, if I’m not mistaken. Did you find him attractive?”

  I opened my mouth, and he chuckled. “Chrissy, you really must…How shall I say this? They are so indelicate here. But sometimes the beasts of the field know the ways of the world, do they not?”

  I stared.

  He laughed. “You really must get laid. It’s one of the true joys of the outside world. That and a glass of Chardonnay on the veranda when the sun is just about to—”

  “You told him to woo me.” My voice had all but left me. “Told him to woo me and kill me.”

  He stared at me for a lifetime, then smiled. “In fact, I did no such thing.”

  “It’s not a coincidence that he found me. It’s not.”

  “No, my dear. I daresay it’s not.”

  “Then, what?”

  “As you might imagine, there is not an overabundance of intellectual conversation here.”

  I stared at him.

  “And while Mr. Kaplan was no genius, he was stimulating enough.”

  “You were…friends.” I could see it suddenly, two angry, intelligent men, too dynamic to be locked away. “He was seeking revenge on your behalf.”

  His eyes widened, and then he laughed. “My God, Chrissy, you have a one-track mind. And it’s quite smutty.” He chuckled again. “No. No, we were not friends. Neither were we lovers, as you seem to be insinuating.”

  I felt crazed. “What, then?”

  He canted his head, as if analyzing me. “I believe, my dear, that your Mr. Swanson had an old-fashioned crush on you.”

  I felt the air leave my lungs.

  “Did you know we have access to the Internet here? Archaic systems, for the most part, but better than staring at the wall until it feels as if your skin is about to crawl off your body and your mind rots in your skull like—” He drew a breath, smiled, settled back. “I told young Mr. Kaplan about you. About our little altercation.”

  “Altercation!” I felt breathless, crazed. “You tried to kill me.”

  He chuckled, leaned forward conspiratorially. “Ahh, but that’s the operative word, isn’t it? Tried. Mr. Kaplan was quite impressed by the fact that you dissuaded me.”

  I had hit him with the telephone and screamed bloody hell. The cops had shown up before I’d bled all over my cheap linoleum.

  “I believe he was originally intrigued with your bravado. Your zest for life. But then he saw your picture on the Internet. There is quite a lovely photograph of you in a periwinkle skirt and dove gray silk blouse.”

  That was a good picture. I looked slim, controlled, and intelligent. The magic of photography. “You’re saying he…liked me?”

  He laughed. “Poor Chrissy. Always so insecure.”

  “That he found me and made up a story just so he could get to know me?”

  “How long has it been since you’ve copulated, my dear?”

  I leaned back in my chair. “Not so—” I gritted my teeth and resisted closing my eyes. “That’s none of your business.”

  “So tell me, is young Mr. Kaplan still in your life? Are you simply paranoid and needing to check him out before you take him to your boudoir?”

  “He’s dead.”

  His brows dipped the slightest degree, and I watched him, wondering if he was faking his response. If he already knew. If he had hired someone else to do the job at which Swanson had failed. “You jest.”

  “He’s dead. Shot in the head near my garage.”

  “So his paranoia was not just a psychotic manifestation of his guilt.”

  “What?”

  He puffed a little sigh of disbelief.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “So he survived this place, only to die a short time later. How ironic. But he always thought he had been born under an unlucky star. Although, knowing his past, I would have to say it’s a bit more than bad luck that someone was intent on killing him,” he mused, then glanced up as if just remembering I was there. “It appears as if he was right. The two of you did indeed have a good deal in common. As I told your lieutenant.”

  “What?”

  “Lieutenant Rivera, the senator’s moody son. He asked much the same questions.”

  “You knew who Will Swanson was all along.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You knew he was dead.”

  He paused, watching me. “In actuality, that I did not know. Your lieutenant can be quite closemouthed. I assumed he was simply checking into Wires’s checkered past. He seemed quite zealous. Almost as if you were lovers.” His eyes were spookily steady. “Are you two involved?”

  “No.”

  “That’s not what I hear.”

  “From who?”

  “Whom.”

  I jerked to my feet. “Who have you been talking to? You sent the thugs, didn’t you?”

  His brows rose. “Thugs?”

  “You sent them. The three guys with the van. The guy on my stoop.”

  His brows dipped and then he was laughing. “I am so glad you came, Chrissy. Indeed, I haven’t been so entertained for months.”

  “I know who they are. They’ll turn on you. You won’t get out of here for a thousand years. You won’t—”

  He stood up. I jerked back, heart thumping, and he smiled, serene or insane or both.

  “You’re mistaken,” he said softly, and, turning toward Mr. Edwards, nodded serenely. “Quite mistaken.”

  24

  False hope is better than no hope at all.

  —Elmer Brady Chrissy’s maternal grandfather, who was supposed to die of lung cancer twenty years before he decided to do so

  I HAD PLANN
ED TO DRIVE straight to the office from the prison, but my mind was spinning like a dime. If David hadn’t hired Will, then whoever had shot Will had probably intended to do just that. Unless…unless the shooter had mistaken Will for Pete.

  My heart thumped to life at the thought. It would make sense. They looked rather alike, similar height, color, age. But Pete hadn’t even arrived yet when Will had been shot. Which meant that whoever had done the deed had known of Peter’s impending arrival. How? Petras had known. So it must have been common knowledge at the station. Had Daryl called there and learned of Pete’s plans? Or was it somebody else entirely?

  Someone was keeping Hawkins informed, telling him about Rivera and me. Telling him about my impending visit. Then again, maybe he knew nothing. Maybe he was just speculating, lying just to make me paranoid. Or maybe he was lying about Will. Maybe he had paid Swanson, then hired someone to replace him when his luck had run out. But I didn’t think so. He’d seemed thrilled with the idea that a felon had seen similarities between himself and me. Had been enamored.

  I dragged the Yum Yum bag across the seat and took out a turnover. My stomach was still busy churning, but I’d missed breakfast…and supper. A little frosting rained down on my skirt. I chewed, thinking.

  The process of elimination left the Parker trio. But there had only been one man when I’d been grabbed on my stoop. Where were the other two? Was Daryl Dehn the kind of guy who would work alone? It didn’t seem quite right somehow, but what did I know about him, really?

  I took another bite and crunched into something hard. Setting the turnover back on the bag, I picked the pit from between my teeth and—

  Pit!

  I cursed in silence. Hawkins had said Pit had told him to expect me. Micky Goldenstone’s childhood nickname had been Pit Bull. Micky, who had been a guard. Micky, who…I felt a premonitory tingle in the arches of my feet. Micky had had therapy with a psychiatrist before scheduling appointments with me. A psychiatrist whose name he’d never seen fit to disclose. A psychiatrist who blamed me for his incarceration.

  I fumbled my cell out of my purse, dialed directory assistance, and waited, heart thumping as it rang through to the California State Prison.

  “Yes.” I was holding my breath. “I’d like to speak with Pit, please.”