by Chuck Logan
He remembered something Caren used to say: “Do people change or do you just get to know them better?”
Good question to ask Keith tomorrow.
40
Washington County, the fastest growing county in Minnesota, was also the site of the main state prisons: Stillwater and the newer maximum security lockup, Oak Park Heights.
People, Broker among them, moved to Washington County for more open space, less crime, better schools-and wound up living with the largest prison population in the state. On humid summer nights you could almost smell the funky weight of all that incarcerated flesh bead up and sweat in the haze that drifted up the Saint Croix River Valley.
The Washington County Jail could have been a tidy brick and glass corporate headquarters. No taint of punishment attached to its clean exterior. Inside, the climate was almost medical in its spotless isolation; movement was remotely controlled by electronically triggered doors, needle-nosed surveillance cameras tucked in corners, baffles of bullet-proof glass, intercoms.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons rated institutions numerically, from one to six, based on their level of security. The Washington County Jail, like Oak Park Heights about a mile to the south, was referred to as a “seven.”
The U.S. Marshals liked the jail because of its advanced security features and gave it a lot of business. Which was good, because it had been overbuilt and it would take a decade for the county to grow enough bad guys to fill it.
Sheriff John Eisenhower had developed the skills of a hotelier to keep his beds full.
Broker checked in on the administrative side. A deputy behind a glass bubble recognized him, lowered his eyes and buzzed him into the sheriff’s offices. Eisenhower met him in the hall. Broker had been a year behind Eisenhower going through the St. Paul Police Academy. He went to BCA, and Eisenhower ran for sheriff. Working undercover, Broker had reported to Eisenhower on a number of cases. Eisenhower, Broker, Keith, Jeff, and J. T. Merryweather. The old days.
Bluff, ruddy-faced, blond, blue-eyed, and mustachioed, John usually wore a tan department uniform. Today he was in a suit and tie. They shook hands briskly. He asked, “How’s Nina and the kid?”
“Fine.”
Eisenhower tapped the laminated ID Broker had clipped to his chest pocket. “You went and got badged up over this?”
Broker nodded. “Just walking out Caren’s death. Jeff and I don’t buy the FBI version.”
“Forget it. He won’t tell you anything.”
“Then why’d he send for me.”
Eisenhower studied him. “A lot of people are curious about that. They think Cook County should have left him down in the ice water to drown.”
Broker smiled thinly. “Janey Cody in St. Paul called me a leper.”
“They’re spooked in St. Paul.” Eisenhower exhaled, grimaced slightly. “Another thing. It’s hard to be around him if you knew him before. He’s nuts.”
“Some kind of legal ploy? Insanity defense?”
Eisenhower shook his head. “No. He’s lucid enough.
He”-Eisenhower chose his word carefully-“turned.” He shrugged. “Maybe all the stuff he was holding inside all these years came out when he killed Caren. I don’t know.”
A gesture toward the darkness that walked with cops, step for step.
Eisenhower shot his cuffs, his hands circled his belt, tucking at his shirt. “I’ve got to hand you over to Dave Barstad.
Got this damn meeting with a bunch of consultants.” He raised his eyebrows. “Some brilliant mother’s son has this plan to hook all the jail toilets up to a computer. Get all the assholes to crap on-line or something.”
He shook his head. “We have Keith down in separation; I didn’t think it was a good idea to throw him in general population. There could be people he busted in there.”
They went down a corridor, got on an elevator and descended two floors. A stocky blond man in a white shirt and tie met them at the master control station.
“Dave, Phil Broker, he ran some stuff for us when he was with BCA. He’s up in Cook County now.”
Broker and the jail administrator shook hands. Eisenhower touched Broker on the arm and excused himself. Barstad pointed to a small locker inset in the brushed stone wall, twist-out key in the lock. “You can leave your weapon and cuffs-”
Broker shook his head. “All I have is this.” He held up his spiral notebook, which contained the photo Garrison had given him. Barstad took the notebook, indicated the spring spine and left it at the control station. He handed the photo back to Broker, then walked him into a maze of glass parti-tions and security doors. An intercom voice monitored their progress, unlocking and locking the doors for them on the jailer’s command.
They passed the normal visitors’ cubicles, went through more doors and down on another elevator. They came out on the bottom level, where new inmates were processed.
Walled off behind glass were large pens-called pods- with bolted tables and guard desks. Tiered cells were built into the walls of these bays. Solid steel slotted doors. The inmates couldn’t see out. Broker couldn’t see in. He had been through three levels of the jail. He had yet to see a single prisoner.
The disembodied voice of the master control operator sang a cadence back and forth with Barstad. They negotiated the quiet electronic click of locks on thick glass doors opening, then closing. “Leaving such-and-such. Entering Thingama-bob.”
No Christmas carols. No little decorative trees. No paper plates set out with sugar cookies. It was what the tax-payers wanted today: a seasonless storage locker for hazardous waste. Broker missed the feel of air transfixed by steel bars-the notion of a cage. Even whips and chains and tormented jailhouse cries were preferable to this silence. Too clean. Too orderly-an antiseptic womb in which the lethal injection was conceived.
He had a headache. Had only slept three hours last night.
Strange bed. Strange task.
They exited the large reception area and walked down a corridor. “I’ve got him waiting in Transport. You’ll have the most privacy there.”
Broker nodded. Transport was a small holding pen where prisoners were picked up or dropped off when they had business outside the jail.
“Open Transport,” said Barstad to the eyes and ears in the walls. Click-click.
The door opened, and Barstad said, “I’ve had them turn off the audio but I have to keep the video on. It’s policy. Just signal at the camera when you’re through.”
Broker shook Barstad’s hand again and went in.
41
Keith smelled like spoiled meat washed in disinfectant. He sat in a blocky ModuForm armchair. The large dense blob of furniture was molded from a pebbly rubberized substance that looked, in color and texture, as if Barney the dinosaur had been run through an auto compactor and turned into a seat. The chair, designed for prisons, weighed two hundred pounds.
He wore loose blue denim jail utilities and blue slippers.
His shirtsleeves were rolled up, showing biceps. Frankenstein stitches in his left arm twisted like centipedes sleeping in the packed muscle. Yellow disinfectant discolored the seamed forearm. He’d lost fingernails on three fingers on his right hand to frostbite, and they were scabbed over, blackened.
His left hand was clamped in a fist in his lap. His hair was short, sidewalled and bristly. No sunglasses allowed here.
His yellow eyes were hard, clear and shiny as frozen ball bearings. In them, Broker felt the icy embrace of the Devil’s Kettle, and, possibly, the fixed stare of mental disorder.
Despite his present circumstances, Keith held his powerful body with the erect bearing of a mad warrior monk.
On the top of his left hand, a patch of infected skin puffed up a blue tattoo of a three-barred Russian cross.
Crude, self-inflicted; probably with the straight end of a safety pin and ink from a felt tip.
Self-laceration.
What happens to a perfectionist who loses his rule book.
He opened
his curled left hand. And Broker saw that he wore Caren’s wedding ring on the little finger. What was left of the little finger. The first joint had been amputated, and the stub closed with stitches. The skin under the gold wedding band was swollen, marbled with purple bruising.
He wore his own ring on the next finger. His fingers twitched, and the gold bands jingled.
Keith stood up. Instinctively, they circled each other in a sort of preliminary dance. They did not shake hands. The room was wedge shaped, with three holding cells built into one wall. The cells were empty, and the doors were open.
A guard podium was on the other wall. The camera peered, bracketed in the corner.
Broker evoked it all with the sound of his name: “Keith.”
Keith laughed soundlessly. His eyes roved the walls. “This place is really something. Last night I smelled cigarette smoke. It’s been bothering me all day. How the hell did someone sneak a cigarette in here. You quit, didn’t you?”
“About six months ago.”
“What made you do it?”
Broker looked straight in the icy eyes. “Well, the baby.”
“Uh-huh. Maybe I only imagined I smelled smoke. My taste is all screwed up since…” He held up his hands. His eyes continued to travel the walls. “You know, I never even smoked a joint in my life. You did, though. You had to, working undercover.”
“Yeah, Keith.”
Keith shook his head. “You think they’ll legalize drugs?”
It was an absurd conversation, but Broker was carried along. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Me either. It’s job security. Like the buffalo. They support a way of life-cops I mean, and corrections, the people who work in and build places like this.”
“What the hell happened, Keith?” The hang-fire question cooked off.
Keith avoided eye contact. “What happened,” he savored the words. “Who is owed an explanation.” Again, the soundless laugh. The dead eyes crawled over the monotonous brick pattern. “Maybe I’m the one that’s owed an explanation.” He raised the damaged hand and felt along the stone wall. “These walls won’t last, not like, say, an Inca wall. I saw this thing on Nova. I could spend my life staring at an Inca wall. But this…”
He let the thought get away, pressed his forehead against the bricks. “Maybe I got tired of fat cop faces. You ever notice how many fat cops there are.” His disfigured left hand explored the unyielding brick. “Maybe that’s what happened.”
“Why’d you put me on your list?” Broker asked.
“Why’d you ask to be invited?” Keith shot back. A muscle in his left cheek jumped under the skin. His fingers jerked, clinking the wedding rings together in a nervous tic.
“Thought you could tell me what happened out at the Devil’s Kettle.” Clink-clink-clink.
“What happened is I never intended for her to get hurt.
She just had to stick her nose in.” Clink. Clink. Clink.
“That doesn’t answer my question.” Clink-clink-clink.
Keith spat on the floor. “Uh-uh. C’mon.” He jerked his head at the camera. “The FBI is listening to everything we say.”
Broker held up the picture Garrison had given him. Keith shook his head. “You? Carrying water for the feds? I smell that fucking Garrison.”
“He took me to Wisconsin yesterday. We stood over your mother’s grave and he told me what a bad mother-fucker you are,” said Broker.
Keith grinned, took the photo, ripped it in half and let the pieces fall to the floor. “Did you check out the Russian cross, with the three bars?” He raised and twisted his left hand, turning the palm in so the tattoo confronted Broker. Stepped closer. “See the little one on the bottom that’s crooked?” His fingers squirmed. Nerves. Gold circles clicking.
“Keith? You want to talk or play games?”
“I am talking. The reason it’s crooked goes back to a dispute in the early church, in the second century. This faction insisted that the cross should remind people that Christ really was human and he really suffered.” The rings clinked. “That little bar represents the footrest, where the condemned braced their weight. See? Crucifixion was all about muscles giving out, the chest cramping the lungs. Slow asphyxiation. The pain gets more and more excruciating. They writhe and twist the footrest…”
Keith smirked. “I learned that on the History Channel.”
“Was it like that when Alex Gorski got it?” Broker asked in a low voice.
“Excuse me, did I hear right?” Keith cupped his hand to his ear. “Got it? The death of? The problem with ‘the death of?’ is-we’re fresh out of bodies.”
Keith sneered and rubbed his chin with his gruesome black fingertips. “Give me a break, you were never a detective. Go back to the fucking woods. Pretend life is a show on public television. Get used to it. Old cop dilemma-you know who did it, but you just can’t prove it.”
He was changing, like a diver going deeper. His face altered, distorted by the pressure. The lips pulled tighter, creating a ruthless mask wiped clean of illusions. He was getting ready. He would go to federal prison where strangers would try to kill him, on principle, because he was a cop. Broker started to turn away from the willful madness, the jingle of the rings. To the camera.
Keith raised his left hand, blue infected tattoo, nightmare stitches, stumpy little finger and ring finger beating out the demented rift. Clink-clink-clink. Clink. Clink. Clink. Clink-clink-clink…His voice boomed in the cell. “Hold it. I didn’t say you could leave. I brought you here for a reason. You owe me an explanation.”
Broker tensed at the contemptuous tone of command.
“Were you fucking my wife, you shit?” hissed Keith, exploding forward, driving Broker off balance, back through the open door to one of the cells. They smashed into the tight masonry pocket, tripped over the stainless steel combin-ation sink and toilet. Keith’s hand at his throat smelled like rotting flesh.
“Think fast. Cells aren’t miked,” Keith rasped.
Broker’s reflexive defensive left hook glanced off Keith’s face. Felt like hitting a pig, hard gristle. But very alert now.
They clinched. Keith’s voice, low, sinister in his ear: “Find James.”
“Wha-?”
“In your yard, James said Caren took the money.”
The outer door burst open. Incoming shoe leather. Keith continued to whisper, “Check Afton. False wall under the antelope. Key, garage light.”
Three guards dove into the cell, tackled Keith. He swung as they tangled him up. Broker took the punch on his arms.
With manic strength, Keith wrenched free, charged. Broker saw the stinging left hand coming, a glitter of gold rings that snapped his head back. Stunned, he got off a wild right hook, which connected with Keith’s nose. They clinched again.
Went down. Keith’s hot sour breath taunted, low, “Catch me a thief.”
Broker saw it was two deputies and Lorn Garrison piled on Keith. This time, breathing heavily, they bore down and cuffed him. “Outside, Angland,” panted a deputy. They hauled him to his feet. Keith shrugged, his nose was bleeding.
He smirked at Garrison.
“How’s it feel, Lorn, to have spent your whole career in law enforcement peeking through keyholes?”
Garrison shoved Keith aside and went to help Broker to his feet.
Keith grinned again, and his gaze locked on Broker’s eyes with icy traction. He hurled his voice like a curse: “You owe me, fucker…”
The last Broker saw of Keith Angland was his broad denim-covered back as the deputies dragged him, yelling, from the transport room. His voice carried crazy off the brushed stone walls: “Owe me…”
The shout ended in a collision of flesh and bone on brick.
“Watch your step there, Keith,” a deputy sang out.
Without a word, another deputy handed Broker the two halves of the torn photograph and escorted Broker and Garrison back up to the master control bubble.
The deputy said, “You want a fi
rst aid kit for your face?
See the doctor?”
Broker shook his head.
“We told you he was fucking nuts,” the deputy said in a tired pitiless voice. He turned on his heel and slipped back into the maze, his outline shimmered, then swam away through layers of soundproof, armored glass. Broker and Garrison exited the locked perimeter. Garrison retrieved his weapon from the wall vault, and they left the building.
Garrison dabbed a handkerchief at Broker’s right cheek.
“Got you a little mouse out of the deal.”
Gingerly, Broker took over the hankie and moved his jaw around. He was grateful for the shock of the fight, and the blow to the face. It disguised his rising excitement.
Keith, you devious creep, what are you up to?
In a bruised voice, he said, “He’s not exactly feeling remorse about his wife.”
Garrison shrugged. “Had to try.”
“So,” said Broker. “I tried. What about James?”
The sympathetic Garrison of yesterday had changed into a practical horse trader.
“I can’t bring him back, even if I could, shoot-not like I got a lot of incentive. Keith didn’t say anything new in there.
Just accused you of banging his old lady. You, ah, weren’t banging her, were you?”
Broker flung the bloody hankie at the FBI man’s face.
Garrison plucked the cloth in midair, squinted. “Didn’t think so. But what’d he mean, about you owing him?”
Broker shook his head. “You never meant to cut me in on James.”
Garrison’s shrugged again. Not arrogant, just realistic.
“You know how it is.”
“Yeah,” Broker quipped bitterly, “it’s tough poop.” A concept he was preparing his daughter for.
Garrison smiled, sad, wise, cynical. With a trace of mournful music in his voice, he admonished, “Now you put some ice on that cheek, hear?”
42