Within These Walls

by Ania Ahlborn

  The prospect of talking to a figure that represented everything that was wrong with the world was dazzling. Jeffrey Halcomb’s trial had dominated the airwaves for most of ’83 and the first quarter of ’84. Unlike Charles Manson, who talked to anyone who’d listen, the world had largely forgotten about Halcomb because he had chosen steadfast silence. And unlike Manson, who insisted that he was innocent, Halcomb never made that claim. Judging by the trial footage, it appeared that Jeffrey Halcomb was completely satisfied with having convinced eight young Americans to take their own lives.

  And then there was Audra Snow and her baby. There were the deaths of Richard and Claire Stephenson, almost certainly Halcomb’s doing, despite the prosecution not having enough evidence to convict. Other names had come up during Halcomb’s trial as well, names of drifters that had been found across various western states. Someone had killed a young San Luis Obispo family in their backyard in the late summer of ’81. Knifed just before Christmas of that same year, an elderly couple was found dead in their Fort Bragg home. A midtwenties drifter was discovered naked and hog-tied along a hiking trail just outside of Tillamook. All the drifter’s possessions—including his clothes—had been stolen. If he hadn’t bled to death, he would have frozen during that first week of January 1982. All instances placed Halcomb in or around Pier Pointe during the Stephenson kill.

  But despite the jury’s suspicions and the prosecutor’s insistence, none of the other cases stuck. If there were any witnesses to the Stephenson case, they had died in the house on Montlake Road and Halcomb certainly wasn’t going to fess up. Not that writers hadn’t begged for interviews. Jeffrey Halcomb had been as in demand as Charlie for the first few years of his incarceration. Reporters had clamored for a chance to talk to the silent cult leader for nearly a decade, but Jeff refused. Interest eventually waned. As far as Lucas knew, this was the first time Halcomb had agreed to an interview since he’d been locked up.

  His first stop was the visitor’s desk, manned by a stout woman sporting a light brown Annie Warbucks fro. He signed in, gave the woman behind the counter his ID, and fished out of his bag the media release that the prison had mailed him weeks before.

  “You with the news?” she asked.

  Lucas shook his head. He imagined that she didn’t break five feet tall standing up. Her name tag was missing, but it was probably Phyllis or Florence or Agatha—the kind of moniker that appeared on the endangered names list.

  Observe the last existing Maude in her natural habitat.

  “I’m a writer,” he said, giving the lumpy Annie Warbucks look-alike a smile.

  She eyed him in a suspicious sort of way, as though not liking his face. “For the news?”

  “No. True crime. I’m an author.”

  She looked back down at his license, and for a split second he could see her searching her memory for why his name sounded so familiar. It seemed a natural fit. She worked at a prison. True crime was right up Lumpy Annie’s alley. Maybe she had been one of the millions of readers who had bought Bloodthirsty Times a dozen years ago. She may have watched him stumble through an interview on Good Morning America while having her morning cup of coffee.

  Nope.

  She slid his ID and credentials back to him and nodded toward the waiting area. “Have a seat, Mr. Graham. Ten minutes till in-­processing. Then you go through security. And no cell phones, even for media. You leave it at the checkpoint. No exceptions, so don’t even ask.”

  “All righty.” He turned toward the waiting room, took a seat in a scuffed hard plastic chair that reminded him of grade school, and dug through his bag to make sure he had everything in order. He tried to keep himself from getting cold feet by studying the folks waiting to be let in for visitation. An elderly woman sat across the room, clutching her purse with talon-like fingers of sinew and bone. When she noticed Lucas watching her, she narrowed her eyes at him and pulled her purse closer to her chest. And yet she’s brave enough to visit her convict son in supermax, he mused.

  My son is not a convict, he imagined her squawk back at him. My boy has been wrongfully accused! Because wasn’t that always the case?

  He looked away from her angry face and focused on a young woman rocking a baby in its car seat with her foot. She was reading a tattered old paperback, probably something she’d picked up used for a dime at the local Goodwill. But it was her posture that fascinated him most. So casual, as though she’d been to Lambert Correctional every week for as long as her baby had been alive; maybe six or seven months before it had ever been born.

  Ten minutes turned into twenty. Lucas was eventually ushered into a room with small lockers situated behind a waist-high counter. The prison guard peered at him as Lucas removed all items from his pockets—keys, cell phone, loose change—and slid them across the surface to be stored. His messenger bag went in as well, but the guard allowed him to keep his yellow legal pad of notes and a handheld digital voice recorder to conduct his interview. He wasn’t allowed to bring a pen. Lucas had seen enough prison movies to not question why.

  The guard patted him down, then wanded him for good measure before motioning for him to step over to the barred door on the opposite wall. A second officer met him on the other side of the bars before a loud buzzer screamed and the door slid open.

  The guard who greeted him inside the belly of the prison wore a name badge that read “J E MORALES.” He was a tall, lanky man, maybe in his early thirties, with mocha-colored skin and a faint limp on his left. His smile was wide, almost triumphant.

  “Mr. Graham? It’s a real honor,” he said, grabbing Lucas’s hand. “I read your book, the one about Ramirez?” It was always the one about Ramirez. “Man, it was good. You really captured the, uh . . . what’s the word . . .” He waved a hand above his head, trying to summon the right term. “The atmosphere,” he said, snapping his fingers at his own success. “I was born and raised in L.A. just outside of Monterey Park, where he shot that girl and attacked that old couple, you know?”

  On top of killing Tsai-Lian “Veronica” Yu and assaulting and murdering one of the Dois, Richard Ramirez had also beaten a sixty-­one-year-old woman to death in that same part of town. Lucas didn’t bother to bring up the omission. “That was one of the hardest hit areas,” he agreed.

  “I was just a kid,” Morales said. “My parents were shitting bricks. Ramirez was one of the reasons I decided to become a cop.” He paused, as if going back to the memory of growing up in a terrorized Los Angeles, then shook his head. “I worked the beat for a while, but my mom was always waiting for a call, you know? Waiting for el segador . . .” He paused. “You speak Spanish?”

  “Not really,” Lucas said.

  “That means ‘the reaper,’ ” he said. “She was always crossing herself, praying for me on Sundays, counting off her rosary beads so I wouldn’t get shot in some alley in El Este.”

  Lucas had spent enough time in California to be familiar with El Este—East L.A.

  “It was mostly just robberies and car theft, lots of domestic disturbances . . . but it was rough, you know? My mom couldn’t handle what I did too good, so I applied as a guard at San Quentin. She wasn’t too happy about that, either, it being so far from home and all, but in her eyes, it was better than me being out on the streets.”

  Lucas gave the chatty guard a nod. He appreciated the distraction. A silent walk into the bowels of Lambert Correctional would have only made Lucas sick with anxiety. It was a strange coincidence to run into such an avid fan, but he was thankful. Scared that the guy would suddenly stop talking and Lucas would be left to wrestle with his own self-doubt, he kept the conversation rolling.

  “San Quentin,” he said. “You know that’s where—”

  “Where they had Ramirez locked up? Yeah, man, I know. Everyone knew. I was working general population, so I was never in the same unit as him, but I knew he was there. I tried to get in to see him, but you know
how it is, rules and regulations and all that. It was weird when he died.”

  “Weird how?”

  “Like, just weird,” Morales said. “You felt good that this guy was gone, right? But you felt bad because you aren’t supposed to feel good about people going to the other side.”

  “Did you call your mom when it happened?”

  Morales’s face lit up at the inquiry. “Oh, hell yeah, I did,” he said with a laugh. “I called her that same day and told her, Mama, el monstruo está muerto and she started doing Hail Marys right there on the phone. She’s read your book, too. I recommended it.” He paused, smiled apologetically. “She hated it. Sorry, man.”

  Lucas bit back a laugh. “Great. Maybe I’ll send her my next one as a mea culpa.”

  “A what?”

  “An apology.”

  “So, you don’t speak Spanish but you speak Latin?” Morales asked.

  “No.” Lucas chuckled. “Just that and a few other things. Alibi. Alter ego. Stuff like that.”

  “ ‘Alter ego’ is Latin?”

  “Yep.”

  “Huh.” Morales looked mystified. “Then I guess I speak Latin, too. Man, it’s good to meet you!” He beamed again, smacked Lucas on the back like a lifelong pal. “I lived in L.A. all my life, but I’ve never met a real-life celebrity before.”

  Celebrity. Lucas nearly scoffed at that, but instead, he bit his tongue and offered the overly eager guard a smile.

  The pair arrived at a second set of bars. There was a small office to the left, thick glass separating them from the guard inside. Morales gave the guy a nod and waited. The buzzer sounded, the bars slid aside, and they continued their walk.

  “So, you tried to get to Ramirez; what about Jeffrey Halcomb?” Lucas asked. “Have you met him?”

  Morales shrugged, as if suddenly reluctant to talk. “Yeah, I mean, it’s part of the job. He’s okay. Quiet, but I’m sure you know that, right? Him not giving anyone interviews or anything. He doesn’t cause too much trouble.”

  “You know about his refusing interviews?” Lucas asked. It was interesting that a guard would be privy to that sort of information. How well did Morales know Halcomb? “Are you on one-on-one terms with him?”

  Morales squinted, uncomfortable with the question. For a moment, Lucas was sure he wasn’t going to get a reply. Eventually, Morales shook his head and spoke. “Nah, man. I mean, the guys in here, some of them are good people, you know?”

  Lucas furrowed his eyebrows at the sentiment. The way it had come out of nowhere, it seemed to him like Morales was justifying something.

  “But nah, I’m not one-on-one with him,” Morales clarified. “I’m not one-on-one with any of them. That whole setup seems like a bad idea, you know? I just work here.”

  Lucas wasn’t convinced, but he didn’t press the issue.

  There was one more cage to go through before they reached the visitation cell—three in all, rendering the daydream of escape impossible. As they waited for the final buzzer to allow them inside, Lucas cleared his throat and pulled on the hem of his button-down shirt.

  “You’re nervous,” Morales observed, then shot him a crooked smile. “Don’t worry, we haven’t had a homicide in here in, like, years; just a few instances of aggravated assault.”

  “Great.” Lucas smirked at the vote of confidence.

  “Nah, no worries. You’ll have two guards in there with you. They’ll Taser him in two seconds if he tries anything.” Except physical violence wasn’t the real danger when it came to Jeffrey Halcomb. His acts of violence were never fueled by anger, and that was, perhaps, what made him so dangerous. Every move Halcomb had made to get him to this point in his life had been strategic. The man had lived out his life as the king in his own game of chess.

  “So, you really think this is a good idea?” Morales asked, pausing at an open door, the visitation room just beyond it. “You know he’s got . . . like, voodoo in him. Why else would all those people have done what they did?”

  L.A. Mexican-American. A mother who Hail Mary’d on the phone. Whether it was stereotypical or not, Lucas couldn’t help but imagine paintings of Jesus Christ and Our Lady of Guadalupe decorating the walls of this guard’s childhood home. There was no doubt the Morales clan went to church every Sunday, celebrated Easter as ornately as Christmas, and believed that their destiny was in the hands of God. And where there was an unshakable faith in the Almighty, there was also an intrinsic fear of the devil. Officer Morales looked put-together. His uniform was freshly pressed and his badge was as shiny as a cowboy’s gold star. But underneath it all, he was his mother’s demon-fearing son. Lucas could only imagine how well regarded he was in his circle of family friends. He was, after all, protecting the world from God’s exiled angels.

  “You don’t think Jeffrey Halcomb is good material for a book?” Lucas asked. “He can’t reach out and grab you through the page.”

  “Yeah, but the dude had a lot of followers. He still does. You should see the amount of mail he gets, and what do all those letters say? I mean, what are people writing to this guy about? Don’t you ever get worried?”

  “What, about stalkers?” Lucas gave Morales a smile. “Don’t you ever get worried about your occupational hazards, jail breaks and cafeteria brawls?”

  Morales stared at Lucas for a long moment, as though he’d just been asked the stupidest question he’d ever heard. “Yeah, actually.”

  Of course he does, Lucas thought. His mother probably brings up the dangers of his job every time he calls home.

  It was then that one of Morales’s fellow officers came around the corner and met them with an upheld hand. The name on his badge read “M L EPERSON.” He was a big guy, probably a good fifty pounds overweight, a John Candy look-alike with the body of a forty-year-old and the face of a toddler. Sweat beaded around Officer Eperson’s temples despite the air blasting down on them from overhead. His uniform was a size too small, the buttons on his shirt holding on for dear life. Either Eperson had had too many Krispy Kremes or his wife had shrunk his uniform in the wash.

  “I’m coming from Jeffrey Halcomb’s cell,” he told Morales, then turned his attention toward Lucas. “Afraid the inmate has canceled on you, Mr. . . .” Eperson waited for a name.

  “Graham—and what the hell are you talking about?” Lucas gaped at the prison system’s Pillsbury Doughboy, waiting for the punch line. The receptionist had warned him to call in advance. He had been told that either prison administration or the inmate could cancel a visitation at any time, for any reason. Yet Lucas had stupidly considered himself immune to that possibility. It wasn’t supposed to happen. He and Halcomb had a goddamn deal.

  “Yep.” Eperson shrugged, looking more penitent than necessary. “Sorry to say, but Halcomb’s got a reputation for saying one thing and doing something else. When you made your appointment, the receptionist should have told you to call two hours ahead—”

  “She did,” Lucas cut him off with a murmur.

  Eperson and Morales exchanged looks, then Eperson cleared his throat and gave Lucas a regretful smile. “To be fair, seems that calling wouldn’t have done much good here anyway. It looks like everything was fine until I went to retrieve him. That’s when he told me he’d changed his mind. There isn’t anything we can do if an inmate refuses to take a visitor. They’re in prison, but they still retain the right to privacy.”

  “Great,” Lucas said. “Fantastic.”

  “It’s not all bad,” Eperson insisted. “Apparently, Halcomb sent something up to the front desk for you. A consolation prize.” Morales exhaled a laugh at Eperson’s joke, but Lucas didn’t find it funny.

  Maybe it was an apology; a Hallmark card reading “Gotcha!” on the inside flap. Lucas frowned and glared down at his legal pad of questions. This was bullshit. He wasn’t some run-of-the-mill visitor. He’d moved his entire life for this opportuni
ty. Halcomb had given Lucas his word.

  Except Halcomb hadn’t actually promised, had he? The sudden realization that Lucas had imagined Halcomb’s letter as some sort of ironclad guarantee made his entire body sizzle with weariness. But why would Halcomb say one thing and do something completely different? What was the point? Maybe he was bored. The thought spiraled through his head like a paper airplane in the wind. Maybe he was fucking bored and he decided to screw with someone. That someone just happened to be me. Because how did a master manipulator get his kicks if it wasn’t by messing with people’s minds? Who better to target than an author who was guaranteed to salivate at the mere thought of interviewing a criminal who hadn’t breathed a word to the media before now? Goddammit, I should have listened to John.

  “Fuck.” The profanity slid involuntarily past his lips. The guards seemed to shift their weight around him, as if hesitant to break the silence. Eperson finally did.

  “Josh, uh . . . you want to lead Mr. Graham back up to the front?”

  “Sure thing,” Morales said.

  Eperson gave his comrade a nod and pivoted on the soles of his boots, marching back to wherever he had come from.

  Lucas stood motionless for a long while, his eyes fixed on the yellow paper that had turned crinkly beneath the ink of his ballpoint pen. He had spent all night on those questions and notes, pressing down hard enough to make the back of the paper bumpy like Braille. Yesterday, he was sure he was a day away from correcting his downward trajectory, so close to fixing his screwed-up life. Now, he had no idea what the hell he was supposed to do. Because despite Halcomb upending their deal, Lucas was sure one thing in that letter was set in stone: Halcomb’s deadline. I won’t reveal the significance of the date or deadline, so please, don’t ask. Lucas had two weeks left to make the connection. Two measly shots left to get to Halcomb before the whole thing was called off, if that hadn’t already happened. Fuck him, Lucas thought. I’ve done what he’s asked. He’s going to talk to me whether he wants to or not.