by E. R. FALLON
I took a deep breath and pulled open the door. A woman dressed like she worked in the prison’s administrative offices was about to exit and I held open the door for her. She thanked me and I went inside once she was out of the way.
Two hulking male guards, with very short hair and muscles nearly bursting out of the shirts of their beige uniforms, stared at me when I walked inside. I waved to them. Would they search me themselves or merely run a hand-held metal detector over my body? I was a man and they could rightfully give me a pat-down before allowing me deeper inside the prison. I didn’t see the kind of metal detector you walked through. I felt grateful I’d worn a padded garment to show through the front of my jeans that day.
I joined in on the ‘manly’ banter I overheard them having about women, something that I normally didn’t encounter with Josh at work, for neither Em nor Sammie would have tolerated that behavior, and rightly so. I’d known first-hand all the shit women had to put up with from men.
“Were her tits really that big?” I said with a grin, in response to the crude remark the taller guard had made to his colleague about his date last night.
The taller guard had cold blue eyes and a deep tan. He had a repulsive phlegmy laugh that he demonstrated to me right then. “Let’s say they were more than a handful,” he replied, and I cringed inside.
I’d never understood why some men thought those types of conversations made them appear manly to each other. In my opinion, they had the opposite effect. I wondered about my mother’s safety inside the prison’s high, impenetrable walls. From what I’d remembered—I hadn’t saved photographs of her—Alice Lane was a beautiful woman, and strong.
I played along with his unpleasant repartee to get on these guys’ good sides, if they even had them. “You must’ve had a really good time, then,” I said.
“Oh, yeah.” The guard gave me a boastful smirk. “It was a grab and squeeze kind of night, if you know what I mean.”
Yuck.
Thankfully, the shorter guard interjected. “Hello, how’s it going today?”
He seemed embarrassed by his colleague’s behavior, appeared a little older and looked as though he took his job more seriously than the other fellow.
“I’m here to see one of the prisoners. A police detective made an appointment for me. I’m a journalist.”
I gave them Mack’s name as my contact and Evan Samuels’ name as mine, and the shorter guard, the one who seemed more in charge than the other, walked behind a computer at a standing desk and typed on the keyboard. Before they could ask me for identification—I assumed they would—I pretended to search my pockets and bag for my wallet.
“Okay, we have you down to come at three o’clock. You’re a bit early,” he said.
“Yes, sorry about that. Shall I wait here?” I pointed at the plastic chairs lined up against the wall to my left. They looked uncomfortable and I couldn’t imagine family members having to sit on them while waiting to see their loved ones.
“No, that’s all right. You can go in early. It’s fairly quiet here today.”
“Yes, I could tell from the parking lot.” I smiled.
He remained solemn. “Can I see your identification?”
“Will my driver’s license do?”
“Sure, that’s what we usually ask for.” He held out his hand and, again, I pretended to check my clothing and bag for my wallet.
“Ah, fuck,” I groaned and searched my pockets again. “I’m not from around here. I seem to have left my wallet back at the lodge. You know the lodge, right?”
“We do,” the taller guard said. He eyed me with mistrust. Perhaps I’d underestimated him.
I addressed the shorter one. “A detective, Mack Boyle, set up this whole thing for me, for me to interview Alice Lane for a story I’m working on. I’m a writer, you see. I already said that, but, anyway, this has all been arranged by a detective from here, from Freedom. Why don’t you call him to confirm?” I couldn’t recall Mack’s new phone number off the top of my head and I had no idea what I’d do if the guard asked for it.
After what felt like an extensive period of silence, the taller guard said, “That’s okay. All the guys from the press who come here want to talk to her.”
Perhaps my earlier bantering with him had won him over to my side, no matter how unpleasant it’d been for me. He handed me my nametag and I clipped it to the front of my jacket.
The other man interrupted. “We have to check him.” He indicated for me to empty my pockets into the white bins on the counter the other guard leaned against.
I didn’t have a watch or other jewelry to remove, and I didn’t have anything in my pockets to declare. I put my eyeglasses in the bin. Then I took my satchel off my shoulder and set it on the counter. The more serious guard stared at my pockets and I patted them to show they held nothing. He quickly went from that to clearing his throat and nodding at the notepad and pen I still gripped in my hand. I set them down too. The guard at the counter set the bin with my glasses on a conveyer belt and moved it through a small metal detector. Then he opened my bag and dug through the contents as the other man ran a metal detector wand over my body.
He hunkered down to scan my shoes and the area around my legs. “Do you have anything on you that you need to disclose before we let you inside?” He asked, standing up to my level.
“No.”
When he scanned my pockets, the metal detector beeped. “Please empty your pockets completely, sir.”
“I don’t believe there’s anything else in them,” I said.
He tilted his head at the bins on the counter.
I found that I had left a few coins in my pocket. I dropped those into the bin and they clinked. “Sorry about that.”
He gave me a knowing look and then picked through the coins with his finger. Once finished, he nodded at me to put them back in my pocket.
“One second,” I said. “Will I be in the same room as the prisoner? I presumed from what the detective said, that I’d be separated from her, from the prisoner, by a sort of partition. But you seem to be searching me as though I’ll have direct contact with her.” Could I have faced my mother without a wall, even a clear one, between us?
At my side, the younger guard smiled at me with gleaming teeth. “What’s the matter, are you afraid she’ll bite?”
His cheap joke wasn’t lost on me but I didn’t react. “No, but I’d like to know what kind of setting I’ll be interviewing the prisoner in.”
“Everything we’re doing is part of protocol. You’ll be separated from her,” the older guard said, zipping my satchel closed. He handed it to me. “You’re all clear to go in. You can take your bag in with you. You’ll be talking to her through a speaker.”
I put the coins away. He nodded at my notepad and pen, and I picked them up from the counter. The taller, younger guard didn’t move from his current place, leaning on the counter and resting his weight. The other one motioned for me to follow him through a bolted metal door painted green.
“I’ll escort you to where you need to go,” he said.
He opened the latch with one of the keys on the set that dangled from his belt. It was then I noticed he also carried a gun on his belt, and I assumed his counterpart had one clipped on him, too.
With my satchel hanging from my shoulder, I reluctantly followed him, walking one step behind the guard into a brightly lit hallway with its walls painted an institutional white shade.
“What’s your name?” I said. “If you don’t mind my asking.”
“Bennet.”
“That’s your first name?”
He glanced over his shoulder at me and had a look on his face that conveyed nobody in my current position had asked him that very question.
“It’s Karl,” he said. “With a k, not a c.”
I waited for him to apologize for his colleague’s behavior. When he didn’t I said, “Good to meet you, Karl.” We didn’t cease our walk and I refrained from offering to shake hands si
nce it didn’t seem appropriate under the circumstances. He murmured a greeting I didn’t catch, and I didn’t care to ask him to repeat himself.
When we had made the journey to the end of the hall, Karl stopped in his tracks just in front of me. He unlocked—typing a code into a keypad on the wall—and led me through another door, and into a different, ill-lit hallway with gray walls. Karl stopped at a white door to our left and used one of his keys on his belt to open it. My mother couldn’t have escaped easily.
Once more, the lighting changed, and I struggled to adjust my vision to the now more intense glare.
“Where is she?” I asked, fighting to see through the intensity.
“She’s over there, sir,” Karl said.
Chapter 11
I peered at the woman, directly in front of me, a step or two away, so that if I walked in a straight line, I could press my hand to the translucent partition that separated her room from the one I stood in.
A banquet chair had been set out for me to use during the visit. My mother looked small and alone behind the clear partition, alienated from me. There weren’t other inmates lined up at her left and right talking to their loved ones through telephone receivers like in the movies. Alice Lane sat alone.
I didn’t know whether they were keeping her out of the general population on purpose for her safety. The lovely butcher. My mother. How could it have been that nearly twenty years had passed and I hadn’t seen her?
Sammie and I had a terrible row once about how although my mother had taken lives, she was my mother, and I could never fully bring every ounce of myself to hate her. I knew where Sammie came from and respected her take. Her little sister had been murdered. Every time Sammie’s sister’s killer was up for parole, she spoke in front of the board to prevent his release. She felt killers deserved no remorse from anyone, their own families included. Sammie’s grief at her sister’s sudden death was more violent than that of Ben’s parents, who were quiet and held forgiving, religious views even towards their son’s killer, unlike the families of Alice’s other victims, who had made it quite clear that if they had their say, my mother would have been drawn and quartered in the town square. Alice Lane was a murderer but she was also my mother, and I could never bring myself to despise her with all I had.
Alice, once the town’s most feared woman, looked vulnerable and breakable, like my hand could have pushed right through her if we hadn’t been divided. She was older, rounder in the face, and her body filled out her red jumpsuit. Her exposed arms looked puffy and white. She’d been well-fed in prison and the lack of exercise and fresh air had gotten to her.
Alice peered disinterestedly from me to Karl. She always had liked playing things cool. She crossed her arms and gave him one of her sweet smiles I remembered all too well from my childhood. Alice hadn’t been the kind of mother who baked or was overly involved in my life, but she’d been there for me when I needed her.
“My favorite guard. The nicest one,” she said to Karl. Her voice had aged into a weaker, softer, sound.
He blushed and frowned.
My mother’s voice made it seem like she wasn’t capable of killing anyone, much less several people. How she had misled me as a child. How much she had misled everyone in her life. The newspapers had portrayed her as a cunning woman, someone who hid behind the agreeable schoolteacher persona she’d developed in our town.
Before she became a known predator, most folks in the town remarked how peculiar it was that a woman as pretty as my mother had chosen teaching high school math as her profession. Why, with her looks and family pedigree, she could have married well, she hadn’t needed to marry a man like my father, who’d gone on to abandon her. But my mother wasn’t a brilliant mathematician. In fact, she was far from that. She’d grumble to me when she came home from work that it was all a great big ruse and there wasn’t a day that went by without her doubting she knew what she was doing.
“You’re my favorite,” she spoke again to Karl.
He ignored Alice’s goading and said directly to me, “You’ll have an hour for your visit. I’ll come collect you when the time’s up.”
“Is it possible to have a bit longer than that?”
“One hour.” He moved his fingers over a large orange button on the wall. “Press this if you need me to come earlier.” Did he think Alice might possibly hurt me through what seemed like a bullet-proof divider? When I didn’t acknowledge his instructions, he tapped the button.
“Should I be worried?” I asked.
“I don’t think she can hurt you from inside there just by looking at you.” But he didn’t sound convinced.
Alice nodded at me and talked to Karl through the speaker in the partition. I’d anticipated she and I would have each had to pick up a phone to converse through the glass, but, alas, no. The sound of her voice was fainter than it would have been if I was sitting in front of her. “Who the hell is that man?” She squinted at my visitors’ badge but my name hadn’t seemed to register.
“Evan Samuels.” I extended my hand to her but we couldn’t touch through the glass. She peered at my hand, and, from the gleam in her eyes, viewed my gesture with amusement. “I’d like to speak with you, if that’s all right,” I said, stepping closer, my voice raised, so close I could have pressed my nose to the partition’s surface if I wanted. I knew my mother and how strong she could be, and I knew that straight away I would have to make it clear I was in charge if I stood a chance of leaving there with what I wanted. A part of me had been worried she’d recognize me somehow, but I could tell from her defensive stare that I wasn’t familiar to her.
“Who said you could come here?” she asked. “My lawyer? And don’t try to trick me with some line that you’re my new lawyer because I know you aren’t. Are you a fan? How did you pull the strings to get in here? All the guards told me was that I had to come with them to see someone right now.”
“A detective,” I started to say, and she pointed at the speaker like she couldn’t hear me and wanted me to use that to communicate with her. I bent down to talk through it. “A detective in the area arranged for me to visit you.”
“You’re not law enforcement,” she observed.
“It’s that obvious?”
She didn’t smile. “A detective you said? Was his name…Mack?” Alice’s voice faded as a memory seemed to come to her.
I nodded.
“He was nice to my daughter,” she said.
I took a seat in front of her while she continued to talk.
“Of course, this would have been years ago. My daughter stopped communicating with me a long time ago.” She seemed so unassuming that it wasn’t difficult to see why her confession had shocked so many.
Despite my awareness of her crimes and how much suffering she’d inflicted on others, tears of guilt at abandoning her in that place, that prison, pricked at the corners of my eyes. I held the tears back and quickly thought of how to explain I knew Mack, because she would inevitably wonder. “A colleague of mine put me in touch with him. I’m a journalist, and I’d like to interview you for a story, if you’ll give me a few moments of your time.”
She giggled. “Time? Listen, handsome—may I call you that?—in here all I have is time.” I smiled at her, and her tone morphed into something less friendly. “You want to write about me?”
“I want to include you in my story, yes.”
“Then you should know it’s a rule of mine not to speak to reporters anymore. Your lot mostly prints trash about me. Too bad you weren’t just a fan.”
She stared at me for such a long time it made me uncomfortable. Did she recognize me?
“You’re not bad-looking for a short guy,” she said.
I breathed with ease. “I won’t quote you directly in my story.”
“I’m sorry but I can’t trust you’ll remain true to your word.” Her manner stayed clipped and to-the-point.
“Have you been burned before?” I asked, though I recalled she had.
My mother paused, and then said, “When the news of my arrest first broke, I tried speaking to journalists in hopes they could spread my message that my family, my daughter, were victims too, in a sense, and people shouldn’t blame them for something I’d done. But when my lawyer shared with me what they’d written, I saw they’d twisted everything around and made me look like a monster.”
I recalled how the families of her victims hadn’t liked her speaking to the newspapers. And rightly so. They hadn’t wanted Alice to have a voice when their murdered loved ones couldn’t speak for themselves.
“And you aren’t a monster?” I said.
Serial murderers were sociopaths or psychopaths, from what I’d researched on the topic after her arrest, but for years I’d sought to hear an answer from her directly, all the while comprehending that she most likely wasn’t capable of admitting the depravity behind what she’d done. Those like her—serial killers—almost never were.
“I’m sure someone like you would like to think of me as that,” she said.
“Not necessarily. I consider myself to be a fair journalist. I stick to the facts and don’t embellish the truth.” I liked to think I did that regardless of my true occupation.
She looked at me like she found my answer, and me, amusing.
“You’ve had the same lawyer for all these years?” I asked, something I was ashamed not to have kept track of or cared about.
“No. The first one retired. I have a new one these days. He’s a little man, like you, but his gumption makes up for that shortcoming.”
“You have a sense of humor,” I said.
She replied, “One has to have a sense of humor to survive in here.”
I hadn’t heard Karl leaving but he must have sneaked out because when I checked, he was gone. And I was alone with prisoner 899—I noticed the number had been stitched onto her jumpsuit—also known as my mother. I hadn’t heard him locking the door but I assumed he had since he’d insinuated that only an official could escort me in and out of the room, something to do with that orange button.