by Reed Arvin
“And what was that?”
Hale pauses a moment, drawn back in a memory. “She worked in food services. Real sweet face, like an angel. I went through the line, and she give me my first smile in a year.”
Jesus, this is about a woman. “Who was this?”
“Damita D’Angelis. I just called her Angel. We was real.”
“You developed a relationship?”
Hale nods. “I bought my way onto food services, and it was real good. I built my time, no problem.”
“The guards tolerated this relationship?”
“You know how it is,” Hale says, and I do.
“How long did your relationship last?”
Hale’s answer is the mathematics of a man whose world is building time. “Four months, eleven days,” he says. “Until Owens filed incompatibility on me.”
Filing incompatibility is the neutron bomb of prison life; a prisoner claims another will do him harm, and the institution is obligated by law to move one of them to another location. If they don’t get moved and the violence goes down, the state can be sued for wrongful death. Like everything else in prison life, the inmates have learned how to use the filing of incompatibility for their own purposes.
“So who was moved?” I ask.
“Me.”
“Once you were gone, did Mr. Owens start a relationship with Ms. D’Angelis?”
Hale’s face proves that even the most godforsaken bastard on Earth feels his own loss, in spite of the fact he has exacted ten times as much misery on other people. “Yeah,” he says, after a moment. “So we had business. I got out in October, Owens the month after.”
“What did you do to him, Mr. Hale?”
He smiles. “I set his ass up. Owens hung out around Green’s pawn, over near where he lived. Only took me a couple hours to get four butts. Once I had that, it was pretty much over. He’s in the system, know what I’m sayin’? The DNA gonna nail his ass; case closed.”
“So you stood outside the grocery store smoking, but dropping Owen’s cigarette butts instead of your own.”
“That’s it.”
“It seems to me this is a lot of trouble, Mr. Hale. Why not just confront him? Take him out?”
Hale smiles. “Because a niggah’s got to have style.”
“Style?”
“I got pride in my work. Everything I do, it got that mark of quality. Style.”
“So now you’re confessing,” I say. “You don’t want Allah to punish you for your crimes.”
He nods. “I got to stand before Allah.”
At this point, I let myself lose it a little, intentionally opening up to a slow, controlled burn. “So your idea of style is walking into a grocery store, pulling a sawed-off shotgun out of your coat, and blowing holes into Steven Davidson and Lucinda Williams? Is that what you’re going to tell Allah, Kwame? That you killed those two people because it had more style?”
Hale’s face flushes. “I don’t need no lecture on the Koran from no white man.”
“And I don’t need a lecture about morality from a self-confessed murderer.”
Hale moves up off his chair—getting him upset is child’s play, really, considering his malevolent disposition—and the guards move to squash him back down into it. Hale is immensely strong, and for a moment, the three of them are locked in midair, Hale in a half squat, a motion he’s probably done in the weight room carrying nearly the same weight he has on him now. Hale’s fists are close together from the plastic cuffs, and he brings them down hard on the table, gaining leverage. Buchanan backs away like a scared cat, and the guard on Hale’s left reaches for his nightstick. I do not move. What I want to do is to make Hale crack a little bit. I want to upset his game, play into his emotional makeup. I want him to end up saying more than he planned, and about two more incendiary comments ought to do it. Hale shrugs the guards’ hands off his shoulders and sits back down, but he’s still as tense as a spring.
I know this kind of baiting is going to make me look bad on the videotape, but I don’t care, because compared to how bad I’m going to look if it turns out Hale is telling the truth, it hardly matters. “You’re a liar, Kwame,” I say, leaning forward until our faces are only about eighteen inches apart. “You’ve got a fifth-grade education, and you want to start talking shit about dropping DNA? You’ve been incarcerated six times, and you’re in now because you were too stupid to wipe your fingerprints off a car you stole when committing a robbery. Oh yeah, you’ve got style, pal. You’ve got the style of a goddamn moron.”
Hale loses it, and it’s beautiful. He actually reaches for me, and the guards drop on him like a ton of bricks. Buchanan elevates once again out of his chair and away from the commotion, then starts screaming about prisoner abuse and the violation of his client’s rights. I ignore him because he is now irrelevant. Kwame Jamal Hale is all that matters. The guards wrestle Hale back down into his chair, and he gives me a look that says if we were alone, he would end me. When the guards get him back under control, they chain his arms to his chair. Hale glowers at me, radiating hate.
“OK, Mr. Hale,” I say. “Take me through the crime. Let’s start with when you got up that morning. Where were you?”
Buchanan interrupts, as if on signal. “What happened was a long time ago. Trying to resurrect these details seven years after the fact is a stretch.”
“Bullshit,” I say. “I want him to tell me what he had on, and I’m talking down to boxers or briefs. I want to know whether or not he shaved that day. I want to know where he bought the shotgun shells and where he loaded the gun. I want everything.”
“You want to catch some tiny detail that’s not accurate, and use that as an excuse to call him a liar,” Buchanan says.
“Are you telling me that your client is so blasé about killing two people that he can’t even recall where he got up that morning?”
“I’m not saying anything of the kind,” Buchanan says, flushing. “But after such—”
“After what, dammit?” Rayburn interrupts. He’s been quiet until now, but he can’t take it anymore. “The whole thing’s a load of shit. Somebody like Hale would have hunted Wilson down like a dog and blown him away. He tried to rip off Thomas’s head thirty seconds ago, and everybody in this room saw it. This frame-up job is a crock.”
“When it comes to that, there’s more than one killer in the room,” Buchanan spits. “How many have you sent down the river, Mr. District Attorney? You got ninety more waiting to die right now. Compared to you, my client is a choir boy.”
“Goddamn it,” Rayburn says, “if you think—”
We’re seconds away from turning into a full-on circus, and I can’t actually figure out if that’s good or bad. Normal rules don’t apply when there’s so much at stake. But I don’t have the chance to calculate, because Hale’s voice enters the argument, as dark and quiet as spreading oil. “I can prove it,” he says. “I can prove what I say.” Rayburn freezes in midsentence. Hale has mastered himself again, and he’s sitting with his shackled hands folded in front of him on the table. He is very still inside, his eyes focused straight ahead.
“Now would be the time,” I say quietly.
“The gun,” Hale says. “You never found the gun.”
I look up warily. “That’s right. There was an extensive search, but it had vanished.”
“I know where it is,” Hale whispers. “You can match it to the shells at the scene. Case closed.”
I look at Buchanan. “You knew about this?” Buchanan smiles, which means he did. “OK, Mr. Hale. Where’s the gun?”
Buchanan touches Hale’s arm. “Not this way, Kwame. By tonight, it will be gone, like it never existed.”
“Are you saying we would tamper with the evidence in this case?” Rayburn demands.
“Everybody in this room knows what’s on the table here,” Buchanan retorts. “If that gun disappears, it’s like Kwame Jamal never happened.”
Carl, until now, has said nothing. I’ve almos
t forgotten about him, this mountain of a man, wordlessly listening on my left. He clears his throat, and everybody shuts up and turns toward him. “We are men of integrity,” he says, just those words. Carl Becker is the real deal, and accusations of illicit behavior bounce off him like pebbles off a boulder. He turns to Rayburn. “We can go together to the location, with a forensic team,” he says. “It’s not worth fighting with somebody like this.”
Rayburn nods. “Today is Tuesday. Is there any reason we can’t do this by Friday?” Buchanan shakes his head. “Good.” Rayburn stands, and Carl and I rise with him. “Ten a.m. Friday, my office,” he says. “Don’t make my people wait.”
TEN FEET OUT OF high security, I pull the escort aside. “Take me by Hale’s cell,” I say, under my breath. The guard nods, looks up at the officer in the control room, and points to the door. The door snaps open, and we walk across the polished floor to a cell on the opposite side. The guard points to a small window, and I peer in. The metal furnishings are standard prison issue. There are a few posters of girls in bikinis on the wall—apparently, Hale’s Islamic convictions only go so far—and a small television set on a table. “When did he get the TV?” I ask.
“About four months ago, I think. The lawyer brought it.”
Five minutes later, we’ve been released back out into the gravel parking lot in front of the prison castle. The white granite walls behind the prison shine in the sun. If it wasn’t a seat of human misery, we would be in a beautiful place.
“He’s lying,” Rayburn says. “I didn’t know what to think at first, but I swear to God, he’s lying.”
“Sure,” I say, agreeing more out of loyalty than anything. “He’s lying.”
“Did you see that TV?” Rayburn asks. “There are two hundred guys in that building willing to lie to get something like that.” Rayburn’s right; I’ve had perps rat out their best friends just for the promise of a private cell.
Carl’s eyes are locked on the windows of Brushy Mountain Prison. “If he is lying,” he says quietly, “I’d like to know how he got that shotgun.”
THE MILES REVERSE themselves as we head back in Rayburn’s car, returning us to an office filled with workers who don’t know anything about our visit to Brushy Mountain. Carl and I are ostensibly taking one of the fifty or so vacation days we have accumulated, and Rayburn is supposedly off raising money for his reelection campaign. About thirty miles from Brushy Mountain, I ask the obvious. “How long can we keep this quiet? If we find the gun, I mean.”
“Nothing’s conclusive until we run the ballistics,” Rayburn says. “I can stretch that out at least a week. Maybe two.”
“You know Buchanan’s going to want his own lab to do the test,” Carl says.
“Yeah, and he can kiss my ass. Anyway, if we get a positive, he’s not gonna complain.”
“You think Buchanan is going to keep his mouth shut until then?” I ask.
Rayburn stares ahead at the road. “It’s like that Geraldo thing. The one with the vault. Remember that?”
“Al Capone’s vault in Chicago,” Carl says from the back. “Huge TV numbers, and there was nothing there. Geraldo looked like a moron.”
“It’s been more than seven years since the murders,” I say. “A lot of things can happen to a gun in seven years. It can get found, or destroyed, or even paved over, depending on where it is.”
Rayburn drives on silently for a second, then pulls off the road. He parks on the gravel and turns in his seat. “This guy Buchanan’s got an ego. Think about it. Uncovering the murder weapon that proves, for the first time, the wrong person was executed in this country. It’d be on every news outlet on Earth.”
“He’s not going to risk a Geraldo,” I say. “He wouldn’t be doing this unless he knew the gun was there.”
“That’s my point. I’d bet my pension he’s been to the site. He knows what’s going to happen. And if he’s been to the site, it’s potential evidence tampering.”
“Gentlemen,” Carl says, “we might be into a full-blown Geraldo-type situation. He probably already has some choice media contacts in the loop, waiting to pounce.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Rayburn whispers. He slips the car into gear and floors it.
CHAPTER
7
WE SHOW UP at the office about 3:30, half expecting to find an army of reporters waiting on us. Rayburn even makes us come up the elevators separately, to dispel the notion that we’ve been together. But it’s wasted effort; we slip into the office without a blip, and nobody asks where we’ve been. “Calm before the storm,” Carl says, when we meet in the hall a few minutes later. “Something’s coming. I can feel it.”
I head back to my office, and Stillman materializes beside me—he’s developed the talent of appearing out of nowhere—and follows me inside. He’s dressed immaculately, as usual, and he carries a Coach briefcase that costs 450 bucks. I know this because I priced it myself and decided it was too expensive. He flops into a chair and somehow manages to keep his clothes perfectly in place. This guy is going to last six months, I think. Then it’s Jeff Stillman, reporting from Hollywood on the latest washed-up actor accused of whacking his wife.
“You look good, Stillman. Your parents rich or something?”
“Good clothes are an investment.”
“For what? You already got the job.”
“So,” he says. “What happened up there?”
“Shut the door.” He shrugs, closes the door, and turns back to me. “Nothing happened, Stillman. The professor told us what’s on his mind, and we’re going to check a few things out. Other than that, it was a big washout.”
Stillman looks disappointed. “Really? That’s great.”
“Meanwhile, we’re keeping our mouths shut. So unless there’s something else, Stillman, I’ll catch you tomorrow.”
“You forgetting the pretrial conference?”
I exhale. “God, I forgot. With Tamra Hartlett’s family.”
“They’re already here. They’re waiting in the small conference room.”
“Sure. Give me a second, OK?” Stillman doesn’t move. “I mean alone.”
“OK, but they’re waiting.” I motion for him to close the door behind him.
I spin my chair around to the window and look down on downtown Nashville. I’m going to have to come to terms with Stillman, I think. I can’t keep treating him like shit. The traffic is light on Second Avenue; a handful of tourists are wandering around, probably wondering why Toby Keith or somebody isn’t standing on a street corner playing guitar. What I have to do, I realize, is figure out where in my brain to put Kwame Jamal Hale for a few days. Problem is, the time I have to do it in is the thirty seconds it’s going to take to walk between my office and the conference room. It seems about four hours short.
Hale didn’t seem like a lunatic. That’s what’s pissing me off, I realize. He just seemed your garden-variety evil lifer, a guy who’s been in and out of jail a dozen times before he fell off the edge and got sent up for good. We had taken comfort from the TV in Hale’s cell; the stuff about inmates selling out their mothers for favors wasn’t just blowing smoke, after all. Once you’re in for life, your personal economy boils down to what fits in a ten-by-ten concrete room. But the TV doesn’t mean Hale was lying. Buchanan is exactly the kind of man who would think the whole idea of a jail cell is inhumane, and he probably knows enough people who think like he does to take up a “Buy poor Kwame a TV” collection. I swear to God, there are times when this job drives me crazy.
I stand. “So,” I say out loud. “Let’s go meet the bereaved.”
RHONDA HARTLETT, Tamra’s mother, is forty years old. She has her daughter’s pale skin, bleached hair, and depressing, overextended sexuality. Her lingering handshake isn’t personal; it’s like a nervous tic, something she doesn’t think about anymore. I say hello, and she bats her eyes like a soap actress, then settles into a long stare at Stillman.
Tamra’s father—never Mr. Hartlett—is a day
laborer named Danny Trent. He lives in Chattanooga, hasn’t seen his daughter in more than a year, and isn’t a material witness. About fifty years old, he has moody eyes that stare at me from beneath a Titans ball cap. His teeth are stained with tobacco juice, and a pack of Skoal is visible in his shirt pocket. He nods wordlessly when I shake his hand.
Sitting to Trent’s left is Jason Hodges, Tamra’s boyfriend. Jason is a key witness, certain to come up on the stand. He’s twenty-four, never been in trouble with the law, and has a nervous, eager expression on his face, like he knows this is serious and he doesn’t want to screw up. He’s about five foot ten, with short brown hair combed straight down over his forehead. He is a Nationite, down to his toes.
“It’s your meeting, Stillman,” I say, taking a seat. Stillman looks up, surprised. Yep, I’ve declared pax, Stillman. Show me what you got.
“OK,” Stillman says, flipping open his notebook. “I’ve read your testimony, Rhonda,” he says. “For today we’ll just review a few things. You saw Tamra the day before the incident, about ten a.m. She loaned you fifty dollars. You talked about Jason, and she said everything was going fine. She was upbeat, happy.”
“That’s right,” Rhonda says. She looks like she wants to eat Stillman between pieces of Wonder Bread. “That’s just exactly right.”
“OK. So, Jason, I think it’s going to come down to you,” Stillman says. “You’re the closest to Tamra, and your testimony is going to have the most weight.”
Hodges looks up, eyes wide. “OK.”
“It says here you work at the Hiller Body Shop.”
“That’s right.”
“When you ain’t high,” Rhonda says, under her breath.
Hello. I look over. “Is that right, Jason?” I ask. “Do you have a drug problem?”
“I ain’t got no drug problem. I’m a skilled welder. That takes steady hands.”
Rhonda rolls her eyes but says nothing.
“How about Tamra?” Stillman asks. “Did she do drugs?”
“I don’t see what difference it makes now.”