___________________
Back in my cell, I tossed and turned uncertain if it was because of Butch's thinly veiled threats or the images of the past that continued to haunt me, first in my sleep, and now preventing it.
God, I missed my family. Sometimes I thought of them all together, sometimes individually. Every now and then, I'd hear door hinges sing a high-pitched tone. The sound would remind me of a delicate solo violin line and think of Bethie. At twelve years old, she was already a virtuoso violinist, soloed with the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Eleven. Our pride and joy. How could this be?
The sound of my cell door sliding open jolted me from my nightmarish sleep. It must have been four in the morning. "Get up!" C.O. Cummings barked. He bound my wrists behind my back and shackled my feet, while Butch stood with his gun aimed straight at me. They checked me for shanks and then shoved me out the door.
"Let's go! Move it!" Cummings said.
"Where?" My eyes hadn't yet adjusted to the light. I could barely open them.
"Get going!" Butch shouted. "I told you that I was the law. You break it, I break you."
All the way on the ride in the truck to wherever we were going, Butch kept talking to me about how lucky I had been in the SHU, especially with him as my C.O. "I didn't ask too much. Never made you fight. Didn't want to get your pretty face messed up."
"You tried to set me up."
"Yeah, that contraband was just a test.
"Your bitch test?"
"You failed." With a perverse grin he said, "Come on. It was just a couple of nickel bags and a cell phone." He put his arm around me and played with his toothpick. "Would've made you my own special connie. With all the benefits."
I tried to struggle free but I was completely shackled. If I tried to jump out of the truck, Butch and his men wouldn't hesitate to shoot. He pulled out his toothpick and put his mouth right next to my ear. His hot breath made my stomach turn.
"You might reconsider—if you live long enough." His lip brushed my earlobe. Fed up, I thrust my head into his face and hit it hard. Butch let out a grunt. His lip was bleeding. But he remained cool and gave me a menacing smile. "Oh, you're a feisty bitch." He rubbed his busted lip, looked at his bloody fingertips, then started sucking them. Sick. "You'll be begging for me to take you back, trust me."
"Whatever." Where were they taking me, anyway?
The answer came as we stopped and they brought me into another building. A much larger one. The guards buzzed me in, checked me head to toe, and led me to a cavernous area with countless cells lined up over two tiers.
Anxiety lodged in my chest as Butch began to chuckle and snort. "Silk, you may already be famous. But ain't it nice to be somewhere where everybody knows your name?"
"What are you doing?" I said.
"The good news is—your time in the SHU is over. But the bad news is, so is your protective custody."
"No, wait! You can't do this!"
"Already done, pretty-boy," he said, brushing my face with the back of his hand. "Welcome to Gen-Pop."
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Lying awake in sheets soaked with cold sweat, I felt grateful the upper bunk of my new cell remained unoccupied. Butch left me in there, promising that I wouldn't be alone for long. Was that supposed to be good?
From what I knew about life in Gen-Pop, I'd be afforded a great deal more freedom: outdoor open yard time, access to the law library, the canteen, even phone calls and religious services. One might almost think that Butch had done me a favor.
But when a rude buzzer announced the start of a new day, I knew he had a plan for me. If I didn't get shanked the moment I came in contact with the other inmates, I'd surely be tortured by the suspense of not knowing exactly when and how it would go down. I never thought it possible to miss solitary.
My first day in B-Yard was strangely reminiscent of my first day of Junior High School. The sun began its frenzied ascent into the desert sky. Cloud shadows crept across the verdant lawns and concrete basketball courts. Three discernable groups dominated the scene—the blacks, the whites and the Mexicans. Everyone seemed to know their place. I stood alone in a corner.
A couple of skin-heads did pullups on a steel bar, their muscular arms covered with tattooed swastikas. On the other side of the yard, a black guy did dips while two brothers stood by his side, talking and gesticulating aggressively. Not daring to make eye contact, I kept my head down.
Every time an inmate walked past me or looked my way, my blood pressure kicked up a few notches. Did they know who I was, what I was in for? What I wouldn't give to be invisible. On the other hand, I was grateful for the fresh air. It had been months since I'd been in an open, outdoor area larger than the Dog Walk.
I shut my eyes, faced the sky and let the warmth of the sun bathe my face. I couldn't help but smile. If only for that short moment, it felt almost as if I'd been released. Until I caught a hard blow between the shoulder blades and fell to the grass.
Dull but excruciating pain shot up my spine. I saw nothing but several pairs of legs passing by. From the laughs and insults in Spanish, I could tell that I'd just been welcomed by Northern Mexicans. I didn't want to get up too quickly, lest they take it as a sign I wanted to fight back. But if I stayed down too long, someone would notice and from now on, I'd be marked easy prey. Great first impression.
I got up, dusted myself off and watched the backs of their heads as they strutted away. One of them turned back and glared at me. I frowned and nodded at him with my chin. He pointed his chin at me. If I wasn't mistaken, he just told me to watch my back. Either that, or I was carne muerto.
Reaching around my back, I felt where I'd been hit and then examined my fingers. No blood. I exhaled in relief but kept looking over my shoulder as I started to walk. The last time I looked there wasn't a wall in my path, but that's exactly what it felt I had walked into when I turned around. My head recoiled and I nearly lost balance again.
"Watch it!" said the wall, a bald Caucasian man with a scar across the side of his face. He towered over me. I'd seen some big guys before, but this guy made them look like midgets. He grabbed me by the shirt and slammed me against a concrete wall, squinting tightly at me.
I tried to apologize, but the wind had been knocked from me. My mouth opened and shut like that of a dying fish. Aside from his formidable stature, he seemed unremarkable. The only thing that stood out in my mind was the tattoo on his arm. A crucifix with the bleeding Christ hanging on it.
I shook my head, Please don't kill me. He let me down and shoved me back. Nearly falling on my hindquarters, I braced myself against the wall.
"You stupid or something?" he said, glaring at me. "Keep gawking at the sky like some kind of idiot and someone'll get the idea to kill you—just for the fun of it."
My chest heaving, I tried to speak. "Sorry...I didn't—"
"Stay out of my way!" Anything I might say would have sounded stupid. Thanks for the advice—oh, and by the way, thanks for not squashing me like a cockroach. I just nodded and watched him leave. He strode directly into a mass of white inmates who quickly spread out and made a path.
But what puzzled me was when he walked right into a group of black cons and they did the same, though with some furtive taunting. Behind his back. You could tell they respected him. Or feared him, anyway. Something told me it wasn't just because of his size.
___________________
That I survived my first day in the yard, that no one appeared to have recognized me as Sam Hudson, was highly suspect. Butch was definitely up to something. An inmate convicted of my crimes would be targeted right away. But having me shanked right away would rob him of the fun of watching me wander like a kitten in a junkyard full of rabid dogs. I would give him no such satisfaction.
That afternoon I had a visitor. My heart skipped a beat when Rachel Cheng, came to visit. As my defense attorney she had been filing for an appeal while Mack, the private investigator she hired continued looking for the real killer.
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Unfortunately, the appeal had been denied.
"Maybe it's time you moved on," I said.
Rachel looked up at me through the protective glass. Her eyes—today violet, courtesy of those whimsical colored contact lenses—shimmered and she pushed a stray lock of raven hair behind her ear. "Sam..." I could tell she had been at least considering it.
"You've done your best," I said. "It's time to get your own life back on track."
"If I'd tried harder," Rachel said into the handset, her eyes welling up. "If only I'd found something, anything." She studied the polished chrome around the Plexiglas window and ran a finger along its edge.
"No. Rachel, don't blame yourself."
"You were framed."
"Say that in here and I'll get more than a couple of laughs and snorts."
"Do you have any idea who could have... who would have wanted to do it?"
I'd only been thinking about that for the past year. "Lots of people had access the days before the murders," I said. "The killer got past the security system."
"Logs show that it was disarmed, with the manufacturer's default passcode at 10:30 PM. A half hour before you came home."
I was the only person in the house who even knew the manufacturer's passcode, used to reset the unit. I turned my palms upwards and shrugged. "There are only two possibilities," I said, so weary at this point that I wondered if death by lethal injection might be more merciful. "One: someone committed the perfect crime, or two—" She blinked with a puzzled look. "Two: I did it."
"Come on, Sam. Don't even think that."
"Hell, the whole world believes it. The evidence points to me. Maybe I did it and just can't remember. Maybe I went crazy and blocked it out."
Rachel rose from her chair, leaned in close to the window. Her eyes swept around and she whispered. "Do not repeat what you just said. Not ever, not to anyone. Someone in here could twist it into a confession and—-"
"And what, send me to jail? To death row?" I snorted.
"Sam, listen to me! If there's ever going to be a chance for another appeal, you cannot, I repeat, can not be going around saying things that a paid snitch can use against you."
"You're assuming there's hope."
For a moment, not a word came out of her lips. Her poignant eyes glistened. "So that's it, you've given up?"
"I don't think... I just can't go through it again. Raising my hopes, only to have them crushed." Rachel had done an amazing job during the trial. At several points, I really thought the jury would turn an N.G. I was wrong.
"We've got to keep fighting," she said.
"What's the point?"
"Aaron."
What I said next, I'd regret for years to come. I was so rapt in self-pity that I hadn't realized just how low I'd sunk. "For all we know, he's not going to make it."
Rachel's eyes widened. It was as if someone had told her that a nuclear warhead had detonated less than a mile away. "How—? Sam, of all people. How could you?" Defensiveness would have been my default reaction—shifting the blame to her for goading me into it with her incessant exhortations of hope since we first met.
But it was all me. I knew it. "I....I didn't mean that."
"No, I don't believe you did." I couldn't face her."I have to go," she said. "Anything develops, I'll let you know."
I nodded, still avoiding her eyes. She tapped the window. "Sam."
"What?"
"We're all still praying."
"Thanks." It was the furthest thing from my mind. If there even was a God, he'd let me down, big time.
Rachel left and I felt like I'd just handed my son over to an executioner. How could I even think that he wasn't going to make it? Self-contempt prompted a decision. From that moment on, I would never entertain the thought that Aaron might not make it. Never mind what the doctors said, I would not live my final years resigned to the death of my son.
From that moment on, I'd be a fighter.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
I returned to my cell and found it now occupied by another inmate. When he saw me at the door, he leapt to his feet and hit his head on the metal bed frame.
"This your bunk?" He rubbed his fuzzy head, eyes shifting from side to side like some kind of rodent. His considerable front teeth and pointy nose, which wiggled like he was sniffing around for something, did little to counter that image.
"It's okay," I said, reaching out to shake hands and introduce myself.
"NO!" He cringed, covered his face and fell onto the floor in a fetal position.
"What —?" A loud buzzer sounded and all the doors in our block slammed shut. My cellmate was now lying in a foul-smelling puddle he'd just made. I let out a sigh and stood away from him, leaning against the wall until he seemed ready to get up.
"You okay down there?" He finally looked up and decided I wasn't about to kill him. I grinned at him with a, "what is your problem?" look.
He beheld his urine soaked pants and groaned. "Aw, man!" He got up and smoothed out his pants, realized he just got his hands wet and sighed.
"What's your name?"
"Artie," he said. "Pleased to meet you." He extended his hand but I graciously declined to shake it.
"Yeah, well. I'm—"
"I know who you are," said Artie, his beady eyes swiping around the cell. I straightened up. Right away, he cringed and covered his head. "No, please!"
"Would you stop that! I'm not going to hurt you." That only made him cower again. It took another ten minutes before he stopped knee-jerking at my slightest move. So rather than talk, I threw down a used towel and with my foot, mopped up the yellow puddle. When I was done I kicked it under the bars of our cell. "You can have the bottom bunk if you like," I said.
"You sure?"
"Yeah."
"In exchange for what?"
"Nothing, what are you talking about?"
"Nothing."
Artie was the last person you'd expect to find in Salton. He'd pass out if he saw a mouse. I sat on a stool on the opposite side of our cell and waiting for him to stop pacing.
A female C.O. stopped outside the cell and tapped on the bars. Artie whooped with a start. Great he's going to wet himself again.
"Hey Possum," she said, peering through golden bangs that peeked through the rim of her cap. "Welcome to B-block." she kicked the soiled towel away".
I regarded my cell mate with an ironic smirk. "Possum?"
"Yeah."
"Why do they call you that?" I asked.
His eyes were shiny ball-bearings, his ears stuck out of the sides of his head. "No idea." Regarding the officer, he said, "Hey Gracie, thanks for giving me a celebrity cellie." At once, I noticed her unusually kind demeanor. Unusual for a C.O., anyway.
"Celebrity?" I said to Possum.
"Everyone knows you. Superdad turned—"
"You're Sam Hudson, aren't you?" she said, lifting her eyes to meet mine. There was a melancholy look in those sapphire eyes, the corners of which wrinkled as she smiled. Though she must not have been much more than thirty-five, it made her appear a decade older.
"I'm afraid you have me at a considerable disadvantage."
"Sergeant Sonja Grace," she said. "I'm one of the C.O.'s here in B-Block."
"Yeah, well. Nice to meet—"
"I read about you in the papers."
With a deep breath in, a sharp one out, I said, "Who hasn't?"
"No, I mean I remember your picture out in front of the School Yard during the hostage crisis. You know, the one with you facing off with the officer, with his rifle in your chest?"
"Oh, Coyote Creek Middle School." Seemed like ages ago, and certainly eclipsed by the tragic events of that fateful night, only weeks later.
"Bubba's got some cajones, muy grandes," Possum said. "He was a real hero."
"Hero," I scoffed. "Right."
"Until your conviction, anyway," Possum said.
"And your boy?" Sergeant Grace said, completely catching me off guard. Her smile diss
olved.
"Excuse me?"
"Your son. Did you get to see him before....?"
"No, I didn't."
A pained expression filled her eyes. "Sorry to hear it." What was it to her? She stared down the tier and sighed. "Anyway, like I told Possum, welcome to B-Block. Keep your nose clean, your cell clean and we'll get along just fine. Got it?"
"Yeah."
"I'll be seeing you." Sergeant Grace tapped on the bars of our cell with her nightstick and left.
"Seems nice," I said to Artie.
"Absolute doll."
"So," I said, "What's your story?"
He crinkled his nose, examined our cell. "I ain't got one."
"Everyone's got a story," I said. I would learn later, that Artie "Possum" Castigliano had been an accountant for a large seafood import corporation. He was doing time for participating in a State tax scandal. Could his company have been a client of my firm—that is, former firm, Lewis, Garfield & Brown?
Of course, he was innocent and had been set up. But no one in Salton was stupid enough to belly ache about stuff like that. Most of the cons saw Salton as a promotion, a place to hone their criminal skills. Complaining of a wrongful conviction was not just showing weakness, it was a disgrace. Then again, Artie the Possum had just peed in his pants a few minutes ago.
"Okay, so what are you?" Possum asked. "Psychopath? Sociopath? Plain old nasty guy?"
"What?"
"Everyone knows what you're in here for. You got issues, man."
"That's what I was convicted of," I said. "We've all been convicted. Whether we did it or not is besides the point." This Possum might actually be a rat. No way I'd say anything snitch-worthy.
"True. True-true," he said, bobbing his little round head and looking around the cell.
"So, how much?" I said.
Possum's eyes zipped around the cell. He answered in a hissing whisper. "Nine-point-two-five." Nearly ten million dollars in evaded state taxes was plenty motive. And he made an easy scapegoat. Poor guy.
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