Inmate 1577

by Alan Jacobson

  “The way I see it, I’m not doing anyone any good rotting away in this shithole. Pardon my language, Father. But I’m definitely not doing Henry any good. If I make the attempt and get shot...” MacNally shrugged a shoulder. “That’s what’s in the cards, I guess.”

  Finelli looked down, clearly disappointed in MacNally’s answer. “You’ve obviously given serious thought to how you’re going to do it. When would you leave?”

  “Two or three months, if things work the way I think they will.”

  “Then I have some time to discourage you from making your attempt. You don’t mind, do you?”

  “How about you focus your energies on finding my son and getting that letter to him.”

  Finelli promised he would do just that—and each Saturday, when released out onto the yard, MacNally asked if the seminarian had made any progress. Three weeks later, he informed MacNally that he had located Henry in Peekskill, New York, and that he had mailed his letter.

  “I think your note was beautiful,” Finelli said as he gazed out at the Golden Gate. “Your son is going to be touched by what you wrote.”

  MacNally swung his head toward the man. “You read it?”

  “In view of the comments you made about your desire to escape, I felt I had no choice. I told you I wasn’t going to turn it over to prison officials, and I honored that vow. But I had a responsibility to...review it. If there had been something in it pertaining to your escape, I could be arrested for aiding in your felony.”

  MacNally felt his face turn hot, despite the constant chilled wind blowing off the Bay. “That was a violation of our trust, Father. You shouldn’t have done that.”

  “I’m a seminarian, Walton. And I did not violate anything. I did what I felt was required of me, in keeping your private matters private, between the two of us. I did not share the contents of your note to Henry with anyone. And I will never speak of what you wrote. You have my word.”

  The anger MacNally felt building within was something he had not experienced since his time in isolation. He felt that his innermost feelings had been exposed, raw emotions he had reserved for, and decided to share with, his son. He had been violated. There weren’t many things he had in prison he could call his own, but what he had written to Henry, the personal sentiments he had shared, were the last things he was able to claim as sacred.

  MacNally rose abruptly from the cement step. “I need to take a walk.” Finelli stood as well, but MacNally held up a hand. “Alone.” It was better than assaulting a priest—or a seminarian—or whatever he preferred to call himself. If MacNally wanted to have a shot at implementing his escape—at seeing Henry again—he needed to keep his anger in check.

  But as MacNally would soon find out, his failure to heed the wisdom Officer Voorhees had given at Leavenworth—the part about making the correct choices in life—would once again have catastrophic effects.

  61

  The Zodiac sped through the rough San Francisco Bay waters in the darkness, the lights of the city behind them attempting to poke through the misty fog that was hanging low over the tops of the buildings.

  “ID yet on the vic?” Burden asked.

  “Nothing, from what I heard over the radio,” the officer yelled above the din of the engine.

  “How old is he?” Vail asked.

  “Pretty old.”

  Vail, Dixon, and Burden shared a glance: not Friedberg.

  As the Zodiac ventured closer to the island, the vapor got denser, to the point where they appeared to be whipping through an undulating opaque curtain.

  With visibility so poor, the officer slowed the craft and motored in blindly, as if approaching by braille. Finally, he called out, “There we go. Up ahead.”

  Vail craned her neck and saw what appeared to be a lighthouse in the front of the island, slinging its beacon around at regular intervals.

  He brought the craft alongside the dock, behind a larger boat. He tied off the Zodiac, and then the three of them climbed up onto the dock. Vail looked over the area: multiple amber-lit buildings, some shedding their coats of paint and others burned out hulks, shells of what they used to represent.

  And then, as they approached what appeared to be a windowed National Park Service booth, her eyes locked on the silhouette of two men: a National Park Police officer and a man she had not seen in years, dressed in a leather jacket and slacks: Special Agent Mike Hartman.

  Vail couldn’t make her way over to him fast enough. “Mike! I’ve been trying to reach you.”

  He turned to face her, but the brightness behind him prevented her from seeing his face. “Just landed in Oakland. ASAC told me to double-time it over here.”

  “Nice to see you answered your ASAC’s call. You’ve been ignoring mine.”

  “Yeah, well, fuck you, Karen.”

  Vail jutted her chin back. That’s usually my line. “You can’t still be pissed.”

  “Don’t you dare tell me what I can and can’t be feeling.” Hartman rubbernecked his head; the whites of his eyes seemed to settle on Dixon, before shifting to Burden. “This isn’t the time. Or the place. We’ve got a DB and I’m goddamn tired.” He turned to the Park Police officer. “Where’s the body?”

  “Hold it,” Vail said, stepping forward. “I really need to talk with you. In private.”

  Dixon and Burden shared a look. “Can’t that wait?” Burden said. “That DB may help us locate Robert.”

  “Actually,” Vail said, “No. I need to find out—”

  “We’ll talk later,” Hartman said. “Maybe.” He turned back to the officer. “Where’s the body?”

  “This way.”

  “Inspector!” The Zodiac officer was approaching on the run. “Dispatch wants an ETA on my return. You three need me to hang around?”

  Vail remembered seeing a boat at the far end of the dock. She looked over and saw it was a Coast Guard cutter, with a uniformed man on deck. “I don’t think we need him hanging around. Who knows how long we’ll be here. We’ll find a way home.”

  “Agreed.” Burden shooed him away with a hand. “Go on back, but stay on alert.”

  Vail, Burden, and Dixon turned—and saw Hartman heading up the inclined roadway in a red, two-seater Toro flat-bed vehicle.

  “Gotta be kidding me,” Vail said, her hands on her hips. “What an asshole.”

  “Just an observation,” Burden said, starting up the hill. “He doesn’t like you.”

  “No guessing required. Back in New York, after he was reassigned and given a new partner, I was involved in a bank shooting. He responded to my call for backup, his partner was killed, and Mike took some lead. Had nothing to do with me or anything I did, but I was a convenient scapegoat for him because I made the call. Anyway, he was laid up for months and thinks he got passed over for promotion because of it. Of course, none of this was an issue till I got the BAU gig. Then one day he goes off on me. Haven’t seen or heard from him since.”

  As they trudged along the sharply inclined roadway at a quick pace, Dixon said, “You think the offender knows we’re here? We’re bumping up against the deadline.”

  “Depends on how he’s tracking our movements. Out here, in the middle of the Bay, in a fog-socked night, I doubt he’s watching from the mainland.”

  “Unless he’s monitoring the radio band,” Dixon said.

  Burden swung his head over. “I’m him, that’s what I’d do. No way for us to track that. But if that’s the case, he knows we’re here.”

  “It’s possible he’s here, too. On the island,” Dixon said.

  “Anything’s possible,” Burden said. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with, then we’ll have a better idea as to when he killed this vic. I doubt he’d stick around, on an island. His getaway options’d be limited if the place was suddenly swarming with cops.”

  Sodium vapor lights provided barely adequate illumination along the roadway, which was steep and took a good few minutes of uphill hiking. “Now I know why you stair climb at the gym,�
� Vail said between huffs. “So when you’re trudging up the hills at Alcatraz in search of an UNSUB, you’re able to do it without losing your breath.”

  “Exactly,” Dixon called back, ten paces ahead of Burden and Vail. “Because I come here so often tracking serial killers.”

  Ahead, the small vehicle that had transported Hartman was parked outside the Alcatraz cellhouse, an imposing, and aging, prison structure.

  When they arrived at the top of the hill, they hung a right and entered the building through the main entrance, where an arched, three-dimensional sign over the door read, Administration Building. An eagle protruded from above, perched atop a rendition of the American flag—though the vertical red stripes were modified to read, FREE.

  “Someone has a sense of humor,” Burden said.

  They entered the facility where, ahead of them, a man in a suit held out a hand. Vail immediately pegged him as FBI.

  “ID?”

  Burden, Vail, and Dixon displayed their badges.

  “This is federal jurisdiction,” the agent said, his gaze dwelling on Burden’s and Dixon’s state credentials.

  “They’re with me,” Vail said. “We’ve got reason to believe this vic was done by the same offender we’re tracking in the city.”

  The man waved them through.

  They entered the large cellhouse. Ahead on a flesh-toned wall, a tourist-friendly sign read B BLOCK. The interior was in decent condition, the ceilings bright white and the cell bars wellworn but intact.

  Off to the left, voices. They moved in that direction following another modern-era sign that read, Broadway. Down the main corridor, which featured cells on either side, stood a sharply dressed black man, US Park Police Detective Peter Carondolet, who was huddled with a suited Asian man. Mike Hartman was talking with a woman holding a camera—Sherri Price, the FBI forensic technician they had previously met at Inspiration Point.

  Burden reached into his pocket and handed out paper booties.

  “There’s your buddy,” Dixon said to Vail as she slipped a set over her shoes.

  After heading down Broadway toward the knot of law enforcement personnel, they made introductions: the man they had not previously met was FBI Special Agent Ignatius Yeung, a field office colleague of Hartman’s.

  “Who’s the vic?” Vail asked.

  “Elderly male,” Hartman said. “Looks to be late seventies, early eighties. No I.D. A full set of upper dentures and two partials on his lower. Callused hands.”

  “Is he in IAFIS?” Vail asked, referring to the FBI’s national automated biometric database.

  “Don’t know yet,” Price said. “I took a set of prints and emailed them to the lab. Because it’s after hours, I don’t know how long it’ll take to get an answer. But I asked them to expedite.”

  Vail asked the men to move aside so she, Burden and Dixon could get a look at the crime scene. Staring back at them was an elderly male standing upright, his legs and arms handcuffed to the bars, facing forward. The numeral 23 was drawn on his forehead. “Looks like our UNSUB.”

  “As if there was a question?” Dixon asked.

  “I meant the text he sent. He said he gave us ‘some latitude.’ I thought he meant he gave us some leniency, but there was a double meaning—those latitude/longitude readings. The missing number was 23.”

  “TOD?” Burden asked.

  “Just a guess at this point—I can’t even get to the body—but rigor hasn’t yet set in, so less than three hours.”

  Hartman’s phone rang. He pulled it from his pocket and moved off.

  “Mike,” Vail called after him. “Hang on a sec—”

  The BlackBerry pressed against his ear, Hartman held up his middle finger as he walked away, without turning around.

  Lovely.

  Burden pointed at the wall behind the victim. “There are things in the cell. Books, paintings. A magazine on the shelf.” He twisted his head. “From 1961. Looks like this cell’s a diorama of sorts, for the tourists.”

  “Exactly,” Detective Carondolet said. “I got my start as a ranger here on the island when I was seventeen. Lots of stuff has changed, but I still remember a fair amount of my Alcatraz history and training.”

  Vail grabbed the bars and gave them a yank. “Can we open this thing?”

  “Only way,” Carondolet said, “is using those locked vertical closets at the end of each cell block. I checked, but the keys aren’t where they used to keep them after hours. Dispatch is trying to find a ranger who can tell us where they keep ’em now. They’re the original keys from back when the prison was open.”

  Keys. “Would those keys be short, stubby, funny looking things?”

  “You’ve seen them?”

  “Unfortunately,” Burden said. “Killer leaves them at some of his crime scenes.”

  Carondolet said, “They sell facsimiles in the gift shop. Look just like the real thing.”

  “His clothing’s a bit odd,” Dixon said, nodding at the victim. “Don’t you think?”

  Vail turned back to the cell. “Deep creases in the shirt, sun bleached along the crease marks. As if it was folded and on a shelf a long time.”

  “Denim shirt and khakis,” Dixon said.

  “Prison dress,” Carondolet said. “Posters—maybe you saw ’em on the way in. Photos of famous prisoners who did time here. Capone, Machine Gun Kelley, the Birdman—”

  “You think the UNSUB dressed him in these clothes just for us?” Dixon asked.

  “Bet on it.” Vail knelt down and viewed the body from below. “Going with our theory, this vic either worked here or did time here. Way he’s dressed, looks like the latter.”

  “Unless,” Dixon said, “the UNSUB didn’t like a particular guard and this is his way of finally getting justice. He puts the guy in a cell and handcuffs him to the bars. Treating him like the UNSUB was treated.”

  Vail pursed her lips. “That’s good, Roxx. You might be right.” She turned to one of the agents. “Are inmate and employee records still kept on the island?”

  “I doubt it,” Carondolet said. “Bureau of Prisons abandoned the place sometime after they shipped off all the inmates and closed it down. A lot of the laundry and medical equipment was sent to other penitentiaries and a chunk of the records were given to some doc for a research project, some kind of sociology study or some shit like that. He never returned ’em. About fifteen to twenty years later, I think a judge compelled him to turn everything he had over to the National Archives facility in San Bruno.”

  Vail stood up. “San Bruno. That’s where the archives building is? And the Alcatraz records are kept there?”

  “They’ve got all sorts of things, like evidence the Bureau found after the big ’62 escape. The raft, paddles, tools, stuff like that.”

  “That vic, back in ’82,” Burden said. “Edgar Newhall. Wanna bet that building where he was found was the National Archives?”

  “Things are starting to come together,” Dixon said.

  Yeah, but are they coming together fast enough? Where the hell’s Friedberg? How much longer does he have—if he’s even still alive? With that thought, Vail’s BlackBerry buzzed.

  “I’m gonna call the office,” Burden said, “let ’em know what we’ve got here and see if they’re anywhere on that roster of officers and inmates who served here.”

  Vail looked at the phone; it was her boss, Thomas Gifford. Doesn’t he ever sleep? “Yes, sir.”

  “I don’t like the sound of that,” Gifford said.

  Vail pulled the phone from her ear and looked at it. Then she brought it back to her face and said, “What are you, like a hound dog, sniffing out my emotional state?”

  “So I’m right.”

  “Sir, no offense. But we’re busy here. Is there a problem?”

  “Not a problem,” Gifford said. “For me, at least.”

  “Now it’s my turn to say, ‘I don’t like the sound of that.’”

  Gifford plowed ahead. “Just decided this evening. B
AU’s going through a reorganization.”

  “A reorg— Are you telling me I’m fired?”

  “I’m not that lucky. No, nothing that radical. Years ago we were organized into regions. West coast, east coast—”

  Vail looked at her phone. “Hello?” She moved back a few feet, then glanced at her handset. One bar.

  Price’s camera flash spread light across the front of the cell block.

  “Sir,” Vail said, turning again and taking several steps to her right. “You there?”

  “Yes—yes. Did you hear what I said?”

  “You winked out for a few seconds,” Vail said. “But yeah. The regional setup. It went out the window right after I started.”

  “It’s coming back in the window,” Gifford said. “One SAC’s failed policy is another’s solution. So we’re shifting back next month. And since you’ve done so well out west, you’ve been assigned that region.”

  “No, sir,” Vail said. “Just... No.” She rubbed at her forehead with thumb and forefinger, then glanced at Burden. He was still on the phone. Dixon was sticking her pen through the bars and moving aside the man’s shirt, gesturing to Price about something.

  “I know this is sometimes a hard concept for you, Karen, but when I ask a question, my voice rises at the end. When I give you an order, it goes down in pitch. In case you’re not totally sure, my voice is going down now. Way down. You are going to be assigned to the west coast region. So when we get a case that’s somewhere out west, it’s yours—”

  “Look, sir,” Vail said. “I really can’t deal with this now.”

  “I’ll let you get back to work. You can go through all this with Frank when you get home.”

  “Del Monaco? Why should I talk with him?”

  “He’s your new partner.”

  Vail laughed. “Good one, sir.”

  “It could be worse.”

  Vail stood up straight. “How on earth could it possibly be worse?”

  “Give me some time. I’ll work on it.”

  “Is this really the way you want to treat the woman who’s dating your son?”