Corrupt Justice

by Peter O'Mahoney

  “They want me to confess to something I didn’t do?”

  “Quiet.” Denise hushed her. “Not so loud.”

  “They want me to take the deal?” Nina leaned closer, tears in her eyes.

  “But you can’t tell anyone. Not even your lawyer.”

  “How do I know they’ll deposit the money?” Nina was young, but she was street smart. “Can I trust them?”

  “You don’t have a choice. You’ve just got to take the risk. That five hundred will get you a lot in here, just imagine what ten thousand could do.”

  “Who is it from? I have to know.”

  “My brother came to see me, and someone had come to see him.” Denise shook her head. “They knew we were cell-mates and he gets five hundred if you take the deal, and so do I. So, I suggest you take the deal because I get five hundred out of it.”

  “And if I don’t?”

  “Then girl,” Denise looked around the room, then up to the guards. “You’re not going to have a good time in here.”

  Chapter 29

  It was a walk he never enjoyed, never looked forward to, but Tex Hunter had consigned that walking through the halls of the Cook County Jail Prison Hospital was a part of his life. He knew the older nurses at the prison hospital by their first names, the attendants by their faces, and the guards by appearance.

  It was the screams he hated the most—those blood-curdling screams of people in pain that echoed through the halls. There were those screaming in pain from violent attacks, those fighting diseases of the body, but the worst screams, the ones that chilled him to the bone, were the screams from the inmates fighting diseases of the mind.

  When he was in his teens, the prison hospital was usually where he would visit his father.

  After Alfred Hunter was first arrested, his father received regular beatings from the other prisoners, the guards, and anyone else who could get their hands on him. He was public enemy number one, and target number one behind bars.

  Over the years, as the crimes faded into past memories, the beatings became less regular, less frequent, but there was still an ever-present threat of violence. Alfred Hunter was a tall man, but not a large one. He became an easy target for the battle-hardened gang members, someone to prey on when pent-up aggression needed to be released.

  Hunter received the call from the prison only a day after talking with Alicia Carson, and it was a coincidence he couldn’t shake. Tex was listed as next of kin, attorney, and only associate of Alfred Hunter. Alfred had no one else to put on those forms.

  “He’s not well.” Nurse Jackie Hansen told Hunter as he signed into the prison registration office. She was older, in her late sixties, kind, and had the soul of an angel. Her caring hands had provided so much support to the men and women of the prison for the last forty years. “He’s had problems with his heart.”

  “I didn’t know he had a heart.” The nearby guard quipped as Hunter handed back the clipboard. “You have to have a heart to have heart problems. Get it?”

  “He gets it.” Jackie replied as she took Hunter by the arm. “Ignore him, Tex.”

  She used her swipe card to enter into the halls of the prison hospital, and as the doors opened, the yelling became clearer. Even from behind closed doors, locked down and contained, the screams reverberated through the halls, into the souls of those that dared walk the long way. The hall was extensive, empty, and soulless, but it was a necessary walk to the ward where they kept the older patients.

  “He’s on a lot of pain medication so he’s not very lucid at the moment. He’s been given a high dose of Endone, which is an oxycodone. He’s reacted well to the high doses, but he’s been saying a lot of strange things.” The nurse walked Hunter to the entrance of the minimum security rooms, and stopped. She held the folder across her chest, looking down. “Tex, he received quite a beating this time.”

  “Beating?”

  “You know how this works.” She sighed. “It’s listed by the guards that he slipped and fell down the stairs, but it was the stairwell with no cameras, nor witnesses. This shouldn’t be a surprise to you. You’ve been here before.”

  “I’ve been here many times before, but I’ve never heard you say the word ‘beating.’”

  “Maybe I’m becoming more honest in my old age.”

  “Twenty-one isn’t old.”

  “Oh, stop.” She slapped him gently on the wrist with a smile. “I’m a bit older than twenty-one. Try tripling it, and you might get close.”

  “You don’t look a day over twenty-one to me.” His dimples showed as he grinned. “Is he in here?”

  “He’s in this ward, Room 203, but I want to tell you what happened out here first, away from the guards in there.” She looked down the hall, and then over her shoulder. “Whatever happened caused him to hit his head, and he possibly fractured his wrist. He has cancer, and that has weakened him considerably, but it looks like he’ll still pull through, even with the head injuries. He’ll be in here a while, and we’ll monitor him, but he might make it back out there in general population within the month.”

  “How promising.”

  “I know it isn’t much to look forward to, but we have to follow our processes. The doctors say the cancer will get to him in a year, at most. He’s refused treatment, so there’s not a lot else we can do.”

  “Thank you.” He placed his hand on her arm. “Thank you for everything you’ve done, Jackie.”

  “Tex, there’s something else.” She bit her lip, drew a breath, and looked up to the lawyer. “He’s been saying things on the drugs, things I’ve never heard before. It’s known to happen to people when they take a high dose of Endone. That’s not to say what he’s been saying is true, but he has been saying the same thing over and over.”

  “What is it?”

  She looked to the floor, smiled, and led him down the hall to room 203. Hunter nodded, and she took out the swipe card to let him enter. With a beep, the doors opened to a narrow room with four beds, separated by hospital blinds. Alfred Hunter wasn’t considered dangerous anymore, if he ever had been, and was housed in the low security section of the prison hospital. There was one guard at the door, but he was more interested in reading his magazine than paying attention to the people in the beds. A young nurse came and went between rooms, not concerned with the low risk, recovering patients. Behind the curtains, the occasional groan came out, but there wasn’t much activity.

  After he said thank you to nurse Jackie, Tex stepped through the gap in the blue curtains, taking a moment to stand at the end of the sterile hospital bed. He looked at his father lying under the white blanket, skinny, frail, and weary; hooked up to machines that monitored his heart rate and breathing. He had a drip connected to his arm, a monitor clamped on his finger, and a cuff on his wrist.

  Stepping closer, Hunter rested his hand on the frail wrist of his father. It didn’t feel like the body he used to know. This body was dehydrated, tired, almost bereft of life.

  The warm touch caused Alfred Hunter to roll over and turn to the person next to his bed, his eyes not focusing on anything in particular. There was a bruise on his left eye, almost black, and cuts over his forehead. Dried blood sat on top of his bald head, his fragile skin breaking easily. His lips were cracking, and his eyes were tinged yellow.

  “Patrick? Is that you?” Alfred could barely keep his eyes open.

  “No. It’s Tex.”

  “Tex.” A small smile, almost indistinguishable, escaped his lips. “Thank you for the flowers.”

  Hunter looked around the room—there were no flowers, no gifts, and almost no color.

  “Who attacked you?”

  “It was them.” Alfred Hunter’s head wobbled slowly from side to side, as if the muscles in his neck weren’t fully functioning. “They said it was because of Tex’s case.”

  Hunter drew a long breath. His jaw clenched, his muscles tightened, and his fingernails dug into the palms of his hands. He reached across to the plastic chair next to th
e bed. He placed it near his father’s head, sitting down, resting his hand on his father’s forearm.

  His father had been beaten many times over the years, too many to count, but as the years had passed, as age had started to weary his body, the scenes were becoming more confronting. The end was in sight.

  Tex’s mother had passed away over two years ago, going to her grave still claiming her innocence. She spent thirty years in prison for being an accomplice to the murder of eight girls, thirty years of telling her children that she didn’t know anything about it.

  Alfred, however, never claimed he was innocent, but also never admitted guilt. Despite his son’s pleas, despite the years of needing an answer, Alfred Hunter never said what happened, always cryptic in his statements. He had pleaded Not Guilty at his trial, and his subsequent appeals, but he never looked his son in the eyes and told the truth.

  That lack of knowledge, that lack of information, had almost broken Tex many times over. He spent most of his life fighting to prove his father’s innocence, fighting to clear his name, because he felt there was no way his father could have done it, no way the man he loved could’ve cut the throats of eight teenage girls.

  “I remember,” Alfred’s head fell to one side, looking away from Tex. “I remember my first day in prison. It was horrible. They all hated me so much.” Alfred wasn’t speaking to anyone in particular, his focus looking into the distance. “They beat me every chance they had. For years, they beat me.”

  “Prison is a tough place.” Tex looked over his shoulder, checking to see if there were any shadows behind the curtains. “Terrible things happen here.”

  “It’s tough, Patrick. Your brother Tex used to come here often.”

  “I am Tex.” Hunter stated, but it didn’t matter. His words were barely being processed by the semi-lucid detainee. “Patrick isn’t here.”

  “Tex is so strong. He stands up for what’s right.” Alfred went to raise his hand, but didn’t have the ability. “I once told him that the strong defend themselves, but the mighty defend what’s right. I think that’s Tex. He’s mighty, our Tex.”

  “Thank you.” Hunter’s voice was softly spoken.

  “The strong defend themselves, but the mighty defend what’s right.” He repeated. “That’s our Tex. Mighty.” His head wobbled again. “Your sister Natalie came here last week.”

  “What?” Hunter gripped his father’s forearm a little tighter.

  “Natalie…” His head tossed over to the other side, back towards Tex. “She was a nice girl before it all happened. We were a nice family.”

  “You saw Natalie?” Hunter leaned forward. “I haven’t seen her, or heard from her, in over two decades since she moved to Mexico.”

  “Natalie...” Alfred’s eyes closed. “When she smiled, she looked so much like her mother. Such a beautiful woman.”

  Hunter’s head dropped, looking towards the floor, holding onto his father.

  Alfred’s eyes remained closed as his breathing became lighter, his chest barely moving up and down. His time was coming, they were all fully aware of that, and there would be many people celebrating his demise. As a convicted serial killer, his death would be notable, not least by the families that lost their daughters.

  Hunter sat with his father, the man he knew was innocent, and the wall around his heart began to break down. The years of anguish, the years of abuse, the decades of pain, started to build in his stomach, filling his body with tension. His breathing shortened, his eyes filled with tears, and his face began to frown. He tried to fight it, he tried to clench his muscles to push the emotions away, but it was no use.

  The emotions were winning.

  As a tear fell down Hunter’s cheek, rolling over the frowned face, Alfred took a sharp breath. Hunter sat up, wiped his cheek with his hand, and looked at his father.

  “Life has taught me many things, but I can feel the end is coming. I can almost taste it. It tastes like… metal.” Alfred’s tongue rolled around his mouth before his head wobbled again. “Enjoying life, even a life in here, is not about having more, but the ability to enjoy less. That’s life’s greatest skill—the ability to enjoy less.”

  Hunter held his hand.

  “I’ve been blessed, Patrick. I’ve had you, Tex, and Natalie. I’ve had your mother. Your beautiful mother. I’ve had food, a bed, a roof over my head my whole life. But,” His eyes closed. “But for me, death may be the greatest of all blessings.”

  “It’s coming for you.” Hunter nodded.

  “Patrick, before I die, before I go, I have to tell you something.” Alfred’s head wobbled again. “Patrick…”

  “I’m not Patrick. I’m Tex.”

  “Patrick,” Alfred whispered, his eyes rolling to the side. “I didn’t do it.”

  “What?” The statement caught Hunter off-guard. “Do what?”

  “It.”

  Hunter leaned closer. “What didn’t you do?”

  Alfred rolled back over, turning away from his son.

  Hunter rushed around the bed to the other side, squatting down to look his father in the eyes.

  “Did you kill those girls?”

  “I’m innocent.” There were tears in Alfred’s yellow-tinged eyes. “I always have been.”

  Chapter 30

  Patrick Hunter stood at the edge of the outdoor football facility at Halas Hall, hands in his coat pockets, looking on as the Chicago Bears tested potential new recruits. The football field in front of them was large, the grass was almost a fluorescent green, and the white lines were freshly marked. A small crowd had gathered at the side of the two outdoor fields, where the assistant defensive coach was yelling instructions to the men. Most of the day’s crowd were in the indoor facility nearby, out of the fresh breeze, where the offensive teams were running set plays. The third-string defense were training hard, away from the masses at the furthest edge of the field, and Patrick Hunter studied one of the team’s most promising new recruits.

  “This kid is going to be something, Tex. He’s from Florida U, and he’s big, strong and quicker than any defensive lineman I’ve seen in the last twenty years.” Patrick pointed to the large padded man walking across the field. “But he’s got to read the play better. He gets faked out too easily. Someone throws a step, does a little move, and he almost falls over. It’s his balance. He needs a tighter core.”

  “He finally said it.” Tex Hunter’s tone was flat.

  “Who said what?” Patrick Hunter squinted, confused, staring out to the field in front of him. He turned to look at his brother when he didn’t respond immediately. “Oh no, Tex. Not that again.”

  “Did you hear me, Patrick?” Hunter ignored the training drills in front of them. “He finally answered the question.”

  Patrick Hunter was spending the day assessing the Bears’ chances for the upcoming football season at their public training session. A thin rope separated them from the hulking giants of sport, close enough to hear the bone rattling collisions, even in pre-season training. As a criminal psychiatrist, he hated to think what those collisions were doing to the men’s heads, especially the decision-making areas of their brains. He could see a day when their brain scans could present a defense in court, a defense against criminal damage, the same way a person could plead insanity.

  Much of his research in psychiatry was focused on brain scans, and predicting whether a person could be insane based on their brain’s behavior. In CBT, often found in footballers, the results were clear—the years of high-level impact could affect their brain’s decision-making and aggression controlling centers.

  His convicted serial killer father had played football in high school, and he wondered what his brain patterns would show, if any difference at all. Long ago, while planning for the future, Patrick had his father sign a form donating his brain to medical research, where people could study his father’s brain once the man passed away.

  “I heard you, Tex, but right now, I’m watching the future of football. This guy
could change the game, he could be the MVP, if he can just get his balance right. Ready, here’s a play. Watch this.” Patrick nodded to the field as the defense ran a set play. The running back took the ball, sprinted, and then easily stepped inside the young defensive end, flying past him. “See. There he goes. Tripped over his own two feet. A lack of balance and a lack of core muscles.”

  Patrick Hunter loved defense, something the Bears prided themselves on, but he worried whether the team could find enough avenues to score in the upcoming season. However, he was comforted by the age-old adage that defense wins championships, something he repeated to himself as he watched the defense coach take the youngster aside, talking more with his hands than his voice.

  “I didn’t drive out here to talk about football, Patrick.” Tex Hunter stepped closer to his smaller brother. “I drove out here to tell you that your father has finally admitted the truth—he’s innocent.”

  “Keep your voice down,” Patrick hushed him. Although older, Patrick Hunter wasn’t blessed with the genetic package that Tex received—he was shorter, skinnier, and had a hard time doing any fitness activity now he was in his early fifties. “I was having quite a nice day out here until you arrived.”

  “This is it, Patrick. This is the moment we’ve been waiting for.”

  “No, it’s not. It’s the moment you’ve been waiting for, not us. Don’t include me in this. I accepted he was guilty a long time ago, as did most of the country.” Patrick turned to his brother. “Why did he answer the question now?”

  “He was beaten up, badly, and he was in hospital. I went to visit him. He’s dying, you know. He doesn’t have long left.”

  “And why was he beaten up this time?”

  “Because of my case against a dirty cop.”

  “Well,” Patrick laughed. “That’s a change of roles. You spent most of your school years fighting off people who wanted to beat you up because of your father, and now I guess, it’s your father’s turn to deal with that.”

  “Our father.”