by Paul Cleave
I don’t answer him.
“That actually proves you’re not dumb at all, Joe,” he says, carrying on, and he’s really warming up now, really hitting his stride. He even unlocks his fingers. “Actually proves the opposite. That you’re smart. That’s what this test was designed to do. That’s why it’s full of stupid questions.” His smirk turns into a full-blown smile. “You’re smart, Joe, not brilliant, but smart enough to stand trial.”
He opens his briefcase and puts the questionnaire inside. I wonder what else is in there. It’s a nicer briefcase than the one I used to own.
“Joe is smart,” I say, and I put my big goofy smile on, where all my teeth show and my face lights up. Only these days it doesn’t light up as much. The scar running down the side of it tightens and my eye droops a little.
“You can cut that bullshit now, Joe. The test proves you’re not as smart as you like to think you are.”
My smile drops away. “What?”
The shrink’s smile widens and I think that’s because he thinks I’m not getting his point, and I’m not, and that’s because he’s not making it. “It was a time test. It helps weed out the guys not smart enough to pretend they really are that dumb.”
I shake my head. “I don’t understand.”
“That’s the only genuine thing you have told me,” he says. He stands up and walks to the door.
I turn in my seat, but don’t stand up. I can’t, because of the cuff.
He reaches out to knock on the door, but holds back. Instead he turns toward me. I must look pretty confused, because he goes ahead and explains it. “It was a time test, Joe. Sixty questions. It took you fifteen minutes. That’s four questions a minute. Each one of them you got wrong.”
“I still don’t follow,” I tell him. Surely it’s a good thing that I can be that dumb that quickly.
“You got them wrong too quickly, Joe. If you were as dumb as you wanted us to think, you’d still be doing the test now. You’d be drooling over it or licking the pages. You’d be thinking really hard searching for the answers. You didn’t search at all. You just answered each one in quick fire succession and that’s where you went wrong. You’re no idiot, Joe, but you were too dumb to figure out what was going on. I’ll see you in court.”
“Fuck you.”
He smiles again. His thousand-dollar smile that he’ll practice before being called up to speak in front of a jury, the thousand-dollar smile that won’t be worth a cent after I get out of here and learn where he lives and take that nice-looking briefcase off him. “That’s the Joe everybody is going to see,” he says, and then he knocks on the door and is escorted outside.
Chapter Three
It’s almost been a year since I was arrested. It’s felt longer. Every day for about a month I was the headline news. There were photos of me on every front page across the country. I even made some front pages around the world. Some were my ID photo from work; some were pictures of me younger, provided by schools I had gone to; and many were of me being arrested and many more were of me coming out of the hospital. Those of me being arrested were all snapped on cell phones. Those at the hospital were taken by reporters who arrived while I was still in surgery. Of course I was on TV a lot too. Footage from the same two events.
There were requests for interviews that I wasn’t given the chance to accept or turn down. One week after the surgery I stood up in court and pled not guilty and was denied bail and was told a trial date would be set. Photos and footage were taken of me there too. My face was red and puffy, the eyelid purple, there were stitches and patches of ointment and I could hardly recognize myself.
Then I started making the news only once a week. Other killers came and other killers went, taking up the headlines as more blood was spilled in the city. Then I was yesterday’s news, a mention of me perhaps once a month-if that.
Now the trial is less than a week away, and I’m the headlining act once again.
My arrest set a chain of events into motion. Actually, those events started two days before my arrest when the police figured out who they were looking for. Of course you could even say that chain of events was put into motion the night I met Melissa. I met her in a bar. We got on well. I was walking her home thinking how nice it’d be to see her naked and perhaps with a few twisted limbs and definitely some blood too, only she was thinking how nice it’d be to tie me up and rip apart my testicle with a pair of pliers. She was the one who got her wish because in the bar she had figured out who I was. She tied me up to a tree in a park and while she clamped the pliers on my testicle and squeezed, I could do nothing but wish for death. Her death, at first, and then my death.
Only it didn’t work out that way. Instead she tried to blackmail me for money, then I filmed her killing Detective Calhoun, and then we fell in love. Opposites attract-but so do people who enjoy hurting others.
I made my way home, and that week Melissa kept showing up at my apartment to help me. At least I thought it was her who had come to help me. I was out of it most of that week, delirious. Half the time my head was full of bad dreams and the other half even worse dreams. It turned out I was wrong about who was helping me. It was Sally that had come to my apartment, not Melissa. Fat Sally. Simple Sally. And in the process of helping me, Simply Fat Sally, or, The Sally as I now think of her, had seen some things she shouldn’t have. The Sally had touched a parking ticket I had hidden away, a parking ticket I had hoped to use to frame Detective Calhoun for murder. Only the card had her prints on it too, so the police came to her house, and the rest, as they say, is one fucking annoying history.
So the chain of events was started. The police went to my apartment on a Friday night, only I wasn’t there. I was with Melissa. They searched it and found a whole bunch of stuff that wasn’t too helpful for my cause. Then they waited for me, and I didn’t show up, and then they decided that I had run. Only I hadn’t. I came home on the Sunday morning and there was one police unit waiting for me. They radioed in, a minute or two later there were a dozen. I pulled a gun. I tried to shoot myself. The Sally stopped that from happening. She jumped on me and pulled the gun away.
From there I was taken to the hospital. I started making the news. Then I began to experience loss. I lost my freedom. I lost my job. I lost my cat. It was a cat I had found weeks earlier that had been hit by a car. When I made the news, the vet who had taken care of that cat recognized me, and they came and picked it up. I lost my apartment. My mom started getting interview requests, and my mom would say all sorts of weird shit. Life moves on for everybody on the outside, but inside these walls life feels like it’s come to a standstill. If anybody ever wants to know how twelve months can feel like twelve years, all they have to do is get arrested for murder.
My prison cell makes my apartment look like a hotel. Makes my mom’s house look like a palace. Makes the interrogation room look like an interrogation room. It makes me miss all of those places. It’s one room that’s about twice as wide as the bed and not much longer, and the bed I have isn’t that big to begin with. A real estate agent would call it cozy. A funeral director would call it roomy. I got four concrete block walls, one of them with a metal door stamped into the middle of it. No real view to talk of, just a small slot in the door that looks out to more concrete and metal and other cell doors if you can get the angle right. It’s a neighborly kind of place because there are people in cells to my left and right, people that won’t shut up, people who have been in here a lot longer than I have and who will continue to be in here long after I’ve been found not guilty.
On one side of me is Kenny Jefferies. Kenny Jefferies is a man of three lives. In one life he is, or was, the guitarist for a heavy metal band. They called themselves Tampon of Lamb. They released two albums and built up an audience of people who like their music on the raw and bloody side, and went on tour. Then they released a greatest-hits album, and then people found out about Jefferies’s second life, which meant no more tours and no more albums. It was his secon
d life that made him a household name-the media began to call him Santa Suit Kenny. In his second life he was a child rapist who would dress up as Santa to draw his victims away from their parents. As one of the prison guards here said a while ago, only the children can know which of those two professions Jefferies was better at. The guard summed it up by saying I sure as hell hope he was a better rapist than he was a singer, because he was a fucking awful singer.
Jefferies’s third life is as a convict. Sometimes he sings or hums music I can’t understand. Sometimes he’ll play a guitar that isn’t there, he’ll strum the air and sing about torture and pain, which must hurt his throat. When I think about heavy metal music, I think the evolution of mankind has peaked and we’re surfing the downslope to becoming monkeys again.
On the other side of me is Roger Harwick-though more commonly known as Small Dick. And it’s not like when people call the big guy Tiny to be ironic. Harwick struggled with his victims. It’s not that he didn’t have the desire to perform, he just didn’t have the “tools.” My guess is he was attracted to children because he thought they’d be a better fit. Only he was wrong. It made him famous in the media because his failed attempts made him a joke. He was the comical child molester-or at least as comical as a child molester can be-and compared to some of them in here, it makes him hilarious. So right now I’m surrounded by celebrity pedophiles-and it’s the safest place to be. That’s why I’m here. Away from general population, where my neck won’t get snapped by any one of a thousand inmates up to the task. My entire cellblock is full of guys like Jefferies and Harwick. In the mornings we’re all kept in our cells, but when twelve o’clock comes around we’re all let out into a common area, thirty of us in total, not too many inmates to control. Some of us stick to ourselves, some try sticking filed-down toothbrushes into each other, some try sticking body parts into each other. We share a kitchenette and a bathroom, and we can go outside into a caged area big enough to swing a dead puppy, but too small to swing a dead hooker by her ankles. If small is cozy in real estate terms, then a real estate agent would list this entire cellblock as being super fucking cozy.
There isn’t a lot I can do in my cell, but I do have options. I can sit on the edge of my bed and stare at the wall, or I can stare at the toilet, or I can sit on the toilet and stare at the bed. It’s been a painful twelve months. There’s the occasional interview from the psychiatrist, but after this morning’s performance I think those might be over. My mom has come to see me twice a week every week. Monday and Thursdays. For the most part it looks like prison is all about boredom. If I was in general population I’d be less bored, but I’d also be dead. All I have is a couple of books in the corner of my floor and people in cells next to me who can’t go three hours without masturbating loudly. Next door, Santa Suit Kenny is humming “Muff Punching the Queen.” It’s the title track of their first album and the song that made them famous. He’s tapping his foot against the floor. I pick up one of the romance paperbacks and open the covers, and the words blend into one and hold no attraction for me whatsoever. I keep thinking I ought to write my own book. Teach some people the truth about romance. But that’s a stupid idea. Nobody would read it. But maybe they would read anything written by the Christchurch Carver. Maybe I should write a book on how I would have done the things they are saying I did, if I could remember doing them. Of course, if that were true, and I really couldn’t remember any of it, it would really just make it a book full of blank pages. I remember every detail, every woman, every word spoken. I think about them a lot. It’s the memories you have that stop you wrapping a sheet around your throat and hanging from the end of the bed.
I throw the romance paperback back down in the corner. It makes no sense I’m still in here. I am better than this. Smarter. It makes no sense I couldn’t talk my way out of this when Schroder and his henchmen came for me. I can’t imagine spending twenty years in here. I’m only weeks away from becoming the same amount of crazy I’ve been pretending to be over the last few years.
Most of all, I can’t stop thinking about the stupid test.
It should have been so obvious. I missed the point completely. Is it possible I’m not as smart as Barlow told me I wasn’t?
Santa Kenny goes quiet, and I’m pretty sure I know what he’s doing. Small Dick-or Little D as he’s called around here-has struck up a conversation with the guy in the cell next to him. It’s a shit conversation because they’re talking about the weather. They have no idea what it’s like outside because there’s no view. But they talk about the weather a lot, those two. I’d have thought they’d talk more about what they had in common-the reasons they are in here-but it turns out they don’t talk about that much at all. It’s like the memories are too exciting for them. They are pure adrenaline. It’s like if they touch on those experiences they’re going to start climbing the walls.
The sound of a door opening further up the corridor makes everybody in the block go quiet. There are footsteps down the corridor and voices outside, then the footsteps stop a few cells down from mine. I peek out the slot in the door, sure others in here are doing the same. There are three people standing out there. I recognize two of them.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” one of the two guards says, a guy by the name of Adam. “Let’s have a warm round of applause for the return of one of your favorite cellmates,” Adam says. “He’s come back to us after fifteen years in jail, six weeks on the outside, and the last three weeks in suicide watch. You know him, you love him, the one, the only, Mr. Caleb Cole.”
Nobody claps. Nobody makes a sound. None of us know him personally. None of us care. Caleb Cole wasn’t in our cellblock. We’ve seen him on the news, but really, who gives a fuck?
“Come on, ladies, that’s no way to treat a friend. Caleb will be joining your group because he’s no longer fit to be placed into general population. He has. . what’s the word we keep hearing? That’s right-he has issues. So what do you say, Caleb, don’t be shy, you have a word for your new roommates? Want to share some of your issues with them?”
If Caleb does have a word for us, he keeps it to himself. I remember twelve months ago being given the same treatment. Two guards escorting me down here and introducing me to what, they said, was my new family. I remember the absolute fear as few people clapped, and I got a few wolf whistles too, which, thank God, never led anywhere, and when asked to say a word I had the same response as Caleb. I’ve seen this a few times now, and nobody ever says anything. Back when I was first brought in, I didn’t know how I was going to make it through that night, let alone the months before the trial began. I mentally committed suicide about a hundred times, my mind drifting down those paths and visualizing the outcome, every time realizing nobody would really care. Maybe Melissa.
Deciding there’s no more fun to be had at Caleb’s expense, they carry on, a cell door is opened further down from me and out of my line of sight. Thirty seconds later it’s closed, this time no doubt with Caleb on the inside. Caleb Cole is a killer. He was in jail for killing, he was released, and then he killed some more. Some people just have it in them. Some people say a serial killer can’t change their spots.
The same guards who escorted Caleb to his cell now come to my cell and the door opens up. It means they’re going to take me somewhere, and I figure somewhere has to be a lot more interesting than here. They come into my cell.
Adam looks like one of those guys who spends two hours a day in the gym and two hours in the evening in front of a mirror watching his hard work pay off. The other guard, Glen, looks like he’s probably right there alongside Adam the entire time. I bet they get together once or twice a week to fuck each other senseless and talk about how much they hate gay guys. Adam stands in front of me, muscles bulging at his uniform, the kind of muscles that a blunt screwdriver could bounce off. Some of the guys in here have found religion since being locked behind bars. They say Jesus will provide. I look around, but Jesus doesn’t provide me with a sharp screwdriver. All He’s
giving me are the same two assholes who have used those muscles He provided them to push me around almost every day since being here. Into walls. Into the floor. Into doors.
“Let’s go,” Adam says.
“Where am I going?”
He shakes his head. He looks angry. Maybe the bench press is broken. “Un-fucking believable,” he says, “but you’re going home, Joe.”
My heart skips a couple of beats and I develop some kind of tunnel vision, where the walls disappear and all I can see is Adam as he’s talking to me. But that’s not all I can see-I can see myself walk through the door of my apartment and lie down on my own bed. I see women in my future. I see other dead people too-like Adam, like Barlow, like Glen. I can’t talk. My mouth hangs open and my eyes stretch wide and I can feel a goofy smile forming and I just. Can’t. Talk.
“The charges have all been dropped,” Glen says, and his face is scrunched up like he’s been sucking on a bad piece of fruit. Or on a good piece of Adam.
“Some stupid fucking technicality,” Adam adds.
I still can’t talk. All I can do is smile.
“Let’s go,” Adam says, and he almost spits the words at me and, just like that, my prison experience is over.
Chapter Four
The days are getting shorter. Colder. Most days the forecast says tomorrow is going to snow yet it doesn’t get there, and Schroder is never sure whether to blame the weatherman or Mother Nature. Last year had a summer that felt like it wasn’t going to end, with warm days late into May. This summer was on the same track until a few weeks ago. Earlier in the year a heat wave scorched the city and took lives. In this weather it’s hard to remember those times. The good thing about the cold is that it keeps the loonies inside because it’s too miserable to be outside mugging people. Crime always has a way of being scaled back in the winter. People at work are leaving houses that feel like refrigerators and nobody really wants to break into those. So it’s a good time of the year to be a cop. Only Carl Schroder isn’t a cop anymore. Hasn’t been for over three weeks, since the night he killed that woman and his rank-along with his gun and badge and all the shitty benefits that came along with it, including the shitty pay-was taken away.