The Simple Truth

by David Baldacci

  He received his visitor’s card, passed through the main gate and was then directed to the prison’s visitors’parking. He explained his purpose to the guard at the entrance.

  “You’re not on the visitors’list,” the young guard said. He eyed Michael’s dark blue suit and intelligent features with contempt. A rich, smartass, pretty boy from the city, Michael could read in the man’s eyes.

  “I called several times, but I never got through to anyone who could tell me the procedure for being put on the list.”

  “Up to the prisoner. Generally speaking, if he wants you to visit, you do. If he don’t, you don’t. Only control these boys got.” The guard cracked a grin.

  “If you tell him that an attorney is here to see him, I’m sure he’ll put me on his visitors’list.”

  “You’re his lawyer?” “I’m involved with an appeal of his right now,” Michael said evasively.

  The guard looked down at his ledger. “Rufus Harms,” he said, evidently confused. “He’s been here since before I was even born. Exactly what sort of appeal could somebody like him have going after all this time?”

  “I’m not at liberty to discuss that,” Michael said. “My work is covered by attorney-client privilege and is absolutely confidential.”

  “I know that. What, you think I’m stupid?”

  “Not at all.”

  “If I let you in and it turns out I wasn’t supposed to, then my keester’s in a lot of trouble.”

  “Well, I was just thinking that you might want to check with your superior. That way, it’s not your call and you can’t get in trouble.”

  The guard picked up his phone. “I was already going to do that,” he said in a very unfriendly tone.

  He spoke into the phone for a couple minutes and then hung up.

  “Somebody’s coming on down.” Michael nodded. “Where you from?” the guard asked.

  “Washington, D.C.”

  “How much does somebody like you get paid?” It was clear that whatever sum Michael stated would be too much.

  He took a deep breath as he observed the approach of the uniformed officer. “Actually, not nearly enough.”

  The young guard quickly stood and saluted his superior officer. The officer turned to Michael. “Please come with me, Mr. Fiske.” The man was in his fifties, with the lean build, calm but serious manner and closely cut gray hair that helped mark him as career military.

  Michael followed the man’s precise strides down the hallway to a small office. For five minutes Michael patiently explained what he was doing there without really revealing any information of substance. He could do the lawyer-speak with the best of them.

  “If you tell Mr. Harms that I’m here, he’ll see me.”

  The man twirled a pen between his fingers, his eyes dead center on the young lawyer. “This is rather puzzling. Rufus Harms just received a visit from his lawyer not too long ago. And that person wasn’t you.”

  “Is that right? Was his name Samuel Rider?” The man didn’t answer, but the momentary surprise on his features made Michael inwardly smile. His hunch had proven correct. Harms’s former military counsel had enclosed the typewritten sheet of paper. “A person can have more than one lawyer, sir.”

  “Not someone like Rufus Harms. He hasn’t had anyone for the last twenty-five years. Oh, his brother visits pretty regularly, but all this interest in the man has us puzzled. I’m sure you can appreciate that.”

  Michael smiled pleasantly, but his next words were spoken in a firm manner. “I hope you can appreciate the fact that a prisoner is entitled to speak with an attorney.”

  The officer stared at him for a few moments and then picked up the phone and spoke into it. He hung up and looked back at Michael without speaking. Five minutes passed before the phone rang again. When the man put it back down, he nodded at Michael and said curtly,“He’ll see you.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  When Rufus Harms appeared in the doorway of the visitors’ room, he looked confused as his gaze settled on the young man. He shuffled forward. Michael rose to greet him and was met with a bark by the guard behind Rufus.

  “Sit down.”

  Michael did so immediately.

  The guard watched closely until Rufus took a seat across from Michael, and turned to the lawyer. “You were previously instructed as to the rules of conduct during visitation. In case you forgot any of them, they’re posted clearly right over there.” He pointed to a large sign on the wall. “No physical contact is permitted at any time. And you are to remain seated at all times. Do you understand?”

  “Yes. Do you have to stay in the room? There is such a thing as attorney-client confidentiality. Also, does he have to be chained like that?” Michael asked.

  “You wouldn’t ask that if you’d seen what he did to a bunch of guys inside this place. Even all chained up he could snap your skinny little neck in half in two seconds.” The guard moved closer to Michael. “Maybe at other prisons you get some more privacy, but this isn’t like other prisons. We only got the biggest and the baddest here, and we have our own set of rules to operate by. This is an unscheduled visit, so you got twenty minutes before the big bad wolf here has to go to work cleaning toilets. And we got some real messy ones today.”

  “Then I’d appreciate your letting us get started,” said Michael.

  The guard said nothing else and moved over to his post against the door.

  When Michael looked at Rufus he found the big man’s gaze squarely on him. “Good afternoon, Mr. Harms. My name is Michael Fiske.”

  “That name don’t mean nothing to me.”

  “I know, but I’m here to ask you some questions.”

  “They said you were my lawyer. You’re not my lawyer.”

  “I didn’t say I was. They just assumed that. I’m not associated with Mr. Rider.”

  Rufus’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know about Samuel?”

  “That’s really not relevant. I’m here to ask you questions, because I received your writ for certiorari.”

  “You did what?”

  “Your appeal.” Michael lowered his voice. “I work at the United States Supreme Court.”

  Rufus’s mouth fell open. “Then what the hell are you doing here?”

  Michael nervously cleared his throat. “I know this isn’t actually orthodox. But I read your appeal, and I wanted to ask you some questions about it. It makes a number of very damaging allegations against some very prominent people.” As he looked into Rufus’s astonished eyes, Michael suddenly regretted ever coming here. “I looked into the background of your case and some things don’t make sense to me. I wanted to ask you some questions and then, if things check out, we can get your appeal going.”

  “Why isn’t it going already? It got to the damned Court, didn’t it?”

  “Yes, but it also had a number of technical deficiencies that would have caused it to be denied processing. I can try to help you with those. But what I want to avoid is a scandal. You have to understand, Mr. Harms, that the Court receives bags of appeals from prisoners every year that have no merit.”

  Rufus’s eyes narrowed. “Are you saying I’m lying? Is that what you’re saying? Why don’t you spend twenty-five years in this place for something that wasn’t your fault and then come here and tell me that?”

  “I’m not saying you’re lying. I actually think there’s something to all of this or, believe me, I wouldn’t have come here.” He looked around the grim room. He had never been near a place like this, sitting across from a man like Rufus. He suddenly felt like a first-grader getting off the bus and realizing he was somehow in high school. “Believe me,” he said again. “I just need to talk to you.”

  “You got some ID shows you are who you say you are? I ain’t been in a real trusting mood for the last thirty years.”

  Supreme Court clerks were not issued ID badges. The security personnel at the Court were required to learn to recognize them by sight. However, the Court did publish an official
directory with the clerks’ names and photos. That was one way to help the guards get to know their faces. Michael pulled this from his pocket and showed it to Rufus. Rufus studied it intently, looked over at the guard, then turned back to Michael. “You got a radio in your briefcase?”

  “A radio?” Michael shook his head.

  Rufus lowered his voice even more. “Then start humming.”

  “What?” Michael said, bewildered. “I can’t really … I mean, I’m not really musical.”

  Rufus shook his head impatiently. “Then you got a pen?”

  Michael nodded dumbly.

  “Then pull it out and start tapping on the table. They’ve probably heard all they need to hear by now anyway, but we’ll leave ’em a few surprises.”

  When Michael started to say something, Rufus interrupted. “No words, just tap. And listen.”

  Michael began to tap the table with his pen. The guard glanced over but said nothing.

  Rufus spoke so softly that Michael had to strain to hear him. “You shouldn’t have come here at all. You don’t know the chance I took to get that piece of paper out of this place. If you read it, you know why. Killing some old black con who strangled a little white girl, people wouldn’t give a damn. Don’t think they would.”

  Michael stopped tapping. “That was all a long time ago. Things have changed.”

  Rufus let out a grunt. “Is that right? Why don’t you go knock on Medgar Evers’s or Martin Luther King’s coffin and tell ’em that? Things have changed, yes sir, everything be all right now. Praise the Lord.”

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “If the people I talked about in that letter were black, and I was white — and I didn’t call this place home — would you be here right now ‘checking up’on my story?”

  Michael looked down. When he looked back up, his expression was pained. “Maybe not.”

  “Sure as hell not! Start tapping, and don’t stop.”

  Michael did so. “Believe it or not, I want to help you. If the things you described in your letter did happen, then I want to see justice served.”

  “Why the hell you care about somebody like me?”

  “Because I care about the truth,” Michael said simply. “If you’re telling the truth, then I will do everything in my power to get you out of this place.”

  “That’s sure easy enough to say, ain’t it?”

  “Mr. Harms, I like to use my brains, my skills, to help people less fortunate than I am. I feel it’s my duty.”

  “Well, that’s real nice of you, son, but don’t go patting me on the head. I might bite your hand off.”

  Michael blinked in confusion, and then it registered. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to be condescending. Look, if you’ve been wrongly imprisoned, then I want to help you get your freedom. That’s all.”

  Rufus didn’t say anything for a minute, as though attempting to gauge the sincerity of the young man’s words. When he finally leaned forward again, his features were softer, but his manner remained guarded.

  “It ain’t safe to talk about this stuff here.”

  “Where else can we talk?”

  “No place that I know of. They don’t let people like me out for vacation. But everything I said is true.”

  “You made reference to a let — ”

  “Shut up!” Rufus said. He looked around again, his eyes locking for a moment on the large mirror. “Wasn’t it with what was filed?”

  “No.”

  “All right, you know my attorney. You said his name before.”

  Michael nodded. “Samuel Rider. I tried to call him, but he didn’t call me back.”

  “Tap louder.” Michael picked up the beat. Rufus glanced around and then began speaking. “I’ll tell him to talk to you. Whatever you need to know, he’ll tell you.”

  “Mr. Harms, why did you file your appeal with the Supreme Court?”

  “Ain’t no higher one, is there?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t think so. We get newspapers in here. Some TV, radio. I’ve been watching them people over the years. In here you think a lot about courts and such. Faces change, but them judges can do anything. Anything they want to. I seen it. Whole country’s seen it.”

  “But from a purely legal technical point of view there are other avenues you really have to pursue in the lower courts before your appeal can be heard there. You don’t even have a lower court ruling from which you’re appealing, for instance. In sum, your appeal has numerous flaws.”

  Rufus shook his head wearily. “I been in this place half my life. I ain’t got all that much time left. I ain’t never been married, I ain’t never gonna have no kids. The last thing I’m gonna do is spend years messing around with lawyers and courts and such. I want out of here, and I want out of here just as fast as I can. I want to be free. Them big judges, they can get me outta here, if they believe in doing the right thing. That’s the right thing, you go back and tell ’em that. They call ’em justices, well, that’s justice.”

  Michael looked at him curiously. “Are you sure there’s not another reason you filed it with the Supreme Court?”

  Rufus looked blankly at him. “Like what?”

  Michael let out a breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. It was certainly possible that Rufus wouldn’t know the positions now held by some of the men named in his appeal. “Never mind.”

  Rufus sat back and stared at Michael. “So what do them judges think about all this? They sent you down here, didn’t they?”

  Michael stopped tapping and said nervously, “Actually, they don’t know I’m here.”

  “What?”

  “I haven’t actually shown anyone your appeal, Mr. Harms. I … I wanted to be sure, you know, that it was all aboveboard.”

  “You’re the only one that’s seen it?”

  “For now, but like I said — ”

  Rufus looked at Michael’s briefcase. “You didn’t bring my letter with you, did you?”

  Michael followed his gaze to the briefcase. “Well, I wanted to ask you some questions about it. You see — ”

  “Lord help us,” Rufus said so violently that the guard braced himself to pounce.

  “Did they take your briefcase when you come in? Because two of the men I wrote about are at this prison. One of them is in charge of the whole damn place.”

  “They’re here?” Michael went pale. He had confirmed that the men named in the appeal were in the Army back in the seventies. He knew the current whereabouts of two of them, but he hadn’t bothered to locate the others. He froze, suddenly realizing that he had just made a potentially fatal mistake.

  “Did they take your damn briefcase?”

  Michael stammered, “Just — just for a couple of minutes. But I put the documents in a sealed envelope, and it’s still sealed.”

  “You done killed us both,” Rufus screamed. Like a hot geyser, he exploded upward, flipping the heavy table over as though it were made of balsa wood. Michael leaped out of the way and slid across the floor. The guard blew his whistle and grabbed Rufus from behind in a choke hold. Michael watched as the giant prisoner, shackled as he was, flipped the two-hundred-pound guard off like a bothersome gnat. A half dozen other guards poured into the room and went at the man, swinging their batons. Rufus kept tossing them off like a moose against a pack of wolves, for a good five minutes, until he finally went down. They dragged him from the room, first screaming and then gagging as a baton was wedged against his throat. Right before Rufus disappeared, he stared at Michael, horror and betrayal in his eyes.

  * * *

  After an exhausting struggle that had continued all the way down the hallway, the guards managed to strap Rufus to a gurney.

  “Get him to the infirmary,” somebody screamed. “I think he’s going into convulsions.”

  Even with the shackles and thick leather restraints on, Rufus wildly gyrated, the gurney rocking back and forth. He kept screaming until someone stuffed a cloth into his mouth.
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  “Hurry up, dammit,” the same man said.