“War’s coming,” says the killer.
“This red power bit isn’t helping, Billy,” Dean says, drained.
“Better get back to the blanket.”
They have been at it for almost three hours, Dean and Grimes have, faced off across a metal-topped refectory table in one of the County Jail’s interview rooms. Billy Grimes is built for prison, six-five and not a neck in sight, with the puffed-up profile of a true goon. When the guards walked him in their slapsticks were at the ready. Dean asked them not to restrain his client but apparently Billy hasn’t been behaving, so Grimes is chained hand and foot to a steel eyebolt sunk into the concrete slab floor.
“I get visions,” Grimes says, rattling his chains. “Waking dreams, like.”
“Let’s get back to your parents.”
“There’s still time,” Grimes says. “That race war starts, though, and you’re still trying to pass as cracker, nothing can save you. Nothing but the language, hatak nahollo. Back to the blanket. Choctaw’s the only way we’ll know which side you’re on.”
“I’m sitting here talking to a ghost,” Dean says.
“What?”
“I can do futures too.” Dean’s done with nice. He finds Grimes’s eyes. “Let’s do yours. After the trial. After you’re found guilty, after you’re sentenced to death row. They will put you in a windowless seven-and-a-half-foot by five-and-a-half-foot box in McAlester State Prison. H-Unit, Billy. That’s the supermax wing. The warden likes to joke the H in H-Unit stands for Hell.”
Grimes doesn’t look away. Duly noted.
“Have you ever been to the stockyards?” Dean asks. “H-Unit smells exactly like that. Like the funkiest locker-room you’ve ever stepped foot in. This is the fear you’re smelling. And while some down-on-his-luck lawyer appeals your death sentence, you’ll be waiting there, in this concrete shithole, for decades. A decade is ten years, Billy. You’re, how old now, twenty? Twenty-two? Double that in your head. The hearings and motions and paperwork have gotten you nowhere. You are forty-two years old, give or take a few, and it’s time to die.”
A universal sort of hiss-boom-bah hums from somewhere beyond the interview room, the dismal plainsong of men under pressure. The hydraulic slide and crash of a security gate, belligerent shouts echoing over snatches of barked horseplay.
“One day they take you to a holding cell. Nobody who’s slept in it has walked out alive. You’ll be bunking there about a month. Now this new cell of yours has two doors: there’s the regular one, the one you entered through. Then there’s the other one, the one painted yellow. The yellow door opens onto the death chamber. The anticipation is building, Billy. One morning they wake you up and say it’s time. Your whole life has been building to this day. That big yellow door swings open. Your knees might give out, so maybe they have to carry you. Or maybe you’ll put up a fight. But eventually you will find yourself strapped to a gurney. There’s a big shatterproof window here but you can’t see through it because of the blinds. People are sitting behind the blinds, waiting for the show to begin. They’ll be dressed up like for church. A medical technician punches a bunch of tubes into your veins. This might hurt a little. Your heart, Billy,” Dean pounds his chest several times in quick succession, “is jackhammering.”
Billy scratches his face and the jangle of his chains is lost in the ambient noise.
“Don’t worry though, because the drug cocktail is about to put a stop to all that. It’s supposed to knock you out first. So, theoretically, none of this should hurt. I say theoretically because who knows, right? But many veterinarians are switching to more—get this—humane drugs.”
“Chahta Okla imanukfila achvfa.”
“No. Billy. We are speaking English.”
“Chahta imanumpa ish anumpola hinla ho?”
“How do you say sodium thiopental in Choctaw?”
Grimes finally looks away.
“How do you say temporary insanity in Choctaw?”
“Fuck you.”
“You’re locked in a box, Billy. They have you in chains here. How do you expect to get out if your language can’t even describe the box? No. We speak English.”
Billy examines his ankle restraints.
“Let’s get back to the courtroom. The judge, you see, can’t get elected without district attorney Bob Macy’s endorsement. So the judge and the district attorney are on the same page, sentencing-wise. Hell, Macy would shoot you on sight if they’d let him.” Dean begins ticking off fingers on his left hand. “So on their team is: the judge, the district attorney, the twelve people in the jury box who—and this is important—elected them both. And behind the witness stand we have your girlfriend Willa, and your son Caleb.”
Grimes jumps as if stung.
“That’s right. If Bob Macy can get your son to testify without looking like a bully, he’ll do it. Now after all is said and done, if nobody comes to claim the body they’ll wheel your corpse out back of the prison for burial. The cemetery at McAlester is called Peckerwood Hill. I’m not kidding here. I’m not smart enough to make this cornball kind of stuff up on my own. Guess how many visitors that cemetery gets in a year?”
Dean curls his fingers into a donut.
“Zero,” he says. “Now this is your future. It’s all going to happen. It’s happening. You are going to die in prison. At this point it’s just a question of how. Do you want to die of old age? Or the way I’ve just described?”
Dean stops talking.
After a long while Grimes says, “What do you want?”
“First, talk to no one but me. Bob Macy is already putting pressure on your cellies, hoping they’ll rat you out. I’m the only person in the world right now who cares about William Grimes.” Dean slides his business card across the metal table. “If someone from the outside comes calling, give them this. Don’t tell them anything but to contact me. I’ll handle it. Second, if you did this crime, plead guilty. Tell me everything. I maybe can help you get life in lockup instead of a lethal injection.”
“I’m not pleading guilty.”
“Then let’s talk about your parents.” Dean picks up a legal pad and readies his pen. “And Billy?”
His client seems deflated. Dean’s getting through.
“I need the truth.”