Eight years later, homicide detective Bill Higby came after me like a wolf, though Judge Peterson had said, Get out of jail free, and the newspapers and magazines had said, Oh, the injustice – three years on death row and five more in Supermax for a crime he didn’t commit – and Jane Foley and Hank Cury at the Justice Now Initiative talked about a hundred thousand per incarcerated year plus damages, and even the governor said, Something should be done to make him whole. So I rented a room at the Cardinal Motel on Philips Highway. Weekly specials. Hourly rates available. Jimmy marks on the doorjamb.
‘Why the hell there?’ Jared asked. ‘Hookers and pimps for neighbors.’
‘Who else will rent to me?’ I said.
Bill Hopper, the motel owner, was a foul-mouthed, born-again ex-con, famous for taking in men like me. 60 Minutes did a segment on him. He asked the reporter, ‘You think if Mary and Joseph had felony records, the stable wouldn’t have kicked them out on their asses?’
‘The judge let you go,’ Jared said.
‘I could stay with you,’ I said.
He laughed.
‘I wasn’t joking,’ I said.
‘I don’t think that would work so well, Franky.’
‘I didn’t think you’d like it.’
‘In fairness, you did this to yourself.’
‘Maybe we shouldn’t talk to each other anymore,’ I said.
‘We would probably kill each other,’ he said.
A man who’d gone through what I’d gone through didn’t joke about these things.
‘You’ll always be my brother,’ he said. ‘That doesn’t change.’ As if he’d given me the gift of shared blood.
So I was at the Cardinal Motel when Detective Higby came knocking. With a fist like a club of wood.
I opened. What did I have to be afraid of? I was free.
But freedom meant little when a man like Higby blocked the only exit from a room. ‘What?’ I said.
‘Just checking on you,’ he said. He was a big man. His thinning hair – black when he sent me to jail – was mostly gray now. His back – broad and straight when he lifted me by the collar and held me against a wall – seemed narrower. The last eight years had been hard on him too. ‘Just letting you know I know where you are.’ He peered into the room, dark except for the flickering TV. ‘You aren’t going to invite me in?’
‘The judge said I didn’t do it.’
‘No, the judge said we didn’t prove you did it, Franky. Big difference. Lack of proof means still to be proved. It doesn’t mean innocent. Your blood was on the boys. That doesn’t go away.’ With the glisten of sweat on his forehead and the weight he carried around his middle, he looked like he should smell.
‘You’ve got no right to harass me,’ I said.
‘I’m halfway there,’ he said. ‘More than halfway. This time you won’t get out.’
‘The State Attorney says she won’t try me again.’
‘I don’t know where you get your information,’ he said. ‘She’ll do whatever the evidence tells her to do. When I’m done, the evidence will tell her to retry you. Count on it.’
I tried to close the door, but he held it with a fist.
‘The damage you did to those boys,’ he said, ‘it haunts me.’
‘I didn’t do it,’ I said.
‘You told me you did.’
‘You made me say it. If I could go back, I would let you kill me before saying I did something I never did. I was a dumb kid.’
He shook his head. ‘There’s a difference between dumb and having no soul.’