Detective French rose early and left the house before the sun had cleared the trees. He’d spent most of the night wrestling with thoughts of his son and murder and a dead girl’s cloudy eye. It looked bad for Jason: the photos of Tyra’s torture and death, the bloody scalpel taped to the back of his son’s dresser.
But still the doubts lingered.
Still, these images of the boy he’d raised.
Captain Martin had locked him out of the case, and word had gone down the line. Only Burklow had the balls to break ranks, and what he’d shared was not enough. French had not seen the knife or the photographs. He knew nothing about witnesses, forensics, the specifics of the autopsy results. Patience had been urged, and French, half-broken, had agreed.
But that was last night.
Like most in law enforcement, the medical examiner was an early riser, and was still at home when French parked the car and killed the engine. He hesitated because there were boundaries in the murder business—there had to be. Putting his uneasiness aside, he climbed out into the morning sunlight as a young man jogged past, and a kid on a bike flung papers. French waited until one landed in the ME’s yard, then picked it up: The New York Times, which was good.
Nothing local.
No mention of his son.
On the porch, he raised his hand to knock, but the door opened before he could. “Detective French. What are you doing here?”
“I brought your paper.” He tried to keep it light, but Malcolm Frye declined to return the smile. “I’m sorry, Mal. I know it’s early.”
“I can’t discuss the case with you.”
His reticence was understandable. Going against the captain’s orders would get any medical examiner in trouble, especially in a case as politically loaded as Jason’s. And Malcolm Frye wasn’t just any ME. He was the only black one in the city, no small accomplishment in a county that had only recently integrated its public schools. That made Malcolm an important part of the civil rights movement. He was visible. He had a lot to lose.
“He’s my son, Malcolm. I don’t know where else to turn.”
The moment stretched uncomfortably. Neither man would call the other a friend, but the respect had always been there: all the years, dozens of cases. The ME frowned, then softened. “You still drink coffee, don’t you?”
“Only in the mornings.”
“Coffee, then. Come on.” He led the way into a neat kitchen. “Two things first.” Malcolm poured the coffees. “If anyone asks, you were never here. Second, the autopsy file is at the office. Even were it here, I wouldn’t share it with you. That’s a line I can’t cross.”
“Hey, we’re just two guys talking.”
“All right, then.”
French had a thousand questions, but one rose first in his mind. “You’ve seen the scalpel recovered from Jason’s bedroom. Is it consistent with Tyra’s injuries?”
“With the more precise cuts, yes.”
“Would most scalpels be consistent?”
“Bear in mind that two blades were used on Tyra Norris, one very thin and incredibly sharp. It takes high-grade steel to hold that kind of edge. A scalpel is specifically engineered to that purpose. Telling one from another…” He made a face that meant probably not.
“And the blood on this particular scalpel?”
“It matches Tyra’s.”
“Do two blades mean a second cutter?”
“It means a second blade, something like a kitchen knife, nothing special, sharp enough but not surgical. Beyond that, we move into speculation.”
“At the scene, you said some cuts indicated a higher level of skill or knowledge. A corpsman, you thought. Maybe a med school dropout.”
“Yes, but again, that was off-the-cuff speculation.”
“Not enough to rule out my son?”
“I’m sorry, but no. Everything that led me to that initial impression could be learned in a book or on a battlefield or working on stolen cadavers. I can’t testify to a specific level of skill or training. Whoever did this had patience, a steady hand, and a general knowledge of anatomy.”
French stared through the window. Outside, the day was brighter: a high blue sky, the shadows rolling back. “Walk me through it. Front to back.”
The ME kept it clinical. The specifics. “In the end, she died from blood loss and mass, diffuse trauma. The murder took time.”
“How much time?”
“Hours. She suffered.”
French walked to the window, and peered out. “You have a background in psychology, don’t you?”
“Before medical school, I was a clinical psychologist.”
“Forensic, as I recall.”
“I worked with police departments, yes. Miami-Dade. Los Angeles.”
French pinched the bridge of his nose. He was about to leave the cop behind, and it was hard, losing that shell. “How does it happen, Malcolm? What makes someone capable?”
“Of torture like this?”
“The psychopathy.”
“Come, Detective, you know the answer as well as I.” The ME showed his pale, pink palms. “There are some killers we’ll never understand, even after trial and conviction and years of study. You won’t hear this term in clinical circles, but people like that are born wrong. We both know the names. We’ve read the cases. Perhaps one day we’ll understand that level of innate psychopathy, but right now, we don’t.”
“What about those who aren’t … born wrong?”
The ME rolled his shoulders. “Something in life makes them that way. Childhood trauma, abuse.”
“And if it’s not related to childhood?”
“Something violent, then. Something big.”
“Like war?”
“That depends on the person and the war.”
“A bad war. My son.”
“Ah, now I see.” The ME sipped his coffee, very intent. “How long did Jason serve?”
“A bit less than three full tours.”
“Was he physically injured?”
“Burned, shot, and stabbed.”
“Did he kill men in return?”
“Twenty-nine, at least. Would that be enough to change him, to make him capable?”
“Of murder like this?” The ME leaned back, and showed the same pink palms.
Maybe he had no answer to give.
Maybe none was needed.
Court opened at nine, and I was there early, watching from across the street. My father would use the secure entrance in the rear, but I wasn’t taking chances.
If he saw me, he’d stop me.
Leaning against a light pole, I tried to sort the people into groups. The lawyers were easy. They carried briefcases and files, and huddled with people that looked like clients. I knew enough about court to know they weren’t the killers or the rapists—they’d come later, shackled and under guard. What troubled me were the reporters. They stood by a line of news trucks, and I knew they were here for my brother. Details of Tyra’s death remained thin, but the rest of it made a hell of a story. Bikers. Guns. A cop’s kid.
“Jeez, look at these people.”
I turned at the voice, and found Chance at my right shoulder. “Why do you always sneak up on me like that?”
“Because you make it so easy.” He leaned against the other side of the pole, dipping his head at the crowd. “Those are people you never want to see late at night or moving in next door. Jesus. Look at them.” He pointed toward the crowd. “Hey, we know those guys.”
He meant the last group, and one I’d tried hardest to ignore: mothers, fathers, people who knew my family. “Moral support, I guess.”
“Don’t believe it for a second. They’re here for the show. Look at that one. He’s laughing. Fat bastard just told a joke.”
I watched the big man shake. He’d been my football coach in sixth grade.
“They’re opening the doors. Let’s go.”
Chance pulled me across the street, and we followed the crowd through double doors and into a long hall. I counted eight courtrooms. Almost everyone made their way to number six. I looked for my father, but didn’t see him.
“There, that’s a good spot.” Chance pointed at a crowded bench near the front. We took seats on the aisle, and I wondered if this was the same courtroom where Jason had made his plea and been sent away. I thought it was. It felt the same.
After a few minutes, an armed bailiff led the judge into the room, waiting for him to ascend the bench, then calling court to order. “All rise.” People stood, and then sat, and I thought how like church it was, the same rustle and sigh, the roomful of sinners staring up.
“Good morning.” The judge settled like a king on his throne. “We have a lot of cases on the docket, so I’ll try to move things along as quickly as possible. Bailiff.” He gestured, and a second bailiff unlocked a door so other armed men could bring out the prisoners slated to face the most serious charges of the day. A line of them emerged, all in orange jumpsuits, all cuffed. Jason was the last out and the only one in full chains.
“There’s your old man.”
Chance nudged me, and I saw my father beyond the bar in the left corner, talking with an older man. The lawyer, I thought.
“Madam Clerk, call the first case.”
A woman to the judge’s left read from the docket. “Case number 72 CR 1402, State v. Jason French.”
A bailiff led my brother to the defense table, and the attorney left my father’s side to meet him there. “Good morning, Your Honor. Alexander Fitch, for the defense.”
“Mr. Fitch, nice to see you in my court.” The judge glanced at the prosecutor’s table. “Is the State ready to proceed?”
A young woman stood, but before she could reply, a small man rose from a nearby bench. “Brian Gladwell for the State, Your Honor.”
He moved behind the prosecutor’s table, and the judge frowned, perplexed. “Not that you are unwelcome in this court, but we rarely have the pleasure of the district attorney himself on matters as perfunctory as a first appearance.”
“I have my reasons, Your Honor.”
“The privilege is yours. Madam Clerk.”
The clerk read the charges. I missed a few, but the big ones stood out. Attempted murder in the second degree, felony weapons trafficking, felony fleeing to elude arrest, felonious assault, assault with intent …
She kept going, but I kept my eyes on the DA. Fine lines creased the side of his neck, but that’s not what I noticed first.
He was sweating.
He was pale.
When the clerk finished, the judge addressed Jason’s attorney. “Mr. Fitch, how does your client plead?”
“Not guilty, Your Honor.”
“Preferences for probable cause?”
“Only that you schedule the hearing as soon as convenient for the court. We intend to refute these charges and would like to do so at the earliest possible time.”
“Mr. DA?”
“We anticipate further charges, Your Honor. As much time as you can give us would be welcome.”
The judge drummed his fingers. He knew about Tyra Norris. Everyone did. “What kind of charges might you bring in the future?”
“Felony kidnapping. Murder in the first degree. The investigation is ongoing.”
The crowd around us stirred, the sound like a rustle of feathers. The judge consulted his calendar, and offered a date fourteen days in the future. “I assume that’s acceptable to all parties.”
“There’s one last thing, Your Honor.”
“Mr. DA?”
The district attorney cleared his throat and, for an instant, glanced at someone in the courtroom. “Ah, Your Honor…” He cleared his throat again; shuffled some papers on the table. “The State requests that the defendant be remanded to the authorities at Lanesworth Prison.”
The judge was clearly puzzled. “On what grounds?”
“Ah, safekeeping, Your Honor. After consultation with authorities at the local jail.”
“In my experience, Mr. DA, safekeeping orders are for defendants too sickly or frail to manage outside the types of medical facilities available at fully staffed and funded state institutions. Are you suggesting that Mr. French is too unwell to survive two weeks at the local jail?”
“Actually, Your Honor, I’m suggesting he’s too dangerous.”
Another murmur stirred the courtroom. The judge waited for it to settle. “Perhaps you could explain.”
“Your Honor, the defendant served three combat tours in Vietnam, a time in which he learned to kill and do it well. Many here have heard the stories—”
“Rumors, Your Honor.” Jason’s lawyer interrupted. “Unadulterated and irrelevant.”
“Be that as it may”—the DA raised his voice—“the defendant was dishonorably discharged after attacking a highly decorated superior officer. It took four men to subdue the defendant, and three were severely injured in the process, two to the point of hospitalization in intensive care. It takes a dangerous man to do that kind of damage, and local authorities don’t relish the responsibility of keeping someone like that in custody. Our jail is overcrowded. Its officers lack the training necessary to deal with someone as demonstrably violent and capable as this defendant.”
“Your Honor—”
“I have a letter, Your Honor, from the warden at Lanesworth Prison attesting to the dangers of holding Mr. French in custody. Even at a state prison farm—with all its facilities and experienced officers—this defendant was suspected in two unsolved killings and multiple beatings—”
“Suspected, Your Honor. Neither tried nor convicted.”
“Your Honor, if I may approach with the letter.”
“Hardly necessary, Mr. DA. Your request is unusual but well within the prerogative of your office. If you want the defendant in state prison, that’s where I’ll send him. Madam Clerk, enter the order and call the next case.”
An hour passed before they came for Jason. He spent that time alone in a cell.
“Open five.”
When the door opened, Jason blinked but stayed where he was.
“Come on, let’s go. Your ride is here.” Jason waited five beats, then rose as if from a Sunday nap. The guard stepped back, and four others entered to bind Jason in full restraints. “All right. Nice and easy.” They formed up around him, and Jason began the shuffle step that kept him on his feet and moving. They traveled one hallway, and then a second. A bus waited in the parking bay. LANESWORTH PRISON. INMATE TRANSFER. “Stop here.”
Beyond the bus, a concrete ramp sloped to the open street. Jason heard distant traffic; tasted the fumes. When the bus door opened, a uniformed corrections officer stepped down. The name tag said RIPLEY. Jason knew him. “Paperwork?” He held out a hand, and one of the local officers gave him a clipboard. Ripley dashed off a signature, and handed the clipboard back. “Any problems I should know about?”
“Meek as a kitten.”
“We’ll take it from here.”
Ripley summoned two officers from the bus, Jordan and Kudravetz. Jason knew them, too. They got him up the steps and onto a bench. When Ripley mounted the bus, he threaded between the seats until he reached the place Jason sat. He was midfifties, broad, strong, and prison-pale.
Jason met his eyes, and said, “Captain Ripley.”
“Prisoner French. Do you understand what’s happening and why?”
Jason nodded once. He knew.
“Would you believe me if I said I’m sorry for you?”
Jason met the guard’s steady gaze. Captain Ripley wasn’t a bad guy, just trapped, like the warden was trapped. “I would,” Jason replied.
“It’s a long drive,” Ripley said. “At least you have that.”
He returned to the front of the bus, locked the steel mesh door, and sat on the other side with Jordan and Kudravetz. The driver cranked the engine, and rolled them into traffic. Jason watched the city slide past, the businessmen and tall buildings, the construction crews and pretty women. A clutch of hippies filled a street corner, protesting the war; and Jason watched them slide past, too: the men who’d never fought, the women with angry faces and flowers in their hair. A moment’s resentment flickered, but Jason was too much a prisoner to really care.
He thought of Tyra, instead.
He thought of X.
When the city fell away, it took little time for the fields to spread out and the forests to rise. The bus made multiple turns, moving ever eastward until the roads narrowed and buckled. The driver downshifted when it got bad, but the old bus still rattled and clanked.
The prison was close.
Jason saw it in the tangled woods and narrow cuts, and in the ditch lines filled with stagnant water.
Not just close, he thought.
Here.
The bus slowed on cue, turning at an enormous block of stone where words, carved long ago, told the sad, grim truth of things:
LANESWORTH STATE PRISON FARM, 1863
ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO ENTER HERE
Before his time at this place, Jason had never read Dante, but could now quote entire passages. “Through me the way to the suffering city; through me the everlasting pain.”
Ripley turned his head, his fingers hooked in the mesh. “What’s that, prisoner?”
“Dante’s Inferno,” Jason replied. “Divine Comedy. The gates of hell.”
“I don’t get it.”
“I just hate that sign.”
Ripley didn’t understand or care enough to ask again. “Four miles,” he said; but Jason knew that, too.
Four miles of private road.
Eighteen thousand acres.
The prison crowned a rise in the center of all that emptiness, and Jason felt a familiar chill when he saw the blackened stone. Ripley said, “Welcome home,” but Jason heard a softer voice, instead, a knowing whisper and the long-ago words of Dante Alighieri.
Nothing was made before me but eternal things,
And I endure eternally.
The voice belonged to X.
Jason was home, indeed.