Callum had half expected Raine to collapse by the car. But she’d surprised him, stiffening her back and marching toward the building as if her near panic attack had never happened.
Once inside, she’d demonstrated her knowledge of the procedures by directing Callum on filling out the visitor log. She’d provided her brother’s inmate number from memory, as well as other required information. They both provided their IDs again, and one of the people manning the checkpoint area looked them up online to verify they were who they said they were and that they were preapproved for a visit. Raine explained to Callum that they were also confirming that the prisoner was available, not at court or in medical, that kind of thing. Information on the prisoner was written on a piece of paper and placed in the tray that would go through a metal detector, which was Raine’s and his next step in the process.
The invasive procedures after that made TSA security requirements in airports seem pathetically inadequate. They were practically strip-searched, with all metal, shoes, belts, keys and anything else not required for modesty taken away. The metal detector didn’t beep on either of them but they were still patted down then taken to separate “privacy rooms” for further searching.
Callum was told to untuck his shirt from his jeans and the male guard ran his hands around inside his waistband and even pulled his jeans away from him and peered down his underwear with a flashlight. Callum wondered what kind of embarrassment they were putting Raine through, but she didn’t seem fazed when she met him back in the checkpoint area.
“How friendly did your guard get with you?” he whispered.
She smiled, for the first time in a long time. “I had to untuck, then lift my bra and shake my boobs to prove I didn’t have anything tucked beneath them.”
He stared at her, truly shocked. “They do that to all the women?”
“I assume so. Can’t remember when they haven’t done that to me. You get used to it, or as much as you can I guess.”
One of the guards must have heard them and stared unflinchingly at Callum, as if to dare him to complain. Remembering Raine’s warning about not following procedures to the letter, he didn’t. But he sure wanted to. It bothered him to no end that she was treated as if she too was a criminal. He understood that the security measures were intended to keep everyone safe. Still, he didn’t like it. Not at all.
The final step in the process was to get their hands stamped. The ink wasn’t viewable to the naked eye, but when a guard passed a UV light over them, the stamps glowed. Raine motioned him toward a doorway where yet another guard waited.
In spite of them having just had their hands scanned, he scanned them again and requested the slips of paper they’d been given earlier. The surprise on his face was evident when he read them, and rather than escort them to the visitation area where others had gone, he had them wait while he stepped down the hall and made a call using a landline phone on the wall.
Beside Callum, Raine sighed. Disappointment clouded her expression when she glanced up at him.
“I have a feeling your friend wasn’t able to jump through all of those hoops after all,” she said. “They aren’t going to let us visit a death row inmate since it’s not the right visitation day of the week. Joey also may have already used up his hour today, so that would be another reason for them not to let us see him.”
“Used up his hour?”
“Death row inmates are locked in their cells twenty-three hours a day. They get one hour for showering or exercise or visitation. Joey didn’t know we were coming, so he may have already used his free time.”
Callum’s respect for what Raine had suffered all these years was expanding exponentially. He honestly didn’t think he’d have been able to take all of these onerous rules so well if their roles were reversed. Security was important. Punishment, or justice, made many of the rules necessary. But some of them, like being locked up twenty-three hours a day, seemed cruel. How was someone supposed to stay sane in an environment like that?
He supposed most people didn’t care. And he was guilty of never considering the living conditions of death row inmates, until today. But what did treating people like animals say about those in charge of the treatment?
There had to be a better way to keep society safe from those who’d proven they couldn’t be allowed to live amongst the public anymore. But Callum didn’t have the answers to that quandary. Maybe no one did. The justice system was flawed in many ways. But he’d yet to see a better one anywhere else in the world.
Raine was still watching him, with worry wrinkling her brow.
He cleared his throat and tried to reassure her. “Don’t give up yet. Reid’s pretty resourceful. He wouldn’t have told me he could get us in unless he was sure that he could. One of the things he told me last night was that, contrary to what you’d expect, the closer to the execution date you get the more likely they are to grant extra privileges.”
“I’ve never heard that before. His lawyers didn’t tell me that.”
“I doubt the prison advertises it. They probably keep it on the hush-hush.”
She smiled. It was a small one, but a smile nonetheless. “I can see them doing that, not wanting anyone to know that they don’t follow their own authoritarian rules a hundred percent of the time.”
The renewed look of hope on her face had him dreading what the guard might say when he returned. If their long drive and ensuing indignities turned out to be for nothing, Reid was going to owe Callum far more than one favor in the future.
A few moments later, the guard returned. Disapproval was heavy on his features as he waved them forward to the next gate. Callum thanked him and got a grunt in reply. He and Raine hurried down the hallway before the guard could change his mind about letting them through.
Another guard took them through another gate, its thick bars painted a cheery yellow in stark contrast to the drab off-white floors and gray cinder-block walls. They headed through a maze of hallways, sometimes coming upon prisoners in those same hallways. The guard with them would bark an order and the inmates immediately moved to the far side and faced the wall. They barely moved as Callum and Raine passed. He could see that military-style discipline she’d spoken about and was grateful for it. No telling what types of crimes those men had committed and the mayhem they’d do to Raine if allowed.
When they finally arrived at the death row portion of the prison, he was struck by how quiet it was. There were no chains rattling or prisoners shouting in the distance. No hum of activity from the sheer number of people in the building. It was as if they’d stepped from the bustling hive of a high school hallway into the tomb-like silence of a library. The only discernible noise was the muted hiss of ventilation equipment and the low tones of their guard’s voice as he consulted with another guard who stood on the other side of a closed gate.
“I didn’t expect it to be so quiet.” Callum kept his voice low, much as he would in the library he’d compared death row to, or maybe a church.
She nodded, her gaze fixed on the guards, no doubt worried once again that they’d turn her and Callum back on the precipice of finally seeing her brother.
“In general, the UDS prisoners are quieter, better behaved than the rest of the population.” She kept her voice low as well. “I’ve been told it’s because many of them are still going through the appeals process. They don’t want to do anything to jeopardize their chances, however small, of having their sentences overturned or commuted.”
He nodded, once again feeling empathy he’d never expected to feel for the nameless, faceless men behind these walls. As a police detective, he’d participated in many cases that had resulted in death penalties for those who were found guilty. But this was his first time actually visiting a maximum security prison, let alone one with a death chamber on the grounds. It was much more difficult to feel satisfaction over a verdict when faced with the reality of that decision. Most, if not all, of the men locked in their cells just past the next gate would only leave this prison one way—in a body bag. It was a sobering reality.
A metallic clanging sounded, followed by the low electronic buzz of the gate rolling back. The earlier gates were opened with keys. This one, Callum realized, must have been unlocked remotely, by a control center that probably had eyes on them right now. There were cameras all over the building. This hallway was no exception. One of them was positioned in the top left corner over the growing opening.
Their guard motioned for them to approach. The second guard stared at them, eyes narrowed as he watched their every move.
“No talking,” Raine whispered. “Follow my lead.”
She handed the piece of paper she’d been given at check-in to the second guard. Callum did the same. The guard studied it a long moment, then sighed heavily and motioned for them to step through.
The other guard returned back down the hallway as the gate hummed, then began to slowly slide across the opening. As soon as it clanged shut, the three of them headed across a narrow common area devoid of people. There were three tables, and five TVs mounted high up on the walls, but they weren’t turned on. Four hallways opened off the common area, presumably leading to the prisoners’ cells.
It went against every protective instinct in Callum’s body to walk behind Raine through an area designated for the worst of the worst that humanity had to offer. But she’d done this dozens of times before and had taken the lead. She knew the routine. And she’d already warned him not to do anything to break protocol. This close to their goal, he certainly wasn’t going to cause any problems that might result in their visit being cut short. Raine would probably never forgive him. And he couldn’t stomach the idea of robbing her of what was most likely one of her last chances to see her brother before he died.
At the far end of the room, rather than take them down one of the corridors of cells, the guard stopped them outside a metal door painted the same gray as the rest of the room. Using the radio on his belt, he identified himself and stated that he was escorting two visitors to the visitation area. He announced Callum’s and Raine’s names, as well as the prisoner’s name and ID. Callum expected to hear an electronic buzz like with the gate. Instead, the guard shoved the radio back onto his utility belt and used a key to unlock the door.
A few moments later, Callum and Raine were alone inside the small visitation room with the door locked behind them. Their only instructions were to sit at the third of five windows and that the prisoner would be in shortly. They’d have approximately fifty minutes to talk to him using the old-fashioned telephone attached to the wall. Then the prisoner would be returned to his cell and the guard would escort them back to the general population area.
Raine hesitated in front of the lone metal stool attached to the floor in front of the window. She glanced up at Callum and he shook his head.
“Don’t even try to get me to take the only seat,” he said. “My mom taught me better manners than that.”
She smiled a wobbly smile and sat.
Callum leaned against the partition to her right. “Will we both be able to hear him?”
“It’s soundproof, I suppose to give the prisoners some kind of privacy when there are others here. You can only hear using the phone. We’ll do our best to share it. If we can’t hear well, we’ll take turns talking to him.”
“Fair enough.”
She glanced at the analog clock on the wall above the glass, then watched the empty room beyond, her knuckles whitening where they gripped the laminate countertop in front of her.
Hoping to set her more at ease, Callum relied on the information he’d read last night on her laptop to make small talk. “Joey’s older than you, right? Something like ten years?”
Her gaze stayed riveted on the only doorway in the other room as she waited for her brother to emerge.
“Twelve years. I was a senior in high school when he was arrested. Two years later, he was sent to death row.”
And several years after that, both of her parents died. She’d had a rough time of it. And yet, from what he’d managed to find out about her through internet and law enforcement types of database searches, she was on track to be named a partner in the law firm where she worked. And she’d already become a wealthy woman in that short amount of time. Against all odds, she’d been hugely successful. Then she’d gambled it all on a foolhardy stunt, willing to give everything up on the slim chance that it would save her brother. Part of him thought she was nuts. But mostly, he was in awe of her family loyalty and the unconditional love that would make her risk it all.
“You do realize the odds of success, of getting his sentence commuted, are almost nonexistent, don’t you?”
She finally looked away from the door and met his gaze. The haunted look in her eyes had his heart aching. No matter what she’d done to him on her foolhardy quest, she didn’t deserve to suffer that kind of pain. No one did. He had to fist his hands at his sides to keep from reaching out to her and cradling her against his chest.
“I know the odds.” Her voice was hollow, incredibly sad. “But until they stick a needle in his arm, I’m not giving up.”
Unable to resist the urge to offer comfort in some small way, he took one of her hands in his and gently squeezed. “For your sake, I hope you’re right and he’s innocent. And that we can get him a stay of execution, if nothing else, then to have more time to fight for his release. But whatever happens, remember it’s not your fault. You’ve done everything you can to help him. Don’t blame yourself and wreck the rest of your life with could’ve, would’ve, should’ve.”
Her eyes widened as she stared at their joined hands. But before she could say anything, movement on the other side of the glass had both of them turning. She tugged her hand free and pressed it against the glass as a man in a white jumpsuit and shackles on his wrists and ankles shuffled toward the window. A lone guard leaned against the wall about ten feet behind him, watching his every movement.
“What have they done to him?” she whispered brokenly as a tear slid down her cheek. “He looks awful.”
The man on the other side of the glass was nothing like Callum had expected and barely resembled the mug shot Callum had viewed last night. He didn’t know how much Joey Quintero had changed since Raine’s last visit. But he looked as if he’d aged thirty years since his arrest.
Before entering death row, Joey had been tall and bulky, resembling a football linebacker. Now he was nearly bald, with grayish-white eyebrows and whiskers on his gaunt, lean face. Yellowing skin seemed to sag on his skeleton as he took his seat across from them. But it was the bleakness in his eyes that was the most shocking of all. There was no sign of recognition, no smile of greeting for his sister. And he barely glanced at Callum. This was the face of a man who’d lost everything and had no hope for a future of any kind.
Raine’s hand shook as she picked up the phone. She held the receiver next to her ear, tilted away so that Callum could hear as well. He settled on his knees on the floor beside her stool and leaned in close to the phone.
When her brother sat, looking at her with no expression, she managed to muster an encouraging smile and motioned toward the phone on his side of the glass. He seemed to consider it a moment, as if he wasn’t going to pick it up. But he finally did.
“Joey, it’s so good to see you. Are you feeling okay? You look...tired.”
The shackles on his wrists jangled as he rested his elbows on the counter and cradled the phone to his ear. “I live in a six-by-nine box twenty-three hours a day with no TV, no radio, nothing but an uncomfortable bed, a toilet, a sink and those sappy books you send me to pass the time. The guards turn on the lights and wake me up every half hour at night to make sure I haven’t managed to escape or steal the executioner’s fun by offing myself. What do you expect? Of course I’m tired. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in over a decade. Why are you here, Raine? Get on with your life. Forget about me. You’ve wasted enough time on me as it is.”
He raised the phone as if to hang up, but Raine frantically motioned for him to keep talking. His chest lifted in an obvious sigh and he held the phone to his ear again. “What?”
She swallowed, hard, her free hand still pressed against the glass as if she could feel him if she pressed hard enough. “Don’t give up, Joey. There’s still hope. The man with me is a private investigator and—”
“Another one? How many investigators have you hired over the years? My appeals are exhausted. There’s nothing else you can do. Seriously, Raine. Please. Stop this. Let. Me. Go.”
“I can’t. Don’t ask me to do that. We’re going to review the case, find some way to prove you’re innocent.”
He briefly closed his eyes as if in pain, then gave Callum his full attention for the first time. “Put him on the phone.”
“He can hear you,” she said. “We both can.”
His cold gaze flicked to her. “Put him on the phone. Just him.”
Callum wanted to slug the other man. His cruel indifference was clearly hurting his sister. He was going through a living hell in here—deserved or not. But that didn’t justify him treating Raine this way.
She handed Callum the phone, her face pale and drawn as she clasped her hands in her lap.
Callum drew a bracing breath and focused on not shouting and upsetting Raine any more than she already was. “Mr. Quintero, I’m Callum Wright. I’ve agreed to take a fresh look at your case and see if we can get a stay of execution, clemency or a conversion of your sentence to life. Your sister has gone to incredible lengths, risked her career, even her own freedom, to convince me to help you. A smile or an I-love-you wouldn’t hurt you one bit and it would sure as hell make her feel better.”
Raine stared at him, wide-eyed, before quickly looking away.
Joey stared at Callum too. Then he started laughing.
Raine looked absolutely stricken.
Callum motioned to the guard behind Joey, then pointed at Raine. He nodded and spoke into his radio. Moments later, the door in the visitation room opened and another guard stepped in and waved for Raine to follow him.
She blinked and shook her head no.
“Raine.” Callum’s voice was low, just for her to hear. “Give me five minutes with your brother. Then come back in.” When she started shaking her head again, he whispered, “You’ve trusted me this far. Don’t stop now.”
She stared at him, then glanced at her brother, obviously torn. Her lips quivered as if she was trying to hold back tears. Then she hurriedly left with the guard.
As soon as the door shut and locked behind them, Callum sat on the stool and faced the amused-looking man across from him.
“Joey. You don’t mind if I call you Joey, do you?”
He shrugged, his smug smile still in place.
“Before your sister contacted me, I really hadn’t bothered to look into the execution process in detail. Last night I did quite a bit of research on it. Has anyone ever shared with you exactly what’s going to happen to you in thirteen days?”
His eyes narrowed and his smile slipped. But he didn’t say anything.
“About twenty-four hours before they kill you, they move you to a holding cell called the death watch area. It’s not a whole lot different than where you stay right now except it’s a little bigger and has a shower. Upgrade. Cool, right?”
His eyelids lowered to half-mast as if he was bored. But he was still holding the phone to his ear, still listening.
“You think you don’t have much privacy now, wait until you’re in that holding cell. A guard will sit right outside it the whole time monitoring your every move to make sure you don’t, as you put it earlier, off yourself and cheat the executioner. Then there’s the last meal. In Georgia, it’s not some fancy takeout from your favorite restaurant. Other prisoners fix it here in the prison. Don’t expect it to taste any better than what you eat every day.”
Joey’s mouth flattened, his knuckles whitening around the phone.
“If you haven’t completely alienated your sister, the one person in this entire world who gives a damn about you, she might be allowed to visit you one last time—from outside of the cell. No touching. No final hug. The only ones who actually get to come into your cell are the warden and chaplain, and the guards of course.”
Callum motioned toward Joey’s white jumpsuit. “You’ll probably wear those same clothes to your final appointment, except for one thing. You’ll have to put on an adult diaper. That makes it easier for them to clean up the mess when your bowels empty the moment you die.”
Joey swore, a litany of curse words and phrases that questioned Callum’s parentage and accused him of several disgusting fetishes.
Callum responded the way Joey had to Raine.
He laughed.
“You don’t want to miss this last part,” Callum said. “Once they take you to the execution chamber, they strap you to a table, arms spread and tied down, completely vulnerable. That makes it easy for them to shove that needle in your arm. Then they open the curtain. One-way glass. They can see you but you can’t see them. And you know who will be out there? Watching? Praying for your soul?”
He leaned up close to the glass. “No one. That is, unless you apologize and fix the hurt you just did to your sister. If you don’t, I guarantee she won’t be there for you. I’ll make sure of it. I refuse to let you hurt her again.”
“What the hell do you want from me?” Joey demanded, spittle running down his mouth, his earlier smugness replaced with anger and a flash of fear.
“You want to know how it ends, right? They’ll let you say your last words. But, again, no one who cares will be there to hear them. So it really doesn’t matter what you say. It’s just fodder for the twenty-four-hour news cycle, until the next story comes along and they completely forget you.”
Joey’s nostrils flared, the whites of his eyes showing as his Adam’s apple bobbed in this throat. He was trying to play it cool, pretend nothing Callum was saying mattered. But it clearly did.
Callum continued his attack, firing with both barrels. “They’ll pump you full of sodium thiopental to supposedly put you to sleep.” He shrugged. “Who really knows what you’ll be aware of? What you’ll hear. What you’ll feel. The second drug is pancuronium bromide. It paralyzes your diaphragm, your lungs, so you can’t breathe.”
Joey’s face turned white. His lips lost their color.
“The last drug they pump into you is potassium chloride. It stops the heart. Assuming everything goes as planned, maybe you won’t feel pain. Maybe you will. The only thing for sure is you’ll be dead. As dead as Alicia Claremont, the young woman you killed fifteen years ago. Death is never a pretty thing. But imagine dying alone, with only the guards and executioner to keep you company instead of knowing that someone you love, and who loves you, is out there, praying for your soul.”
Joey winced and looked away, clearly shaken.
Callum went in for the kill. “If you die with things between you and your sister the way they are now, her last memories of you will erode all the good ones from the past, from when you grew up together and cared about each other. She’ll forever resent how you treated her when she’s done nothing but sacrifice for you for the past fifteen years. You think you’ve suffered in here? Think about her, how she’s put her hopes and dreams for her life on hold so she can focus on you and trying to get you free. Sure, she made herself a good career, and money. But why do you think she did that? So she could fund your defense. So she could give you the best possible chance at a future, at a life. And you repaid her by being a complete and utter jerk, to put it mildly.”
Joey glared at him, red dots of color brightening his pale cheeks. “Don’t you get it, dude? I love my sister. I know what she’s sacrificed for me. She should be married with babies by now and instead she spends all her free time working on my case.” He swore. “I was doing her a favor, trying to make her want to forget me. I don’t want her grieving me and ruining even more of her life when I’m gone.”
Callum shook his head. “She’s going to grieve for you whether you leave bad memories in her heart or good ones. You can’t turn off her emotions like a switch. If she didn’t care about you, deeply, she wouldn’t have stuck with you all these years. One conversation isn’t going to somehow keep her from being hurt. The way you spoke to her just piles more hurt on what she’s going to feel if we don’t succeed in getting your sentence overturned.”
“What the hell am I supposed to do then?” Joey demanded.
“Be a decent human being. Apologize, tell her that you’re having a bad day and shouldn’t have taken it out on her. Do whatever it takes to make her feel better, or I’m off this case. And, believe me, no one else is jumping up and down wanting to help. You want to live? Potentially have a chance at some kind of future, possibly even your freedom? Then you have to do two things. One, convince me you didn’t kill Ms. Claremont. Two, grovel to your sister and repair the damage you did earlier.”
Joey’s eyes widened. “You like her, don’t you? That’s what this is all about. You’re interested in her so you don’t want her upset. That’s the whole freaking reason you’re here, to get into my sister’s pants.”
“Goodbye, Joey.” Callum stood and hung up the phone.
Joey slammed his fist against the glass, gesturing wildly toward the phone and obviously yelling even though Callum couldn’t hear him.
The guard behind him pushed away from the wall and said something.
Joey held up his hand, his manner turning placating until the guard positioned himself back against the wall. A look of desperation crossed Joey’s face as he urgently motioned toward Callum’s phone.
Callum really did want to leave. The clock above the phone showed they had only thirty more minutes for the visit. From what he’d read of this scumbag’s case last night, he doubted there was anything Joey could say that could convince him he wasn’t the murderer the court believed him to be.
And he really couldn’t stomach how Joey had treated Raine.
But as Joey continued to gesture toward the phone, Callum realized he couldn’t just walk out and leave it this way. Not for the man on the other side of the glass, but for the woman on the other side of the door. Coming here had given him a new perspective on what she had suffered for years and years. And it had pretty much taken away the sting, and embarrassment, of having been surprised by her at gunpoint. He could understand her desperation now, at how she felt she was without other options. And his respect for her, for the sacrifices she’d made, and had almost made, to help her brother meant Callum couldn’t just walk out and crush her hopes at this point. So, for Raine, Callum sat and picked up the phone.
Mimicking Joey’s earlier attitude, he demanded, “What?”
“You’re cold, dude. Stone-cold.”
Callum lifted the phone toward the receiver again.
Joey frantically waved at him.
Callum pressed the phone back to his ear. And waited.
“Okay, okay. I’m sorry, all right? I was out of line when I said that stuff about you. And I don’t want to die, not if there’s a chance you can stop it and get me off death row.”
“And?”
His throat bobbed again as he swallowed. “And I get what you’re saying about Raine. I didn’t really want to hurt her. I was trying to help, in my own stupid way. I thought it would be easier on her if she was mad at me at the end. She’s bullheaded. Anyone else would have given up on me long ago. But she refuses to stop. I need her to be okay when I’m gone. I just... I don’t know how to get her to let go and be okay.”
“Did you kill Alicia Claremont?”
He blinked. “No. No, I didn’t.”
“But you confessed.”
He rolled his eyes. “They interrogated me for twenty hours straight. I would have told them I assassinated the pope if it would make them let me lie down and get some sleep. I didn’t kill no one, okay?”
Callum stared into the other man’s eyes. Usually he could read people pretty well. But he honestly wasn’t sure what he saw this time. Joey could be innocent, as Raine believed. Or he could be the savage killer he’d been convicted of being.
“I’ll lay it out for you, Joey. I work for a cold case company, Unfinished Business. We have a large team of some of the best investigators in the country, along with our own private lab, just for starters. If anyone can find reasonable doubt this late in the game and convince the board to stay your execution, it’s UB. But we’re not lifting a single finger on your behalf until you’ve done one thing.”
His fingers curled around the phone. “Anything, man. Name it.”
“When your sister comes back in here, you’re going to do whatever it takes to make her smile again. Fix the damage you did or you can kiss your last chance at justice, and life, goodbye.”