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Chapter 4

4

My appointment at West Florida Correctional Institution (WFC) the next morning was for 9:30, but unlike Tallahassee, the prison was in the central time zone. That left me plenty of time to get there, with a getting lost cushion in acknowledgement of my spotty navigation skills. The warden’s assistant, a Ms. Tanya (pronounced Tan-ya like the bland color, not Tawn-ya) Carroll, had been accommodating. Her north Florida twang sounded young, but she also sounded efficient. She promised that by the time I arrived she would at least know if Isaac Thomas’s records remained, and where any records were being stored. Having some experience with prisons and law enforcement agencies throughout the state, that was a tall order.

My mind wandered on the drive, from Isaac and Noel to my unopened letter, from Noel’s past to mine and back again and random destinations in between. I didn’t attempt to control my thoughts, just watched my mind generate noise. The static was a necessary first step, priming my brain to recognize connections later. Lack of scenery on I-10 helped, providing a blank canvas for my brain spatter. The remaining twenty-five miles or so on state roads wasn’t quite as monotonous, and I started to become aware of my surroundings again. Intermittent roadside markets carried everything from Vidalia onions to pecans, Native American trinkets to bonsai trees. Restaurants with country names promised home cooking, whatever that meant. Meat in your vegetables? Approaching the incorporated areas, the businesses were replaced by convenience stores with enough gas pumps for a NASCAR race.

The driving gods were smiling on me. I made good time and found the prison with no wrong turns. Since I was early, I went to a nearby Handi-Way (not quite as many gas pumps within the town limits) for a drink and a bathroom break. It must have been close to shift change at the prison. Everyone inside the market was wearing a uniform. I roamed back and forth in front of the drink coolers, eavesdropping, trying to get a sense of the people I’d be dealing with.

The woman behind the counter was plain, in her early fifties, with flat hair the color of smoked cigarette filters and an eye-catching mole on one plump cheek. Penciled-on eyebrows were her only make-up. She seemed to know the whole town and traded good-natured jibes and modest innuendo with everyone who walked through the door. I picked up a bottle of water and some peanut butter cookies (my compromise between total crap and something nutritious) and went to check out. I smiled at her as I set my purchases on the counter. “Shift change?”

She chuckled. “It sure is, honey. Three times a day this is the safest place in town to get gas and smokes. All these big burly men hanging around to protect ya. Isn’t that right, Charley?”

The buzz-cut young man waiting next to me blushed to his earlobes and began to fidget with the pack of gum and soda in his hand. He looked like a skinny high school kid, if you ignored the crisp khaki corrections uniform and all of its aggressive accoutrements. “Well, I would hope to do so, yes, ma’am.”

Another uniformed man, older and bulkier, bumped me on his way to the door. The bell on the door rang as he opened it, and he turned back to speak before leaving. “s**t, Annie, he couldn’t stop a one-legged thief. He’d have to quit his goddamned jawing first. You better not be late again, Charley. If I write you up one more time, the warden’s gonna have your ass.”

Charley’s head dipped unconsciously, and the blush that had begun to fade pinkened his ears again. “Yes, sir,” he said, to the already closing door.

Annie rolled her eyes. “Just ignore him, Charley. Anybody as mean as him shouldn’t be let out off his chain.”

Annie handed me my change. I thanked her and said to Charley, “I’m with her. Like my Gran always said—don’t let the bastards get you down.” I looked again at his uniform as I passed him and laughed. “And my Gran never had to work in a prison with turds in brown uniforms.”

Annie’s chuckles followed me out the door, and I could still feel the warmth of them as I left the parking lot.

WFC was on the outskirts of town. There was public access to the parking lot and one administrative building, but the rest of the facility was enclosed by chain link fence topped by razor wire. I drove past the ubiquitous black men in blues washing down cars. There may be some minor stylistic variation, maybe a crew neck versus V-neck shirt, but most prison inmates in Florida wear blues: blue pants and a blue shirt, usually with a white T-shirt underneath. You’ll see guys in blues scattered over most prisons, washing cars, pushing carts of laundry or cleaning supplies. Of course, the one dress code exception is death row. Death row prisoners in Florida wear orange, but you won’t be seeing them out washing cars.

I greeted the men rinsing car suds as I walked past them to the administration building. I’d never been to WFC, but experience told me the warden’s office would be in that building rather than inside the razor wire, and a uniformed receptionist just inside the door confirmed my suspicions. The receptionist must have phoned ahead. I was greeted by Tanya Carroll before I could even make it to her office. She had over-permed short blond hair and just enough too much make-up to slightly cheapen her pretty face. Ms. Carroll was as young (mid twenties?) and efficient as I had supposed. She was slowed down only by the extra syllables she invariably added to her vowels, and the perky well-bred politeness that wouldn’t allow her to speak in the brusque monosyllables and sentence fragments that are good enough for the rest of us.

“Yes, ma’am, I am happy to say that we still have copies of Mr. Isaac Thomas’s records. I’ve pulled those and someone is making copies of them for you right now. It’s a lot of records, but she’s been working on it since we spoke yesterday, so if you’d like to come back after lunch they should be ready.”

For the first time there was a slight shimmer in her veneer of composure as her gaze involuntarily turned to the unseen office of an unseen supervisor. “Of course, we do have to charge you for the copies, and I’m afraid we require p*****t when you pick up the records—checks only, no credit cards. I should have said something when we spoke on the phone, but I’m sorry to say it slipped my mind. If that’s a problem, you can send us a check and we’ll mail you the records.”

“No, that’s no problem at all. I’ll write you a check this afternoon.”

Her head did its unconscious supervisor swivel again, but Tanya seemed relieved. “Good.” She clasped her hands and swiveled one last time. “Oh, good.”

That settled, I left her office, but not before visions of baby shampoo bottles with twisting heads began flashing through my head. I stood for a moment in the hazy bright light outside the admin building, shaking the image away and getting my bearings. When I passed the men washing cars in the parking lot, nodding, I noticed that they hadn’t even had time to finish their rinse.

The timing suited my plans. Alastair was only about forty miles west, so I could go meet Noel’s family and stop by the prison on my way back to Tallahassee. I decided to top off my gas tank and chat up everybody’s friend Annie at the Handi-Way on the way out of town. I wasn’t hungry, but I’m never above putting something by for the cause, in this case a green sports drink and a bag of freshly roasted peanuts (freshly warmed under a heat lamp, that is). When the last customer left, I headed to the counter. Annie recognized me.

“Well, hello again.”

“Hi.” I smiled as I handed her a credit card with a tricky strip that doesn’t always work. I’m almost, but not quite, ashamed to admit that I keep it primarily as a tool for bonding with cashiers, slowing down the transaction and increasing the interaction. The card went through this time, but I didn’t need it with Annie anyway. “I thought I’d live on the wild side and get my gas after all the cops left.”

She smiled and looked at the plain black clock on the wall. “Yep, they’re all gone. Won’t have that many customers again for another seven hours.”

“So does everybody here work for the prison?”

“Just about. It’s a job, and a pretty good job at that. ‘Course, anything more than minimum wage is a good job around here, and you get benefits too.”

“Yeah, but what a work environment. I don’t think I could do it.”

Annie leaned across the counter toward me. “You and me both. That’s one of the reasons you’ll find me right here behind this counter. I hear about what goes on in there every day, twice a day. Don’t get me wrong—it ain’t that bad, not like in the movies. It’s maximum security, but they’re not all a bunch of murderers. The way I figure, most of those guys in there aren’t that different from you and me. But the ones that are… Mmm, there are some scary people in there.” She let out a harsh laugh. “And between you and me, not all of them are inmates.”

The drive to Alastair didn’t take as long as I had hoped it would. Mind distracted, I probably drove too fast. Annie’s parting words bounced around my skull, teasing me as she’d probably meant them to. My gut had told me not to follow up yet, not to push her. She knew I’d be back. And I knew I was right to wait, but I was still on edge. As I sped toward Alastair, I realized Noel’s little talk with me the day before had done more harm than good. The thought of facing her grandmother made my stomach queasy. Fortunately I take the Band-Aid approach to such situations—rip it off quickly and it won’t be as painful. Or at least not as prolonged.

I was meeting with Noel’s grandmother, Mary Harrison, and her daughter Ginny. According to Noel, Mr. and Mrs. Harrison had given birth to three daughters. Noel’s mother Vanda had been killed in 1980. Vanda’s sister Viola had died a few years later from some sort of cancer, and Mr. Harrison had passed away himself about three years ago. There were living grandchildren, those born with Noel’s generation, but only Mrs. Harrison and Ginny remained at the Harrison homestead.

It was a lovely old place. I took the drive slowly to keep from kicking up dust, and to take in the view. An unpainted, ranch-style fence circumscribed the property, and a couple of ancient live oaks, their branches grown heavy enough to seek the earth again, flanked the entrance. Rainfall had been on the low side for several months, so the grass wasn’t as lush as it might have been, but it was still hanging on. The fields in front had been subdivided, some enclosed by barbed wire, but there was no evidence of livestock or cultivation. An outbuilding, perhaps an old barn, looked structurally sound but had long ago lost any decorating paint. It had weathered to the color of pine bark.

There was a large vegetable garden to the left of the house, now likely hosting peppers and tomatoes, squash and beans. Another enormous live oak grew to the right of the house, shading that side of the yard and most of the structure. What looked like a pecan grove began about fifty yards to the back of the house, and stands of pine created a visual barrier on its periphery.

I parked alongside the only other car in evidence—a dark blue sedan, several years old but with little evident wear, and sat long enough for the dust to settle. Car door open, I was stretching across the seat for my bag when I heard the front door and saw a figure step out onto the deep porch. She waited there until I had exited the car, bag in hand, before she walked down the steps to meet me.

“You must be Miss Brennan.” She extended her hand with a small smile. “I’m Virginia Ludlow, Ginny everyone calls me.”

Shaking hands is one of those social customs that’s always felt bizarre to me. I’ve never been able to do it naturally, and generally just mimic whatever form and pressure is given me. Ginny’s shake was blessedly quick, her fingers overlapping and claw-like. Our fingers barely made contact. “I’m Sydney.”

We turned toward the house and mounted the steps. “Can I get you anything, some iced tea or water?”

“Iced tea would be great. Thanks.”

She led me through the door into a sitting room that seemed dark after the bright June day. There were no lights on, and the sunlight that came through the windows was mottled with shade. A ceiling fan whirred high above us. It was cooler than I had expected without air conditioning. The house had been built before such modern conveniences, when people used the elements to their advantage instead of creating a hermetically sealed space of constant temperature. A great deal of thought had been devoted to things like ventilation, orientation, and shade.

We crossed the sitting room and I found myself facing an elderly black woman in a high-backed armchair. Her arthritic hands were folded in her lap. She inclined her head a bare fraction of an inch to look up at me when Ginny introduced us, then gave a slight nod. Ginny left to get my tea. I sat down in an overstuffed chair catty-cornered to Mrs. Harrison’s. “This is a beautiful place you have here, Mrs. Harrison.”

“Yes. Yes it is.”

Her voice was hard, without a bit of the quaver common to the elderly. Her unblinking eyes were equally hard. I began to wonder if Ginny’s offer of hospitality was all that altruistic, or if she had just wanted to escape her mother’s formidable glare.

“It’s a shame to bring ugliness into such a beautiful place, don’t you think?” she demanded.

Definitely not altruistic. “Yes, ma’am, it is.”

She turned her head slightly, as if measuring me for my coffin. “Why are you doing this?”

“Your granddaughter hired me for reasons of her own, Mrs. Harrison. If she can’t explain them to you, then I certainly can’t.”

“Oh, I know why she’s doing it. Or why she thinks she’s doing it. I asked why you are. What makes a person want to meddle around in another person’s business for money?”

Some inexplicable puckish urge almost brought a smile to my face, but I repressed it. “It’s what I do.”

“And is that something you’re proud of?” When I didn’t respond, she tried another tact. “Just how much is she paying you?”

I took the time to breathe before answering. “Mrs. Harrison, I didn’t come here to pick a fight. I just came here to meet you, to let you know what I’m doing and see if you have any questions I can answer. Noel is going forward with this. I don’t know your granddaughter very well, but I have a feeling that when she puts her mind to something it gets done.” I paused. “I also have a feeling she takes after you.”

For a moment her eyes softened, and I thought she would smile, but it was just a moment. Still, I knew it was the closest thing I’d ever have to an opening. “What can you tell me about the relationship between your daughter and her husband?”

“I assume you mean my dead daughter. My dead, murdered daughter.” She watched to see if I’d flinch; I didn’t. “Her name was Vanda.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“He killed her. That was the extent of their relationship. What more is there to know?”

“They had a daughter.”

“I thank the Lord for that every day.”

“They were married for several years.”

“Until he beat and choked her to death. Blissful years they were not. Young lady, let me tell you that you have never seen a woman more beautiful than my Vanda. She could have had any man, any man she wanted, and what she ever saw in him, I shall wonder until the day I die. That’s all I have to say.”

I wasn’t sure I had the strength to respond. I could feel myself shriveling like a worm on the hot sidewalk under her gaze. She went on.

“You think you got some kind of magic in that little finger of yours, you can wave and make me say my Vanda was a bad person, you go right ahead and try. You… who do you think you are? What gives you the right to come in here and say I don’t know my own daughter?”

Not understanding her defensiveness, I opened my mouth to respond, but she barreled on.

“You don’t have to say it. I can see it in your eyes. And let’s just say I got a little magic of my own. I know one day you’re gonna come in here and try to break my heart with your lies. Go ahead and try; you can’t touch me. But if you hurt my Noel…”

“Mrs. Harrison, think what you want about me, but the simple fact is that if I don’t do this, she’ll just get someone else. You can’t scare everyone away.” I wasn’t really so sure of that last part; her glare made my chest hurt. “Or she might just do it herself.”

For the first time, I saw a crack in her composure, and she became what she always was but refused to let anyone see—an old woman. When she spoke this time, her voice trembled with anger.

“Get out. Get out now, and don’t come back.”

I rose and left the way I’d come in. When the door shut behind me, I paused on the porch long enough for a few deep breaths of hot humid air. I never did get my iced tea.