Right the Wrong

1 Nora Dockson

1 Nora DocksonThe lock clicked and Nora Dockson pulled open the steel gate in the tall chainlink fence between her and the public entrance to Washington state’s correctional facility for females.

Behind her, metal slammed against metal. The clang set off an alarm in some deep animal part of her brain. The skin on her face went cold, as though a cloud had blocked the spring sun shining that afternoon on the western side of the state. For a second, she was eighteen and fearful she’d never be free again.

Taking a deep breath smelling of concrete dust, she forced herself to cross the barren pavement to the institution’s see-through door. Beyond the thick bulletproof glass, a stony-faced man in a black long-sleeve shirt and matching ball cap sat with his back to the white wall, a chest-high reception podium hiding his lower body. He studied her for ten seconds before buzzing open the door.

Wary, she bypassed the closed coin-op metal lockers and empty black plastic chairs in the boxy waiting room and approached the podium. On Thursdays, the facility was closed for regular visiting and any lingering civilian scents were buried by the institutional odors of steel and disinfectant.

The air tasted different, too, that nervous-sweat flavor of an environment where following every order without protest was the only way to survive. A lesson she’d learned too well. More than a decade later, she was still trying to unlearn it.

Still, she’d done her best to ease the correctional mindset’s automatic suspicion of anyone who chose to visit a convicted felon. Taming her orange curls, she’d dressed in leather shoes, knife-creased khaki slacks, and a Navy-blue blazer, despite knowing that a harmless appearance guaranteed nothing.

Once, when visiting her former cellmate in an Oregon prison, she’d seen a guard refuse to admit two little kids in jeans because they’d violated that institution’s rule requiring inmates to wear blue denim pants and forbidding that choice to anyone else.

In the past, she’d watched kinder officers turn a blind eye to incorrectly-clad toddlers, but the man on duty that day had stopped a mother from hugging her babies just because he could. A prison guard had unchecked opportunities for petty cruelty.

The one facing her studied the ID she handed him. It identified her as an officer of the court. The guard determined with whom she’d scheduled a meeting and pinpointed the inmate’s current location. Picking up his desk phone, he placed a call, rattling off a number, not a name.

Against the backdrop of his inky uniform, the colorful US flag and Department of Corrections patches stood out in attention-getting relief and his polished tin badge shone like an Olympic medal. She caught a whiff of Ivory bath soap, guaranteed to be ninety-nine-and-forty-four-one-hundredths-percent-pure.

The combination of patches, badge, and good clean soap signaled to her that this man believed himself to be on the side of truth, justice, and the American way.

Well, so was she. She stiffened her backbone and fought the urge to grovel. She’d done her time. Time to do her job.

First task: Buy a debit card she could use in the institution’s soda and snack machines. She’d yearned for junk food when she was inside and she wouldn’t begrudge a taste to any inmate. Not even the conniving woman she’d question today.

She handed over a twenty-dollar bill and her businesslike approach seemed to loosen the guard up. He made idle conversation until her moon-faced escort arrived, the set of keys and other paraphernalia on the woman’s uniform belt adding a six-inch-thick layer to her sturdy hips.

The all-black uniform made a tall and muscular man appear invincible. The short, the fat, and the female looked lumpy.

Her escort got them through both doors of the sally port, took possession of the metal desk placed near the entry, and directed Nora to sit at the sturdy molded plastic table closest to the three vending machines.

Nora promptly plopped down on one of the chainlink-gray chairs matching the table. She studied the space around her.

Weak sunlight poured through the bank of gleaming windows in the exterior wall and the air smelled of lemony glass cleaner. Beside her, the soft drink chiller hummed. The high-watt interior lamps in the adjacent display of chips and candy made the snack food wrappers glow garishly. A warning taped to the front prohibited inmates from touching the equipment.

Next to the machines was a set of shelves holding stacks of Scrabble, Yahtzee, and other game boxes, plus cribbage boards and decks of playing cards, as well as jigsaw puzzles, crayons, and coloring books for the younger visitors.

A dozen square gray tables identical to hers were scattered across the room, each surrounded by three chairs in gray plus a fourth the color of dried blood and sporting a large black number.

Five minutes later, she was on her feet, shaking hands with Lisa Fiedler, a solidly-built woman wearing prison-issue gray sweat pants topped by a T-shirt. At thirty-six, Lisa was three years older than she was and at least eight inches taller than her five-feet-four, yet the woman’s high girlish voice and innocent expression gave Nora the impression she was confronting an overgrown teenager.

When they were seated across from each other, she told Lisa why she’d come. An appeals attorney working at Spokane’s Legal Resource Center, she was doing legwork for a colleague who represented Lisa’s former boyfriend and co-defendant, Trevor Bryant. He was serving a life sentence in Washington State Penitentiary for homicide.

She wanted to hear Lisa’s version of the murder. She didn’t add that she hoped to pick up something new that could be used to support Trevor’s request to have DNA testing done on semen from the crime scene.

In her soft, high voice, Lisa began by apologizing for not having a real story to tell.

Puzzled, Nora asked, “Are you saying you don’t remember what happened that night?”

“No, no. I remember.” Lisa finger-flicked her perfectly-trimmed chestnut bangs, as though brushing cobwebs from her mind.

“But it’s all in fragments,” she added. “I can’t quite put together how I did it. It’s like I catch a glimpse, out of the corner of my eye. See the red thread embroidering the pillow. The pink skin on the backs of my hands. I blink, it’s gone. Something’s blocking my memory.”

Nora rubbed her temple with the heel of her hand, pushing ginger curls off her damp forehead. She’d assumed Lisa would be eager to expand on her damning testimony against Trevor. She hadn’t expected getting information from her would require effort.

“All these years later, you haven’t been able to un-block your memory of killing Mrs. Hancock?” she asked.

“Right.” Lisa dipped her chin in a confirming nod.

“You testified that you put the pillow over Mrs. Hancock’s face to muffle her screams,” she reminded Lisa. “That you held her down. You must’ve seen Trevor rape her. Smelled his sweat. Heard him grunt.”

“I must’ve,” Lisa agreed. “But I can’t bring any of that back. Sorry.”

“Me, too,” Nora muttered.

Trevor insisted he hadn’t raped and murdered Mrs. Hancock. But confessions by Lisa and two other accomplices had convinced the jury he was guilty.

She tried again.

“Only a couple of positions would’ve allowed you to cover Mrs. Hancock’s face,” she pointed out. “When you held that pillow, where were you? Kneeling beside Trevor? Or looking at the top of his head?”

Lisa’s lips twisted with regret. “I can’t get those details back. What you want me to remember was a terrible trauma. I can’t bear to relive it. My brain won’t let me. Memory repression. A natural response to a gruesome event.”

Nora noted the formal wording. Lisa was quoting an expert.

She made a mental note and moved on. “If you can’t remember, how can you be sure what you did?”

“The others saw me holding the pillow and stopping her from moving,” Lisa replied. “That fits with what I do remember.”

Nora eyed the tall inmate. Lisa’s T-shirt hugged shoulders twice as broad as hers. At age eighteen, the girl could easily have subdued a smaller woman fifty years older.

Holding a pillow over Mrs. Hancock’s mouth and nose until she’d passed out. Letting Trevor finish the suffocation.

But this head-on questioning was eliciting the same answers from Lisa that she’d provided in her signed confession. Word for word.

Nora shifted in her chair.

“Let’s take a break from discussing that night,” she said to Lisa. “I’d like to hear about your life before. What path you took to get to this room.”

“I don’t have many visitors.” Lisa cast a longing eye toward the soda machine. “I’ll talk for as long as you want to listen. Though I sure could use a cold drink to wet my whistle.”

“That sounds good to me.” Nora rose to her feet. “I’ll get us some soda.”

“Cherry Coke for me, please,” Lisa called to her back. “And I’d love to try those Kettle chips. I hear they’re real tasty.”

Standing by the soda machine, she was surprised to realize she liked Lisa. She hadn’t expected to. A maternally-challenged Patty-Jean Dockson had run off and left her five-year-old daughter Nora without a backward glance. When her mother returned ten years later, she took no responsibility for the abandonment. It was Patty-Jean’s truck-driving lover who’d refused to bring a kid along.

Ever since, Nora’d paid attention to how guilty people shifted blame to someone else. She’d assumed that Lisa had done nastier things than she’d admitted in her confession. Heaped all the worst stuff on Trevor to save herself.

But she was wrong. Lisa was pathetically eager to help her former boyfriend. And the woman was no schemer. She hadn’t played her strongest sympathy card before politely asking for a cold drink.

In passing, the guard at reception had mentioned the actual number of Lisa’s not many visitors: Zero.

Nora was the only visitor in the last five years. Nobody Lisa had known in her former life had shown up.

Nora felt a twinge in her chest, as if a heartstring had been plucked, and a mournful note of loneliness sounded in her head. Sad old music that never died.

Shaking off her memories, she punched in the code for Cherry Coke. A twenty-ounce plastic bottle rattled into the bottom bin. A second followed it. The ice-cold beverages numbed her fingertips as she carted the bottles to the table. She returned for the Kettle Chips plus her own favorites—Cheetohs, Sun Chips, and three different candy bars.

Arranging the treats on the table, she opened bags and broke the candy into bite-size pieces.

“Dig in,” she invited. “Let’s party like rock stars.”

Lisa twisted the cap off her soda. She swallowed deep and smacked her lips. “Man, that’s good.”

“You’re in great shape for someone being fed by the State of Washington,” Nora said. “Hope this doesn’t ruin your training program.”

Lisa grinned and flexed a well-defined bicep. “I’ll do a couple of extra workouts to make it up.”

Nora laughed, cheered by the inmate’s good spirits. “Were you into physical fitness before? One of those girls who got to demonstrate all the tough stuff in phys ed?”

“S’pose I could’ve been. I was a strong kid. But I was no good at school. Couldn’t remember stuff. Dropped out. Ended up in a group home where we only got alternate ed. No phys ed.”

“Tell me how it was for you, growing up.” With encouraging comments and smiles, she drew out Lisa’s history, a litany of low points.

She’d been neglected as a child and bounced around the foster care system. She’d left school at sixteen, been picked up as a juvenile offender and substance abuser, and forced into a series of rehab programs.

Nora summed up Lisa’s status in the weeks before the murder.

“So at age eighteen, you had to leave the place where you’d been living with six other kids.”

“Right, I was too old for the group home. I had to move out. My counselor helped me get hired as a trainee at the chicken packing plant so I’d earn rent money.”

“And she found you an apartment in the same building as Mrs. Hancock?”

“It wasn’t an actual apartment building,” Lisa corrected. “Just a nice old house. Cut up, you know? I had the smallest unit, way up in the attic. But I liked it. My own room. First time.”

Lisa’s words triggered an image in Nora’s head—a tiny pantry with a used foam mattress covering its floor. Her mother had used your own room as bait to get control of the child support Nora’s father had started sending after he sobered up.

Pushing the thought from her mind, Nora edged closer to the murder of the sixty-eight-year-old widow. “Mrs. Hancock lived on the ground floor of that nice, old house?”

“Her place was originally the living and dining rooms for the whole house.” Lisa nibbled a square of chocolate and continued.

“She had these big glass doors that opened to the back yard. I thought they were the coolest things I’d ever seen. Her rent was a lot higher than mine. But she could afford it.”

Lisa leaned forward and lowered her voice. “Standing out on the lawn, you could look in at her stuff. She had such pretty things. Trevor said some were worth a lot. ”

Nora tilted her head. “Did you and Trevor talk about robbing Mrs. Hancock?”

“Sometimes. The other two got excited by the idea.”

“So all four of you had this conversation?” Nora asked.

Lisa nodded. “We only talked. We never made a real plan.”

“Anyone else get wind of all this talking?”

Lisa’s eyes widened. “No. Trevor said we had to keep quiet. Such an easy score, we didn’t need help. He didn’t want anyone else horning in. Only us four.”

“So you remember that you talked about burglarizing Mrs. Hancock’s apartment. Even though you can’t remember much else, you remember that clearly.”

“Well, we were all doing meth.” Lisa shrugged. “We needed money.”

“How about after you killed her? Did you talk about what you’d done?”

“Not that I remember.” Lisa shrugged again. “I mean, I knew she was dead. A cop came through the house and questioned everyone. Like, was I in my apartment that night? Did I hear or see anything?”

“What’d you tell him?”

“I wasn’t home,” Lisa replied. “I was out with Trevor and the others.”

“Nobody came back with more questions?”

“Not to me. The cops were interested in Trevor for a while. They heard his Trans Am had been parked out front. Got a search warrant. Kept the car for a few days. Gave it back. That was it.”

“And they didn’t talk to you again until four years later?” Nora registered Lisa’s nod and continued.

“So tell me what you were doing from age eighteen to twenty-two. You stayed in the same town?”

“Right. O’Neill, Washington. Sort of had to. I got busted for possession and put on probation.” Lisa beamed and lifted her soda bottle as if making a toast.

“Best thing that could’ve happened,” she added. “They hooked me up with a good counselor. I joined AA. Got off drugs.”

“Once you were clean, you probably didn’t hang out with Trevor any longer.”

“No. He dumped me. Said I was no fun.”

“Did you stay with your job at the chicken factory?”

Lisa’s face lit up. “I finished training and they moved me into security. I felt like I had a real future. I was planning to buckle down and earn my damn GED. So I could get certified for security work. Put myself in line for a good job. Helps, being as big as I am.”

“So things were going well.”

“Pretty well.” Lisa’s happy expression fled. “Then the cops pulled me in for questioning. I ended up here. I guess there’s worse places. But I still haven’t managed to get that stupid GED.”

The guard’s voice interrupted their conversation. The time allotted for the meeting had expired.

“I have to leave,” Nora said to Lisa. “Thanks for agreeing to see me. If I have more questions for you, can I come back?”

“Any time you want.” Lisa’s grin widened. “I love talking to you.”

Waiting in the sally port for the second door to open, Nora glanced back through the window in the one that had closed.

Saw Lisa, still seated in the blood-colored chair, her eyes trained on the public exit. Beaming, she blew a kiss to Nora.

She knew she shouldn’t respond. Lisa was neither a client nor a friend. A goodbye wave might raise false hopes

She couldn’t bear to be so cold. Kissing her fingertips, she puffed a caress to Lisa. Starting something, knowing she’d have to do more.

Ten minutes later, she had the Buick cruising south, Puget Sound’s Gig Harbor Bay at her back and Olympia an hour drive ahead of her. Once she was inside the hotel room, she’d scrub every bit of prison poison off her body. She was counting on her lover to help her get rid of the ugly grayness fogging her mind.

Trooper Lieutenant Kent Harper was assigned to Washington State Patrol headquarters in Olympia for month-long training. He’d left Spokane two weeks ago.

The thing between them was so shiny and new. She was still at the can’t-keep-my-hands-off-him stage. She loved that he liked touching her as much.

Without him around, it’d been a long fourteen days. Nights.

Her business with Lisa on hold, she was hurrying to Olympia and Kent to play catch-up. The best kind, skin-on-skin.