* * *
“Thank you, Mr. Carr, for your cooperation and for enlightening us on your criminal philosophy,” said the older of the two men across the table from me. “The director of corrections, as well as various government officials, will be privy to your statements and ideas. Is there anything else you would like to add before we’re done?”
What was the point? They would never get it, or if they did understand, they were too cowardly to step up and fight the system. I shook my head as he turned off the tape recorder, then watched them walk out of the room oblivious to my greatness.
* * *
The door to the interrogation room slammed shut and the FBI special agent in charge of the field office for the region looked at Detective Jose Rivers and said, “Do you really believe this guard has been a serial killer all these years?”
Without answering, the detective flashed his state police badge at the gate to be let out. The buzzer sounded, and he walked down the steps of the Jackson County Courthouse as flashbulbs and questions from reporters came at him from all sides. He had no idea how Michigan was going to restore confidence in its criminal justice system, not after this. Maybe they should have continued turning a blind eye to what Carr was doing. It had to be better than facing these vultures.
“Detective Rivers, how is the state responding to the class-action lawsuits filed on behalf of the murdered prisoners’ families?” a female reporter called out.
“Detective, will the director of the MDOC be stepping down?” another reporter asked, causing the rest of the press corps to erupt in a flurry of additional questions.
It was going to be a long day.
THE INVESTIGATION
BY WILLIAM VAN POYCK
Florida State Prison (Raiford, Florida)
The five men in the cage should have felt crowded, but familiarity of circumstance had long ago erased any such sensation, leaving each instead with a certain economy of emotion. The old man in the wheelchair sat still as a heron, bearing the weight of one who has made peace with the narrow dimensions of his life. A brown rubber surgical tube snaked out from his pant cuff, draining cloudy urine into the clear plastic bag hanging from the chair. With some effort he braced himself and carefully shifted his weight, his handcuffs forcing him to awkwardly use his elbows.
“I ain’t even going to talk to him,” the tall, thin, black-haired man said, showing his bad teeth. “He can’t make me talk, ya know? Ain’t no rule says I gotta talk to him.”
“You’ll talk to him,” the old man grunted, shifting his weight again. The metal frame of the chair creaked in protest.
Cotton stood in one corner, mildly irritated with the cloying, caustic odor of institutional disinfectant that permeated the entire hallway. He idly watched the black Cuban sitting silently on the bench, intent on his chore of hand-rolling cigarettes with his even blacker tobacco-stained fingers. Occasionally, Cotton glanced up the hallway at the closed door behind which, he knew, sat the prison investigator. To Cotton’s right was a smooth young man with straight blond hair cut in perfect bangs, his delicate fingers absently picking at the worn, knotty pine bench running around the inside of the cage.
“I’ve been through this shit before,” the tall man said, waving his cuffed hands for emphasis, momentarily ceasing to be self-conscious about the shiny scar tissue covering both arms.
“It was horrible,” the blond boy whispered to nobody in particular.
The old man snorted. “Get used to it. I’ve been here at Florida State Prison over thirty years, and this one wasn’t no more horrible than any other.” The man paused, looking around before adding, “More or less.”
“It was still horrible.”
“That’s a cliché.”
“Huh?”
“A cliché, horrible. Hell, life is horrible. Why should death be any different?”
“Well, I don’t ever want to see anything like that again. All that blood. And the moaning. It was horrible. Just horrible. And I hope to God I don’t spend thirty years in a place like this. I would kill myself first.”
The boy stared at the floor as though he was unable to conceal from himself his own unimportance. He had a refined, gentle voice, pleasing to the ear, its delicate tenderness incongruous in this cold, steel-reinforced kingdom. Cotton secretly enjoyed the sound, much as he once delighted in the lusciously perfumed letter a guard had mistakenly passed out to him. Cotton recalled how he rubbed the scented pages across his pillow before returning the letter, and how that night in bed the feminine fragrance stirred long-suppressed memories, flooding him with powerful emotions. Cotton wept that night, so many years ago—that is why he recalled it so clearly. It was the only time in his adult life he had cried. Or perhaps the fourth.
“You don’t set out to do thirty years, son. That’s how they get you. You start out with hope—that you’ll be out in a few, see your girlfriend, your wife.” The old man paused, glancing at the boy. “Or maybe just see your mom and dad. You know: get out, go straight, start all over. But they don’t let you out. So it just grows on you, one day at a time, little here, little there, until one day you wake up and the hope is all gone, and all that’s left behind is you.”
“I heard you were once on the row. Two times, in fact. Is that true?” Even the clinking of the boy’s shackles somehow sounded delicate.
“Yup. That’s a fact. But they keep letting me off. Hell, I only killed convicts.” The old man laughed hoarsely, then began to cough and sputter.
“You should put your faith in God,” the Cuban interjected as he licked another cigarette paper. “If you really and truly believe—if you have the faith—God will see you through.”
“Yeah, right,” the thin man said, jerking his hand up. “Where was God this morning when Cisco cut Bobby’s guts out and left them smeared all over the dayroom floor? Huh? Bobby was a good guy. He didn’t deserve to die like that.”
“Who does?” the boy wondered aloud.
“Do you believe it matters how you die?” the Cuban asked.
“Well, all I’m saying is, God don’t seem to be too concerned about shit like this, about convicts like us. Shit happens all the time,” said the thin man.
“My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, sayeth the Lord. God was there. He saw it all,” the Cuban intoned.
“Seeing it and doing something about it, that’s two different things. That’s all I’m saying. God could have stopped it. Why didn’t God stop it?”
“You could have stopped it. Why didn’t you stop it?” The Cuban cocked his head.
“Bobby wasn’t really my friend. I didn’t even know him all that well.”
“Are we not our brother’s keeper?” The Cuban stared at the thin man. “We are all instruments of God’s will,” he added softly, turning his face.
Cotton’s fingers absently brushed at the halo of thin gray hair that crowned his head. It seemed as if his thick mane had fallen out almost overnight, though in truth it had taken years. Cotton stared at the thin man’s arms, which he knew had been burned when another convict threw lighter fluid on him some years ago. Cotton saw it happen. The convict thought the thin man had stolen something from his cell, but later it came out that the thin man was not the thief. The skin on the arms was parchment-thin, shiny as wax, with purplish white gnarls streaking from shoulders to wrists like some hideous octopus trying to skulk away. Cotton knew it could have been fixed up a lot better, with skin grafts or something, but that did not happen. It was like when Cotton fell off the kitchen roof fourteen years earlier while carrying shingles up a broken ladder. The convict orderly set his shattered ankle badly, and when he finally saw a real doctor five weeks later, it was too late—or too much trouble—to do it right. Now the joint was fused and he walked with a painful limp, his ankle making a clicking sound with each step.
“Cisco killed him over a ten-dollar pocket debt. Man, you don’t kill nobody over ten lousy dollars,” the thin man said.
The boy raised his questioning eyes.
“How much do you kill someone for, then?” the old man asked, cocking his head.
“I’m just saying.”
“All this talk of killing. It’s so negative,” the boy said softly, mostly to himself. “Please stop.”
“It wasn’t about no ten dollars, any more than Jackson got killed over a piece of fried chicken, or that guy who got killed in the gym for stepping on some other guy’s shirt. It was about respect. He disrespected Cisco in some kind of way. Must have. Or at least Cisco thought he did. Maybe he didn’t. Maybe it was all a misunderstanding. It happens.” The old man shifted his weight again and the wheelchair groaned, its spokes popping loudly.
“Respect God. Only God is worthy of true respect.” The Cuban stared ahead.
“Yeah, great advice. That will get you killed in here,” the thin man said. “I say respect the big knife and big balls.”
The Cuban glanced around the cage.
Thus sayeth the high and exalted one who
inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: I
dwell in a high and holy place, but I also
live with those who are broken and humble
in spirit, to revive the spirit of the humble, to
restore the courage of the broken.
The Cuban almost seemed to be speaking to Cotton. “Isaiah 57:15,” he said.
Cotton glanced up the hallway as the investigator’s door opened and a young, sullen-looking black prisoner silently left the room, staring straight ahead, his leg chains scraping the shiny linoleum floor. A guard appeared with a large brass key in his hand. He opened the cage door and motioned to the Cuban, who followed him to the investigator’s office. Cotton caught a dim glimpse of the large, plexiglass-covered display case mounted on the wall behind the investigator’s desk. It held a wide variety of weapons confiscated over the years, from zip guns to real guns, crude hatchets to spears, clubs to knives. Lots of knives. Cotton had watched the display case grow and evolve during his time there. More than one of the weapons once belonged to him.
The door closed behind the Cuban. Cotton knew the drill. The investigator would plead with, cajole, or threaten each of them, according to his nature, in the hope of getting one or more to turn state’s evidence. Turn state’s. Rat. Snitch. Stool pigeon. Those traitorous labels. In return, the investigator would promise to transfer the rat away from this hated, wretched maximum-security prison to a sweet, soft joint full of fresh promise. He used to guarantee favorable parole recommendations to the parole commission, until parole was abolished.
Cotton had been through the process countless times, for he had an eerie knack for being in the vicinity of almost every murder that occurred in this hulking prison. It was some kind of weird coincidence, that’s all, but even the guards commented on it. Once, on a sleepless night some years before, Cotton got out a piece of paper and tried to recount all the killings he had witnessed over the years. He stopped at around thirty, depressed by the memories and by his difficulty recalling some of them. What did it say about him, he wondered, that he could watch a man be killed and then not be able to remember it? Where did that memory go?
The first one was the most vivid. It always is. A memory still saturated with a surrealistic clarity, a sense of reality so immediate and precise that it defied articulation. The relentless hand moving in and out, the sun glinting on the steel blade, the sense of timelessness, the dull look of puzzlement on the victim’s face, followed by recognition that this is it, this is real, that he was dead and helpless to do anything about it. Cotton easily recalled that first one. Also the second one. Perhaps the third. After that they just became statistics.
It isn’t easy to kill a man, Cotton reflected. At least not with your hands. It’s not at all like in the movies, where you stick a man once and he silently drops like a sack of cornmeal. A gun is one thing, though even then the vitality of the human body could amaze you. A knife or razor, a club or bat, a barbell or padlock in a sock, well, that was wholly different. The primal urge to live, to survive, is powerful, and it takes a lot to overcome that—more than some are willing to give. And when they do die, it is messy, often with bloody reluctance, with thrashing, gasping, begging, imploring, praying, with victims calling to their mothers. Yes, a man will generally fight hard to live, harder than one might think possible. Cotton once saw a man, a small man, stabbed thirty-seven times. The man never stopped moving, never stopped kicking, ducking, bobbing, weaving, fighting, spraying his blood everywhere, burning an indelible vermilion image in Cotton’s mind. It was the assailant who finally gave up and fled, hoping the small man would die. They pulled the sheet over his head in the ambulance, but he reached up and snatched it off. His heart stopped twice at the hospital. But he lived. Cotton had seen, and he had learned.
“That Puerto Rican, he’ll snitch,” declared the thin man. “All that talk about God.”
Nobody said anything.
Someone would talk, sooner or later—Cotton knew that. They always did. As often as not, the testifying inmate had seen little or nothing, but that was not going to stand in the way of his transfer. It was ironic that Cotton, who had seen so many of these killings, consistently refused to rat, while others, who had seen nothing, fabricated convincing stories to sell to the jury. Their colorfully embellished fantasy then became reality, recorded in the law books and newspapers as the gospel truth. Cotton reflected more than once that he seemed to be the only one playing by the rules.
“What is truth?” The words startled Cotton as he realized he had said them out loud. The others looked at him as if noticing him for the first time.
“He had bad nerves,” the thin man announced, and Cotton considered this statement. Bad nerves. What did that mean, exactly? Nobody ever proclaimed to have good nerves. And how does one know when nerves are bad, anyway? A man would knowingly state that his nerves were bad, but it seemed impossible to discern the state of his nerves by looking at him. So it was, too, with a man’s heart, Cotton reflected. It was like looking at one of those calm, still watering holes frequently shown on nature programs. The placid surface promised safe refuge, yet just beneath lurked the terrible crocodile, infinitely patient, waiting to destroy the illusion.
Cotton considered what he would say to the investigator this time. Usually he just explained that he was sleeping, that he had seen nothing. It was sort of an ongoing joke between Cotton and the investigator now, a tired comedy routine, Cotton always being asleep when someone was killed. It was just easier to say that. The investigator knew, he understood, and he, in his own way, respected Cotton’s honoring of the code. He once called Cotton a dinosaur. Someone else would always talk.
This time, though, Cotton really had been asleep. His sixth sense had awakened him to that familiar, awful silence that always signaled something had just happened. Cotton had seen nothing, just the dead body, the blood draining away, pooling beneath Bobby’s impossibly white face.
The investigator’s door opened abruptly, and the Cuban left the office. Each prisoner silently calculated whether the Cuban was inside long enough to give a substantial statement. Had Cotton’s eyesight not been failing, he could have seen the worn outline of the pocket-sized New Testament in the Cuban’s back pocket as he shuffled by. But Cotton hated the chunky plastic eyeglasses provided by the state, so now he mostly squinted a lot.
The guard opened the cage door with his big brass key, motioning to Cotton. It was his turn.
Cotton entered the office, leg irons tugging at his ankles with each step, and he sat down without waiting to be asked. In the corner sat a dusty, moth-eaten county fair keepsake: a large stuffed rattlesnake, fangs bared, ready to strike, coiled around a stuffed, ratty, furred mongoose, snarling in response, the two forever frozen in locked mortal combat. As always, Cotton wondered if this was supposed to convey some metaphorical message, or if he was giving the investigator too much credit.
Looking up at the display case, Cotton saw the spea
r Outlaw had used to kill Ninety-Nine: a long broom handle with a cruel knife lashed to it. Outlaw ran it through Ninety-Nine’s belly while the man just stood there in the shower with shampoo in his eyes. Cotton was the only other person in the shower when Ninety-Nine was killed. He remembered how his stomach knotted violently when he saw Outlaw, fully clothed, first step into the shower holding that spear, until he understood that Ninety-Nine was the target. He remembered that after Ninety-Nine fell gasping to the wet floor, Outlaw hesitated, his eyes betraying that he was deciding whether he should kill Cotton too. In such a fleeting moment, one’s life can hang in the balance, and Cotton still recalled the strong, coppery taste that had filled his mouth as he locked eyes with Outlaw. That was fifteen years ago. Cotton wondered where he would be now if he had testified against Outlaw, as the investigator and state attorney begged him to. Outlaw was out on the streets now, doing welding work at a shipyard, Cotton had heard.
“Hello, Cotton,” the investigator said without looking up. He shuffled some papers and then pushed a tape recorder across the desk. “You know how this goes. I’ve gotta record this.”
The investigator fumbled with a cord. Cotton unconsciously rolled his tongue across his teeth, feeling the worn shards. Not that many years ago, he had beautiful white teeth, almost perfectly straight. Then, for no known reason, he began grinding his teeth in his sleep. He wasn’t even aware of it at first. Eventually, the prison dentist gave Cotton a mouthpiece to wear while he slept, but after he chewed through two of them the dentist refused to issue him a third. Now his teeth were ground down to nubs that resembled brown wooden pegs.