Within These Walls (25 page)

35

V
EE HEARD THE
car crunch up the driveway. She shoved her clothes back to where they originally were on the closet rod, pushed an empty cardboard box into the corner, and closed her closet door. When she finally stepped into the upstairs hall, she was just in time to catch Echo following her father inside.

Echo tilted her chin upward and gave Vee a warm smile. “Hello, Virginia,” she said. “Remember me?”

Vee caught her bottom lip between a row of teeth, unable to help wondering if suggesting Echo coming over was the most fabulous idea. She seemed nice enough, but there was something about her that tied Vee’s stomach into a loose knot. Suspicion. Vee had never been all that great around strangers.
Try harder.

“Hey,” she finally said. “Yeah, I remember. Hi.” She forced a smile before slowly descending the stairs.

“Sorry, you two get acquainted, I need to . . .” Vee’s dad stopped midsentence, as if cycling through all the stuff he had to get done before hitting the road, random things he’d not realized would take as long as they would. He passed Vee on the staircase like a whirlwind. A moment later, the pipes groaned in the walls.

Vee pulled her attention from her dad’s bedroom door to Echo, who was inspecting the place like a tenant looking to rent. She eventually looked back up to Vee, who had stopped in mid-descent, not sure whether she should go all the way down to the ground floor.

Echo arched a questioning brow over one eye, then gave Vee a knowing sort of grin. “He’s like that all the time, huh?” she asked. Vee nodded, still unsure. “Well, between you and me, my dad was the same way.”

“Really?” Vee rubbed at the back of her neck, surprised by the unexpected confession.

“Really, but don’t tell. I told
your
dad I never knew who my father was.”

“Why?”

Echo shrugged. “Eh. I guess I sensed that they were probably both alike,” she said. “And I didn’t feel like telling your dad that my dad hardly knew I existed. What’s the point of talking about someone like that? You may as well say you never knew them at all.”

Vee considered that logic. She thought about refuting it, wanted to argue that her dad knew she existed—he was just really busy. But something about defending him after being forgotten the day before brought a sourness to the back of her tongue. Why
should
she defend him? Yesterday, he had promised to take her to the beach. Today, he had promised to take a day off and take her to Seattle. Both vows were empty and worthless.

“Hey, maybe we can take a walk along the coast,” Echo suggested. “Have you gone yet?”

Vee shook her head that she hadn’t.

Echo gave her a dubious stare. “You aren’t even a quarter of a mile away and you
haven’t gone
yet? Oh, you poor girl.”

She was
supposed
to have gone yesterday, but no, thanks to dear ol’ dad.

Echo was right, Vee
was
a poor girl. And maybe Echo had been a poor girl, too. Maybe, finally, Vee had found someone who understood what it was like.

NORTHWEST NEWS 1 TRANSCRIPT

Aired April 2nd, 1986 – 06:15 PST

JAMES MARKEL, NWN1 REPORTER: Breaking news this morning regarding Washington State congressman Terrance Snow.

(Begin Video Clip)

JAMES MARKEL, NWN1 REPORTER: Police report that Congressman Snow’s vehicle, a silver Lincoln Continental, was found having veered off the road a few miles north of Thurston County’s Schneider Creek. The vehicle, traveling northbound on US Highway 101, was involved in a possible sideswipe scenario, causing the congressman to lose control of the car.

(End Video Clip)

JAMES MARKEL, NWN1 REPORTER: Both the congressman and his wife, Susana Clairmont Snow, were pronounced dead at the scene. President Reagan issued a statement early this morning regarding the congressman’s untimely passing.

(Begin Video Clip)

PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: Nancy and I were saddened to hear of the passing of our friend and congressman Terry Snow. Terry was a great leader. He led with diligence and honor. We will truly miss his presence and his unwavering devotion to our great country.

(End Video Clip)

JAMES MARKEL, NWN1 REPORTER: The couple lost their daughter and only child, Audra Snow, three years ago at the hand of cult killer Jeffrey Halcomb. Congressman Snow has been using the Halcomb case to strengthen his argument for retaining the death penalty as a form of punishment in Washington State. He was due to speak on the Congress floor regarding his capital punishment stance later this month. NEWS 1 will continue to report story details, as well as keep you informed of plans as they develop regarding a memorial for the congressman and his wife.

36

L
UCAS PULLED THE
Honda into the Chili’s parking lot, tucked a hardcover copy of
Bloodthirsty Times
beneath his arm, and stepped into the restaurant. He spotted Josh and Marty just left of the door. Josh raised a hand, motioning him over.

The two coworkers were already snacking on a plate of nachos when Lucas took a seat. A cola sat at Josh’s elbow, fizzing in a plastic mug fashioned to look like a heavy-bottomed beer glass. Marty had a matching mug, his filled with pale yellow pilsner.

“Hello again,” Lucas said, extending a hand to Marty for a formal introduction. “Lucas. Thanks for agreeing to meet with me.”

“Good to officially meet ya,” Marty said. “I bought your book. It’s good.
Really
good. I sure would appreciate an autograph, if you don’t mind doing that sort of thing.”

“Not at all.” Lucas took a seat and gave the two corrections officers a pensive smile. “Speaking of which . . .” He held his book out to Josh, who immediately brightened.

“Thanks, man,” he said. “How much do I owe you?”

Lucas shook his head and held up his hands. “Don’t worry about it. This meeting is payment enough. Consider it a thank-you.”

“Hey, thanks a lot.” Josh reached out and swatted the back of Lucas’s shoulder, then flipped through the pages of his new book. “It must be pretty cool getting your stuff published, huh? It’s like, even after you’re gone, this book will still be here. Almost like immortality.”

“Well . . .” Lucas gave Josh an indulgent look. “Until it goes out of print.”

“What? Why would it go out of print?” Josh peered at the thick volume before him, then gave Lucas a dubious glance.

“Just the nature of the beast.”

“Ebooks,” Marty cut in. Both Lucas and Josh turned their attention to the man who looked even more like a grown-up Goonie out of uniform than he did in it. “You know,
ebooks
?” he asked. “Those don’t go out of print. They’re just a file sitting on a server, right?”

“That’s true. Ebooks will save the world. So, Josh mentioned that you have a family emergency,” Lucas said, veering the conversation toward the point. “Hope everything is okay.”

Marty shrugged and peered down at his beer. “Wife’s pop,” he said. “He’s been sick for a while. It’s been a long time comin’. The old man finally gave up the fight.”

“Sorry to hear it,” Lucas told him.

“It’s all right,” Marty said. “The old guy was a pain in the ass, if I don’t mind sayin’ so myself. Never did like me much. But when the wife’s pop dies, you drop everything and fly out to the funeral to hold her hand.” He dislodged a cheese-covered chip from a mountain of nachos, stuck it in his mouth, and crunched down. “You married?”

Lucas hesitated just long enough for Marty to catch on.

“Divorced, then. Yeah, it happens. Me, I’ve been married for thirty years this September. I keep telling Josh here to get himself hitched, but he listens as well as a deaf guy.”

Josh raised both eyebrows at his coworker. “Who am I supposed to marry, Marty? I don’t even have a girlfriend. Besides,
mi madre
is a picky woman. If the girl doesn’t stack up to Our Lady of Guadalupe, she’s a
putana
and gets her ass thrown out onto the street.”

Marty barked out a laugh and chomped another chip. Lucas
nodded at the waitress who approached. “Just water for me, thanks.” The girl wandered away, and the conversation at the table waned into silence.

“So,” Lucas said after a moment, “rumor has it you may have some information about Jeffrey Halcomb that could be useful? Josh mentioned a visitor.”

Marty nodded and wiped his mouth with the corner of a napkin. “All off the record, though, right?”

“Yeah, sure,” Lucas agreed.

“I’m being dead serious here. Because the last thing I need is to be losing my job, you know? If that happens,
I’m
gonna be divorced, too, and let me tell you, a sad sack like me can’t afford a breakup. I’m not a fancy world-famous writer like you.”

Lucas bit back a comment.
Yeah fucking right,
he thought.
The sob story I could tell you, Marty. It would break your goddamn heart.
Instead, he forced a smile and offered more reassurance. “This will all be anonymous, if I use any of it. This is all for background information, I promise.”

“You swear?” Marty asked. “We don’t have to sign some sort of paper or anything like that?”

“Only if you don’t trust me,” Lucas said.

Marty and Josh exchanged looks, as if considering their options. Finally, Marty exhaled a breath and murmured, “Shit, forget it. Whatever happens happens, right? Dance like nobody’s watchin’.”

“What?” Josh laughed.

“It’s something the wife always says.”

“Oh, okay.” Josh peered at his friend, then gave Lucas a look that swore he had no idea Marty was so sensitive.

“Anyway, after Josh told me you were writing a book about the guy, I kept my eyes peeled. You know, just in case? I’m pretty close
with a few of the guys on the row. And we just call it the row because we don’t know what else to call it—it isn’t death row, but I’m sure you know that already.”

“Sure,” Lucas said.

“But even in supermax, you’ve got inmates, and then you’ve got
inmates.
They’re good men, really; just folks who took a misstep and ended up on the wrong side of the law. Could happen to anybody, if you ask me.”

Lucas wasn’t sure how right Marty was on that point if they were being held in supermax, but he kept his silence, simply nodding to urge him on.

“I gotta admit, though, Jeffrey Halcomb . . .” Marty paused, squinted as if considering his next string of words. “Halcomb is a creepy dude.”

“How so?” Lucas asked.

“That’s the thing. I can’t put my finger on it. It’s like an itch you can’t scratch.”

“And it’s not just you who thinks that way, either, right, Marty?” Josh chimed in.

“No, it’s almost all the inmates on the row—at least the ones who have any contact with him at all . . . which isn’t much, by the way. Those guys stay in their cells for twenty-three hours a day. They don’t get rec time the way you think they do, like they did in that
Shawshank
movie. Whatever free time they get, they spend alone in an animal pen.”

Lucas motioned for Marty to hold that thought. He dropped his messenger bag onto his lap and pulled out his digital recorder. “You mind?” he asked.

Marty gave the recorder the side-eye, then shot Morales a look. “You weren’t kidding,” he said, then turned his attention back to Lucas. “You’re really going to quote me on this stuff?”

“As an anonymous source. And only if you let me. You won’t be named.”

Marty leaned back in his seat, the chair groaning beneath his weight. He was grinning, as though someone had just promised him a gig on TV. “Hell, I’ll let you put my family photo in your book if it didn’t cost me my job. It would give my wife something to brag about to that windbag of a mother of hers. The mother-in-law always did like giving me crap for not making much of myself.”

“See,” Josh said. “You tell me to get married, and then you follow up the suggestion with shit like that.”

Lucas exhaled a laugh and placed the recorder on the table. A small light glowed red next to Eperson’s sweating beer glass. “Okay. You were saying that you think Jeffrey Halcomb is creepy, that all the inmates you interact with share the same sentiment.”

“Off the record?” Marty asked one last time.

“Yes, off the record,” Lucas assured him.

“Most of the guards that work the row think he’s damn weird, too,” Marty continued. “But as I said, you can’t really figure out what it is about the guy that makes him so strange. He’s just got this . . .” He moved his hands in front of him in crude semicircles, searching for the right word.

“Vibe,” Josh cut in. “Tell him about that one guy. Halcomb’s neighbor.”

Neighbor.

Lucas’s thoughts were momentarily derailed, his attention tumbling away from the conversation and to Jeanie 150 miles away. A sickening sense of having chosen the wrong option crept beneath his skin. What if he returned to an empty house? What if he stepped inside and Jeanie was gone, lost forever, all because he had to take a meeting, had to chase the dream of fixing his broken life by writing another blockbuster? Did he really believe that a million sales would
win Caroline back? Would she care, or would she simply smile and hand him divorce papers and murmur
sorry, Lou,
before climbing into asshole Kurt Murphy’s brand-new sports car?

“Yeah, his neighbor,” Marty said, pulling Lucas’s attention back to the conversation. “There was a guy a few years ago, he was new to the row. Schwartz. He came in on murder charges. Double homicide. My memory is fuzzy because he wasn’t around for long, but I’m pretty sure he slashed up his wife and kid.”

“Was he transferred to a different facility, or . . . ?”

Marty shook his head. “No, no, he stabbed himself to death, right in the neck.” Marty gripped a butter knife in his hand, as if considering a reenactment. “And that was pretty damn strange, because of the stuff I
do
remember, that Schwartz guy was a tough bastard. The kind that taunts the guards. Not a nice person. He was no soft heart bleeding out guilt behind bars.” He paused, gave Lucas a sideways grin. “That’ll make a good quote, huh? It’s got a nice ring to it. Anyway, Schwartz left a note that said he was going to join his wife and kid in the afterlife, but he didn’t say
afterlife
, he said
eternal
life.”

If you live right, you can live forever.
Echo’s words.

A shudder cartwheeled down his back.

“And who do you think gave him that idea?” Josh asked, raising both eyebrows at him.

“Wait . . .” Lucas peered down at the recorder, held his tongue until the waitress—who had returned with his water—took their orders and meandered away. “So, this inmate, Schwartz,” Lucas continued. “He was in the cell next to Jeff Halcomb?”

“Yep.”

“And he was there for . . . how long?”

“I don’t know, a few months, give or take. Oh, and get this: he stabbed himself with a cross.”

Lucas’s mouth went dry. His thoughts tumbled to the cross Halcomb had left at the front desk—no, that
someone
had left at the desk for Halcomb. The prison would have never allowed an item like that in a supermax cell. Yet somehow, there it was. Those guys could kill a man like Marty in two seconds flat, and yet Schwartz had used the weapon on himself rather than on somebody else.

“Jesus Christ,” Lucas said.

“If that’s who you believe in.” Marty popped another cheese-­covered nacho into his mouth.

“How did he get something like that inside to begin with?” Lucas asked.

“I don’t know, really. I wasn’t on the case, I just heard about what was going on from other guards. But stuff like that happens on occasion. We get some clever visitors now and again, folks trying to smuggle stuff in every which way . . .”

“You don’t wanna
know
which way,” Josh said with a snort.

“And Schwartz wasn’t a suicide risk?” Lucas asked.

“Not that I know of,” Marty replied. “As I said, he was more of a riot risk than anything. He was edgy. The guards didn’t like him. He was definitely the kind of guy who would slash your throat if you gave him an inch.”

It seemed impossible. How could one man convince another to kill himself? How could one man have so much influence over a complete stranger—over a convicted murderer, no less?

“But rather than using his weapon on a guard . . .” Lucas’s thought tapered off to silence. Both Marty and Josh looked uncomfortable with his line of thought, as they should have. Regardless of whether it was an occupational hazard, nobody wanted to think about getting shivved while working the prison floor.

“You want to talk about guards?” Marty asked. “The one who
was on watch when it happened? He quit that same day, right on the spot. A few days after that, he was found dead in his apartment.”

“It wasn’t murder,” Josh said.

“Well,
he
wasn’t murdered,” Marty corrected. “But the guy did manage to kill his wife before offing himself.”

Lucas gaped. He shot a look at Josh, who appeared smugly satisfied at Lucas’s surprise. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

“The papers made it out like the guy was upset about losing his job. Washington Corrections gave him the ax after the suicide on his shift, even though he really quit. But the fact that this guy killed his wife before he did the deed? I mean, it’s
possible
that the wife found out he lost his job.
Maybe
there was a huge fight and he accidentally killed her and then did himself out of guilt. But then there wouldn’t have been a note.”

“A note,” Lucas said.

“Something to the extent of living forever. Coincidence?” Marty raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think so. See where we’re going here?”

“The guard, what was his name?” Lucas asked.

“Stew Hillstone. He was a good guy, which was just another thing that didn’t sit right with any of the people who knew him. Stew loved his wife, Donna. He had been talking about taking her to Hawaii for their anniversary. And then he turns around and kills her, stuck her in the back with a kitchen knife and laid her out on the floor like nothing happened? I heard that the cops wouldn’t have known she was dead had it not been for the giant pool of blood beneath her.”

“Did Hillstone talk to Halcomb often?”

Marty lifted his shoulders in a shrug. “It’s impossible to keep track of who says what to whom, but it looks like Stew and Halcomb had something going on. I mean, Stew was friendly with almost all the guys on the row. He felt bad for ’em, even the child murderers. Stew was kind of weird that way. He kept it to himself for the most
part, but he and Donna were really religious. They believed in all that forgiveness stuff, you know? Something about forgiving being divine. But the way I figure it, if Jeffrey Halcomb can convince an inmate to kill himself from behind a concrete wall, he can sure as hell get to a guard he interacts with on a daily basis.”