A False Dawn

THIRTY-FIVE

I was booked and fingerprinted. They took my wallet, watch, clothes, and dignity. I was given an orange jailhouse jumpsuit that was three inches too short. Bond was set at two-thousand. The flip-flops were worn down to cracker-thin soles. I had three minutes to make a call. I had two to make. The first was to an attorney friend in Miami, Carl Hoffman. He started the procedure to post bond. My second call was to Nick. “I have less than a minute. Tell me exactly what Slater did.”

“Onion head lost his cookies once he started searching your bed. At first he looked like a man who’d lost his key. Lookin’ under the pillow. Feelin’ the mattress, getting’ down and lookin’ across the mattress, and the pillow. He was cussin’ your name the whole time. He said, ‘Bastard’s found it.’ He started ripping the bed apart.”

“Have you edited the video, the way you just described?”

“Dave and me. Finished!”

“Send it to the e-mail I gave you. Include ‘warmest regards,’ and my name.”

“Three clicks, and it’s gone. Boom, boom, and boom. Gone!”

“Nick, I’ll need you to come down here and make bail for me.”

“I’m on my way.”

“From my laptop, send the Slater video to Dave’s e-mail for backup. If something happens to me in this jail, if I’m beaten up or killed, you and Dave e-mail the video to the media, include CNN.”

A deputy, with a shaved head and a body built by a neighborhood gym and chemicals, escorted me to the holding cell. The only time he made eye contact with me was when the cell door was slammed shut and locked. He simply nodded and walked away, his boots hollow, and then faint, marching down the corridor.

There is no sound on earth that rocks the cradle of your spirit quite like the finality of a cell door closing and locking in your freedom. Your mind paces the eight-by-six-foot cage like a wild animal searching for an exit that isn’t there. You urinate through a hole in plain sight. You are stripped bare of the most precious of human rights — sovereignty. You are under the absolute authority of people who don’t care what you did or didn’t do, who you are, who you think you were, or what you want.

I stood in the center of the cell and listened to the sounds of despair. The sounds of madmen, the yelling, swearing, the never-ending noises coming from inmates who grunted, protested, and roared like zoo animals at feeding time.

There was graffiti scraped into the wall. The deadening effect of prison brought out jailhouse art and poets that bordered somewhere on the fringe of genius and insanity.

I could smell the stench of urine and chemical bleach. I sat on the hard bed. I’d been standing so long that my legs felt rubbery, muscles tight. I thought about how far I’d come in a half circle. I’d been responsible for putting hundreds of misfits in jails like this. Now I sat among them. Their catcalls, threats and screams reverberated around my rectangle cage like heat lighting bouncing off steel. I felt like I did in the motel room, a smothering sense, as if the air was poison. In the motel room, though, I could walk out in the chill of the rain to escape. In the cell, I had no where to hide from the torrent of misery that flowed down the long corridors searching for company.

I heard him before I saw him. The fast clip of the wingtips against the concrete, the strut, the sense of command and authority in his pace. Slater rounded the corner and stood in front of my cell. He stared, his eyes burning into me.

“Who the hell do you think you are? Your little e-mail trick is horseshit. It shows nothing. Nothing! You hear me? Just a thorough search!”

“Go on and scream Detective. Nobody will notice.” I stood up from the cot and stepped to the bars. “But they will notice your reaction to not finding the hair you planted. I shot video when I found it. The date and time are displayed in the frame. I got a close-up where you’d left the victim’s hair. That was exactly where you looked today trying to find something you’d left. Planting false evidence. Hope you have a hell of a good reason. Because right now it looks like you’re the killer. The killer you’re telling everyone you’re looking for. You know, body language speaks volumes, Slater. We have your on-camera commentary. Let me see if I can quote you from memory: ‘Bastard’s found it.’ You went berserk when you couldn’t find the hair to frame me. Combine that with your editorial, and the fact that evidence acquired on your watch has come up missing. I smell an indictment.”

“You’re fuckin’ nuts, you washed-up prick. I didn’t murder anyone!”

“Then who did?”

“You’re crazy, O’Brien.”

“Maybe — but then jail does have a way to work on the psyche. You’ll discover that when you spend the next twenty years in a place worse than this.”

“What do you want?”

“You to come clean. Tell me what you know about the murder or murders. Tell me why you’re so protective of the Brennens. Maybe Richard Brennen or his old man is a killer. They’ve got plenty of easy prey all around their ranch. You want to take the fall for a psychopath? Even you must have learned something in law enforcement before you got greedy. You know this guy won’t stop. He’s addicted to the kill. You want the blood of these girls on what’s left of your conscious?”

He leaned forward on his big wingtips and made a slight snorting sound from the back of his throat. His eyes were slightly dilated, a nerve twitching under is right eye, his breath smelling of Maalox. A tiny speck of antacid tablet dangled from the corner of his mouth. “Screw you, O’Brien. You don’t know a damn thing.” He turned and left.

After midnight, there was no sign of Nick. I was worried but didn’t have any options. Now it would be too late to make bond. I stretched out on the hard cot and felt my heart beat in my temples. I could smell the stink of sweat on the thin mattress.

I closed my eyes, the fatigue and exhaustion flooding my mind. Somewhere in the twilight of subconscious the dream weaver entered my cell. I stood with my uncle on the wooden deck of my childhood home. He pointed to a pair of eagles starting their nest in the bald cypress tree near the end of our property.

I turned to open the sliding glass doors, but I couldn’t push the latch free. Struggling with the lock, I saw the silhouetted reflection of the eagles on the doors. I cupped my hands to the sides of my face and leaned into the glass to see if my father was in the kitchen. Alll I saw was darkness.