False Convictions

24

WHEN THEY ARRIVED at the prison, Graham held up his cell phone to Casey and said, “I’ll wait here and work on lining up the lab. You don’t need me in there, do you?”

“No, I’m fine.”

Casey walked in between the castle turrets and asked through the small speaker in the Plexiglas if she could see the assistant warden. The burly uniformed woman behind the desk looked up from her crossword puzzle.

“You have an appointment with Mr. Mallard?” she asked.

“I don’t,” Casey said, “but he’ll want to see me. I’m with the Freedom Project, working on the Dwayne Hubbard case.”

The woman stared for a minute, then shrugged and picked up her phone. When she finished, she compressed her lips, leaned into her microphone, pointed over to a bench against the wall, and said, “You can have a seat. His secretary will be right down.”

Casey paced the floor until an elderly woman in a flower-print dress shuffled into view and led her through the metal detectors and into the administration building. Mallard had a cramped office with one small window and his secretary sat down at a desk right outside the door. Mallard jumped up from a pile of papers and shook her hand with both of his. He wore an out-of-date double-breasted gray suit with a pink tie.

“Back again. I am honored, Ms. Jordan,” he said, his smile outshining the bald dome of his head. “I was telling friends at dinner just last night about our meeting. How can I help?”

“I’d like to get a blood sample from Dwayne Hubbard and have it sent to a lab right away,” she said. “I think we’ve actually found the proof that will set him free.”

Mallard’s smile turned painful, as if turning someone loose rubbed against his grain.

“I am with the Freedom Project,” she said.

“Of course,” Mallard said. “He’s an unstable man, though, Ms. Jordan. I have to say that.”

“He doesn’t look that way to me,” she said.

Mallard almost frowned.

“I know looks can be deceiving,” she said. “And I know you have a job to do.”

“Four-hundred and sixty-three of the most vicious men in the state,” Mallard said.

“And not an escape since the new wall went up almost a hundred years ago, I’m told,” Casey said.

“Well, just one, actually,” Mallard said.

“And a blood test?” Casey said. “Do you have someone who could do that?”

“We have our own infirmary,” Mallard said.

“I would be glad to sign anything you need from our end,” she said, giving him her best smile. It was a dynamite smile and she reserved it for such occasions.

Mallard sat up straight. His cheeks flushed, somehow increasing the brilliance of the shine atop his head, and he said, “I can handle it.”

Mallard picked up his phone and with an important-sounding voice asked to speak with the captain of the guards. He told the man to retrieve Dwayne Hubbard and bring him to the infirmary right away.

“That fast?” Casey said.

“Would you like to speak with him there?” Mallard asked. “Explain things to him? We’ll need his permission and Dwayne has somewhat of a reputation.”

“He looks like a math teacher,” Casey said.

“Right,” Mallard said, nodding in agreement, “I meant more as a slick talker. He’ll argue with you about the color of the sky if you let him.”

“I wondered before about him being chained up when we first met,” Casey said. “The guard said something about his file.”

Mallard shrugged. “We like to do things by the book. He’s been here quite some time. Someone back in the day may have checked the wrong box. That happens. Better safe than sorry, though.”

Casey followed the assistant warden through a maze of hallways with mint green walls and dull gray floor tiles cracked and waffled at the corners. They descended a stairway, footsteps echoing through the empty space, before a guard let them through a barred doorway that clanked shut behind them. Beds bolted to the floor lined the walls of the infirmary. The crisp white sheets would have looked ordinary but for the manacles hanging from the four corners of each bed. The room’s only occupant lay in the far corner, his face wrapped like a mummy’s in white gauze.

Mallard nodded toward the man and said, “The other guy stuck a hose down the gas tank of a food service truck, sucked out a mouthful, and pulled a circus act on our friend down here.”

“Fire-eater?”

“Spit it out at him over a cigarette,” Mallard said. “Doesn’t need his face, really. He’s a lifer.”

A bulky nurse entered, checked the burned man’s pulse, and waddled toward them.

Through a doorway on the far side of the infirmary, Casey heard the clash of bars rolling open and Dwayne appeared in shackles, followed by a guard. Casey held Dwayne’s indifferent stare as she explained why she was there and what she needed from him. While his expression never changed, her voice rose with enthusiasm.

“Robert Graham, whom you met with me last time,” she said, “is working on pulling some strings to get this lab work moved to the top of the pile. Dwayne, we could have you out of here in a matter of days.”

The nurse reappeared with a test tube, needle, and a rubber strap.

But instead of holding out his arm, Dwayne Hubbard shook his head hard enough to jangle his chains.

“Oh, no,” he said. “You don’t get my blood.”