Killer

chapter 2

present

Someone was moaning within the cell block. The noise was muffled; whoever it was must’ve had his face buried in the mattress. I sat and listened, trying to figure out which cell it was coming from and whether the moaning was the result of an inmate humping his mattress or sobbing into it. Not that I cared, but I’d been up several hours now and welcomed the distraction. The hours when I waited for the lights to be turned on were the hardest. Early on at Cedar Junction, when Jenny was putting the maximum she could into my prison commissary account, I had been able to buy myself a reading light and those hours weren’t so bad. Once she came down with cancer, that changed, and it wasn’t long before the only money coming in was from my work detail, which paid all of eight cents an hour. As much as I hated doing it I sold my reading light when my last bulb blew. I couldn’t afford more bulbs; the little money I got was needed to buy necessities like soap and toilet paper. After that I was no longer able to escape from those quiet early hours alone with myself by reading.

If I were back in Cedar Junction, other inmates right now would be giving this guy hell and letting him know in explicit detail what would be happening to his rectum the next day if he didn’t shut the fuck up. Not here, though. Most of the inmates knew they were lucky to be held at a medium security prison. They knew there were far worse places they could be sent, places like Cedar Junction. And that they’d end up in one of those shitholes if they acted up.

There were no windows in the cell block, but still, there was never a true darkness here; only a murky grayness. The same had been true at Cedar Junction. At night both prisons kept a bank of fluorescent lights flickering on beyond the hallway. It was probably a prison regulation, at least in Massachusetts.

My internal clock told me it was five-thirty. At six o’clock every morning the lights are turned on and a horn is blasted solidly for a full minute to rudely awaken any of the lucky ones who had managed to sleep through the night. After the lights and the horn would come the showers, mess hall and then work details. Not for me, though, not with today being my last day in prison. A fourteen-year stretch done and finished with, and I’d be fucked if I was going to give anyone one last chance to ice me. Later that morning I had one last appointment with my “society reintegration” case worker, then I was done. Until then, I wasn’t going to leave my cell for any other reason. Not that I believed anyone here had the intestinal fortitude to take me out, nor would it make any sense at this point for Lombard’s boys to let it happen, but still, I’d feel like an idiot if I gave someone an opening at this late date.

The moaning had stopped. I had to turn my thoughts to something other than the stillness and quiet suffocating me, and I started thinking of Lombard’s boys, of how surprised they had to be that I was going to be leaving here alive. I wondered briefly what odds were given on the street that I’d ever walk out of prison. Probably at least ten to one, and even then it would’ve been a sucker’s bet. Not that Lombard’s boys didn’t make an effort. I knew they’d put a price on my head; at times I’d spot the ones who were gearing themselves up to make a go for it. But then I’d catch their eye, and I’d see their toughness fading fast, and I’d know they didn’t have what it took to go through with it. The one time any of them tried it, there were three of them and they had set it up so that we’d be alone. When they made their move I moved faster and the one closest to me was on his knees vomiting blood, the other two quickly looking like scared school-children and scrambling to get away from me. After that, all the others that Lombard’s boys tried to employ would make the same mistake of first trying to give me the hard stare in the eye, and then they’d be worthless.

That was all in the past. A different breed in prison now than what you can get on the outside. Things were soon going to get a lot easier for Lombard’s boys, or harder, depending on how you looked at it.

I closed my eyes and listened for whether the moaning had started up again. It hadn’t. Nothing but a dead, uneasy quiet. And far too much of it.

It was eleven o’clock when a guard dropped off the street clothes I had on at the time I was arrested all those years ago. I shed my prison dungarees and tee shirt, and put on my old clothes instead. My shoes, while dusty and scuffed, still fit. Nothing else did. My pants hung loosely on me, as did my shirt and leather jacket. I could’ve used a belt, but I guess they were holding that back until I was officially released. Still, it was good to be wearing my own clothes again. I was leaving the cell for the last time, and the only thing I took with me was a large envelope stuffed with papers. Nothing else was worth the bother.

While I was led through the cell block to the administrative wing of the prison, the guard escorting me made an offhand comment about this being my last day.

“Last hour, actually.”

We walked in silence for a minute, then he muttered out of the side of his mouth, “No fucking justice.”

I turned to give him a look. He was in his late twenties, about the same age as my youngest son. A big, awkward-looking kid with short blond hair, a pug nose and wide-set eyes. His flesh hung as loosely off him as my clothes did me, and it had the same color as boiled ham. There was something familiar about him, and I realized what it was. He looked enough like one of the guys I had taken out to be his son. I asked him what his name was and that startled him, alarm showing in his pink, fleshy face.

“For Chrissakes,” I said, “I just want to know if you’re related to Donald Sweet.”

He shook his head.

“How about any of the other guys I, uh, had business with?”

Again, slowly, his head moved from side to side.

I looked him up and down, feeling a bit of my old self coming to the fore. “Shut the fuck up, then,” I said. “And show some goddamned respect to your elders.”

He stared straight ahead after that, his eyes glazed, his mouth having shrunk to a small, angry oval, and enough red seeping into his cheeks to make his flesh now more the color of a piece of bloodied ham. We walked in silence, and it wasn’t until we arrived at my caseworker’s office and I was halfway through the door that he remarked how maybe I didn’t find justice in prison but that the streets knew how to take care of rats like me. I closed the door behind me, not bothering to turn around.

My caseworker, Theo Ogden, sat amongst the clutter of his small windowless office. He squinted at me from behind his thick glasses, and from the uneasy smile he gave it was clear he had overheard the guard’s comment. “Mr March, I apologize for that,” he said.

“I’ll be hearing a lot worse soon,” I said.

“Maybe so, but it was still uncalled for.”

I shrugged it off, and took the chair across from his desk that he gestured for me to sit in. Theo was about the same age as the guard who brought me to him, but was much smaller both in height and weight, and the complete opposite in demeanor. Like the other times I’d met with him, he appeared disheveled and harried, and the suit he wore was about as big on him as my old clothes were on me.

After the way our last meeting went I wasn’t expecting much, but the son of a gun surprised me by finding me a job cleaning a small office building in Waltham and renting me a furnished one-room apartment within walking distance of where I’d be working. The hours were going to be from 8 p.m. to 2 a.m., Monday through Saturday. I guess at that time the building would be empty except for security, and the building’s tenants wouldn’t ever see me, but still, I was amazed he was able to find anyone willing to hire me, even if it was only cleaning toilets and mopping floors. Theo had me starting my new job tonight, figuring I could use the money, and he stepped me through a budget he had drawn up – which showed how much I’d be taking in each month through public assistance and my job and what my expenses would be. It would be tight, with me hovering just above the poverty line, but it didn’t much matter. If I ended up on the streets, it would still be better than where I’d spent the last fourteen years. And besides, I didn’t expect to be around long enough to worry about it, not with my family history, and certainly not with Lombard’s boys out there waiting, and maybe twenty-eight other families who might want to beat them to the punch.

Theo had finished walking me through the budget, and was now staring at me uneasily while he pulled at his lower lip. I knew he was deliberating whether to broach the same subject we had discussed the last few times we met. I saved him the trouble and told him I had no interest in leaving Massachusetts.

“Mr March, you should consider it,” he said. “Even at this late date, I could arrange it if you let me.”

“What would be the point? If someone wanted to find me bad enough, they’d track me down wherever I ran to.”

“But you’re making it so easy for them…” He stopped to take off his glasses and rub his eyes. With his glasses off he looked like a scrawny teenager who could’ve been president of his high school chess team instead of a prison caseworker who had to spend his days dealing with people like me. He put his glasses back on, ageing fifteen years in the process. His expression turning grave, he told me, “I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, but the news has been running a lot of stories about you, and someone released a recent photo – one that was taken when you arrived here from Cedar Junction. People out there know what you look like, Mr March. I can’t imagine it being too safe out there for you.”

I handed him the envelope I had brought with me, the same one that was delivered two weeks ago filled with court documents outlining the five wrongful-death suits that had been brought against me, all filed by the same attorney. A perplexed frown took over Theo’s features as he looked through the legal papers. Once it fully dawned on him what they meant, he looked up at me, blinking.

“There must be some way to work around this,” he said.

“There isn’t,” I said. “And as you can see I need to be at the Chelsea District Court in three weeks for the first of the lawsuits. They have to know I’m broke and that they’re not going to collect any money. The lawyer’s not doing this on a contingency basis, and he sure as fuck isn’t doing it out of the goodness of his heart. Someone has to be paying the legal bills, either the families or, more likely, some other interested third party who arranged this. And probably for no other reason than to keep me from leaving the area.”

Theo stared intently back at the paperwork, trying to figure out a way around the court appearances I was required to make. There wasn’t any. I didn’t have the money for the traveling back and forth if I were to move out of state, and even if I did it wouldn’t have mattered. As soon as I was back in Chelsea for any of the court dates I’d be right in Lombard’s backyard. Of course, I could’ve been making it sound more sinister than it really was. The lawsuits could’ve been filed for no other reason than to allow those families to have their day in court. But the expense of it made that seem unlikely. I took the papers from Theo’s hands. It didn’t much matter – if nothing else those lawsuits made it a quick argument between the two of us, because even if I could’ve I wasn’t about to leave the Boston area. I wasn’t sure why that was, at least nothing I could articulate, or really get a firm grip on. Of course I could’ve simply used the excuse that outside of my time in prison I’d lived my whole life around Boston and wasn’t about to leave now, and that I was also hoping to re-establish contact with my kids. There was some truth to that, but there was something else, kind of a vague feeling that I needed to stay in the area. I just didn’t know why exactly.

“I guess that’s it,” Theo said.

“Yeah, I guess it is.”

“Maybe after these legal issues are settled you can think about relocation.”

“Maybe,” I agreed, although we both knew it wouldn’t much matter by then. By that time, one way or another, it would be over. I’d be either dead or forgotten.

“We might as well finish processing you,” Theo said with a tired smile.

He brought out a small stack of paperwork for me to sign, and while I did that he left the office. When he returned he had my personal effects – belt, wallet, watch and wedding ring. I was surprised no one had stolen the watch. It must’ve been tempting, especially with the thought of me dying in prison and no one ever finding out about it.

I slipped the belt on. It was too big for me, my pants still dragging down. I was going to have to carve out a few more holes in it. I almost asked Theo if he had a pocket knife, but he didn’t seem the type and I had the thought that he’d panic and start thinking there were other reasons for me asking for one.

“Do you want me to arrange a taxi to take you to the commuter rail?” Theo asked after waiting for me to slip my wallet and wedding ring into my pants pocket. I did the same with my watch.

I shook my head. I had a hundred and seventy-two dollars on me, forty of which I had when I was arrested, the rest from my prison account and what Theo had been able to arrange as an advance on my monthly public assistance payments. I needed to conserve the little I had. The station was four and a half miles away. A taxi probably wouldn’t cost more than a few bucks, but still, I’d walk it. The fresh air would do me good after all these years. Maybe it would help with my headache.

“Do the reporters know I’m being released today?”

Theo made a face. “They shouldn’t. I’ve gotten a few calls, and have been practicing the art of misinformation by giving them Wednesday as your release date.”

The door opened and a guard came in. He nodded at Theo, then fixed his gaze past me, making sure to avoid eye contact. I stood up and thanked Theo for his decency.

Fortunately I didn’t embarrass myself any further by gushing about how it was the only decency I’d been treated to over the past fourteen years, because I could clearly see the thoughts that passed through his eyes – that he was just doing his job and it wasn’t his place to pass judgment on people, that he would leave that to God. He didn’t say any of that. Instead he must’ve decided that discretion was the better part of valor. “Good luck to you, Mr March,” he said. There was no hand offered, not that I expected one. I gathered up the paperwork he had given me, and left with the guard who was waiting to escort me out.

This guard was not the same one who had brought me to Theo’s office. At least twenty years older, short-cropped gray hair, thick folds creasing his bulldog-shaped face. He didn’t say a word to me while he led me to the front gate. I stepped outside, blinking, the sun big and bright overhead. The gate to the prison closed quietly behind me. There was no one out there waiting for me, no one in the prison had dropped a dime to the media about me being released today. I could understand that. I was an embarrassment to them. If they could’ve they would have thrown away the key and never let me out, but they didn’t have that option. Not that there hadn’t been guards trying to bait me over the years in the hope of extending my sentence, but it was always done half-heartedly, and always with some fear. They knew what I was capable of, and they had to be worried that I’d ignore the bait – which I always did – and get out someday. Now that they had to release me, they wanted it done as quietly as possible. I couldn’t much blame them.

It was the middle of October, and it was cold out, maybe in the low forties, and with the wind whipping about, it felt colder. Within seconds I was feeling a chill deep in my bones. These days I got cold so damn easily. I zipped up my jacket and grabbed the open collar, trying to hold it closed as much as I could around the neck area. Then, after looking around to see if there were any cars idling nearby and seeing that there weren’t, I set out on foot to catch a train.