Serial

40

Jefferson City, 1992

The room was small and gray and square. A single rectangular wooden table and two wooden chairs were bolted to the concrete floor. The overhead light fixture was made up of two softly buzzing fluorescent tubes encased in a wire cage. It provided the only illumination in the room. The light was pale and ghastly. The temperature was warm. The odor was a blend of perspiration and lingering fear.

Vincent Salas sat directly across from Westerley. A guard in a uniform that was way too small for him stood outside the single door that had a tall, narrow window in it so he could glance in now and then and see that everything was going smoothly.

Westerley had told the guard it was okay to go ahead and remove Salas’s handcuffs. There was no reason for Salas to make trouble. And if he did, Westerley would welcome it.

Salas was thinner than when he’d stood trial and had already acquired the dusty gray pallor of the longtime convict. He went with the room. His dark hair was cut military short, and the flesh around his sad dark eyes was finely lined. Westerley thought Salas was one of those cons who would age fast behind the walls.

“Are we here to talk about my parole?” Salas asked in a husky voice. He still had at least the vestige of a sense of humor.

“We’re here to talk about your letters.”

“My cigarettes, did you say?”

Westerley gave him a grim smile and pulled two unopened packs of Camels from his pocket and tossed them in front of Salas on the table. A standard form of prison bribery that never seemed to change. Or maybe by now it had become simply good manners.

“I’m rich,” Salas said, and scooped the packs close to him and tucked them in his shirt.

“You didn’t say thanks,” Westerley said.

“That’s because I know they aren’t free.”

“Something else that isn’t free is using the U.S. mail to harass Beth Brannigan.”

Salas settled back in his chair, acting like a man in control. “I think I have the right to correspond with whoever I want to on the outside, so long as the letters pass the censor.”

“I’m going to see that they don’t. And you’re not corresponding with anyone. The letters only went in one direction.”

Salas studied him. “You puttin’ the salami to Beth? Because I never did.”

“Sure, you’re innocent. Like almost everybody else in here.”

Salas touched his chest lightly with his fingertips. “But I am innocent.”

Westerley leaned toward him. “What you’re not anymore is a letter writer. Not if the letters are to Beth Brannigan.”

“What if I get a lawyer and insist on my rights?”

“Your lawyer would tell you that, as a practical matter, you’d better find another pen pal.”

“Practical the same as legal?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes not. This is out-state Missouri and we got certain traditions. Even if you behave in here and somehow get out in ten or fifteen years, I might not be sheriff any longer. But whoever my successor is, or his successor, if you write any more letters to Beth, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

Salas showed no reaction. Penitentiary face already, Westerley thought.

“My guess is you’d make a small mistake that could be regarded as a parole violation,” Westerley said, “and you’d be back here like you were snapped back by a rubber band. That’s if the parole board never saw your letters and granted you a parole to begin with. You start your stretch by harassing your rape victim via the U.S. mail, and the odds are you’ll grow old here and deteriorate along with the buildings.”

“I guess you got them letters in your possession.”

“I do. And I’m gonna hold on to them. And there aren’t gonna be any more of them, or I’ll see that you don’t have to wait ten or fifteen years to wish you’d never learned to write. You’ll limp all the rest of your miserable life.”

“A threat?”

“You betcha. An actual physical threat. But just between you and me.”

“Maybe Beth likes my letters. Maybe she’s in love with me.”

“Like she loves garbage.”

“Some women do love garbage.”

“If she was one, I wouldn’t be here. Anyway, she only read the first few letters. She turned the rest over to me unopened.”

“But you opened them.”

“Sure. I’m the sheriff.”

Salas closed his eyes, as if he didn’t want Westerley to see the thoughts behind them. Then he opened them and smiled. Westerley was liking that smile less and less.

“Can I smoke in here?” Salas asked.

“It don’t matter. I’m leaving shortly.” Westerley leaned in close and locked gazes with Salas. Held steady until he won the staring contest. When Salas looked away, Westerley clutched his face by the chin between thumb and forefinger, as you might do with a recalcitrant child, and swiveled his head back so they were looking at each other again. “You write any more letters and I’m gonna see you alone in another room where there won’t be a guard within shouting distance. You get my meaning?”

Salas didn’t seem scared, but he was paying close attention.

Westerley squeezed Salas’s lower jaw harder and gave him a grim smile. “We got us an understanding?”

Salas said something like “Eyah.”

Westerley released Salas’s chin but made sure their gazes were still locked.

Salas didn’t look away this time. His dark eyes were flat and emotionless, maybe the way they’d been when he raped Beth. Westerley knew the distance in those eyes; he’d driven Salas’s sick and evil demon well back in its lair.

“If she ain’t opening the letters anyway,” Salas said, “I don’t see any point in sending more.”

“I’m glad you got that straight in your mind.”

Westerley stood up, then went over and rapped a knuckle on the door as a signal to the guard that he was leaving.

“Go easy on the cigarettes,” he said, with a glance back at Salas. “Those things are killing lots of rats on the outside.”