The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape

20

LEE HAD STARTED down toward the big yard, meaning to sit quietly in the thin morning sun and try to ease his hurting side, when he saw something that stirred a shock of challenge—but sent a jolt of fear through him, too. He was heading down the hillside steps when he noticed something different about the thirty-foot wall towering over him. The way the sunlight fell, he glimpsed a hint of shadow running up the concrete, the faintest blemish. Not a cloud shadow, it was too thin and straight. Some imperfection in the wall? He paused to look, leaning casually on the metal rail.

In the yard below, half a dozen younger inmates were jogging the track. Two men were playing handball against the wall itself, and beyond them three convicts were throwing a baseball, the figures dwarfed by the giant wall. He looked carefully at the thin line but when he started down the stairs for a closer view it disappeared, was lost in the way the light fell.

He moved on down, trying to recapture the shadow, but not until he reached the lowest step did he see it again. A thin vertical line running from the ground straight up thirty feet to the top. When Lee moved, the line disappeared. He moved back a step, and there it was. He propped his foot on the lower rail, looking. It must be an interlocking joint, though he couldn’t find another like it. This was the only flaw he could see along the bare expanse between the near tower and the distant one, away at the far corner. Could this be a defect when the forms were up? So faint a blemish that when the forms were removed it was missed, had been left uncorrected with no last-minute touch of the trowel to smooth it away? His gaze was over halfway up, following the line, when he saw something else.

Some six inches on either side of the line he could see a small round indentation, the faintest dimple picked out by the slanting sun. Following the line itself, he found two more dots, and two above those, blemishes so indistinct that his slightest move made them vanish.

He noted where the line struck at the base of the wall in relation to the curve of the jogging track. Taking his time, he moved on down the stairs, across the yard and the jogging track. He sat down against the wall just at the joint, casually watching the joggers and ballplayers. No one paid him any attention. When he ran his hand behind him he could feel the joint. When he felt up and down, he found the lowest small dimple. He scraped it with his thumb, then pressed it hard and felt the heavy paint break away. He pushed his finger into the hole. A snug fit, but so deep he couldn’t touch the end.

If all the dimples were this deep, a man had only to figure out how to use them. He found the chip that had fallen behind him, and took a good look. Layer after layer of dried paint hinted at the venerable age of the wall. He visualized it being built. First, a metal interstructure, then the plywood or metal forms both inside and out to receive the wet cement. The line had to be a joint between two sheets of the form. The forms themselves, angled in from the thicker base, would have had supports to keep the cement from collapsing as it dried.

There had to be other lines and other groups of holes. Or did there? Maybe the other holes had all been carefully filled, the lines smoothed away and plastered over. How could this one joint have been overlooked? Maybe this was where two workers met at quitting time? Maybe they had applied one coat of spackle, and the next day they moved on, forgetting to finish this joint? Soon it was painted over by other, uncaring workmen? Leaning back against the wall, he looked up its great height to where it rounded at the top.

If a fellow were to push an iron bar into each hole, he could climb this baby, easy as going up spikes in a telephone pole.

Except, the guards in the tower would pick you off like a cockroach on a barn door.

But when he looked up toward the tower, he couldn’t see the windows that circled it, not from where he was sitting. He could see just a little of the room’s base flaring out atop the wall. Frowning, he glanced toward the farther tower down at the end but couldn’t see any more of that one. If he couldn’t see the windows, the guards inside couldn’t see him, unless they leaned dangerously far out.

Maybe they wouldn’t see a climber scaling the wall until he got near the top, and that thought ripped a thrill of challenge through Lee.

When he looked down the full stretch of the wall, sighting in both directions, he could see that it bowed in. The forms had been bowed here, something had gone badly awry. Either no one noticed or no one wanted to take responsibility. No one had wanted to tear out the forms or maybe tear out part of the wall itself and rebuild it. Maybe some foreman thought no one would ever notice, and that it wouldn’t matter anyway. Once the cement was dry and painted over, why would such a tiny flaw matter? Excitement made his hands tremble. Had he stumbled on something that maybe no one else in this entire prison knew or didn’t think important? Sitting there against the wall, Lee had to smile.

You wouldn’t need a bar at each hole. All you needed was three short iron rods to push in and out. One to hold on to, one to stand on, the third to set for the next step. Lean down, pull the lower pin, insert it over the handhold pin. Step higher, pull out the bottom pin, and replace it in the hole above you. At the top where the guards could see you, you’d have to be quick. You’d leave the last pin in, hook the looped end of a rope over it, and slide down the outside. Slide to freedom.

Lee’s own time was so short that he had no need to escape. But Blake, if his appeal was denied, could be looking at the rest of his life in this trap.

If Blake was to get out of here, if he and Blake together left this joint and could find Brad Falon and get new evidence, maybe make Falon tell where he’d hidden the bank money, Blake would have a chance. The chance he’d never had when, before he knew there’d been a bank robbery, before he knew anything about the crime, he was handcuffed and hauled off to jail.

If they could get out of there, get their hands on Falon, make him tell where he hid the money . . . Maybe it was still in the canvas bank bags where the tellers had stuffed it, bags like the one Falon had planted in Morgan’s car. That was the evidence Morgan needed. Those bank bags, most of them, were edged with leather around the top and had leather handles, and leather should retain fingerprints. If the cops got lucky and found Falon’s prints, that was all Becky’s lawyer would need. He could get a warrant based on new evidence, and the DA would have to indict Falon. There would be a new trial and, if it was a fair trial this time, Blake would be on his way to freedom.

Leaning back against the cool concrete, Lee wondered. Had he stumbled on this by accident? Or had he been led, could this discovery be Satan’s trap? Had he been enticed into this view of the wall? Was he being teased to make an aborted try that could leave them both locked up for the rest of their lives or get them shot and killed?

Picking up a handful of dirt, he crammed it in the hole in the wall and smeared it across the concrete, then he rose and left the big yard. Crossing toward the cellblock he told himself he wasn’t going to think about this, that the idea would never work. That he wasn’t going to screw up his release and mess up what chance Morgan might have for an appeal, he wasn’t going to blow Morgan’s possible new trial all to hell.

But in the next few days it wasn’t easy to leave the idea alone. He thought about the wall at night when he woke with his side hurting. Thought about it when he woke in the morning and all during his shift in the kitchen, thought hard about it when a train rumbled screaming by headed across the country. Thought about it until he wished he’d never seen the damned flaw.