The Cat, The Devil, The Last Escape Read online

  One thing was certain—Anne didn’t want to talk about Morgan or the trial. If Becky mentioned Morgan, Anne grew ill at ease. Becky wanted her to understand that Morgan was innocent, but after three awkward attempts she gave up. Anne would think what she pleased. Becky was surprised when after only a few days, Mariol’s kindness to Sammie seemed to stir a subtle change in Anne. Several times Becky found her watching Sammie with a puzzled frown and once, when Becky was tucking Sammie in bed and hearing her prayers, Sammie said, “Bless Aunt Anne and please make her less lonely.”

  But then came the night when Sammie woke screaming, “Look out! Look out! Get away from him! Get away!” Becky lunged for the lamp switch, turned it on to find Sammie sitting up in bed still half asleep but trembling and terrified. Becky crawled into bed with her, holding her close. “What was it?” she said softly. “What did you dream?”

  “I don’t remember,” Sammie said, clearly lying. “It’s gone now. I want to go to sleep now.” What were these new dreams, that she wouldn’t talk about them? Prison dreams? Ugly prison incidents that no child should see and that Becky couldn’t stop her from seeing?

  “Whatever you dreamed,” Becky said, “there’s more good in life than ugliness. We have to hold on to the bright part, so we’ll be stronger.” They lay holding each other until at last Sammie slept—leaving Becky wakeful, certain that Sammie had seen Morgan hurt. No matter what she told Sammie, she couldn’t shake her own fear. She had no notion that across the room brightness did touch them; that the yellow tomcat sat on the mantel watching them, reaching out an invisible paw to ease them as he, too, considered Sammie’s dream.

  MISTO HAD SEEN the child’s drawings, had looked carefully at the little sketches. In one a man was falling a great distance tied to a rope, and that puzzled him. The tomcat had been in and out of the Chesserson house ever since Becky and Sammie had arrived; he had prowled the opulent rooms getting to know Anne and Mariol, seeing how each interacted with Sammie. He had rolled luxuriously on the fine upholstered furniture and the dense imported carpets, leaving no mark; he had sampled Mariol’s good cooking, licking his whiskers; he had stalked the neighborhood rooftops. Galloping along the steep angles of the Tudor’s slate roof, leaping into the high foliage of the great oaks and across the roofs of the big Morningside homes, he had spied down through mullioned windows, and peered down into lush, shaded gardens; but always he returned to Sammie. He was shocked to a rigid stillness when Anne Chesserson realized that something unseen wandered the house.

  If Misto drifted into the room with her, she would turn in his direction with a puzzled frown. If he stood on the kitchen table licking a plate or peering down at Sammie’s drawings, Anne would look around the room, frowning. She never seemed afraid. When she became too intently aware of him Misto would vacate the house, would return to prowl the prison beside Lee, abandoning the luxury of Morningside, watching for the shadow that, too often, followed his cellmate.

  13

  LEE’S MORNING WAS brightened considerably on his next visit to the dispensary by the sight of Karen Turner coming down the corridor carrying a sheaf of files, the zipper of her short uniform pulled low, her dark hair clean and bouncy. “Hi, Fontana. You look chipper today.”

  Lee grinned at her, the very sight of her made him feel lighter. “Guess I do feel pretty good, I just got myself a job.” Thanks to Gimpy, when a job had opened up in the cotton mill, Lee was in—with some reservation from his counselor, on a try-and-see basis. He was to start the next afternoon on a short, three o’clock shift.

  “I’m glad for you, Fontana.” Karen’s smile warmed him clear to his toes. She went on past him, but before she entered the next office she turned and gave him a wink and a thumbs-up.

  His counselor had been hesitant about the job, but Lee persisted until Camp said he could give it a try. “Wear a handkerchief over your face, Fontana. Or get a mask from the dispensary, the air isn’t the best in there.”

  Lee said he would, but he wasn’t going to go in there acting like a sissy, with some kerchief tied around his face.

  He moved on down the hall to the doctor’s office, still thinking about Karen’s smile and wink. Swinging up onto the examining table, he took off his shirt, wincing as Dr. Floyd slapped the cold stethoscope on him. With the doctor preoccupied, thumping his chest and back, telling him to take deep breaths and listening to his heart, Lee scanned the small, square room. A tray of several sizes of adhesive tape and bandages sat beside the sink, along with a bottle of antiseptic. There were no small, sharp tools to be easily slipped into a guy’s pocket. But across the room on the wall hung dispensers for rubber gloves and paper towels, a disposal bin for waste products and another one for used razor blades: a simple metal box with a handle that operated a dump bin at the bottom. Lee studied this as Dr. Floyd took his blood pressure. He was looking innocently at the doctor when an orderly stuck his head in the door, a thin guy in a pale blue lab coat. “Can you take a phone call from the warden?”

  Floyd glanced uneasily at Lee, then looked around the room, making sure that no sharp instruments had been left out. “Stay put, Fontana.” He moved away, leaving the door wide open, stopping to speak to the orderly. The orderly disappeared from Lee’s sight and Lee moved fast. When the orderly reappeared, stepping into the room, Lee sat on the table as before, his legs dangling.

  Dr. Floyd wasn’t gone much longer. Returning, he nodded to Lee. “You can put on your shirt, Fontana. So far you look good. Keep doing your breathing exercises. I want to see you in a week.” As Floyd moved to the sink to wash his hands, Lee left the room walking carefully, conscious of the tangle of double-edged razor blades wrapped in a paper towel; he had slipped them into his pants pocket in the second before the orderly stepped in, blades that must have been used to shave around wounds before they were stitched and bandaged.

  As he left the clinic, pushing out through the iron door, an icy wind hit him, cutting down the open walk. As he passed the cotton mill he casually checked its trash bins, glanced around, and removed a length of cotton cord from among the detritus.

  From there he headed for the automotive shop, where the sound of hammering on metal rang sharply. Even from a distance the wind carried the smell of oil and solvent and wet paint. He found Morgan at work on a sleek red roadster. They could hardly talk for the noise echoing through the busy shop, and then the rumble and cry of a freight train. At least a dozen men worked in the shop, sanding car parts, carefully tapping out dents with rubber mallets, filling tiny flaws in fenders and door panels, spraying on primer. Three men at the far end stood under a lift working on the axle of an old Model T. Lee smiled, watching Morgan. It was clear that Blake liked his work. When Blake turned to look at Lee his usual anger was gone, his expression almost happy. Lee made small talk, admiring the red roadster and the work Morgan was doing, the newly painted fender replacement, the new tan upholstery. They visited for only a few minutes. As Lee turned to leave, blowing his nose, he managed to drop his handkerchief over a lost machine nut that had rolled beneath a tire. Picking up both, he left the auto shop with everything he needed for a good, no-nonsense weapon.

  So far he had been passive with Coker and Delone, had played it low-key. But those two were half crazy, the kind who got a jolt from bullying and hurting and worse. That night after supper, alone in his cell, Lee checked the cells across the way to be sure no one was idly watching. The custodian had already done the count, the cells were locked for the night and that was the most privacy he’d get. He glanced the length of the cellblock, then, sitting on his bunk with his back to the bars, a pillow behind him as if he was reading, he got to work.

  In the half-light from the corridor, keeping the materials close in his lap so he could pull the blanket up, he cut the cotton cord in two and unraveled the shorter piece to produce lengths of heavy-duty thread. He stretched out the other cord, and at one end he tied the heavy, half-inch-thick machine nut. Moving down the length of the cord he commenced to tie on t
he double-edged blades with the heavy thread, taking care not to slice his fingers. He was lucky to have gotten them. In the cellblocks the guards kept tight count of every razor blade a fellow was issued and collected them again pretty quick.

  Down at the end of Lee’s cot the tomcat appeared as the faintest shadow watching with kneading claws the enticing lengths of thread twist and writhe as they unraveled, watching the heavier, snakelike behavior of the long cord. He wanted to leap into the tangle playing and rolling, biting at the threads. The sharp blades stopped him—though they couldn’t hurt a ghost, memories of past lives and sharp tools were too indelibly a part of his nature. Restraining himself, he only let his shadowy tail lash as Lee fished each thread through the narrow slot of a blade and around the cord and back.

  In order for the weapon to be effective each blade had to be strongly secured at both ends. Working on the garrote Lee found himself thinking about Morgan Blake, puzzling over the young man’s story. Why did it keep nudging at him, why did he keep thinking about Blake’s version of the crime and the trial? He’d heard a million sob stories, all of them as fake as counterfeit twenties, so why did he believe this one?

  But somehow he did believe, and that bothered him. They’d had breakfast together several times when Blake sought him out; each time Blake got onto the bank robbery and the events leading up to that day. Lee didn’t want to listen, but his instinct said Blake was telling the truth, said Blake had been set up, that a carefully planned robbery and killing had been smoothly pulled off at the young man’s expense.

  Lee was irritated that he believed Blake; it bothered him that he’d begun to care about the guy’s predicament. Getting involved in someone else’s life, in prison, was the best way Lee knew to jeopardize his own life. There was no way he could help Blake even if he was stupid enough to try. Yet he couldn’t shake his growing interest.

  It was late when Lee finished tying on the razor blades, working in the dim light of his own shadow. Every time he heard the guard’s soft footsteps walking the rounds he pulled up the blanket, picked up his pulp novel and bent over it. Sometimes he rattled and wadded up a candy wrapper, tossing it on the floor. When the guard had moved on, Lee would continue with the garrote. The weapon was about twenty inches long. At the opposite end to the nut he tied a loop large enough to slip his finger through. The blades, crowded close together, started ten inches from the loop and ended four inches from the steel nut. Turning to check the cellblock, Lee let the weapon hang from his right forefinger.

  Along the rows of cells, the men he could see were either asleep or busy with their own concerns, lying in bed reading, writing letters. Satisfied no one was watching, he moved back into the shadows. “Get out of here,” he hissed at the ghost cat. Misto disappeared but reappeared at the head of Lee’s cot, the faintest shadow. Lee could just see his whiskers and ears flat to his head, but Misto’s toothy hiss was all bravado. Free of the cat, he swung the garrote in a circle, letting the weight of the nut pull the cord taut, whirling it until a faint light flashed off the sharp blades, then the garrote began a faint whistle. At the sound he stopped its motion, glancing across the way. Carefully he rolled the nut and blades up inside the cord until the finished product looked like no more than a ball of string. He dropped this in a Bull Durham bag he’d fished out of the trash behind the mess hall, slipped it under his mattress, and crawled into bed. If Coker and Delone wanted to play rough, he was ready.

  14

  THE COTTON LOOMS thrashed and banged as if they’d tear themselves from the floor; the big room rocked with rows of clattering looms, the thread feeding into them faster than Lee could follow. His job was to keep the spindles supplied to machines fourteen and fifteen so they’d never stop running, and he had to stay on his toes. Red lines painted on the floor cautioned him where to keep clear. As the canvas fabric edged its way out of each loom, Lee’s freckle-faced partner guided its dropping in folds onto a rubber-wheeled cart.

  Gimpy had warned him that no matter what job a man did in here, he had to be careful, everything in the place was dangerous. When Gimpy had introduced him to the foreman, the middle-aged, military-looking man walked Lee through the routine just once and then put him to work. The cotton came into the mill already ginned, the seeds removed. It was air-blown in a big metal hopper up on the second-level loft, was sent from there through a large tube to machines that spun it into thread, wound the thread on spindles, and the spindles sent down to the busy looms. The room’s thunder seemed to rip right through Lee. He had put cotton wads in his ears, as his partner wore, but it didn’t help much. The air was murky with cotton dust, but he wasn’t wearing a sissy mask. He thought he could breathe shallowly until he was out in the fresh air again. Only when he left his machine to get more spindles did he find something to laugh about.

  Glancing into the adjoining room he saw the woven canvas being sewn into large bags, and each stamped in black letters, U.S. MAIL. He was helping make the exact same bags he’d buried in the desert full of hundred-dollar bills. The bags he’d taken at gunpoint from the Blythe post office. And didn’t that make him smile.

  By the end of his shift his cough was bad and his body ached from the noise, the clatter penetrated clear to his bones. The most positive thing about the job, he thought, was that it allowed him to drop out of group counseling—but even that didn’t work. As he left the noisy cotton mill, the guard stopped him.

  “You’re to go from here to your counselor, Fontana.” The man had a face like a bloodhound, drooping jowls, no smile. “He’ll set up a new time for your group sessions.”

  Lee swallowed back his reply, which would only have gotten him in trouble. Heading for Paul Camp’s building, walking back between rows of desks, he found Camp leaning over his own desk tamping tobacco into a dark, carved pipe. Leaning back in his chair, Camp took his time lighting up. Drawing the smoke in deeply, he handed Lee his new counseling schedule. Lee wanted to argue, but what good?

  Camp sat looking him over in a way Lee didn’t like. “I have a request from Morgan Blake.”

  Lee waited. Why tell him about Blake’s problems?

  “Blake wants you to accompany him on his wife’s visiting days, says she’d like to meet you.”

  “Why would she do that? What the hell is that about? Visiting is for families.” Why would Blake want him there during that private time? Why would the woman want to meet him?

  “It’s an unusual request,” Camp said. “Did you know Blake before you were transferred to Atlanta?”

  “Never heard of him. Why would I want to get involved in someone else’s family?”

  Camp leaned back until his wooden chair creaked. “You’ve gotten friendly with Blake pretty fast.”

  “He’s a nice enough kid. But visiting day? I don’t think so.”

  Camp just looked at him.

  “I listen to him,” Lee said, “the kid needs someone to vent to, but I sure didn’t put it in his head to meet his family.”

  “Morgan says that talking to you has helped him accept his situation. You think you’re some kind of counselor?”

  “I listen good,” Lee said, hiding his amusement.

  “Whatever you’re doing,” Camp said, “seems to be working. I’ve noticed a change in Blake.”

  “So what do I get, a medal? Maybe I can counsel the whole family.”

  Camp gave him another long, hard gaze. Lee was about to rise and leave, but his curiosity got the best of him. What harm would it do, a few minutes in the visiting room? It might answer some questions about the way Blake watched him, frowning and puzzled. “What the hell,” he said. “I can give it a try.”

  Camp studied him, made a notation on a pad, and handed Lee a list of visiting hours. Lee moved on out of the office wondering why he’d agreed. Wondering why Blake had made the request. If there was something Morgan knew that Lee didn’t, maybe now he’d find out.

  Bushed from the cotton mill, he skipped supper and headed for his cell. One day on the job
and his cough was bad. His body ached, his head pounded, he knew he should have taken the kitchen job.

  But he wasn’t going to call it quits, he’d wear a damned handkerchief around his face, he’d get used to the noise.

  In the cellblock, as he climbed the metal stairs and moved in through his barred door, his bunk looked mighty good. He collapsed onto it, his strength gone. He was getting old. The thought sent a chill through him. He was deep asleep when Misto dropped onto the cot and stretched out beside him, lying close, listening to Lee’s ragged breathing.

  “She will come now,” the cat whispered, placing a soft paw on Lee’s cheek, sending his words deep into Lee’s dreams. “The child will come now. You’ll know soon enough why Morgan watches you. You’ll know soon enough why, all these years, you’ve carried Mae’s picture with you. You’ll begin to see now that you can defeat the dark spirit. You will take strength not only from me, but from the child.”

  LEE DIDN’T WAKE until morning, to the sounds of men starting the day, coughing and grumbling, the water running, an angry shout, springs creaking and metal clanging. He washed, dressed, stood for the count and then headed for breakfast. Collecting his tray, he found Morgan already at a small table.

  “What’s that about?” he said, setting down his tray. “Why would your wife want me to visit? What kind of scam is this?”

  Morgan looked down at his plate, his face coloring. “Actually, it’s my child who wants you there, it’s Sammie who asked for you.”

  Lee scowled at him. “How does your kid even know about me? What have you told her? Why would . . . ?”

  Morgan drizzled syrup over his pancakes. “I didn’t tell her anything about you. She . . . she dreamed about you. She . . . said you came here from California.”

  Lee looked hard at him.

  “She’s only a little girl,” Morgan said, forking pancakes. The clatter of breakfast dishes and the staccato of men’s voices echoed around them, bouncing off the concrete walls. “She . . . Sammie has these dreams. About people, about things that will happen. Sometimes,” he said, looking almost shyly at Lee, “sometimes her dreams turn out to be real.”