Читать книгу Fox River - Emilie Richards - Страница 8

The inmates at Ludwell State Prison left Christian Carver alone. That hadn’t always been true. When he had arrived as a frightened twenty-three-year-old, he had snagged more than his share of attention. Athletic and strong, he was also lean-hipped and slim. And at twenty-three Christian hadn’t yet learned the importance of feeling nothing, so that he truly had nothing to hide.

In a matter of months he had learned—the hard way—everything he needed to survive a life sentence. Who to befriend and who not to let out of his sight. How to tolerate the noise and the smell. How to find some common denominator with men who had broken into houses or set them ablaze, maniacs who had murdered old women and raped small children. The right balance between anger and hate, so that he could endure but not be consumed by the fire within him.

He had made a peace of sorts with his life. One of the guards had taken an interest in young Christian’s welfare and moved him into a cell with an old man convicted of murdering his wife. Alf Johnson had smothered his beloved Doris at her own request when the cancer eating away her lungs made every breath a torment. In the pre-Kevorkian days of Alf’s trial, Doris’s death had simply been premeditated murder.

Alf had used his years in prison to pursue the education his life on the outside had never allowed, and he had taken the young man under his wing. Before his death a year later, he’d taught Christian how to have a life behind bars, as well as one important motto to live by.

Only one man can imprison your spirit.

Now, as always, Christian was employing everything he’d learned.

“I don’t give advice.” Christian examined the golden retriever puppy at his feet. Seesaw had a coat as shiny as polished nuggets and liquid brown eyes that noticed absolutely everything. “Seesaw, sit.”

The dog sat obediently, her plump puppy body wiggling with pent-up energy. But Seesaw stayed where she was, despite instincts that told her otherwise.

Christian reached down to pet and praise her.

The man beside him spoke. “I don’t need advice, man. I just need to know how to get Tyrell off my back.”

“Same thing.” Christian snapped the leash on Seesaw’s collar. “Heel, Seesaw.”

“Hey, you been here a long time—”

Christian straightened. “And I’m going to be here a lot longer. So I know better than to say anything that might get me in trouble.”

“How’d telling me what to do get you in trouble?” The young man walked beside Christian as he and Seesaw slowly paced the indoor track that the prison dog trainers used for walking their canine charges. Timbo Baines was new to Ludwell, young, black and terrified. He had chosen Christian as his mentor, a job Christian didn’t want but wasn’t quite embittered enough to refuse.

“Look, Timbo. Tyrell has friends here. Friends talk to friends. You’ll talk to some of them. You’ll mention me.”

“So what if I just stay out of his way?”

“Make it a priority.” Christian stopped to gently scold the puppy, who was beginning to strain at the leash. “He has a short attention span.”

“He? I thought Seesaw was a girl.”

“Not Seesaw. Tyrell.”

“Yeah? Oh, yeah. I get it. Okay.”

“Think you can take over? Don’t raise your voice. Praise her if she does what you want her to. Don’t jerk on the leash.”

“Don’t know how I got stuck training dogs.”

“Guess you were just lucky.” As well as convicted for selling cocaine to middle-class teenagers who’d been sight-seeing in Richmond’s inner city.

Christian started back toward the kennel.

“Christian?”

He hadn’t noticed the Reverend Bertha Petersen at the end of the first run. An overweight woman in her fifties, she wore jeans and a sweatshirt with a bandanna covering her closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair. A barrel-chested guard stood stiffly nearby, watching every move Christian made.

Christian approached her, stopping several yards away so as not to worry him. “Hello, Pastor. We weren’t expecting you.”

“It’s good to see you. How are the new puppies?”

“It’s too early to tell. But no real problems so far. The Lab’s a little excitable. She may calm down, but we’ll watch her.”

Bertha Petersen was the director of Pets and Prisoners Together and an ordained minister in a small fundamentalist sect with a long name. While many of her cohorts were busily converting the heathen, Bertha had turned her own considerable energy to good works.

The purpose of Pets and Prisoners was to raise and train helping dogs for the physically or mentally challenged. Ludwell was the first prison in the program to train dogs for the blind, turning over two dozen a year to organizations that did the final portion of the training and placed them. Christian had been in charge of the Ludwell program for two years.

“So, did you just drop by to check on us?”

“I like to keep up with everybody if I can.” Bertha’s gaze traveled to the guard, then back to Christian. “Why don’t you show me the dogs in training? How many do you have right now?”

Ludwell had two separate programs in progress. A new program, of which Seesaw was a part, evaluated puppies who had been bred to become guide dogs. The second and more established, brought in young dogs who had already been socialized by a host family and trained in good manners and family routine. They received intensive training from the prison staff for three months before they were passed on to one of several programs.

Christian would have liked to finish the training of each animal, but the final month involved working with the dog’s new master, often on city streets. And no one felt safe sending the blind to a prison or prisoners to the blind.

But what did that matter compared to everything else the men were denied?

“We have four dogs left,” Christian told the pastor. “We started this session with ten.”

She turned to the guard. “Officer, we’re going over to the other kennel. Will that be all right?”

He didn’t answer directly. Instead he picked up his two-way radio and spoke into it, then he gave a brief nod.

The second kennel was on the other side of solid steel doors. Christian and Bertha waited as the doors opened, then closed behind them. They walked down a short corridor flanked by video cameras. The second kennel looked much like the first, but the track was considerably larger, and a yard fenced in mesh and topped with razor wire was visible through a window.

The guard on duty here was used to Christian and hardly gave him a glance. He was busy watching one of the other inmates walk blindfolded through an obstacle course. A chocolate Lab wearing a leather harness led him through the maze. Javier Garcia, a huge man in blue jeans, walked confidently behind him.

Christian and Bertha strolled over to the guardrail overlooking the course and watched.

Christian explained what they were viewing. “That’s Cocoa. She’s had a little trouble with overhead obstacles.” The dogs had to be trained not to lead their new masters into low-hanging obstacles like tree branches and awnings, even if their masters urged them forward. Guide dogs were trained to practice “intelligent disobedience.” Their own good instincts had to supplant their blind master’s commands.

“She’s catching on?”

“Cocoa’s a winner. Very bright. She’ll make it. But we had one of her litter mates who flunked out the first week. He jumped at loud noises. Very distractible for a Lab. Hopefully by checking out the puppies earlier, we’ll avoid these problems.”

The pastor was silent for a moment as she watched Javier and Cocoa move flawlessly along the track. Then she turned so she could see Christian’s face. “Christian, I’ve been considering this conversation carefully.”

He waited stoically, another survival skill he’d learned.

“I’ve heard something.”

He supposed Bertha heard lots of gossip as she moved from prison to prison. Ludwell wasn’t the only penal institution that trained helping dogs.

She continued. “I suspect I could be accused of interfering with proper procedure for telling you this. Certainly for jumping the gun.”

“I’m listening.”

“Have you heard of a man named Karl Zandoff?”

Christian devoured the newspaper whenever he could. Anyone who could read had heard of Karl Zandoff. He gave a short nod. “He’s on death row in Florida. His appeals are almost up.”

“His execution date’s been set for December.”

“Yeah, and it looks like a date he’ll be keeping.”

“He’s been talking to the authorities.”

“So?”

“Apparently he’s confessed to another murder, one they didn’t suspect him of.”

“Nothing like a rendezvous with Old Sparky to get the juices flowing.”

“I’m told he might confess to more before this is over.”

Despite himself, Christian was growing curious. “Maybe confession’s good for the soul. You’d believe that, wouldn’t you?”

“How about you?”

“I haven’t seen much God in here, Pastor. If we were ever on speaking terms, we haven’t been for a long time. If I had anything to confess myself, I’d do it to my lawyer.”

She didn’t miss a beat. “Zandoff told them where to look for the body, and they found it. A case solved. The girl’s parents can finally put her to rest.”

“Girl?”

“A college student in Tennessee. She disappeared ten years ago.”

“I thought all his crimes had been committed in Florida.”

“Now they’re looking at other unsolved murders in the South. Turns out he drifted for a while. Worked construction, followed the jobs. Then he settled in with a wife and couple of kids in the Sunshine State. But he didn’t stop preying on young women.”

Christian knew Zandoff had been caught with a young woman’s monogrammed barrette and a brand-new shovel covered with Tallahassee’s sandy clay loam. That was the crime he’d been arrested for. And when the body was finally located, the two in shallow graves beside it had earned him the death penalty.

Christian searched the pastor’s face impassively. On the track beyond them he could hear Javier praising Cocoa for a job well-done. They only had another minute at most to finish the conversation before Javier joined them.

“I’m unclear as to why you’re telling me this. I’m not Karl Zandoff. I didn’t kill one woman, much less an interstate sorority. If you think his example is going to stir my conscience, forget it.”

“Christian.” She shook her head, as if she really was disappointed in him. “I know you as well as anybody does. You didn’t kill Fidelity Sutherland.”

He studied her. “There were people who knew me as well as they knew themselves, and they questioned it.” One woman in particular, whose face he still hadn’t been able to erase from his memory.

She glanced at the track. “I’m telling you because there’s a rumor Zandoff spent time in northern Virginia between nine and ten years ago. He’s hinting that he murdered a woman here, as well.”

For a moment Christian didn’t make the connection. Then he shrugged. “Lots of people disappear or die mysteriously every year.”

“He worked construction. They’re looking at records.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Somebody working the case told me. I want to call your attorney. Your interests should be represented.”

Javier reached the railing with Cocoa in tow. He had black hair that fell straight to his shoulders and an incongruously narrow face that didn’t fit his broad body. “Did you see that? She’s catching on, and she goes with a real light touch. She’ll be perfect for a woman.”

“Hello, Javier.” Bertha greeted him warmly. “I spoke to your wife last week.”

The big man beamed. “She doing okay, Pastor?”

“She says you have a good chance with the parole board. Should I start scouting out a job for you?”

“You’d do that?”

“I sure would.”

There wasn’t much Bertha Petersen wouldn’t do for her inmates. She believed in every one of them, despite all evidence to the contrary. She was as comfortable with murderers as she was with Bible-thumping evangelists. She wasn’t foolish, she simply believed that God held her life in his hands.

“About that phone call?” She turned to Christian.

He shrugged. He was dismayed to find that for a moment he had almost been suckered by hope. But unlike the good pastor, he had no illusions that God cared one way or the other what happened to Christian Carver. The prison walls were too thick for lightning to strike here.

“I’ll take it that’s a yes,” she said with a smile. “I’ll leave you gentlemen to your work.”

“She don’t know what bad asses we really are, does she?” Javier said, once the minister was out of earshot.

“Oh, she knows. She just doesn’t care.” Christian grimaced. “God doesn’t deserve a woman like that one.”

“Hey, man, you could go to hell for saying that.”

“Been there, doing that.” Christian walked away.