The entrance to the administration building was outside the fence. I wheeled into the parking lot, walked along a short path and entered the structure. After signing in with the litigation coordinator on duty, I was told to wait until the guards brought Roberts over from general population to the visitor center.
While waiting, I jotted a few notes on a yellow tablet, questions I would ask Roberts. But I figured, after being locked up in such a cruel environment for so long he wouldn’t be forthcoming with the answers. To survive in prison, convicts had to grow tough and callous, tougher than they’d been on the streets. And, over the years they all developed a belligerent attitude and a code of silence.
The hearing was scheduled for tomorrow, and even though there was practically no possibility of his release, if he had a shred of a chance at freedom, then I’d have to get him to show remorse and humility. But I knew any reverence, awe, or passion he once held would’ve slowly leached out of his pores and evaporated like so much sweat during his twenty-nine years in this hard place. With very little time available to thoroughly prep him on how to react to the board’s interrogation, or how to exhibit sorrow without showing hostility, I had to move fast. If Roberts was anything like other inmates I’d interviewed for past hearings, then he’d naturally resent members of a board passing judgment on him. He’d see them as establishment figures, well-off people who had advantages in life that he never did. As the hearing progressed, he’d fume inside and build up resentment. By the time they got around to asking him for a mea culpa, he’d want to bash their heads in.
“O’Brien, the prisoner is now in the interview room. Follow me.”
I put the yellow pad in my briefcase and stood. The correctional officer, a sergeant, wore a CDC forest-green jumpsuit. The nametag over his right breast pocket identified him as J. Marsh. The patch on his sleeve had letters arching above the State seal which read “California Department of Corrections.” He had a baton hanging from a ring on his Sam Browne belt, but no gun.
I stepped along with him as we left the waiting area and walked the length of a long hallway. We stopped at a door made of steel bars, and from a black leather pouch on his belt, he pulled a long metal chain with a large brass key at the end of it.
Inserting the key and unlocking the door, he turned to me and said, “I saw you when you were out here a few months ago, O’Brien. Security has tightened since then. We lost one of our men. Happened three weeks ago. Stabbed with a jagged edged shank.” He paused a moment, then leaned into the door, pushing it open. “I’ll be staying in the room with you.”
“Fine by me, “I said. “Sorry to hear about the guard.”
“Happens.” He shook his head. “And to think they used to call this freak house an honor farm.” We entered a sallyport with another set of steel bars in front of us. When the door behind me shut with a decisive bang, Marsh called out to someone unseen, “Free man coming through.” We walked along a corridor to one of the rooms cut into it. Marsh opened the door, glanced inside, and nodded back at me. I followed him into the 15'x15' cubicle. He moved to a corner and stood at parade rest.
A rectangular stainless steel table stood in the center, bolted to the cement floor. A man whom I presumed to be Roberts sat slumped in one of the four chairs pulled up to the table. He wore the standard blue denim prison garb and even though I knew from the report that he had turned sixty this year, he still had a full head of dark hair. His hands were folded on the table and shackled at the wrists. “You the lawyer?” he said, looking up at me.
I didn’t answer him right away, still thinking about how to handle the interview. Should I try the soft approach, plead with him to give me a reason, any excuse for why he’d killed those two people? Maybe get some contrition of sorts, anything I could offer the board.
Or should I shock him, pull no punches, and try to break him down? Get the hostility out in the open and let him rant at me, let the pent-up anger explode and vent like a pressure cooker with too much heat. Maybe set him up so that regardless of what the board members threw at him, he’d be able to take it.
I sat down, placed my briefcase on the table, and took out his file. I looked at him across the table. He could’ve been a big man at one time with a solid physique, but now sitting with his shoulders hunched he looked weak and venerable.
“Roberts, it says here you murdered two people. Killed them in cold blood. Murdered a woman with your bare hands.” I stared into his eyes. “What kind of animal are you?”
CHAPTER 2
I realized from the moment I looked into his cold, dark eyes that if there were any chance at all of getting through to him, I’d have to work him over hard, not physically but verbally.
With a murder conviction staring the board in the face, not to mention the DA’s glaring statement alleging that Roberts had killed another guy in Arizona, I figured that in all probability, the members of the board would keep him locked away until the next ice age. The hearing would be an exercise in futility.
But notes from the hearing along with the results would be added to his file. California law stated that lifers with indeterminate sentences were entitled to a parole hearing at least once every five years. If the board set him free, I doubted that Arizona would try him now. After thirty years, no witnesses would be available. It would be a tough case to prosecute. And I didn’t want him to screw up his chance of freedom at the next hearing by being belligerent at this one.
I went to work on him, earning my fee. I stood and walked around the table, circling him like a predatory animal assessing its prey. “Tell me about the woman you murdered. Was she hot in bed?”
Roberts raised his head and turned so he could see me. “You’re sick.”
“Did you kiss her before you strangled her?” I snapped.
“I didn’t-”
“Didn’t what? Sleep with her, or kill her?”
“What are you handing me? You sound like a cop.”
“How about Haskell, the guy who picked you up on the road in Arizona? Did you kiss him, too? Kiss him with a tire iron, maybe?”
“I didn’t do a goddamn thing!”
If Roberts kept insisting on his innocence to the board, showing no remorse, and adamantly denying that he hadn’t cold-bloodedly murdered those two people back in 1945, we’d both get tossed out of the hearing on our cans.
“Why’d you kill the woman?”
Roberts remained silent.
“Hey, lover boy, I asked you a question.”
“Wasn’t worth an answer.”
“Did you strangle her when she wouldn’t give you any?”
“I only slept with her once. I was drunk-”
“Oh, so you did have sex with her. You admit that. Now admit that you killed her too.” Christ, the guy made love to her, then murdered her with his bare hands. We wouldn’t mention that fact to the board. “Maybe you were drunk at the time you crushed her windpipe. Was that how it went, Roberts?”
“Get off my back, asshole.”
“Hey, Roberts, did you sleep with her before or after you killed her?”
He raised his arms and pounded the table with his hands balled into fists. “Goddamn it, back off!” He bolted from his chair.
Marsh, the guard, moved fast and shoved Roberts back down. “You wanna call it a day, O’Brien?” he asked, glancing at me.
“No, not yet.” I looked at Roberts, who now had his head down on the table with his arms stretched out in front as far as they would go. I could almost feel the heat building inside him. But he fell silent, not responding at all. “Was she pretty, Roberts? Did she turn you on? I’ll bet she wanted nothing to do with you, so what the heck, you killed her. Isn’t that right, Roberts?”
He didn’t say a word. The silence in the concrete room grew deafening.
“I’m here to help you, Roberts. Goddamn it,” I said. “Talk to me!”