The Washington County Jail could have been a tidy brick and glass corporate headquarters. No taint of punishment attached to its clean exterior. Inside, the climate was almost medical in its spotless isolation; movement was remotely controlled by electronically triggered doors, needle-nosed surveillance cameras tucked in corners, baffles of bullet-proof glass, intercoms.
The U.S. Bureau of Prisons rated institutions numerically, from one to six, based on their level of security. The Washington County Jail, like Oak Park Heights about a mile to the south, was referred to as a “seven.”
The U.S. Marshals liked the jail because of its advanced security features and gave it a lot of business. Which was good, because it had been overbuilt and it would take a decade for the county to grow enough bad guys to fill it.
Sheriff John Eisenhower had developed the skills of a hotelier to keep his beds full.
Broker checked in on the administrative side. A deputy behind a glass bubble recognized him, lowered his eyes and buzzed him into the sheriff’s offices. Eisenhower met him in the hall. Broker had been a year behind Eisenhower going through the St. Paul Police Academy. He went to BCA, and Eisenhower ran for sheriff. Working undercover, Broker had reported to Eisenhower on a number of cases. Eisenhower, Broker, Keith, Jeff, and J. T. Merryweather. The old days.
Bluff, ruddy-faced, blond, blue-eyed, and mustachioed, John usually wore a tan department uniform. Today he was in a suit and tie. They shook hands briskly. He asked, “How’s Nina and the kid?”
“Fine.”
Eisenhower tapped the laminated ID Broker had clipped to his chest pocket. “You went and got badged up over this?”
Broker nodded. “Just walking out Caren’s death. Jeff and I don’t buy the FBI version.”
“Forget it. He won’t tell you anything.”
“Then why’d he send for me.”
Eisenhower studied him. “A lot of people are curious about that. They think Cook County should have left him down in the ice water to drown.”
Broker smiled thinly. “Janey Cody in St. Paul called me a leper.”
“They’re spooked in St. Paul.” Eisenhower exhaled, grimaced slightly. “Another thing. It’s hard to be around him if you knew him before. He’s nuts.”
“Some kind of legal ploy? Insanity defense?”
Eisenhower shook his head. “No. He’s lucid enough.
He”-Eisenhower chose his word carefully-“turned.” He shrugged. “Maybe all the stuff he was holding inside all these years came out when he killed Caren. I don’t know.”
A gesture toward the darkness that walked with cops, step for step.
Eisenhower shot his cuffs, his hands circled his belt, tucking at his shirt. “I’ve got to hand you over to Dave Barstad.
Got this damn meeting with a bunch of consultants.” He raised his eyebrows. “Some brilliant mother’s son has this plan to hook all the jail toilets up to a computer. Get all the assholes to crap on-line or something.”
He shook his head. “We have Keith down in separation; I didn’t think it was a good idea to throw him in general population. There could be people he busted in there.”
They went down a corridor, got on an elevator and descended two floors. A stocky blond man in a white shirt and tie met them at the master control station.
“Dave, Phil Broker, he ran some stuff for us when he was with BCA. He’s up in Cook County now.”
Broker and the jail administrator shook hands. Eisenhower touched Broker on the arm and excused himself. Barstad pointed to a small locker inset in the brushed stone wall, twist-out key in the lock. “You can leave your weapon and cuffs-”
Broker shook his head. “All I have is this.” He held up his spiral notebook, which contained the photo Garrison had given him. Barstad took the notebook, indicated the spring spine and left it at the control station. He handed the photo back to Broker, then walked him into a maze of glass parti-tions and security doors. An intercom voice monitored their progress, unlocking and locking the doors for them on the jailer’s command.
They passed the normal visitors’ cubicles, went through more doors and down on another elevator. They came out on the bottom level, where new inmates were processed.
Walled off behind glass were large pens-called pods- with bolted tables and guard desks. Tiered cells were built into the walls of these bays. Solid steel slotted doors. The inmates couldn’t see out. Broker couldn’t see in. He had been through three levels of the jail. He had yet to see a single prisoner.
The disembodied voice of the master control operator sang a cadence back and forth with Barstad. They negotiated the quiet electronic click of locks on thick glass doors opening, then closing. “Leaving such-and-such. Entering Thingama-bob.”
No Christmas carols. No little decorative trees. No paper plates set out with sugar cookies. It was what the tax-payers wanted today: a seasonless storage locker for hazardous waste. Broker missed the feel of air transfixed by steel bars-the notion of a cage. Even whips and chains and tormented jailhouse cries were preferable to this silence. Too clean. Too orderly-an antiseptic womb in which the lethal injection was conceived.
He had a headache. Had only slept three hours last night.
Strange bed. Strange task.
They exited the large reception area and walked down a corridor. “I’ve got him waiting in Transport. You’ll have the most privacy there.”
Broker nodded. Transport was a small holding pen where prisoners were picked up or dropped off when they had business outside the jail.
“Open Transport,” said Barstad to the eyes and ears in the walls. Click-click.
The door opened, and Barstad said, “I’ve had them turn off the audio but I have to keep the video on. It’s policy. Just signal at the camera when you’re through.”
Broker shook Barstad’s hand again and went in.
41
Keith smelled like spoiled meat washed in disinfectant. He sat in a blocky ModuForm armchair. The large dense blob of furniture was molded from a pebbly rubberized substance that looked, in color and texture, as if Barney the dinosaur had been run through an auto compactor and turned into a seat. The chair, designed for prisons, weighed two hundred pounds.
He wore loose blue denim jail utilities and blue slippers.
His shirtsleeves were rolled up, showing biceps. Frankenstein stitches in his left arm twisted like centipedes sleeping in the packed muscle. Yellow disinfectant discolored the seamed forearm. He’d lost fingernails on three fingers on his right hand to frostbite, and they were scabbed over, blackened.
His left hand was clamped in a fist in his lap. His hair was short, sidewalled and bristly. No sunglasses allowed here.
His yellow eyes were hard, clear and shiny as frozen ball bearings. In them, Broker felt the icy embrace of the Devil’s Kettle, and, possibly, the fixed stare of mental disorder.
Despite his present circumstances, Keith held his powerful body with the erect bearing of a mad warrior monk.
On the top of his left hand, a patch of infected skin puffed up a blue tattoo of a three-barred Russian cross.
Crude, self-inflicted; probably with the straight end of a safety pin and ink from a felt tip.
Self-laceration.
What happens to a perfectionist who loses his rule book.
He opened his curled left hand. And Broker saw that he wore Caren’s wedding ring on the little finger. What was left of the little finger. The first joint had been amputated, and the stub closed with stitches. The skin under the gold wedding band was swollen, marbled with purple bruising.
He wore his own ring on the next finger. His fingers twitched, and the gold bands jingled.
Keith stood up. Instinctively, they circled each other in a sort of preliminary dance. They did not shake hands. The room was wedge shaped, with three holding cells built into one wall. The cells were empty, and the doors were open.