Chapter 13 - The Visitor Behind the Wire
The State Correctional Institution at Rockview sat in the shadow of Mount Nittany, surrounded by double perimeter fences strung with concertina wire that shrieked when the valley wind whipped through the coils.
James had not yet been moved to the general population. Because of the nature of the charges and his status as a former deputy county surveyor, he was being held in administrative segregation in the Lower G-Block—a subterranean tier where the walls were painted the color of dried bile and the light never fully changed from day to night.
When the guard led him into the non-contact visitation booth, he wasn't shuffling. He walked with that same measured, proprietary stride that had terrorized the hallway on Duke Street for three decades. His orange jumpsuit was pristine, the collar turned down sharply, his white hair parted on the left with geometric precision.
He sat down, rested his forearms on the shelf, and waited. He did not pick up the telephone receiver. He wanted me to reach for it first. He wanted me to ask for his permission to hear his voice.
I lifted the heavy plastic phone and pressed it to my right ear—the good ear, the one that hadn't had its auditory canal shattered by a bullet and patched with acrylic cement.
He lifted his receiver. His gray eyes flickered toward my hairline, tracing the fresh pink scar.
"You look thin, boy," James said. His voice was like stones scraping together in the bed of a dry creek. "They told me you were having headaches again. I told the warden you always had a delicate constitution. Like your mother. Always looking for an excuse to lie down."
"It was a .22 short, James," I said. "Remington. Hollow-point. Fired through a pillow from three feet away."
A tiny muscle in his jaw twitched once—a minute contraction that vanished so quickly an untrained eye would have missed it. Then he smiled. It was the same smile he wore when he carved the roast, the one that meant the blade was sharp and someone was about to bleed.
"You think you’re clever because some butcher with a saw pulled out a souvenir," James whispered. His breath fogged the thick glass between us. "You think that changes what happened in ninety-four? You think that makes you innocent?"
"I was four years old."
"And you were already screaming," he hissed, his face pressing closer to the glass until his nose touched the pane. "You wouldn't shut your mouth. Just like her. She screamed for forty minutes in that cellar before the floor gave out, and then you started upstairs. In the crib. Wailing. Calling for someone who wasn't ever coming back up the stairs."
My hand tightened on the receiver until the plastic creaked. "Who wasn't coming back, James? Caroline was in the kitchen."
May you like
James let out a low, wet laugh that turned into a raspy cough. "Caroline? You stupid, blind bastard. Caroline didn't move into that house until ninety-six. You don't even know whose blood you've been wiping off the baseboards your whole life."
***
