Gregg Hurwitz: Last shot

Their footsteps shuddered the metal staircase as they climbed. Newlin led the way along the third-tier catwalk, Bear fanning the front of his shirt against the humidity. The facility was on full lockdown, the cell doors secured. As they drew near, palm-size mirrors, held by dark arms, retracted back through the bars. A huge Samoan kid offered Tim the finger from his perch on the toilet, where he sat with one leg free, his loose pants puddled around a laceless sneaker. A few of the cells remained neat, their mattresses and spartan furnishings intact, but most were torn apart. Posters had been ripped from the walls, leaving behind taped corners of azure water or tanned flesh.

The inmates peppered Newlin with questions: "CO, you guys all buy your ties at the same place?" "CO, who're them Newjacks with you?" "CO, this clogged toilet's killin' me."

The correctional officers milling by Jameson's open door stepped aside, one sweeping his arms melodramatically toward the cell as if indicating a just-unveiled statue.

Perfectly centered on the floor stood the bottom halves of two plastic Coke bottles-makeshift cups that had been filled, one with green liquid, the other with yellow.

Newlin followed Bear's gaze and nodded, lips pinched. "Mouthwash and urine."

Bear peered around the cell, summing up Tim's thoughts: "What the fuck?"

Two of the grid window's safety-glass panes had been broken. No jagged edges, just fist-size circles and a scattering of glass pebbles on the sill. A roll of green dental floss had been tied to a bar and dropped through one of the holes. Tim glanced through the glass, eyes tracing the thread's path down to the quartz rocks forty feet below. A breeze picked up the floss, floating it over the razor wire. A bedsheet rope, complete with a cartoon-prisoner knot and secured in similar fashion to a bar, dangled through the second break, the end swaying no more than ten feet below the bottom of the window ledge. Any drop from the rope, even if Walker could have shrunk himself to Mighty Mouse proportions and squeezed through the bars and the tiny gap in the glass, would have resulted in a death plummet to the razor wire.

Tim lingered on the view-two vast fences, coast guard headquarters, Dumpsters piled with charred refuse, a couple royal palms.

He gestured for a pair of latex gloves, then picked through the trash can. Three balls of tissue unfurled to reveal snot. The other contents were equally enlightening: a few empty Styrofoam cups and lids, two plastic Coke-bottle caps, a shorter string of dental floss, a wad of red gum. He set the can back down and eased to all fours to look under the bed. It took him a moment to identify the delicate blue shavings: rubber gratings from where Walker had whittled the toothbrush against the edge of the metal leg.

Tim stood, mused for a moment, then rapped his knuckles on the steel platform of the top bunk. "He threw his mattress over the rail?"

"That's right."

"He usually participate in stuff like that?"

Newlin took a moment, reflecting on the question. "We don't have Attica break out that often, but no. Walker's not a joiner. He didn't take part in the May riot."

"He left his cellie's mattress." Tim crossed the space and crouched, studying the frayed prayer rug of two-ply tissue. "This would've made for good burning, too." He glanced up at the black velvet banner and the postcard of the Sultan Ahmet, its six minarets pushing into a rich blue sky. "And that."

"So he didn't trash Imaad's stuff," Newlin said. "What's your point?"

"Seems like a pretty selective temper tantrum."

Bear beckoned Tim over to a color newsprint photo adhered to the wall by the sink. It was a studio shot of a woman in her thirties, awkwardly posed, fist to chin. Sears, perhaps. Amused, private eyes, angled to the side as if the photographer couldn't hold her attention. Maybe she was self-conscious, but it looked more as if she would've rather been someplace else. A too-slender nose prevented her from being beautiful, but it also added a sharpness to her otherwise even features, conveying an impression of intelligence, of resolve. The lavender retro-eighties Swatch dangling loose from her right wrist matched a pattern repeat in her shirt. Noting that Dray had a similar, Target-bought button-up, Tim pegged the woman's outfit as stylish but basically cheap. The dated hair-cut-short and excessively windswept-and the woman's makeup suggested the photo was from the late nineties.

"That his girl?" Bear asked.

"Sister," Newlin said. "She killed herself a few months back."

Bear jotted this down. "He take it hard?" Tim asked.

"You wouldn't know with Walker. When the wheels are turning, when they're stuck, you know?"

"Were they close?"

"I don't know, really."

"Given the visitor log," Bear said, "not that close."

Tim knelt before the footlockers. The top lid creaked back to reveal several kufis, shirts, and toiletries thrown together with a collection of postcards of pilgrimage-class mosques. By contrast, the bottom footlocker was meticulously ordered. Toothpaste, neatly rolled. Shirts and pants folded with military crispness. Some yellowed papers peeked out from beneath a row of socks. Tim withdrew them, finding an obituary and a handwritten letter. The obit's torn top border aligned with the bottom edge of the photo stuck to the wall.

Tim scanned the brief newspaper write-up. Theresa Sue Jameson (38), born April 1, 1966. Theresa, a Littlerock native, worked as office manager for Westin Dentistry in Canyon Country. Her friends remember her irrepressible spirit. She leaves behind a son, Samuel (7). Services will be held at St. Jude's Church June 12 at 6pm.

The footer read June 11, Littlerock Weekly.

As good a way as any to reduce someone's life into one and a half column inches. Tim remembered how his father always worded those he placed, rarely, for old associates to come in under the six-line minimum.

Bear, reading over Tim's shoulder, remarked, "Regular hotbed of journalistic panache, the Littlerock Weekly."

It also was a publication of insufficiently wide circulation, Tim figured, to be taken by the Terminal Island library. He tilted the worn rectangle of newspaper and picked up faint indentations in the corner. Maybe a return address from the envelope it had been mailed in, written after the clipping had been enclosed. Bear opened his notepad, and Tim slipped the piece of paper in; they'd have it looked at later.

Bear glanced at it a moment longer before shutting the pad. "Least we know he didn't break out to attend her funeral like that jackass we bagged at his granny's wake in Chino Hills."

The letter proved to be from Theresa, though it was dated a couple years prior, a few months after Walker's term at TI began. Feminine handwriting crossed the page at a slight downward tilt. The cheap, lavender-tinted stationery, torn from a pad, hadn't held the ink well; some of the letters' upstrokes were smudged.

Walk, So I started going to a free counseling center out here. The shrink's younger than I am, so we'll see how that goes. I've been doing a lot of work on myself in therapy for Sammy's sake-shit, there I go again. For both our sakes, for Chrissake (I suck at this). And I figured out all these ways I can't hold my boundaries to protect maybe what's best for me and for Sammy. I don't think I'm strong enough to say no to you, Walk, for much of anything, so the best thing I can do right now is to take some time off. Please, please, please don't be upset with me. I know you just got in there and I know you've got no one, but please remember this is me. I love you and I think of you still and always as my baby boy. We went through some times, me and you, didn't we? I know we haven't been in touch much since you went to Iraq. I always thought it's a shame you never got to know the little guy. He's tough as nails, but he's got heart. He reminds me of you when you were younger, before I lost you to the Marines. I bought you this cross, in place of me, I guess. I bought it in titanium, so even you can't break it (kidding). Love you always, Tess