Vincent Zandri - The Innocent

“Yes, you bloody well did!” Pelton screamed. “You signed the releases for Vasquez a half a dozen different times. You knew he’d killed that rookie cop. You knew he was high risk and that you could have vetoed the releases. But you signed them anyway.”

He was right.

“Come on, Keeper,” he went on, “after Fran died, nothing was important to you anymore. So you let the gorillas take over in force.”

“My wife had nothing to do with this,” I lied.

“You went soft.”

For a moment, I zeroed in on the chrome barrel. If he’d let loose with a round right then, I’d never have known the difference. It’d be lights out, no pain, with the hope that I reached heaven an hour before the devil knew my soul was up for grabs. Right then, standing on the blood-soaked floor of my grandfather’s cabin, death seemed very near, and it was doing a job on me.

“Listen, Keeper,” Wash said, softer this time, “when we started out in this system, there were thirteen thousand inmates for twelve maximum security prisons in New York. Now there’s twice as many inmates living under the same twelve concrete roofs. And do you know what the governor expects of me? My assignment is to cut more officers, cut more programs. Now you tell me, Keeper Marconi, just what does the governor know about prison?”

He kept the barrel of that weapon pointed at my face like it would somehow help him drive his point across. A point that was absolutely valid, but had little to do with saving my life. I was defenseless and Pelton knew it.

“Maybe you had no choice but to go soft, Keeper. We all go soft at some point when the fight becomes pointless. Fran’s death was just the catalyst for your experience. If it hadn’t been her, it would have been something else. And as for Mike Norman? He’d barely gotten out of the starting gate before he crumpled under.” He started bobbing the weapon as though about to collapse under its weight. His finger was pressed against the trigger. I knew he might shoot me and not even intend it. “There is nothing more we can do for inmates. There is no such thing as rehabilitation. Never was. Nowadays, you either give up, or you give in. You gave up is all. I gave in.”

The Remington 1187 was on the floor, not far from my feet. But it wasn’t loaded. I’d unchambered the four unspent rounds myself. My only chance was to jump Pelton or call for Cassandra. But counterattacking Pelton would have blown my entire plan out of the water. I had no choice but to remain the victim for as long as possible.

But then something happened. Something I never would have expected given the dead men on the cabin floor. Pelton took a deep breath, lowered the pistol, eased back the hammer, and simply pocketed the weapon. He spent a second or two rubbing the feeling back into his shooting hand, and then he bent over and pressed the manual eject switch on the rented VCR. When the video was ejected, he popped it out of its VCR adapter and slipped it into his jacket pocket. He straightened up and looked me in the eyes. “You’re certain no further copies of this exist?”

“No copies,” I said, standing cautiously still despite the disappearance of his weapon. “I can’t be sure no one else made any. But Cassandra assured me, before she left.”

Pelton nodded.

“Well then, we had a shaky start, but I think I’ve seen enough to know you mean business.”

“Okay,” I said, not quite grasping his reference to two dead men as a shaky start.

“I’ll make sure you’re cleared of this mess,” he said. “As soon as I get back, I’ll make the necessary calls.”

I nodded.

“Then I’ll send someone up here to take care of the bodies.”

“The overcoat man…what’s his name?”

“Moscowitz.”

“He’s buried out back, underneath a pile of dirt and stones.”

“I see.”

“Key’ll be in the mailbox,” I said.

“Sorry all this had to happen,” Pelton said, running his hand through his gray hair as he turned for the door. “But people change. Things change. You saved my life once. I can’t take that away from you. No matter what, you saved my life. I owe you that. Consider this the fulfillment of a twenty-six-year debt of gratitude.”

I stood still as a statue while the pools of blood grew larger and combined. And just like that, Washington Pelton left through the side door, alone. But as sincere as he may have sounded, I knew he was lying about clearing my name. It was a gift I had, an ability to spot a liar at twenty paces, and it may have been the only thing I’d gotten out of working inside a prison for all these years. I knew that Pelton had no choice but to make me go down for the entire ball of wax. And frankly, I was a little insulted that he assumed I’d bought into his empty promise of vindication.

But there were more immediate problems at hand.

As soon as I heard the Taurus make the turn out of the driveway onto the gravel east-west road, I stepped over the puddles of blood and removed the panel to the potato cellar. Cassandra looked up at me.

“You get it?” I asked.

“You want to see it now,” she said with a killer smile. “Or do you want to see it later?”

“Grab the money,” I said. “We’re taking a little trip.”

“Where to?” Cassandra said, handing up one of the pots filled with cash.

“See an old friend of mine who works in television.”

“No business like show business,” she said.

I felt the weight of the three hundred thousand dollars in my hands, and for the first time in forever, I laughed.

I SEE THE QUICK muzzle flash from the west wall a split second before I hear the sharp crack of the warning shot. When the round explodes against the concrete floor, it sends stony shrapnel into my face, stinging my chin and lower lip. I feel the edge of the shiv pressed up hard against my throat. But not hard enough to break the skin. I hear the breathing of the rebel inmate who holds me tight, forearm wrapped around my neck. I feel his body pressed against mine, his heart beating through my body. To my right, Mike Norman lies on his chest, facedown on the concrete walkway. He is motionless, has been for more than a day. For all I know he is already dead and there’s not a damned thing I can do about it. The M-16 is still aimed at his head.

An M-16 without rounds.

On my left is Washington Pelton. Blood flows steadily and thickly down the front of his yellow inmate jumper. His Adam’s apple bobs up and down. His face has taken on the chalky-white color of death. My face must appear just as lifeless. He is my mirror image. The troopers aim their sniper rifles steady, just waiting for the word, not even the whole word, just the first sound of the word.

Fire!

If I don’t do something now, I am going to die, one way or the other.

We’re all going to die, in the name of terror or in the name of the law.

Campfires spit red-and-yellow flame and black smoke. Steel tables are tossed on their sides, facing the wall like a barricade. The tables have been wrapped with razor wire. As the canisters of tear gas come hurling into the muddy yard and as the poison clouds rise from them like a gentle mist, I know that all negotiations have failed and that the only reason for keeping the corrections officers alive is suddenly lost to the wind like the pungent gas that begins to sting our faces, burn our eyeballs.

When the troopers storm the west wall, I take a deep breath and elbow the rebel inmate behind me in the ribs. I grab his wrist, jam my fingernails into it, feel the nails dig in. He drops the shiv and together we go down for it onto the concrete catwalk. But I’m quicker than he is, more desperate. I grab the shiv, swipe it across his neck. The flesh of his thick, ham-like neck opens up red and white. Blood spurts out, stains my face. He is dead before he hits the ground.