James Patterson - Murder House

The first time Noah Walker walked into Cell Block A, he was overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by the sheer enormity, the cell block extending four stories high and so far from right to left that there seems to be no beginning or end, just an endless wall of steel and chain-link barriers. Overwhelmed by the noise, a deafening clamor of hundreds of caged men shouting, radios playing, gates slamming.

This is his home now, on the top tier of A-Block, Gallery L, seventh cell. He will live in L-7 for the rest of his life. He will live amid a massive series of cages, covered by a concrete-and-brick dome with windows that miraculously let in very little light, sunshine filtered through filth. The polluted air, the noise, the solitude of hour upon hour spent in a cell no bigger than a normal person’s closet — in the seventy-three days that Noah has spent here, they have had the effect of deadening him, killing his hope, erasing his dreams, leaving him numb.

Outside the cell — the mess hall, the showers, the machine shop, and the prison yard — it’s a different story. Noah is alert at all times, his eyes constantly moving about. Noah is not affiliated. The only real option for a white guy is the Aryan Brotherhood, and he’s not going anywhere near those racist morons. That makes him fair game to everyone. Stick a shank into Noah’s back, or accost him in the shower, or jump him in the yard, and nobody will retaliate. Noah is alone in every sense of the word.

And with every day that passes, he finds that he cares less and less. There is nothing for him here but the passage of time. He is simply waiting for time to move along until he dies.

His tiny cell is barren of personal effects. He hasn’t built up enough in the commissary for a radio, and no television is allowed. He has only two personal items, a photograph of Paige and a copy of his favorite novel, The Catcher in the Rye .

In the photograph, Paige is in Noah’s attic bedroom, her hand up to shield her face from his camera, a look of embarrassed amusement on her face. Strands of her hair curl around her cheek. He likes this photograph because it touches all of his senses. He hears Paige’s voice — Don’t take my picture! He smells her the way he liked her best, sweaty after sex. He feels her hand on his arm while she tries to keep him from snapping the photo with his phone.

Paige. He will never see her again. He told her not to come here, and to drive the point home, he told her he wouldn’t see her if she came. They have no future now, and it’s better she remembers him when life was good, to hold that sweet memory close to herself, rather than having her image of him deteriorate slowly over the years as he grows harder, more bitter.

He met yesterday with his lawyer, who told him there would be a one-month delay in getting his appeal on file. Noah told him that was okay. He doesn’t have a chance. He knows that. He’s in no hurry to find out that his appeal has been rejected.

That’s the worst part, worse than the fear in the prison yard, or the loneliness, or the shame of being convicted of a double homicide. The lack of any hope, of any future, of any meaning to his life, will kill him — if a shank in the neck doesn’t.

Which of those will come first, he has no idea.

The machine shop in Sing Sing is in the former “death room,” where the electric chair, “Old Sparky,” killed more than six hundred people, including the spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, over the course of seventy years. “Old Sparky” has been moved to a museum, and the death penalty has been abolished in New York — Noah now often wishes it hadn’t — so instead, Noah works in that space assembling chairs for toddlers, to be used, he assumes, in either an elementary school or a hospital.

If there have been any moments of enjoyment in his two and a half months in Sing Sing, they have come while he’s been doing this work, taking care and pride in putting together these chairs. He’s always enjoyed working with his hands, knowing that there is something tangible to show for his effort. Someone will sit in this chair. Someone will learn something in this chair. Someone will laugh in this chair.

“On the count!” One of the COs walks in for the census, taken four times a day to make sure all prisoners are accounted for. The correctional officers cannot, as a practical matter, follow around every inmate all the time, so they move them in groups through the narrow hallways, always staying to the right of the yellow stripe down the center, and even let them walk on their own when going to the yard or the gym.

At the CO’s call, Noah stands and keeps his hands at his sides. The CO counts off the inmates aloud. There are eleven in the machine shop, divided among the various rooms for printing, woodwork, and welding. There are only three, Noah included, here in woodworking.

Noah gets back to work, squatting down on one knee. Behind him, he hears the other two inmates — both of them African American, Al and Rafer — abruptly put down their tools and walk out of woodworking. Noah senses something.

He gets to his feet just as three men enter the room. Unlike Al and Rafer, these men aren’t black. They are white. He recognizes one of them as Eric Wheaton, the leader of the Aryan Brotherhood here at Sing Sing. His two friends are massive, with shaved heads and skin ink up and down their tree-trunk arms.

Wheaton, himself above average in size but dwarfed by his companions, is the elder statesman of his clan, probably fifty. He shows Noah his teeth. “Well, Noah. Seems like you been avoiding us. My friends have offered to be your friends.”

“I don’t need friends like you,” says Noah. He wishes he had something in hand, like the hammer on the floor.

“You don’t need friends? You’re the only guy in A don’t need friends? How’s a guy like you gonna get along in here with all the mongrels?”

The men on each side of Wheaton fan out, forming a semicircle around Noah. Two more men, nearly as big as the first set of goons, also proud members of the Brotherhood, enter the room. Now it’s five on one.

“So I’m askin’ nice,” says Wheaton. “For the last time.”

Noah takes a breath, steels himself. “I don’t need you or your white-trash racist asshole buddies.”

Wheaton’s smile widens, showing stained, crooked teeth. “He’s too good for us, friends. He’s Jesus. Didn’t you hear? Surfer Boy Jesus. Someone help me remember, now — what happened to Jesus?”

With that, they close in from both sides. Noah keeps his fist in tight and pops one of the goons in the mouth, snapping his head back, and then spins to his right and connects with a roundhouse left to the jaw of the thug from the other side. It’s enough to throw the man off balance but not enough to knock him over. Noah will still have to deal with him and with the other two. He turns back to his left for the oncoming rush, but he’s not fast enough; the biggest of the goons barrels into him, three hundred pounds of force, knocking him to the floor. He kicks out his legs and tries to bench-press the man off him before a boot connects with his temple, sending a shock of lightning across his eyes. Then the man on top of him rises up and slams down a fist. Just in time, Noah ducks his head, and the man’s fist hits the floor instead of Noah’s face. He cries out in pain. Noah lunges up at the midsection like a bucking bronco to topple the man off him.

But they are too many, and too big. After the initial burst of action, it simply comes down to numbers. Five on one. Five men kicking and punching Noah, who is pinned down. Blood flies from his mouth and nose with each kick, each punch, until he can no longer hold his head up. Now he is nothing more than a punching bag. He feels his ribs crack with successive kicks, but he can’t offer any response. He is getting the life beaten out of him, and if they want to kill him, he can no longer stop them.