Patricia Cornwell - Cruel and Unusual

She placed my keys on a counter and left.

Marino was home when I tried him from my car phone as I slowed at a tollbooth about an hour later.

“Do you know the warden at Spring Street?” I asked him.

“Frank Donahue. Where are you?”

“In my car.”

“I thought so. Probably half the truckers in Virginia are listening to us on their CBs.”

“They won't hear much.”

“I heard about the kid,” he said. “You finished with him?”

“Yes. I'll call you from home. There's something you can do for me in the meantime. I need to look over a few things at the pen right away.”

“The problem with looking over the pen is it looks back.”

“That's why you're going with me,” I said.

If nothing else, after two miserable semesters of my former professor's tutelage I had learned to be prepared. So it was on Saturday afternoon that Marino and I were en route to the state penitentiary. Skies were leaden, wind thrashing trees along the roadsides, the universe in a state of cold agitation, as if reflecting my mood.

“You want my private opinion,” Marino said to me as we drove, “I think you're letting Grueman jerk you around.”

“Not at all.”

“Then why is it every time there's an execution and he's involved, you act jerked around?”

“And how would you handle the situation?”

He pushed in the cigarette lighter. “Same way you are. I'd take a damn look at death row and the chair, document everything, and then tell him he's fall of shit. Or better yet, tell the press he's full of shit.”

In this morning's paper Grueman was quoted as saying that Waddell had not been receiving proper nourishment and his body bore bruises I could not adequately explain.

“What's the deal, anyway?” Marino went on. “Was he defending these squirrels when you was in law school?”

“No. Several years ago he was asked to run Georgetown's Criminal Justice Clinic. That's when he began taking on death penalty cases pro bono.”

“The guy must have a screw loose.”

“He's very opposed to capital punishment and has managed to turn whoever he represents into a cause celebre. Waddell in particular.”

“Yo. Saint Nick, the patron saint of dirtbags. Ain't that sweet,” Marino said. “Why don't you send him color photos of Eddie Heath and ask if he wants to talk to the boy's family? See how he feels about the pig who committed that crime.”

“Nothing will change Grueman's opinions.”

“He got kids? A wife? Anybody he cares about?”

“It doesn't make any difference, Marino. I don't guess you've got anything new on Eddie.”

“No, and neither does Henrico. We've got his clothes and a twenty-two bullet. Maybe the labs will get lucky with the stuff you turned in.”

“What about VICAP?” I asked, referring to the FBI's Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, in which Marino and FBI profiler Benton Wesley were regional team partners.

“Trent's working on the forms and will send them off in a couple days,” Marino said. “And I alerted Benton about the case last night.”

“Was Eddie the type to get into a stranger's car?”

“According to his parents, he wasn't. We're either dealing with a blitz attack or someone who earned the kid's confidence long enough to grab him.”

“Does he have brothers and sisters?”

“One of each, both more than ten years older than him. I think Eddie was an accident,” Marino said as the penitentiary came into view.

Years of neglect had faded its stucco veneer to a dirty, diluted shade of Pepto Bismol pink. Windows were dark and covered in thick plastic, tugged and torn by the wind. We took the Belvedere exit, then turned left on Spring Street, a shabby strip of pavement connecting two entities that did not belong on the same map. It continued several blocks past the penitentiary, then simply quit at Gambles Hill, where Ethyl Corporation's white brick headquarters roosted on a rise of perfect lawn like a great white heron at the edge of a landfill.

Drizzle had turned to sleet when we parked and got gut of the car. I followed Marino past a Dumpster, then ramp leading to a loading dock occupied by a number of cats, their insouciance flickering with the wariness of the wild. The main entrance was a single glass door, and stepping inside what purported to be the lobby, we found ourselves behind bars. There were no chairs; the air was frigid and stale. To our right the Communication Center was accessible by a small window, which a sturdy woman in a guard's uniforms took her time sliding open.

“Can I help you?” Marino displayed his badge and laconically explained that we had an appointment with Frank Donahue, the warden. She told us to wait. The window shut again.

“That's Helen the Hun,” Marino said to me. “I've been down here more times than I can count and she always acts like she don't know me. But then, I'm not her type. You'll get better acquainted with her in a minute.”

Beyond barred gates were a dingy corridor of tan tile and cinder block, and small offices that looked like cages. The view ended with the first block of cells, tiers painted institutional green and spotted with rust. They were empty.

“When will the rest of the inmates be relocated?” I asked.

“By the end of the week.”

“Who's left?”

“Some real Virginia gentlemen, the squirrels with segregation status. They're all locked up tight and chained to their beds in C Cell, which is that way.”

He pointed west. “We won't be walking through there, so don't get antsy. I wouldn't put you through that. Some of these assholes haven't seen a woman in years - and Helen the Hun don't count.”

A powerfully built young man dressed in Department of Corrections blues appeared down the corridor and headed our way. He peered at as through bars, his face attractive but hard, with a strong jaw and cold gray eyes. A dark red mustache hid an upper lip that I suspected could turn cruel.

Marino introduced us, adding, “We're here to see the chair.”

“My name's Roberts and I'm here to give you the royal tour.” Keys jingled against iron as he opened the heavy gates. “Donahue's out sick today.”

The clang of doors shutting behind us echoed off walls. “I'm afraid we got to search you first. If you'll step over there, ma'am.”

He began running a scanner over Marino as another barred door opened and “Helen” emerged from the Communication Center. She was an unsmiling woman built like a Baptist church, her shiny Sam Browne belt the only indication she had a waist. Her close-cropped hair was mannishly styled and dyed shoe-polish black, her eyes intense when they briefly met mine. The name tag pinned on a formidable breast read “Grimes.”

“Your bag,” she ordered.

I handed over my medical bag. She rifled through it, then roughly turned me this way and that as she subjected me to a salvo of probes and pats with the scanner and her hands. In all, the search couldn't have lasted more than twenty seconds, but she managed to acquaint herself with every inch of my flesh, crushing me against her stiffly armored bosom like a wide-bodied spider as thick fingers lingered and she breathed loudly through her mouth. Then she brusquely nodded that I checked out okay as she returned to her lair of cinder block and Liron.

Marino and I followed Roberts past bars and more bars, through a series of doors that he unlocked and relocked, the air cold and ringing with the dull chimes of unfriendly metal. He asked us nothing about ourselves and made no references that I would call remotely friendly. His preoccupation seemed to be his role, which this afternoon was tour guide or guard dog, I wasn't sure which.

A right turn and we entered the first cell block, a huge drafty space of green cinder block and broken windows, with four tiers of cells rising to a false roof topped by toils of barbed wire. Sloppily piled along the middle of the brown tile floor were dozens of narrow, plastic covered mattresses, and scattered about were brooms, mops, and ratty red barber chairs. Leather tennis shoes, blue jeans, and other odd personal effects littered high windowsills, and left inside many of the cells were televisions, books, and footlockers. It appeared that when the inmates had been evacuated they had not been allowed to take all of their possessions with them, perhaps explaining the obscenities scrawled in Magic Marker on the walls.