CRIMINAL CHRISTMAS: A Set of 8 Holiday Suspense Stories, page 63
“I understand.”
“No, you don’t. Not yet. He is going to get inside your head, I can guarantee that. I can also guarantee that you aren’t going to like it when he does. Maybe when you get to the point where you have nightmares about him every night, you’ll drop this asinine project of yours.”
“Uh, okay, duly noted.”
The atmosphere inside the entire prison was tense, still, there was something even more palpable hanging in the air—a feeling of doom and desolation— as we entered the unit that confined the death row inmates. It must be the fear getting to me. I’m just nervous about meeting someone like him.
“This is the control booth,” Tilly said stopping at an observation room. Three walls inside the room were comprised of windows. A computer, phone, small standing microphone, and several monitors displaying various areas inside the building sat on countertops that ran along the windowed walls. In the center of the room, a table and chairs were unoccupied. Tilly introduced me to the two men in uniforms sitting at the counter. The one named Downey appeared to be in his mid-thirties and had a relaxed air about him. The one named Lutz looked young enough to be in his teens. On his head was a mop of unruly light-brown hair, unlike the majority of the other guards that I had seen so far who wore their hair buzzed short. I wondered what the minimum age requirement was to become a guard. Both men stood, smiled, and shook my hand, and based on what I saw so far, neither seemed to have a stick up their ass like their coworker.
Tilly grabbed one of the gray, metal folding chairs from the stack against the office wall and looked at me. He asked, “Are you sure about this?”
“Yes, but I’m a little nervous. I was just wondering, will one of you be close by while I’m in his cell?” I asked.
“Are you shitting me?” Tilly yelled, causing me to flinch. “You’re not going inside the cell with him. Hell, we don’t even go in there anymore unless we have protective gear and other officers for backup. He’s a mean motherfucker!” Tilly shook his head and muttered under his breath, “What a crazy goddamned thing to say.”
Officer Lutz smiled at my faux pas and winked one of his large hazel eyes at me as he turned and led us up a long hallway lined with steel doors on one side. Each of the doors had a narrow window made of thick glass, and in several of those windows I saw pairs of eyes watching me. He stopped in front of the one that I assumed belonged to Eisenbrey and, after looking through the window, he spoke into the radio that was attached to his shirt. “All clear.”
Tilly unfolded the chair and plopped it on the cement floor facing the metal door, positioning it about four feet back and told me, “Eisenbrey’s cell has a second door that the others don’t have. It makes it easier for us to deal with him.”
Lutz stood in front of the opening, watching the prisoner as the steel door slid along its runners and revealed yet another door constructed of steel bars. It was a very sturdy affair, and I felt more at ease knowing that I would be communicating with him through that barrier.
Lutz spoke quietly to the prisoner. “Hey Tom, your visitor is here.” I didn’t hear a response.
Tilly crossed his arms and wore a stern expression as he imparted some rules for me to follow. “You are not to hand anything to the prisoner or accept anything that he tries to give you. If you have something for him, you will give it to the officer on duty. The officer will inspect it and determine whether or not it can go in the cell. If the officer clears the item, he will hand it through to Eisenbrey on your behalf. Officers Lutz and Downey will keep an eye on you from the control room. Any questions?”
I couldn’t think of any questions at the moment, but I figured I would as soon as they left me. Lutz had been watching my expression closely and said, “If you need anything, just wave at the camera.” He pointed to where it was mounted high on one of the walls. “I’ll come right over.”
“Thanks,” I said.
Then Tilly delivered his parting shot. “Okay, Little Lady, knock yourself out. Oh, and don’t get too close to those bars otherwise that piece of shit might just do it for you.” He jabbed a finger in the prisoner’s direction.
Lutz gave me a nod, said, “Ma’am,” and then followed Tilly back to the control booth. I stood by the chair, left alone with the murderer.
His cell was seven feet wide and eight feet deep. The cement walls and floor were furnished with a steel sink and toilet that mounted on the back wall, a mattress supported by a steel sheet attached to a side wall, and across from it another piece of metal secured to the wall served as a table. Some clothing and a towel hung from hooks on the wall, but no pictures, and no window other than the tiny one on the door. On the table sat a small TV, a newspaper that he had folded neatly, and a few books. I couldn’t make out the titles. No frills. Every bit as nice as I had expected his living quarters to be, and considering the behavior that landed the guy in there way better than he deserved.
Eisenbrey was tall and lean, this I could tell in spite of the fact that he did not get up to greet me. His long form, clothed in prison issued khaki pants and a white T-shirt, was stretched out comfortably on his bed, the back of his head resting on his hands with his pillow propping him up just enough to have a clear view of anyone approaching his cell.
In spite of the air of indifference suggested by his body language, his eyes sparked, alive and beguiling, tracking my movement, taking in every detail. He sneered and I had the disturbing sensation that he could see something beyond the physical, like he knew some dark secret about me, and apparently he found it amusing. Not exactly sure who I had expected him to be, but the man before me didn’t come close to anything I had imagined.
I remained standing. “Mr. Eisenbrey? Hello, I’m Rebecca Reis. I’d like to speak with you. Is that all right?” Pushing my hair back behind my ear, I felt a slight tremble in my fingers. But why? There was no sense to it. He was secured in his cell. He couldn’t touch me.
“Miss Reis, are you from the church? Are you here to witness to me?” he asked, although I knew he had been told exactly who was coming to visit him.
“No. Are you disappointed?” I asked standing tall, portraying more confidence than I felt.
“I suppose that depends on your intention for being here,” he replied. He smirked and sat up, swinging his long legs over the side of his bed. “You must be the writer then.” He scanned me up and down with a critical eye.
“Yes.”
“I don’t recognize your name. What have you written?”
“I have three published novels: The Liar’s Promise, Unto Me, and Epitaph.”
“Are those true crime novels?”
“No, they’re thrillers. This will be my first non-fiction work.” I tried to steady my breathing, but I felt like a five year old being questioned by the teacher after I had been caught doing something naughty.
He looked nonplussed. “Oh good, you want to practice on me.”
“I’ve sold a lot of books. My agent asked me to do this because she felt I was the best person to write about you.”
As he leaned forward, the cast of the overhead light illuminated his face making an impact that caught me off guard. Everyone in Washington State, and beyond, had seen this man’s likeness countless times in photos and video clips of him sitting in a courtroom or being escorted down a courthouse hallway wearing shackles and orange coveralls, flanked by guards on either side. His capture and murder trials had been prominent in the news from December of 2001 through September of 2003, albeit in the shadow of 9/11.
But the photos hadn’t done justice to his striking features: the artful arch of his eyebrows over the wide-set, almond-shaped eyes, the perfectly sculpted nose, the full lips, now curling into a wicked grin. Everyone else I had seen today seemed so dull and bland by comparison, almost as if we were in a black and white movie and he was the only character filmed in color.
Eisenbrey ran his fingers through his dark, chin-length hair as he pondered me. With his nearly-black hair, blue eyes, and somewhat fair complexion he looked like someone my grandparents would have described as “Black Irish”. The good-looking killer finally said, “I’ll read your books, and then I’ll decide whether or not you’re the best person to write about me.”
I took a measured breath, trying to quell the dislike that had already started to rise in me, but it was no use. Control freaks just irritated the shit out of me. I found myself glaring at him in spite of my nervousness.
“Look, Rebecca, you seem like a nice kid, but I think they should have sent someone with a little more experience, don’t you?”
The sudden increase in tension gave me the urge to throw something, but instead I let my breath out slowly. How dare he insinuate that I am inexperienced? I’d been a published author for seven years, and I was able to support myself on the income from my novels for the last five, a feat that the vast majority of writers would never accomplish. I didn’t need to sell my qualifications to this cretin. “Right. Do you think we could go through some preliminary questions today, or should we just bag the whole interview?” I snapped.
“You’re a testy little thing, aren’t you?” He regarded me for a moment. “Well, sure we can talk a while. I don’t have much else on my calendar anyway, and at least you’re nice to look at.” There was hunger in the way his deep-blue eyes inspected me, which, considering the source, felt unsettling. I saw his muscles tense, reminding me of a tightly wound coil ready to spring forward at any moment. There could be no mistaking that the man on the other side of the bars was a predator.
Sitting down on the hard metal chair, I gave him what I hoped looked like an amiable smile. “May I call you Thomas?” I inquired.
I had let my guard down somewhat and started to relax until he squelched it by saying, “No. You call me Mr. Eisenbrey.”
I quickly switched gears. It looked as though I was going to have to get into the let’s just get through this mindset. It was just as well. After all, this guy was a vicious murderer. I wasn’t supposed to enjoy talking with him, but just to try to maintain a good enough rapport with him to facilitate the collection of the information I needed. I wondered how many meetings it would take before I had enough to cut him loose.
“All right, Mr. Eisenbrey, may I have your permission to record this interview?”
“Sure, honey.”
Crap. He sounded curt and dismissive, and he then looked away. I needed to engage him somehow, get him invested in the conversation. I took a small digital recorder out of my bag, turned it on, and set it on the floor between us.
“Let’s start at the beginning. Where were you born?”
“Carnation,” he said in a monotone.
“Is that here in Washington?” I asked, knowing the answer already because the city of Carnation was only a few miles east of where I lived in Bellevue. I’d never been there, never had a reason to make the short trip. I’d heard the town held nothing more interesting than a few cows in a field, so there was no point for me to visit.
His eyes narrowed. “It’s not far from Seattle. It was a little farming community, still is I suppose. But why haven’t you heard of it? You’re not from around here?”
“I moved here from California. Did your family have a farm?”
“No, my parents didn’t own one, but when I was a kid I did a little work on a couple of farms for spending money.”
“What are your parents’ names?”
“Joseph and Sarah Eisenbrey.”
“What do they do for a living?”
“Dad was in construction. Mom was a housewife.”
“Do you love them?” I asked quickly.
That took him by surprise, and he seemed to contemplate my question for a moment. “I don’t know. I suppose I was fond of my mother…I don’t think about them much anymore.”
“What about your father?”
He paused, and regarded me in a calculating manner. “We’ve talked enough about them. Tell me Rebecca, do you love your parents?” he fired back at me.
“Yes,” I said and I held his gaze. I loved them in a way that you’ll never love anyone, and I wish like hell that they were still here. God, I miss them. His expression changed. Something had piqued his interest. Once again I had the uneasy feeling that he could read my thoughts. I asked another question. “Do you have any brothers or sisters?”
“I had a brother,” he said slowly. I felt a tingling on the back of my neck, and I didn’t want to look into his eyes anymore. I studied my list, remembering the vivid description that Scanlon had given me of the condition of his brother’s body when they found him in the forest.
“You said that in the past tense. What happened to him?”
“He went hunting and…well, they found his body a while later. The police suspected foul play. Someone had gotten a little carried away with a blade of some kind,” he said, his voice flat and calm.
I looked up again and watched Eisenbrey closely as I asked my next question. “Do you miss him?”
“Not particularly,” he said, and I believed him. The questions about loving or missing his family failed to elicit any discernible emotional response, but I should have expected this, given his diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder. Apparently, whatever I’d heard about the abilities of serial killers to charm didn’t apply to this one. Eisenbrey glanced away from me, but not before I caught the corner of his lip curling up in amusement.
“Was he older or younger than you?” I asked.
“He was older.”
“What was his name?”
“David. We called him Davy.”
“Were you with him when it happened?”
A slight stiffening in his posture as his eyes returned to me. “Hmm. Your question leaves me in a bit of a quandary, as you can probably imagine. I’m going to lay down some ground rules for you here, Rebecca. We won’t discuss my actions or whereabouts in regards to any deaths except those that I have been convicted of in a court of law”— he paused and his eyes fell to the digital recording device resting on the floor between us, then he glared in my direction— “Especially with that running. I might be on death row but that could change at any moment. Do not mention any other cases that could result in a new conviction or you will find yourself on my shit-list.”
“I could turn it off if that would make you feel more comfortable speaking candidly with me about your brother,” I offered.
Eisenbrey wagged his finger at me. “So it can wind up in your little book? No,” he said forcefully and then seemed to rein himself back in. “That is not going to happen. If you want to continue this interview, you will follow my rules and never write about anything other than those occasions that turned into convictions.”
“All right,” I said, holding my hand up solemnly. “You have my word.”
“Good, now why don’t you just try a different question?”
“Okay. Do you talk with your parents very often?”
“Are you kidding me?” He glowered at me like I was an idiot for going right back where he had just told me not to, but then gave a resigned sigh and answered me. “I haven’t seen my father in over twenty-two years. He ran off.” Eisenbrey crossed his arms and smirked. Apparently he found his father’s disappearance humorous. “And my dear mother doesn’t speak to me anymore. For some reason, she seems to be afraid of me,” he said, shaking his head as if he assessed his mother’s reaction as odd. I couldn’t blame the woman.
“Do you have any idea where your father ran off to?”
He rubbed the stubble on his chin pensively. “Not exactly, but I have the feeling that none of us will ever see him again.” Eisenbrey leaned back and seemed relaxed, yet my spine tingled like an electric current had jolted it. My senses screamed, ‘Run!’
Goddamn. So he did kill his brother and father. And it looked as though he wanted me to understand that, even though I had been forbidden from putting it in the book. If I was his mother, I would have changed my identity and moved somewhere far away from here. In fact, I felt like I wanted to get away from him now.
I ran through the rest of my list of questions for the day’s session, obtaining some information on his extended family—whom he had never been close to—and his early life, but it all seemed mundane. He didn’t insinuate that he had been involved in any other deaths. After a while, the guard signaled that my time had run out.
“Well, what do you think?” I asked. “Are you willing to try this again next week?”
He shrugged. “Yeah, that’s all right.”
“Monday?” I asked.
“If I’m in the mood.” He gave a non-committal shrug, but still, it seemed like a yes.
“Okay.” I stood and bent over to pick up my bag, and then I noticed my digital camera toward the top of its contents. “Do you mind if I take a snapshot of you? I find it useful to have a visual reference,” I told him.
“Sure, but then I get a picture. I’d like to have a visual of you as well.” The wicked grin had returned, and it creeped me out. He stood and leaned casually against the cement wall and studied me, sensing my hesitation. “It’s only fair,” he chided.
“Uh…” I didn’t think it a good idea but I couldn’t conjure up a reason to say no to him at that moment. “All right, but I didn’t bring one with me.”
“That’s okay. You can give it to me at our next visit. How do you want me?” He stood and tugged lazily at his T-shirt, and as he smoothed it down I saw a generous amount of dark chest hair peeking out over the collar, which matched the hair on his arms. He leaned casually against the wall, bringing one of his knees up and resting his foot on his cot. Somehow he had managed to make his jail-issued gear look like something from Calvin Klein. This man could have been a model very easily. “How’s this?” he asked, as if he were aware of the effect his appearance had on me. At least he seemed to be enjoying our meeting now.
