CRIMINAL CHRISTMAS: A Set of 8 Holiday Suspense Stories, page 74
Avery’s proximity didn’t seem to faze DiMaggio. He kept his attention on me. “I don’t think you fully appreciate the situation you’re in. I’m not one of the guys locked up in here. I have days off. And your home address really wouldn’t be that hard for me to get.”
“Jesus, DiMaggio! She could report you to the warden, and you know she’s a personal friend of Barnett,” Avery warned him. Hearing the misconception amongst the guards alleviated some of my stress. Captain Barnett and I were not chums, but I certainly didn’t feel compelled to correct him.
DiMaggio transferred his stony stare from me to Avery as he pondered his words, then glared at me once more, finally letting go of me. Avery rested his hand on the small of my back and led me away from the guard’s office, then dropped it as we neared Tom’s quarters.
“You okay?” he asked as we walked.
“Yeah. No worries,” I assured him. It would be counterproductive to turn DiMaggio’s tantrum into the next world war. And I had no interest in wasting the precious time I was allotted inside the prison—two hours, twice per week.
Avery looked me up and down, chewing his lip, his brows furrowed. “You wanna file a complaint against that asshole?”
“No. I’d rather not. It’ll just eat into my visitation time. I didn’t drive all the way out here to sit in Barnett’s office.”
“Okay,” he said. Avery had already set up a chair for me by the cell. He peeked through the window at Tom. “Oh, shit, he’s meditating,” he told me in a whisper.
“Really? Is that something he does regularly?” I asked.
“Yeah, pretty often. Sometimes he does it for hours. Doesn’t move at all. It’s fucking creepy.” Avery pressed the button on his radio and said, “Clear.” He turned to me, his expression somber. “You know, I’m awful sorry about what happened back there.” He spoke quietly as the outer door to Tom’s cell began to open, his voice barely audible over the hum of the electric motor. He shook his head. “DiMaggio’s a prick. Just let me know if you change your mind.”
“Thanks Don,” I said.
Tom had been sitting on his bed when the door to his cell opened, but he uncrossed his legs and rose to his feet as he saw me. “Uh-oh, what happened?” he asked.
It took a nanosecond for me to consider whether or not to tell him about the rude welcoming I had received. I decided it would be nicer not to trouble him with that information. It would only make him angry, and I didn’t see how that would help either of us. “Why do you think something happened?”
“You look different,” he remarked.
“I’m just feeling low. It was the visit to the gallows. I didn’t want to go there,” I said as I sat down. Tom remained standing and leaned against the bars, tapping the metal softly with one of his knuckles.
“Well, shit, I can assure you that I don’t want to go there either.”
Giving myself a mental kick for my lack of sympathy, I said, “Of course. I’m sorry. I don’t know why I’m down. You’re in a terrible situation, Tom. I don’t really have anything to complain about.”
“Sure, unless you might be upset about someone you care for being executed in a little while.”
I nodded silently and swallowed. His capacity for understanding how it made me feel surprised me. “Why didn’t you give me any warning? I could have used some time to prepare myself.”
“If I hadn’t sprung that on you, you would’ve just thought up reasons to put it off and you wouldn’t have done it. You needed to see that place.” That too was a little more insight than I had expected from him. During the course of my research, I’d read that psychopaths didn’t have the ability to comprehend other people’s emotions since they lacked any real emotions themselves. Perhaps in his case that wasn’t true.
I sighed. “You’re probably right.”
He stepped back from the bars and crossed his arms, staring down at me. “What else happened?”
He knew something had taken place. I figured I couldn’t hide it from him anymore and I rationalized that he wasn’t the kind of man who needed to be sheltered anyway. “DiMaggio,” I said. Then I relayed the entire incident to him.
“That motherfucker,” Tom hissed, his countenance full of loathing. “He’s going to pay for that.”
“Tom, how do you intend to make one of the officers pay when you’re locked up in this cell?”
“I’m sure I’ll come up with something. I sure as hell ain’t gonna let that slide.” Tom started pacing back and forth, not easy in such a confined space. He looked as though the slightest thing might throw him into a rage. I could see I needed to be careful not to set him off. I shouldn’t have told him about DiMaggio.
I ran through the questions I had prepared for our session that day, but he seemed preoccupied while he answered. No doubt his thoughts kept returning to that horrible guard. The more his mind drifted from our conversation, the more I stared at him, and finally I just had to say it. “Thomas Donovan Eisenbrey, why couldn’t you be ugly?” I looked up into his eyes and a dizzy feeling that was mixed with exhilaration overtook me. I was swooning. I couldn’t help it.
He laughed, “I am ugly on the inside, darlin’. What do you want me to do—stop shaving? Get a beer belly? I can’t help it if I was born with a pretty cover, but I’m not sorry at all if that’s what brings you here.” He wrapped his fingers around one of the bars and caressed it absentmindedly. “I’m so glad that you keep coming to see me, baby. You make me so happy.”
The literature on the issue of rehabilitating someone like him painted a bleak picture. Being honest with myself, I couldn’t even say I knew for sure that the words he spoke came with sincerity. I wanted to fix him, to heal him, to make him into someone I could justify loving. I couldn’t see any way to do that, but there had to be a way. There had to, because I needed it.
We had both become quiet as we watched each other through the bars. A guard finally broke the silence. “Time’s up.” I looked up, thankful to see Avery and not DiMaggio.
“Tom, I want more than two hours with you.”
“I know,” he whispered. “Me too.”
“It’s not enough.”
“I know,” he said. He looked afraid of something, but what could the Hunter be afraid of? He was the scariest thing I had ever known. I stood up and reached toward him, wanting to be closer, wanting to touch him, knowing it was unwise.
“No touching,” Avery reminded me.
I dropped my hand.
I began the long drive back to Seattle, feeling hopeless. It wasn’t until I got to the west side of the mountain pass that I realized just how much all of the Eastern Washington sunshine had been improving my mood. As I entered the dark drizzle under the thick cover of clouds, so common to Western Washington, my feelings of hopelessness joined with doom and despair. Now they could all have a party with each other, but not one that I wished to attend.
Spending time with Tom made me feel crazy. I wanted to touch him, to be near him. The drive home after a visit was always depressing, and even more so when I acknowledged the fact that the man I had fallen in love with had a date with a hangman’s noose in less than one year. It wasn’t fair. Why couldn’t I be this sexually attracted to a man that hadn’t killed several people? I had to ask myself—what the hell am I doing?
Chapter 23
“The chapters you sent me are…a bit unusual,” said the voice on my cell phone. Andrea’s verdict hung in the air for several moments while I tried to form a response. God bless the British for their subtlety, although Andrea wasn’t likely to understate her feelings for long. The people I had chosen as friends weren’t what I’d classify as “yes people”. Andrea would have no qualms about ripping me a new one if she felt it was warranted. She hadn’t actually said she disliked it but, let’s face it, if she had liked it that would be the first thing she’d mention. I felt the need to defend what I had written.
“I know, but I keep returning to this particular voice, this way of describing him that’s intertwined with my feelings.”
“Feelings? Whoa,” Andrea said. “Are you beginning to actually like this guy?”
“Well…”
“What you’ve written isn’t well rounded at all. It feels like you’re trying to paint him as something other than the monster that he is. You need to interview the relatives of one of his victims. I think it would give you a more healthy perspective if you spoke to someone who’s actually lost one of their loved ones to a murderer.”
“I have...in a way. My parents were murdered when I was in high school. I was the one who found them,” I confessed.
“Rebecca…” Andrea started. Then I heard her exhale slowly, followed by a long stretch of silence. I waited. Finally she said, “I thought we knew each other well. Why haven’t you ever told me this before?”
“It’s not something I like to talk about. I didn’t see any reason to bring it up.”
“You should have mentioned your parents when I asked you to write about this man. If I would have known, I wouldn’t have asked you to do this.”
“You wouldn’t have? Really?”
“Well, all right, maybe I would have. I suppose having that in your past gives you a unique perspective another writer might not have.” She sighed heavily into the phone. “The point is—we should have talked about this before I sent you out to Walla Walla. This must really be messing with your head.”
“Andrea, this guy would mess with anyone’s head, even someone whose background was…clean.” Even someone who hadn’t come home one day after school to find half of her father’s head blown away. I struggled to suppress that mental picture.
“I don’t suppose it helps that he’s so bloody handsome,” she remarked.
“You could have sent a man out there who was 100 per cent heterosexual; he wouldn’t have been safe either.”
“Yes, wonderful, I can see that you’re deeply affected by his charms, but seriously Rebecca, you need to put those thoughts to rest. Your infatuation with him has got to stop. I need to get some pages from you that deal with the horrendous murders this man has committed, and the impact it’s had on the lives of his victim’s families.”
Andrea was right. It had to stop. I couldn’t keep flirting with the devil. Sure, I could leave my bullshit out of the book. Sure, the world didn’t need to know I was falling in love with the incarnate of evil. The trouble was that I knew, and I couldn’t hide what I had allowed myself to become from myself.
Chapter 24
November 19th, 2012
I selected one of the phone numbers for the prison from my speed-dial and hit send as I barreled down I-82, doing as the prison officials suggested and confirming by phone an hour prior to my scheduled visitation time with Tom. Close to the city of Richland, about sixty miles from the penitentiary, I slowed the car, pulled over to park in a wide graveled area beside the freeway and hit the steering wheel with my balled fist. “Goddamn it! Shit! Fuck! Shitfuck!”
The man on the other end of the line had just told me our visit had been cancelled due to the prisoner’s bad behavior. I’d already driven over 200 miles. That was more than three hours of my life wasted, not to mention all of the time I’d spent anticipating my chance to see Tom again. How could they let me drive all that way before telling me? When I’d asked the prison employee why someone hadn’t called to tell me before I’d been in the car three hours, he told me that it wasn’t the prison’s policy to call people that were scheduled for visits to notify them of cancellations. It was the responsibility of the visiting party to call the prison for the status.
It could have been worse, I told myself. At least I’d saved myself the last sixty miles by doing the one hour check. That did little to console me. Extremely curious about what kind of bad behavior Tom had been guilty of, I decided to call Andrea’s friend, the Prison Captain, Ralph Barnett.
I dialed his number and then watched the other cars as they sped by me, every one of the drivers exceeding the speed limit, rushing to whatever places they had to be. I’d bet their meetings hadn’t been cancelled.
After explaining who I was to Barnett’s secretary she patched me through to his phone. “Hello Miss Reis,” he said with curt efficiency. I got the impression that calling him Ralph would be a bad move for me.
“Hi Mr. Barnett. I’m calling because I was just told my visit with Eisenbrey has been cancelled. Do you know anything about that?”
“Yes, I do. This may come as a surprise to you, but some of the inmates that we house here have been known to misbehave. Eisenbrey is no exception.”
“Do you know what he did that caused the cancellation?”
“I know plenty Miss Reis. For instance, I know one of my guards found some lacy panties when they inspected his cell ten days ago. Do you know anything about that?”
“Uh…oh crap,” I muttered. “Yes, I gave those to him.”
“And that’s not all you did according to the guards that were on duty. Tell me, did you at any time reach through the bars of his cell?”
“No sir. I wouldn’t do that.”
“I sincerely hope not, but I’m not sure what you would or wouldn’t do anymore. You aren’t exactly the person I expected from Andrea’s description. You were told to stay back four feet from the opening to his cell at all times. How did you get the panties to him?”
“I tossed them through the bars.”
“Well don’t do it again,” he said, his voice harsh. “The prisoners here get away with a lot of shit—kinky love letters to their girlfriends, phone sex, making out during their visits. Hell, some of them even figure out creative ways to have sex in the visitation area while they’re surrounded by visitors, some of which are children. I don’t approve of that sort of behavior around the kids, but most of the other stuff doesn’t bother me. It helps with morale and that makes it easier for us to manage these men. But Eisenbrey is a different story. That motherfucker is on death row for several good reasons. I don’t mind you doing your little interviews, but I don’t feel that his remaining time here needs to be a party. I expect you to conduct yourself in a more professional manner when you visit him or you your visits will be terminated.”
“I understand, and I’m very sorry about that Mr. Barnett. Is there any way you could allow me to see him today? I was almost to the prison when I found out the visit was cancelled. This is a very long drive for me.”
“No way. It’s too bad about your long drive, but he assaulted a guard. I don’t have any intention of rewarding him with a visit from a nice looking woman after that.”
“Oh no. Which guard did he assault?”
“It was Officer DiMaggio,” he answered. I breathed a sigh of relief. I didn’t care if something bad happened to that particular guard. In fact, I had fantasized about assaulting the man myself. “That reminds me, I need to ask if Eisenbrey has ever made any statements to you that seemed threatening or insinuated that he intended to harm any of the staff here.”
“Uh…no, I don’t recall any,” I lied. I remembered Tom telling me that he was going to get even with DiMaggio, but I couldn’t disclose that to Barnett. Tom might shut down during our interviews if he thought I reported what he said to prison officials. Besides, I wasn’t feeling a warm and fuzzy alliance with Captain Barnett.
“Well, I want you to let me know immediately if he ever makes any statements to you that lead you to believe he’s going to harm someone. That goes for my staff, the other prisoners, and you. Don’t ever allow yourself to believe that he wouldn’t physically harm you if he could reach you. That four foot rule is an important one. Got that?”
“Yes. I don’t have any problem with staying back from his cell. I agree that it’s a necessary safety precaution.”
“Whether or not you agree is irrelevant. Just see to it that you comply. It would give me no pleasure to have to terminate your visitation. I wanted to do this favor for Andrea.”
“When will I be able to see him again?”
“I’ll let you see him this Friday provided he doesn’t break anymore rules. As assaults go, this one wasn’t too bad. DiMaggio didn’t sustain any injuries, so I’m not going to bust Eisenbrey down to level one…yet.” I cringed at the mention of level one. That meant complete isolation, no visitors whatsoever. The possibility was something that I dreaded to hear. It would put a serious damper on my book.
There was a pause and when Barnett spoke again he sounded a lot less like a drill sergeant. “And, Miss Reis, I uh…didn’t actually realize that you hadn’t received a phone call from one of our staff when the visit was cancelled. If it looks like this Friday isn’t going to happen, I’ll give you a call before you make the trip.”
“Thank you, I appreciate that,” I said. My rapport with Barnett had taken a beating, but it looked as though I hadn’t completely demolished it.
I hung up and, after taking a few deep breaths, I had calmed down enough to safely pull back into traffic. There was nothing else for me to do east of the mountains so I turned around at the next freeway exit and headed back home to Bellevue feeling irritated with Tom for causing our visit to get cancelled.
I had assumed he would be on his best behavior with the guards because I thought our time together was important to him too. Was that too much to ask of him? Based on the exchange I’d witnessed between him and DiMaggio, he seemed to be allowed to say whatever the hell he wanted to the guards, so it appeared that the only thing he had to do to keep his visitation privileges was refrain from assaulting anyone. And, Jesus, how hard could that be?
But how much of this was Tom’s fault? DiMaggio loved to pick a fight anytime an opportunity presented itself. And perhaps I shouldn’t have told Tom what DiMaggio had done to me; it had only inflamed him. Tom had made it clear he knew something had taken place, but he wasn’t all knowing, he’d needed me to fill him in on the details. I wondered if a little restraint on my part could have halted his rage. I feared that my last visit had been a set up for the perfect storm.
