By : Betsy J. Bennett
Courage is the mastery of fear, not the absence of fear—Mark Twain
CHAPTER 1
“Stop!”
With controlled movements, as if the car itself were grateful not to go any further, the vehicle pulled off the side of the road, only feet from the tall, guarded gate, covered in razor wire. The driver looked at the man in the passenger seat, his words filled with compassion. “I can turn around.”
“No.” The word was long in coming, the voice dry, sounding unused. They had not spoken on the sixty minute trip from Stafford, Indiana to the maximum security state prison. There was nothing to say. Sometimes things were too painful to be shared. Even the radio, which in this part of the state ran to the price of soybeans and corn and the occasional somebody-done-somebody-wrong song, had remained silent.
It was early, only past eight-thirty in the morning. Neither man had slept well that night, were eager to get it over with, whatever that entailed. “Are you sure you want to go through with this?”
The sky appeared gunmetal gray, and as the man in the passenger seat looked through the windshield, he saw not clouds, but depression, deep and abiding, taking all oxygen from his lungs, the will to live from his chest. He was cold, chilled to the marrow of his bones, and although the temperature outside the car loomed in the low 40’s, the car’s heater ran and therefore could not be responsible for the chill he felt.
“Richard?”
He shook his head, tried to find sanity in this place where before, there had been nothing but desperation. “No, I don’t want to do this.”
“You don’t have to.” The compassion returned, warmer than the heat barreling in through the vents. “I can turn the car around. We can go back. There’s nothing for you here.”
Dr. Richard Kimble looked over at his brother-in-law, a man who had stood by him for years while he avowed his innocence and fought a murder conviction. “I know you would. Len, of all the people who believed in me—“ he wouldn’t finish. There was no need to.
“Donna said you didn’t do it, and Donna’s always right.”
Richard cracked a smile, one of those transient emotions that appeared then vanished. “Yes, there is that. It was quite annoying when we were kids. Still, if he has anything to say, I need to hear it.”
Tapping his fingers on the steering wheel, Leonard Taft allowed that as his only sign of annoyance. It was a brand new car, a 1967, his pride, his baby, which still had that new car smell. He hoped that wouldn’t be tainted by the scent of fear he was also picking up.
“He’s a criminal sociopath. The odds are high he’s not going to tell you anything you don’t already know.”
Kimble laced, then relaced his fingers. “He killed Helen.”
Not by his own hand, that had been Fred Johnson, a one-armed man Kimble had seen over six years before leaving his house. Fred Johnson was the man Kimble had hunted for four years while every police department in the country hunted for him, an interstate fugitive. No, this man he was going to see was the man who had given the order, who had wanted a Supreme Court seat badly enough to kill not once, but several times.
“Judge Reistling—“
Kimble cut him off, slashing with his hand. “He’s no judge to me.”
But he had been. Reistling had presided over Kimble’s murder trial, sitting on the bench, dressed in the black robe of his authority, which hid all the corruption of his soul. He sat above everyone, all powerful, listening to arguments on both sides, his mind already made up, his eyes on a greater prize. It had been Reistling’s decision to go for the death penalty in the Kimble v Indiana case, even when he had known he himself was responsible for the murder.
“Reistling will just cause you pain.” Len mashed his palms on the steering wheel. “He’s already caused you enough pain.”
“Len, thanks. You know I needed that, and you.”
Kimble was grateful for Leonard Taft, for he had decided, correctly, that his hands would shake, and he wouldn’t be able to drive for the nightmares behind his eyelids even though he was awake. It was not a task he could have asked his sister, she was still nursing an infant, and he didn’t want Olivia, the woman he planned to marry, to see him this vulnerable.
“Len?”
“Yeah?”
“Come on, let’s get this over with.”
Len drove up to the guard’s stop, handed his license, was waved through. They were expected.
“Does it feel any different coming through the gate this time?”
“No.” There were no handcuffs at his wrists, no leg irons, but it felt no different. Kimble had spent two years as a prisoner here, after a death-row conviction, while waiting for the last of the appeals to go down in flames. If he thought being a fugitive was difficult, running from police, always afraid to be recognized, it was nothing compared to a six-by-eight cell, and facing an appointment in the electric chair. The guards had not been sympathetic to a man accused of murdering his wife.
“You’re free, you know.”
“Yeah, tell that to my blood pressure.”
I’m free, he repeated Len’s words, a statement that had become his mantra. As usual, he found no comfort in them.
There was no doubt the prison was a cage, handling some of the worst offenders in Indiana history. Tall guard towers stood tall, as if this were some medieval castle, guarding a king and his wealth. Its purpose was quite a bit more nefarious than that. The watchers were armed with weapons that should a prisoner make it to the courtyard, they stood very little chance of making it much further.
Inside the prison, heavy bars, guards, and a stench that was so familiar it had his gut churning. His pockets were empty. He had deliberately left keys, wallet, and a roll of half-used antacids in the car with Len. He wanted nothing from his new life in this hell.
He recognized the beefy, smirking guard who escorted him to the visitor’s room, a particularly nasty man who liked to maintain his authority through the liberal use a night stick. Kimble resisted the urge to rub his shoulder, his jaw. He wouldn’t give the sadist the satisfaction. And he walked firmly, carefully, although his impulse was to shuffle, as if he wore hand and leg irons. He kept his back straight, his eyes ahead, was grateful he’d eaten nothing for breakfast the way his stomach roiled.
“I always knew you’d be back, Doc.”
No, that wasn’t what he’d said. “You gonna fry,” he’d repeat, over and over. “You gonna fry.”
No sense making the correction now. “And I always told you I was innocent.” He was not a violent man, at least he hadn’t been, six years before. Now it took all his strength of will not to form his right hand into a fist and have that monster chewing teeth.
“Visiting room. I guess you know the rules.”
“Yes.” Not from this side of the table, Kimble thought, and wouldn’t give the guard the satisfaction of saying it aloud. How many times had his lawyer come, or his sister and his father, trying to get him to keep his spirits up? Had they felt this overriding, soul crushing despair? If so, they had only appeared upbeat with him, trying to offer courage, faith, hope. They spoke of appeals, of their plans when he was released, knowing as well as he did, his “release” was not to be of this world.
He never had the heart to tell them that every time they came it made everything worse, watching them leave, free, while he returned to a small locked cell and a nightmare he had no control over. Maybe it was the same for Reistling. He could only hope.
The room held eight small tables, scarred from generations of visits, five of them occupied, lawyers or loved ones come to visit the incarcerated. Only one, against a far wall, held a single person.
He almost didn’t recognize him. It hadn’t been that long since Reistling’s trial, one Richard Kimble had witnessed hoping to find closure, to put some of his nightmares to rest. Although he had been willing, he had not been asked to testify. During that trial, dressed in a thousand dollar suit, represented by the best lawyers in the state, Reistling had been forceful, defiant, angry, and yes, still manically ambitious. It was his sights on a Supreme Court vacancy which had him silencing a witness, had his hired man kill Helen Kimble, had jurists on the Kimble trial unable to come up with any verdict other than “guilty.”
Kimble had wondered then if there would be justice, or if this judge, this jury would be bought off, threatened, coerced into seeing things his way. Apparently not. Jury deliberation had been less than a day, and yes Kimble heard there would be appeals, many appeals, and he hoped like his own, they would be a blip on the evening news and then ignored.
Reistling sat unmoving, not so much as blinking, staring blankly into a corner, his hands, manacled to the table, still. Kimble tried to pull up his impression of Reistling from his own murder trial, found he couldn’t. He had been in shock then, trying to process what was happening to him, which was so far from his former life he had no basis for comparison. He kept expecting someone to say, “there’s been a mistake, he’s innocent,” someone to listen when he spoke honestly of his marriage and of the man he had seen leaving his house the night Helen had been murdered. He had a flawless reputation for caring, had friends who knew his honesty, but they couldn’t compete against the lies, the fabrications, the fingerprints on the Kimble lamp.
Richard only remembered the jury as faces, not real people who held his life in their hands, but caricatures of real people. He tried to face them, to radiate innocence as his lawyer requested, but to little avail. Of the judge on the trial, he remembered nothing at all but the sound of a gavel, the ringing pronouncement of death by electrocution, the statement he still heard in nightmares, “May God have mercy on your soul.”
Mercy had not been what either of them was after. Reistling wanted fame. Kimble had wanted justice.
The man facing him was a shell of the forceful, dynamic man who had overseen his trial, who had been preparing for a Senate confirmation hearing when he had been arrested. After hesitating briefly, Richard walked forward.
Reistling had lost serious weight, was little more than bones, with his eyes, sunken, his skin tone far too yellow to be healthy. The prison jumpsuit hung loose as if it fit a skeleton. His hands shook. Kimble was a physician, knew the signs. Cancer. It was the first time he made a diagnosis from eight feet away.
“Dr. Kimble.” The man stood, rounded shoulders. He was handcuffed to the table, and again, Kimble had to resist the impulse to rub his own wrists. He remembered the weight, the confining nature of handcuffs that made him feel like a rabid animal so clearly he could feel them now. Uncomfortable, he shoved his hands into his pockets, felt that made him look ridiculous, so he took them out, let them hang at his sides. He would show no weakness in front of this sociopath.
“Reistling.” He made it only an acknowledgement, clipped and curt. He’d sooner throw the man under the wheels of a speeding train than sit here and converse. Kimble pulled out a chair from the metal table, the scrape loud in the room, almost painful. He didn’t sit. Somehow towering over the former judge left him with the feeling of power and an ugly taste in the back of his mouth.
At the other tables, no one looked up. They knew the sound, knew the drill. They were not willing to share in someone else’s miseries.
Ten feet above them windows showed a trace of sunlight making its way into this bastion of despair. The windows were covered with weighty iron bars, the green paint peeling like some form of metallic leprosy. Avoiding Reistling, Kimble watched a fly, hopeless, pounding against the window again and again, trying to get out through that false illusion of freedom. He waited through the sound of a frantic buzz then the inevitable smack overly loud as the small winged insect crashed again. Kimble raised his chin, followed its desperate flight as it backed up, tried again for liberty.
Been there, done that, Kimble thought to himself, wondered if he should wish it good luck or tell it to abandon all hope.
Windows in a prison didn’t do anyone any good. Yes, a prisoner could check, see if it were raining, snowing, or sunny, but every day inside was painfully, mercilessly the same. Windows showed barbed wire, armed guards, sniper rifles, and was not an accurate representation of what life on the outside was like. It was a sad commentary that most people inside would never have a clue what freedom was even if they were released today.
The fly crashed again, gave a half-hearted attempt to find some other exit, some other avenue of hope, before it returned to pounding its head against a wall. With bile sickening his stomach, Kimble wondered if the fly had family waiting for it somewhere, if the buzz could be translated into “I’m innocent. I’m innocent.”
He turned away, but the man waiting for him was even less welcoming.
“This isn’t a social visit.” Kimble tried for scorn, found it wasn’t a difficult emotion to resurrect. His mouth was dry. He tried his silent mantra, “I’m free,” wondered how that would work for the fly.
“No. I’m dying. I want you to know. Liver cancer. I’ve only got a few weeks, they say.”
Kimble had yet to sit, stood tall, looming over Riestling. He was a healer, had spoken a vow with the phrase, “First do no harm,” which meant absolutely nothing to him facing this monster. “What do you want from me? I’m willing to shout Halleluiah if it will make you feel any worse.”
“You should know, even if I’d gotten to the highest court in the land, I wouldn’t have lasted long.”
Ahh, so that was what this was about. He still grieved his lost shot at greatness, having to settle for infamy. Kimble took the time to settle himself on the cold metal chair, his hands on the table, even if in nightmares when he was here he wore shackles.
His jaw hurt. Obviously he had been clenching his teeth together. Olivia would yell if she found out. Slowly, deliberately he forced his mandibular muscles to relax. “You have no right judging others, or arguing Constitutional Law. You should have been locked behind bars long ago.”
“I thought…” he hesitated, while Kimble, keeping his thoughts to himself, imagined six dozen ways to finish that sentence, almost all of them haunting his days and nights.
The handcuffs rattled again as Reistling tried to form his hands into a plea. “I thought I could make a real difference on the Supreme Court.”
The transient smile, Kimble’s trademark, appeared and vanished as rapidly. “Arguing for justice, no doubt.”
“Yes, although you mock, yes. This country is falling apart, with blacks and whites fighting each other, with so many laws that had been accepted now being questioned by long haired college students who think to change statutes by holding signs and singing.”
Kimble leaned forward, surprisingly, seeing this monster trapped, his earlier fear drained, and his hands were steady. “The death penalty for one.”
“Yes. I thought I could be the voice of reason.”
He prevented himself from snorting in disbelief. Kimble spoke clearly. “This country is going to abolish the death penalty. And it can’t come soon enough.”
“I know you’d think that. You have a right. But the death penalty, there are uses for it.”
Kimble sat back, literally, figuratively, putting more distance between them. “Sometimes I wish the DA could have gotten you on more than two cases of second-degree murder, more than conspiracy, more than jury tampering. Maybe then you’d have a different perspective.”
Reistling looked up, made eye contact, probably the first time he had met Kimble’s gaze. His eyes were bloodshot, his color jaundiced. Kimble witnessed no emotion, not even the anger he expected. “Bad people need to be punished.”
Kimble was ready to spit, but held the look and let a smile blossom this one he held for longer than a second. “I couldn’t agree more.”
Reistling looked away, toward the ceiling, where the fly continued its desperate bid for freedom, never realizing it was hopeless, never accepting the parallel that Kimble recognized. “I’m not sorry for what I did.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“I needed a trial to shoot me up into national attention.”
Kimble shifted, the metal chair screeching on the tile floor, as painful a sound as the earlier jangle of handcuffs. “So you manufactured one, not caring who you hurt, who you killed.”
Reistling shivered. The room was cold. The action could not be indicative of guilt. “I never meant for your wife to die.”
“Yeah, we were both inconvenienced by that, weren’t we?”
“If it makes any difference, I thought they’d get Johnson.”
“It doesn’t. Not in the slightest. Especially since he was working to your orders.”
“I never wanted your wife dead.”
Kimble’s smile this time was fleeting, held no mirth. “I think your earlier statement belies that. And if you’re trying to offer an apology, I’m not accepting it.”
The fly, exhausted or perhaps drained of hope, finally understanding futility, dropped to the table between the two men who sat facing each other. It landed on its back, buzzing, too exhausted to right itself. Without thinking, Reisling placed his thumb over the insect, pressed down. Kimble made a face, said nothing, as the former judge wiped the remains of his last death row ruling on the edge of the table.
“Anyway, I’ll be dead soon. That’s what I wanted you to know. Then it will be over.”
“Yes, then it will be over.” Without looking back, Kimble stood, walked to the door where a guard would let him out, let him walk free into the late fall sunshine, with no handcuffs, no death penalty, no worry that every stranger could recognize him, send him straight to hell. Even knowing all that, he knew one other thing.
It would never be over.