Caged to Kill

by Tom Swyers

  “Spell it.”

  “K.L.E.I.N.S.C.H.M.I.T”

  “Let me plug it in and see what we get.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Bingo. Surprisingly, there’s quite a few of them in New York. Any idea where he lives?”

  “No. Wait a second. Phillip said he was going over the river to see him. He was headed to Albany. That must mean he’s crossing the Hudson.”

  “Right. And it must be close to a bus line, I’d imagine. So he’s local, or at least has a house locally.”

  “Makes sense—”

  “There’s only one Kleinschmit who lives locally. Looking at the bus route maps, he lives close to the Route 233 bus line, across the Hudson, in the village of Hampton Manor.”

  “Can you transfer from the 905 to the 233?”

  “Yes, down at the Greyhound Bus Terminal in Albany.”

  “What’s his address?” David grabbed a pen from the desk to write it down on the envelope.

  “Fifteen Thoroughbred Drive, Hampton Manor, 12144.”

  “Got it. Talk to you later.”

  “Be careful out there.”

  “Will do. Thank you, Julius.” With that, David hung up, shut and locked the door behind him, dashed to the office to fling the key at the motel clerk, and mounted his Mustang for the ride to Hampton Manor.

  He tried Phillip one last time on his cell. Still no answer. This time David texted him instead. Phillip, I just met with Edith Nowak. She claims to have had sex with O’Neil once. Said Kleinschmit ran paternity test that showed him to be father. Doesn’t add up. She also seems to be an electroshock and memory experiment victim. Where are you?

  David then punched Kleinschmit’s address into his GPS phone app. The internet calculated the quickest route—a forty-five-minute drive, if the traffic cooperated. He figured that Phillip had an hour-plus head start on him. That was way more than enough time for him to find trouble. David regretted the day he first told Phillip to venture out of his motel room into the world. At that instant, he wanted to lock Phillip in a box—the same feeling he had about Christy sometimes—to protect him from himself. While peeling out onto Central Avenue, it struck David that he might have two sons now.

  Chapter 29

  After David plucked him from his one-on-one meeting with O’Neil the day before, Phillip felt rebellious. He ignored David’s instructions to return to his motel room. He didn’t want to be alone with his thoughts; he didn’t want to be trapped in his room. The need to move was mindless, like itching under his skin. It likely sprang from a fear that O’Neil would send someone after him.

  Instead of heading to the safety of his room, his feet took him out to the bus stop. He got on the Route 905 bus and rode between Mohawk City and Albany for the rest of the day. Every time the bus passed the Red Apple Motel, he’d scrutinize the area to see if there was any activity around his room. Nothing.

  Slowly Phillip gained confidence that the fear he instilled in O’Neil had legs, but he still felt he had to act soon. He believed the commissioner would keep quiet about his visit for now. The man didn’t want his relationship with Edith Nowak revealed to his family, to his close colleagues, and to everyone in the system.

  But Phillip knew from his own experience that fear could not be sustained without the delivery of a refresher—just as the COs did with their steel-toed boots on follow-up visits to his cell. Without that kind of reminder, he knew that O’Neil would talk to someone about his visit soon enough. Then they’d target him again. He needed to act while the commissioner was still punch-drunk with fear.

  David’s text about his visit with Edith Nowak vibrated in Phillip’s pocket as he moved across the street into the woods near Kleinschmit’s driveway entrance. He pulled out the phone, read the message, and filed the information away for future reference. He didn’t answer David’s query about his location. He still wanted David to stay out of it for his own good and the safety of his family.

  Kleinschmit’s house was just as Phillip saw it in his mind—a two-story, large, modern stucco home with a long, crushed stone private driveway. He didn’t recall capturing it this clearly in Google Maps on the library computer. He remembered that the bird’s eye shot of the home was blocked by trees overhead. The street view was virtually useless because the house was set back on Thoroughbred Drive, hidden by trees and shrubbery. Still, the home replicated his vision of it.

  Phillip saw one car, a tuxedo black Lincoln Navigator, lurking in the driveway. He had overheard some COs talking about its magnificence outside of his cell gate one night. It was hard for Phillip to believe that someone would pay just under a $100,000 for something twice the size of his box. Even more mind-blowing was the idea that a prison super could afford it.

  Circling slowly around the house in the woods that protected the residence, Phillip reached Kleinschmit’s endless backyard. It was a manicured lawn the size of five football fields. At the far end there was a large fenced pasture, a barn, and a pair of horses frolicking about. Close to the house, the green velvet expanse of lawn broke for a long, rectangular in-ground pool framed by travertine blocks and intricate ceramic tile patterns.

  Such a pretty picture. Not a threat in sight. Why did it fill him with a sense of dread? His gut knotted and churned for no reason that he could see or explain.

  In the distance, Phillip spotted the figure of a man reclining poolside on a chaise lounge facing him. Phillip knew from the Kranston scuttlebutt that Kleinschmit was a lifelong bachelor without any family. He thought the man tanning himself poolside in the warm summer sun must be Kleinschmit.

  Phillip made it to the far end of the in-ground pool undetected by the sun worshipper. He stepped carefully in his secondhand sneakers across the stone and concrete pool deck, moving toward him in plain view. Phillip noticed the man’s rhythmic breathing and pursed lips. He looked asleep.

  At the narrow far end of the pool with his back to the house, Phillip recognized Martin Kleinschmit. The superintendent lay facing skyward, propped up on one of a dozen poolside chairs that showed no sign anyone’s wet butt ever sat on them. Draped in an open, plush terry cloth short robe, the lounger showed no sign of hearing Phillip. As his chest slowly rose and fell, the man’s genitalia bulged in the gentle embrace of his red Speedo. Kleinschmit’s tall, slim body glistened in the sunlight and radiated an aura of expensive sunscreen. He was hiding behind a pair of Ray-Ban aviator sunglasses that reflected the rare cloud in a blue sky.

  Halfway up the length of the pool, Kleinschmit blurted, “Good to see you, Dawkins. I’ve been expecting you.”

  Startled, Phillip stopped in his tracks and rose up to full height. He then slowly brought his feet together, as if standing at attention by his gate at Kranston. “Hello . . . Mr. Kleinschmit.”

  Kleinschmit lifted one hand gracefully, palm up, gesturing to the phalanx of patio chairs that lined the long side of the pool. “Sit down, Dawkins.” He emanated phony graciousness, like a Mafia don greeting a supplicant.

  Phillip looked over his shoulder as he spun around, like a dog chasing its tail, scanning the scenery for anyone else in the yard. Nobody. Then he glanced at the house windows. The reflections from the backyard prevented him from looking inside. Nothing there either. “I’ll stand if you don’t mind.”

  “Suit yourself.” Kleinschmit clasped both hands behind his head as he crossed his legs. Phillip saw his top foot sway left, then right like a clock pendulum. He thought of what Kleinschmit used to say to him: Time has a way of changing things when we can’t. He mumbled it out loud.

  “Did you say something, Dawkins? Speak up, man. What brings you here?” His tone had a taunting quality, verbally poking Phillip in the gut.

  “Since you expected me, you must know.”

  Kleinschmit laughed sardonically, his lips twisting in a mockery of a smile. “You want answers. Right?”

  “How did you know I was coming?”

  “They all do.”

  Phillip was taken aback. What does he
mean by “all”? Does “all” include Edith Nowak? He didn’t mention O’Neil’s name—must not have talked to him. He didn’t know I was coming. Not today, at least. He’s bluffing.

  “I don’t like the look on your face, Dawkins. I wouldn’t try anything rash if I were you. There might be a high-powered rifle with your head in its crosshairs. There are lots of trees around, lots of windows in my home. COs come over here all the time and stay for the weekend. It’s like a retreat for them.”

  Phillip hadn’t considered the possibility of a threat from the trees—like guard towers and COs armed with sniper rifles. The reflective glass blocked the view through the windows, so he couldn’t see inside. Like prison, there could be a hundred guards out of sight who would come running if Kleinschmit summoned them. Phillip felt like he was back at Kranston with Superintendent Kleinschmit flaunting his power.

  His voice, the sound of his raspy voice, was making Phillip break out in a cold sweat, go weak at the knees. The sense of foreboding became a tidal wave of terror washing over him. He could feel the surrounding woods closing in on him; the sky was collapsing, crushing him. “I know I killed that police officer. I remember it.”

  “Really? Are you sure?” Kleinschmit lay relaxed on his lounge, like a cat in the sun.

  “As sure as I’m standing here. I want some answers.”

  “We all want answers, Dawkins. We all think we want the truth. But there’s the truth and then there’s the real truth. And most of us can’t handle the real truth. We’d rather believe anything but the real truth because we’d shrivel up like a slug on a hot rock and die if we faced up to the real truth.

  “Take your case. Now you say you know you killed that police officer. Maybe so, but maybe it weighed on you as the years passed. Maybe you grew a conscience all alone in the box. Maybe you couldn’t live with yourself knowing that you killed him. Perhaps you thought about his wife, his kids, his family. You got weak. Your remorse got the best of you. Maybe we had to give you anti-psychotic meds to stabilize you. Maybe that’s the truth. Can you handle that truth or do you just want me to tell you what you think you want to hear?”

  “Just tell me the truth. And I never took meds!”

  “Ah, memories are a very fragile web, Dawkins. You can lose them, you know. We exist as a collection of our memories. That’s what defines us, what separates us from one another. It’s what makes us unique. Without our memories, we don’t know who we are or why we’re here. The longer you stayed in the box, the more you lost your memories, your sense of self, and you became a hollow version of the person you were. You became a long-haired, wild-eyed zombie. You might have forgotten about taking those meds, but maybe you wanted them because you needed them. You needed them to get high and forget. Maybe we found you hanging yourself from the ceiling air register grates with your bedsheets. Maybe we cut you down, gave you CPR, brought you back to life.”

  “That’s not true. That never happened.”

  “Are you sure, Dawkins? Maybe you just don’t remember it. Anything is possible when it comes to memories. But I remember it like it happened yesterday.”

  “I’ve lost some of my memories. I’ve regained some. I’ve had some that turned out to be false. You messed with my mind!”

  “Maybe we stopped you from killing yourself.”

  “You did me a favor, then?”

  “Maybe you were on your way to checking out. Maybe you were of no use to anyone—even yourself.”

  “So you saved me from myself? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “You’re getting upset, Dawkins. Maybe you’d like something to drink—calm your nerves? I’ve got some good scotch here.” Kleinschmit waved a hand toward a bottle of golden liquid that sat next to his chaise on an end table.

  “No, not from you. When you saved me from myself then, why didn’t you let me out of the box?”

  “You’d become a legend in the system, the longest-held prisoner ever to survive in solitary. You were notorious—an invitation to cons in the general pop to make a name for themselves by taking you on. We didn’t want to see you get killed, not on our watch. They’d ask a lot of questions then. We would be buried in paperwork. You also had too much power for us to let you roam free in the general pop. You got too much respect for being such a survivor.”

  “Come on. Whatever notoriety I achieved was because you didn’t let me out of the box after you first put me in. You never gave me the chance. I earned a chance. I earned an opportunity to live in the general pop. If it didn’t work out, you could always put me back in the box. And if things really didn’t work out, I could have had an accident and you could have dug me a grave out in the fields. Put me out of my misery.”

  “At some point it became too late to let you out, both for your own good and the good of the facility.”

  “So you locked me up in a box for my own good?”

  “Those were my instructions.”

  “Cons die in prison all the time. What made me so special? Why couldn’t I have a chance to live with the general pop?”

  “It wasn’t my call. You were a central office case.”

  “That’s not what O’Neil said. He printed out the central office list right in front of me and my name wasn’t on it. For years you blamed the central office for my stay in the box. You blamed the system, when it was really you pulling all the strings.”

  “You talked to O’Neil then?”

  “You’re damn right I did. Yesterday.”

  “And did he tell you I was to blame?”

  “No, I just put two and two together when he showed me the central office list.”

  “Did he voluntarily agree to meet with you?”

  “Let’s just say my visit was unannounced.”

  “You really shouldn’t have done that, Phillip. O’Neil will call me first thing on Monday. I know him. He’s going to be pissed at you. He’s going to want to punish you.” Kleinschmit’s voice projected regret, but his body showed some tension now.

  “Really? How can he get more pissed at me than he already is? I know you two wanted me to kill Thompson, so then you could kill me, or lock me back in the box. I was as good as dead before I stepped into his office. I had nothing to lose because you still can’t kill a man more than once.”

  “You’re entitled to your opinion. And how do you know all this?”

  “You had me take vitamins at night at Kranston. Every night they’d deliver them to my gate. The CO would not leave until I took them. They were laced with LSD.”

  “Come on, Phillip. It sounds like paranoia has gotten the best of you.”

  “The bottle you gave me when I was released—I had it tested. Laced with LSD.”

  “Nonsense, Phillip. Why would we do that?”

  “You already said you gave me anti-psychotic drugs. Why not LSD? You knew I had already tried it—you had to have known about that the first day at intake when they put me away.”

  “Oh come on now. I was good to you. Sneakers, long johns, shower sandals, stick deodorant, extra bars of soap—I got them for you even though the bureau directives didn’t allow for them. Why would I do this for you and then drug you?”

  “To calm me, to make me more receptive to your messaging.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “You piped special music into my wall headphone jack.”

  “Right, classical music. Another thing I did for you.”

  “You knew I went to sleep listening to the music. You pumped subliminal messaging into it—‘kill David Thompson.’ It was the same messaging you pumped into my radio. I had it tested. There was a chip in it with the same command—‘kill David Thompson.’ I was a manufactured assassin dispatched to do your bidding.”

  “Ridiculous.”

  “Really? Then why else would you release me when you knew I killed that police officer? You knew I killed once while high on LSD. You thought I would do it again. The officer’s family knew something about it. Why else would the wife’s nephew
inspect my shop?”

  Kleinschmit’s eyebrows twitched.

  “Yes, I found out about him, too. The family must have known you’d finish me off one way or the other. That’s why they didn’t object to my release. They want to see me dead.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “You made my life miserable on the outside, so that I’d be more susceptible to killing Thompson. What exactly did you do to me in Kranston?”

  “That’s not important.”

  “Why not?”

  “If you don’t have a memory of it, it never happened.”

  “Just tell me the truth!”

  “The truth is your memories.”

  “So the truth is ever-changing then? It’s like the weather? If you don’t like the truth, wait a while and maybe it will morph into something you like better?”

  “The truth is but a fleeting memory. When that memory is gone, the truth never happened. When a new memory emerges, that becomes the truth. What do you remember?”

  “I see what you’re doing now. You’re probing my memories, my truth, to see if I’m still of any use to you. Maybe you think you can save me with some memory maintenance. Maybe you think I’m a total loss because my memories are coming back to me and my truth is changing. I don’t understand why you did this to me. I thought you were a good man, a good superintendent.”

  “Phillip, do you recall your relationship with your father and mother?”

  “A good man . . . .”

  “Focus, Phillip. Do you recall what your father and mother said about you?”

  “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Just answer.”

  “No—”

  “Your father said he never wanted to have you. Your mother said she hated you.”

  “NO!” Phillip screamed with his eyes shut. A flash of light seared through his brain as if a CO had cracked his skull with his baton. He cringed, grabbed his head, and buckled at the knees. He blindly wriggled a hand at his side, searching for the feel of a patio chair to fall on. His eyes opened, tears streaming down his face, as he found a chair and collapsed into it.