Twenty

by James Grippando

  “Got a bunk for you,” said the guard. “Let’s go.”

  Xavier rode up the elevator flanked by a pair of corrections officers. The doors opened to the disciplinary cellblock, where a third officer completed the disciplinary check-in procedures. It had taken so long for a bed to free up that it was already “lights out.” The cells were dark, but the long corridor remained lighted. The guards escorted Xavier past one locked door after another until they stopped at cell number 511.

  “You’re bunking with Roosevelt,” the guard said. “It’s your lucky day.”

  Xavier had no idea who Roosevelt was, but the way the other guard snickered at the “lucky day” comment, it was a safe bet he was no relation to the former presidents.

  Maybe I should’ve stayed in solitary.

  The cell door buzzed open. The guards removed the shackles. Xavier entered quietly, trying not to disturb Roosevelt on the top bunk as he climbed onto the mattress below. The metal frame squeaked as he settled in. The cell door closed, and then it hit him. This was no ordinary inmate. He was locked in a cell with a man who was being punished for breaking the rules. Maybe it was his imagination running wild, but Xavier quickly convinced himself that Roosevelt had done something far worse than throw a chair against the wall.

  “Hey, you that shooter, ain’t you, pretty boy?”

  Apparently, Roosevelt had only pretended to be asleep. Xavier kept quiet, hoping his cellmate would let it drop. No such luck.

  “Yeah, you is. I saw you walk in. Shooter is a fuckin’ pretty boy.”

  Xavier lay still, praying for silence. It was dark. It was scary. His pillow stank so bad that he wanted to throw it on the floor. Maybe Roosevelt had sprinkled it with toilet juice: the joke’s on the pretty boy.

  A minute later, Roosevelt’s voice again pierced the darkness. “Wanna know somethin’, pretty boy? You is better off with the death penalty. You get yo’ own private cell on death row. Takes years to move on down the line to the gurney. And when you finally get there, you lay down, take a needle in the arm, and go to sleep. That don’t sound so bad, does it?”

  Xavier didn’t answer.

  “But a life sentence?” he said, chuckling. “Shit. You in the general population, pretty boy. You understand what I’m sayin’? If you take the needle, you get stuck once. But if you in the general population—shit, a pretty boy like you? You get stuck every night.”

  Xavier had already gone down that line of thinking, many times, since his arrest.

  “You don’t talk, huh?” asked Roosevelt. “I get it. You afraid to open your mouth. You don’t have to worry, pretty boy. You can open your mouth. I ain’t gonna stick my dick down your throat.

  “Not tonight.”

  Xavier froze. This was the first of ten disciplinary nights with Roosevelt. Xavier could ask for a transfer to another cell, but he could end up with worse. Or his request could easily be denied. Either way, he’d need to state the reason for the request, and he’d have to tell the guard that Roosevelt threatened him. Then Xavier wouldn’t just be the “pretty boy.” He’d also be a snitch who needed to be taught a lesson. “Snitch bitch” was what the other inmates had called that guy in the shower who was down on his knees.

  Roosevelt was right. The needle was preferable.

  “Hey, pretty boy,” said Roosevelt. “I’m gonna do you a favor.”

  Xavier felt a chill down his spine. Did he mean sexual favor?

  “Listen good,” said Roosevelt. “I don’t do this for everyone. And you don’t even have to thank me. Just listen real careful to what I’m saying. Then take the time you need to think it over. And while you thinkin’, be sure to pay attention to the schedule the guards follow to check on us at night. Okay? You listening?”

  Xavier remained still.

  “I’m gonna tell you how to make a good, strong fucking rope out of a bedsheet.”

  Chapter 28

  Around four a.m. Jack phoned Molly Khoury from his bedroom. She answered on the second ring and sounded wide awake. A good night’s sleep was obviously not part of this mother’s current existence.

  “I just heard from Jackson Memorial Hospital,” said Jack. “Xavier is in the intensive care unit. He tried to hang himself.”

  Molly’s shriek on the line was so loud that it made Andie stir on the other side of their bed. Jack went into their master bathroom and closed the door. It took a minute to calm Molly down and tell her what he knew, which wasn’t very much.

  “They wouldn’t give me details over the phone. I pushed so hard to speak to him that I must have ticked off the nurse. She got a little testy and said Xavier couldn’t talk to me even if phones were allowed in the ICU. He’s unconscious and breathing on a ventilator.”

  “Oh, my God,” said Molly. “Why did no one call me?”

  “You’re the first person I called,” said Jack.

  “I mean the hospital or the jail!”

  The harsh reality was that Xavier had listed neither of his parents as “contacts,” but there was no need to make her feel worse than she already did. “I’m leaving in five minutes. I can meet you at the hospital and we can get a handle on what’s going on.”

  She agreed, and as quickly as Jack could get dressed, he was out the door and on the causeway to the mainland. Molly had a shorter drive to Jackson and was already in the waiting room by the time Jack made it over from Key Biscayne.

  “They won’t let me go up to see him,” she said. “How can they not let his own mother see him?”

  Molly seemed to have mentally blocked out the fact that her son was not only an accused mass murderer, but also a Protective Custody Level One detainee who was in disciplinary detention for bad behavior. Jack went to the admissions window. The clerk took the necessary information from him and called for a security guard to escort him to the ICU. Molly was much like any concerned mother, filling Jack’s head with her son’s complete medical history.

  “Xavier had his wisdom teeth removed six months ago. Probably should have had his tonsils out in the fifth grade, but we decided not to. He tolerates acetaminophen well but has trouble swallowing the tablets, so be sure to tell the nurse to break them in half or give him gel caps.”

  Molly was so scattered that she seemed to have forgotten that, at last report, Xavier wasn’t even breathing on his own. “Got it,” said Jack.

  She handed him the file she’d grabbed from home. “Everything is right here. Please give it to the nurses in the ICU.”

  “Will do.”

  The security guard took him up the elevator. They rode in silence, which gave Jack another opportunity to wrestle with the guilt he was feeling. Xavier’s attempted suicide had come on the heels of Jack’s story about the teenage boy who’d taken his own life—his old friend Ray’s son. It was enough to make Jack wonder.

  The elevator door opened, and as he stepped into the bright hallway, Jack felt a strange sense of déjà vu. Two weeks earlier, he’d walked down this same hallway to visit Nate Abrams, whose daughter was barely clinging to life. It was almost too bizarre for words. All he could hope was that Lindsey’s killer—alleged killer—wasn’t lying in the very same bed. Jack reached the pneumatic doors and pressed the call button, but this time there was no crackling response from the nurse over the intercom. The door opened, and a physician dressed in scrubs walked out.

  “Please don’t come in,” he said.

  “Who are you?” asked Jack.

  “I’m Dr. Henderson. Infectious disease. I’ve been with Emily Ramirez almost all night. The infection from the gunshot wound to her abdomen is back with a vengeance. She could easily become your client’s fifteenth victim by the end of today.”

  “I’m so sorry to hear that.”

  “Her parents are with her now. They don’t need to see your face. Please, don’t come in.”

  Jack didn’t make an issue of it. “I presume my client is under armed guard?”

  “Yes. Two of them. They’re posted right outside his bay, which is
distressing enough for Emily’s parents, not to mention our other patients who have never committed mass murder.”

  “I don’t want to add to anyone’s stress,” said Jack. “But can someone give me an update? I was told Xavier is on a ventilator.”

  “Then you got bad information. He’s breathing on his own. Vitals are good. Pupils respond to light, so no sign of depressed brain-stem reflexes. Reflexes are normal, and he responds to pinprick and other painful stimuli.”

  “So, he’s going to recover?”

  “Let’s put it this way: people who want your client to be fully aware and conscious when the executioner sticks a needle in his arm will not be disappointed.”

  “So he’s going to be fine?”

  “Yes,” said the doctor, and then he glanced back at the ICU entrance. “How the good Lord squares that with the innocent children who didn’t come out of here alive is beyond me.”

  “I understand.”

  “No you don’t,” said the doctor. “No lawyer who does what you do understands anything but money and some kind of perverse high that comes from defending despicable people.”

  “My wife says the same thing,” said Jack. “Except the money part. She’s on a government salary and makes more than I do.”

  The doctor didn’t so much as acknowledge Jack’s attempt to defuse the situation. “I need to get back to my patients.”

  “One second,” said Jack. “Can you give me some idea of what happened?”

  “What I know is all after the fact. You’ll have to talk to the detention center. I gotta go.” As the doctor stepped away, he seemed to reconsider his attitude. He stopped. “Hey, sorry for what I said about what you do and why you do it. It’s been a long night.”

  Jack had been on the receiving end of much worse. “No problem,” he said.

  Jack was in court before his client was fully awake. Judge Martinez was starting a jury trial in another case that morning, so he squeezed in Abe Beckham’s request for an emergency hearing at eight thirty a.m.

  The judicial assistant brought a big mug of coffee up to the bench. “Mr. Beckham, I presume this emergency relates to the attempted suicide and hospitalization of the defendant?”

  “That’s partially correct,” said the prosecutor. “The state of Florida disputes that this was an attempted suicide.”

  The judge reviewed the file in front of him. “The incident report states that the detainee tore off three long strips from his bedsheet, braided the strips together like a rope, tied the rope to the bed frame in the bunk above him, and hanged himself by the neck until he was unconscious. Does that not sound like attempted suicide to you, Mr. Beckham?”

  “Things are not always what they appear to be.”

  “Especially in this town,” the judge added. “But why has the prosecution brought this matter before the court? If anything, I would have expected a motion from the defense arguing that Mr. Khoury is mentally incompetent to stand trial.”

  “I’m being proactive,” said the prosecutor. “I, too, fully expect the defense to latch on to this incident and postpone the trial until Mr. Khoury dies of old age. My goal is to nip this stunt in the bud.”

  Jack rose. “Your Honor, I have to object to the characterization of a medical emergency as a ‘stunt.’”

  “Yes, Mr. Beckham. Let’s tone down the rhetoric, please. Especially in the absence of any factual record to support your allegation.”

  “My apologies,” said Beckham. “With the court’s permission, I would like to establish that factual record.”

  “When?” the judge asked.

  “I have Dr. Andrew Phillips waiting in the hallway. He is with the Office of Health Services, Florida Department of Corrections, and oversees the administration of health care at Miami-Dade Pretrial Detention Center.”

  Jack was on his feet again. “Your Honor, I’ve had no time to prepare.”

  “Prepare,” said Beckham, almost snarling. “Judge, that’s exactly why we need to move quickly. We all know exactly what Mr. Swyteck means by ‘prepare.’ He needs time to prepare his client to say exactly the right words in a psychiatric evaluation. He needs time to find the right psychiatrist who will listen to this beautifully prepared presentation so that he, in turn, can prepare an ironclad report. And Mr. Swyteck then needs time to prepare his disingenuous argument to the court that the trial must be postponed indefinitely because his client thinks the judge is a kangaroo, thinks the prosecutor is from planet Mars, and thinks the FBI is spying on him through a camera implanted in his penis.”

  “Judge, this is beyond the pale,” said Jack.

  “Really, Mr. Beckham. What is it that you want?”

  “I want the immediate opportunity to demonstrate to this court that the defendant is mentally competent to stand trial.”

  “Judge, I have not yet asserted that my client is mentally incompetent,” said Jack.

  “But it’s coming!” said Beckham. “We all know it. Hollywood makes it seem that claims of not guilty by reason of insanity are an everyday occurrence in a criminal courtroom. They’re not. But I can tell you what is: a claim by a guilty-as-sin defendant that he is mentally incompetent to stand trial, followed by a flurry of motions from death row arguing that he lacks the mental capacity to understand why he is being executed.

  “Well, what about the mental state of the good people who are grieving for the children who were shot down in their own school, Your Honor? What about their mental anguish? I’m here for them this morning. I will not be caught flat-footed and watch the defense use this so-called attempted suicide to delay this trial for months, if not years, which will only deprive the victims and their families of the justice they deserve.”

  Jack kept his seat. Even at such an early hour, and even for a last-minute hearing, more than a dozen friends and relatives of the victims had gathered in the gallery. They were the core group who had vowed to “be there, no matter what” for a lost loved one—wounded souls who would have shown up in their pajamas at three a.m. if someone in Victims Services at the State Attorney’s Office had called to tell them that a hearing was scheduled at the last minute. Finally, the prosecutor had pushed the right button with Judge Martinez: justice for the victims.

  “All right,” the judge said. “We have time for one witness.”

  Beckham thanked him, and, as if on cue, Dr. Phillips entered through the rear doors of the courtroom. The witness was sworn and settled into the chair. The prosecutor quickly established his credentials as chief physician at the detention center with more than two decades of experience at the Florida Department of Corrections. The questioning quickly transitioned to Jack’s client.

  “Dr. Phillips, when did you find out that Mr. Khoury had been taken to Jackson Memorial Hospital?”

  “I received a phone call from the warden around one a.m. He informed me that the ambulance was already on the way.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I have staff privileges at Jackson, so I went straight to the emergency room.”

  “Did you provide any information to the emergency room physicians about Mr. Khoury or the events that led to his visit to the emergency room?”

  “Officer Jenkins was the corrections officer who found Mr. Khoury in his bunk. He rode in the ambulance to the ER. He provided that information to the doctors.”

  “Were you there for Officer Jenkins’ report?”

  “I was.”

  “Could you summarize, please?”

  “Jenkins was on his regular rounds when he checked Mr. Khoury’s cell. Mr. Khoury appeared to be sitting up in the lower bunk. Jenkins called to him, but Mr. Khoury did not respond. Jenkins switched on the light and then saw the rope around Mr. Khoury’s neck. He immediately radioed for assistance and entered the cell. He removed the rope and administered CPR. Mr. Khoury was breathing when paramedics arrived.”

  “Dr. Phillips, have there been suicides at the Pretrial Detention Center in the past?”

  “Sadly, yes.”r />
  “And I suppose there have been attempted suicides, where the inmate survived?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did any of those suicides or attempted suicides involve hanging?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now, Doctor. Can you tell me if in any of those previous cases, the detainee tried to hang himself while lying down?”

  “Lying down,” he said, searching his memory.

  Jack rose before the witness could answer. “Your Honor, I see where this line of questioning is going, and I object. Any qualified expert on this subject would testify that death by hanging doesn’t require a drop from the highest gallows. Hanging is deadly in any number of positions: sitting, kneeling, toes touching the ground—and yes, even in a prone position with nothing but the weight of the head and chest as the constricting force.”

  “That’s not my point,” said Beckham. “Judge, may I continue without interruption, please?”

  “You may continue,” the judge said, “but please make your point soon.”

  “Dr. Phillips, when you heard that Mr. Khoury hanged himself, what was your first thought?”

  “Tragic. We do everything reasonably possible to ensure the safety of our inmates.”

  “When you heard that Mr. Khoury tried to hang himself while lying down, what was your first thought?”