Providence Rag

by Bruce DeSilva

  They smoked in silence and peered into the case, their eyes moving across three more Pulitzer medals and scores of plaques, trophies, and framed certificates for excellence in feature writing, beat reporting, hard news coverage, photography, and investigative reporting. Polk, Hillman, Livingston, National Headliner, Overseas Press Club, Ernie Pyle, and Robert F. Kennedy Awards. Goldsmith Prizes. Batten Medals …

  “A grand legacy,” Lomax said.

  “And a lot to live up to,” the old man said. “If The Providence Dispatch is to pass into history, I will not have it cowardly slink into the darkness. Run that baby, Ed. Page one, with a second-coming headline.”

  “Yes, sir. I’ll have it ready to go for Sunday.”

  “Make it a week from Sunday,” the publisher said. “I’ve got some arrangements to make first.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And, Ed? Be sure to post the videos on our Web site.”

  “All of them, sir?”

  “All of them. The one with Diggs’s poem should be accompanied by a sensitive-content warning. I trust you to handle that with the appropriate discretion.”

  July 2012

  Freedom is tantalizingly close now. He stares at the bars of his prison cell and imagines them dissolving, sees himself strutting out of the prison gate. No cuffs binding his hands. No leg chains hobbling his gait.

  He pictures himself shopping for his murder kit. Rubber gloves. A glass cutter. Condoms. A Buck knife. In his mind, he caresses each of the items, then carefully packs them in a small black valise.

  His lawyer says he shouldn’t get his hopes too high. Legal hurdles remain. A judge might order him to take a psychiatric evaluation. But he beat the headshrinkers once before. He can do it again. The hot little ho is probably screwing that reporter right now. He imagines catching them in the act, a knife singing in his hand.

  He thinks about the other blessings freedom could bring. Finding Susan Ashcroft and finishing the job. Plunging his blade into Connie Stuart’s twin sister, a thrilling way to reenact his finest moment. Walking down a city sidewalk stinking with blondes, picking one out, and following her home. So many honey-haired bitches to choose from.

  His thoughts drift to the one-eyed photographer, the way she shivered when she took his picture last fall. He knows her name. It was right there, under the photo in the newspaper he read in the prison library. Gloria Costa.

  He wonders if she can still weep out of both eyes.

  60

  Mulligan worked the phones all morning, trying to flesh out an advance about Judge Needham’s pending ruling on a psychiatric evaluation for Diggs.

  The sheriff’s department confirmed that in the last five days, sixteen bomb threats had been called in to the Providence Superior Court building. Felicia Freyer reported that someone had slashed the tires on her Acura MDX. And Needham’s secretary said the judge had received thousands of e-mails and a bulk mail bag full of letters in the last week. Some of them urged the judge to “do the right thing.” Others threatened him with dismemberment or death if he didn’t.

  No, the secretary hadn’t sorted through them all. No, she couldn’t read any of the letters or e-mails to Mulligan. She had turned them all over to the police, who had asked her not to release anything to the press for fear that publicity would “bring more squirrels out of the woodwork.” That was a bizarre way to put it, but Mulligan decided to use the quote. He figured readers would know exactly what she meant.

  The Boston Globe, The New York Times, The Associated Press, and four national TV news organizations were planning coverage of Needham’s ruling, and both Greta Van Susteren and Nancy Grace, who Mulligan doubted had ever even been to Rhode Island, were already tweeting about the case.

  A “Keep Kwame Diggs Locked Up” Facebook page now had 53,612 followers—not nearly as many as the Texas hold ’em poker, Family Guy, or Vin Diesel fan pages, but still impressive.

  Two years ago, Lomax had ordered the whole news staff to sign up with Facebook and Twitter to keep track of stuff like that. Mulligan had reluctantly complied, but his Facebook profile was nearly devoid of personal information. Under Religion, he had typed, “None of your business.” Under Politics, he had listed, “Disgusted.” And under Favorite Quotes, he’d posted: “‘Fuck this yuppie journalism shit’—the late Will McDonough, a reporter’s reporter.” He’d left everything else blank.

  Because he’d never uploaded a profile picture, and never would, its place was held by a head-and-shoulders silhouette that reminded him of a pistol-range target. He’d never once posted a message on either Twitter or Facebook; and when others—mostly old acquaintances he hadn’t missed, old girlfriends he’d been glad to be rid of, and people he’d never met—tried to “friend” him, he always clicked the “not now” button because there wasn’t one that said “fuck off.”

  Mulligan had nearly finished writing the advance when a courthouse tipster phoned with the perfect tidbit for a kicker. Judge Needham had already made his decision but was dithering with the draft because he was waiting for a custom-made, boy’s-size judicial robe—one with stylish yellow lightning bolts on the sleeves—to be shipped from Academic Apparel in Chatsworth, California.

  The judge wanted to look pretty for the camera.

  Nancy Grace and Greta Van Susteren had both been leaked advance word of Judge Needham’s ruling—or so they claimed. Grace, the CNN court reporter and failed Dancing with the Stars contestant, was reporting that Needham had approved the state’s request and that Diggs would be examined by a committee of experts at the Harvard University Department of Psychiatry. Van Susteren, the Fox News harpy, was reporting that Needham had denied the state’s request, and she was howling for his removal, branding him “a liberal activist judge who is way out of the mainstream.”

  Mulligan figured both of them were talking out of their asses.

  * * *

  On Thursday morning, the protesters on the Superior Court building steps numbered three hundred by Mulligan’s rough count. He bobbed and weaved through them, made his way to Needham’s third-floor courtroom, and settled into a seat in the jury box between a reporter for the National Law Journal and a stringer for The New York Times.

  Needham’s new robe was a wonder to behold, the lightning bolts on the sleeves reminding Mulligan of the design on the San Diego Chargers’ football helmets. The judge again cautioned the packed benches that he would not tolerate any outbursts, swiveled on his booster seat to face the TV camera, and read from his decision.

  “In the matter of The State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations versus Kwame Diggs…”

  He began by noting that in 1994, Diggs had been examined by a psychiatrist and found competent to stand trial on five counts of first-degree murder.

  “During his eighteen years of incarceration,” the judge said, “Mr. Diggs has never been diagnosed as mentally ill by the prison medical staff, and he has received no psychiatric treatment. It is conceivable, however, that he could be suffering from a mental illness that the Corrections Department negligently failed to diagnose despite having many years in which to do so.

  “But if that is the case, in what way is it relevant to the issue at hand? The State has offered no evidence that the mentally ill are more dangerous, per se, than other members of the public. In point of fact, they are not. Statistics show that as a group, they are much more likely to be victims of violent crimes than to commit them.

  “Given these facts, which are not in dispute, it is reasonable to conclude that the State’s insistence on a psychiatric examination at this time is nothing more than subterfuge to deprive Mr. Diggs of his civil liberties.”

  Needham then digressed to review the shameful history of involuntary psychiatric commitments in the United States. For the best part of two centuries, he said, thousands of citizens who had committed no crimes were declared “deviant,” “socially aberrant,” or “morally insane” and locked away in lunatic asylums, often for life. Their so-called deviant beha
viors, he explained, had included masturbation, extramarital sex, homosexuality, and denying the existence of God.

  “In some cases,” he said, “husbands had their wives involuntarily committed just to get rid of them.”

  He then turned to recent reports that some political dissidents in China had been declared “politically insane,” forced into psychiatric hospitals, and subjected to electroshock therapy.

  “Such abuses should offend the sensibilities of every civilized person,” the judge said. “And yet now, the attorney general of the state of Rhode Island seeks to have Kwame Diggs declared mentally ill on the grounds that he might pose a danger to others at some indeterminate date in the future.”

  Mulligan stole a glance at Attorney General Roberts, who was squirming in his chair at the defense table.

  “The court is cognizant of what is at stake in this case,” the judge said. “It is common knowledge that both Attorney Freyer and The Providence Dispatch have been making inquiries about the drug and assault convictions that have kept Mr. Diggs incarcerated since his original sentence expired in 2001. The prospect that Mr. Diggs could be released as a result of these inquiries has engendered widespread fears—fears that have been stoked by an irresponsible member of the media.

  “Of course, there is no guarantee that any prisoner will become a law-abiding citizen upon release. The recidivism rate is sixty percent. If the legal standard was a guarantee, we would never release anyone. It is worth noting, however, that the recidivism rate for murder is less than two percent within three years of release.

  “Nevertheless, the murders for which Mr. Diggs was originally incarcerated were particularly heinous and brutal. The people of the state of Rhode Island are entitled to receive some degree of assurance that he would not pose an intolerable threat to public safety if he were ever to be released from state custody.

  “The bar the State must meet in cases such as this has been set high. According to a large body of case law, a finding that Mr. Diggs is mentally ill would not be enough to justify continuing his confinement. Nor would a finding that he might pose a danger at some point in the future be sufficient. Rather, the State can commit Mr. Diggs to a secure psychiatric facility against his will only if it presents clear and convincing evidence that his release would pose an imminent threat to himself or others.

  “Imminent does not mean three years from now,” the judge said. “It does not mean six months from now. It means that Mr. Diggs must be declared so deranged and violent that he would pose a mortal threat to society on the day that he steps out of the prison gates.

  “To determine whether Mr. Diggs would, in fact, pose such a threat, the court hereby orders him to submit to a psychiatric evaluation by a qualified professional to be selected by the State of Rhode Island.

  “Court is adjourned.”

  As the judge scrambled down from his booster seat, spectators filed out. Mulligan made his way over to the prosecution table and tapped the attorney general on the shoulder.

  “Is it true that you plan to have Diggs examined by Harvard psychiatrists?” he asked.

  “No,” Roberts said.

  “Who will be performing the examination?”

  “We have yet to determine that.”

  * * *

  Back in the newsroom, Mulligan called the director of Eleanor Slater Hospital, the state mental hospital in Cranston; the chief psychiatrist at Butler Hospital, a private mental hospital in Providence; the head of the Department of Psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital in Providence; and the chairman of the Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior at Brown University. All four said they had been contacted by Roberts’s office. All four said Roberts was shopping for a psychiatrist who would not be reluctant to authorize an involuntary commitment.

  All four wished him good luck with that.

  61

  “Believe me,” Jennings said, “after we arrested Diggs for the Medeiros and Stuart murders, we spent weeks trying to connect him to unsolved crimes. There’s nothing there.”

  “Just in Warwick?” Gloria asked. “What about the rest of the state?”

  “He was a kid back then,” Mulligan said. “He wasn’t even old enough to drive. He couldn’t have gone far by himself.”

  “Maybe he had a friend who took him somewhere,” Gloria said.

  “The state police gave us a hand looking into that,” Jennings said. “They came up dry.”

  “Did his parents take him out of state for a vacation?” Gloria asked. “Maybe Disney World or something?”

  “We asked them about that,” Jennings said. “They said they didn’t. We asked the neighbors, too. None of them could remember the family being away for any length of time between the two murders.”

  Jennings walked into his kitchen and came back with three Narragansetts.

  “I want to watch Diggs’s confession,” Gloria said.

  “Why?”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “I’m not sure it’s something you should see, Gloria,” Mulligan said.

  She wheeled on him and glared.

  “Okay, fine,” Mulligan said. “Go ahead and show it to her, Andy.”

  Jennings turned on the TV and slid the tape into the VCR. Then he and Mulligan took their beers into the backyard to play with Smith and Wesson.

  Two hours later, Gloria turned the video off, ejected the tape, and dropped it into her purse. She helped herself to another beer from the refrigerator and went outside to join the men.

  “I need to borrow the tape for a few days, Andy.”

  “What for?”

  “I’ve got an idea.”

  * * *

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me again, Mrs. Diggs.”

  “You’re welcome, dear. Can I get you something?”

  “I’m fine, thank you.”

  “I’m going to have some lemonade. I squeezed it fresh just before you arrived.”

  “In that case, I’d love a glass.”

  “Make yourself at home, Gloria. I’ll be back in a jiffy.”

  Gloria sat on the faded pink-and-green floral sofa beside an enormous black-and-white tomcat. The cat was sleeping. Gloria reached down and massaged him behind his ears.

  “What’s his name?” Gloria asked as Mrs. Diggs returned with two moisture-beaded glasses on a hammered-aluminum tray.

  “Justice.”

  “A fine name,” Gloria said as the woman seated herself primly on the other side of the cat.

  “On the phone, you said that you have some news for me,” the woman said.

  “I do,” Gloria said. “Mason wanted me to tell you he has found proof that your son was framed for last year’s assault charge.”

  “Thank the Lord!”

  “The paper will be running the story soon.”

  “Does this mean Kwame will be getting out?”

  “That will be up to the courts,” Gloria said, “but it is possible.”

  “That would be the answer to all of my prayers,” Mrs. Diggs said. “My baby might be coming home.” She plucked a tissue from the sleeve of her yellow housedress and dabbed at her tears. “Thank you for coming all the way up here to tell me. You could have just given me the news on the telephone, you know.”

  “It’s not the only reason I came,” Gloria said.

  “It isn’t?”

  “No. I wanted to ask if you still think your son is innocent of all those murders.”

  “Of course I do.”

  “Even after reading Mason’s last story? The one in which Kwame admitted his guilt?”

  “Oh, yes. Kwame told me why he had to say that.”

  “What did he tell you?”

  “He said his lawyer and Mr. Mason convinced him that an expression of remorse would help his case, even though he never killed anyone.”

  “I see. Tell me, Mrs. Diggs. Did you ever see the video of Kwame’s original confession to the Warwick police?”

  “Heavens, no. Years ago, Kwame’s first lawyer, Mr.
Haggerty, asked me if I wanted to watch it, but I said no, thank you. Kwame told me how the police beat it out of him. I couldn’t never bear to watch my boy being abused. Or listen to those awful lies.”

  Gloria opened her purse and slid out the videotape.

  “I’d like you to watch it now, Mrs. Diggs.”

  “Whatever for?”

  “Because it’s important that you do.”

  “No! I won’t. Can’t you understand? This is my son!”

  Gloria rose from the couch and turned on the thirty-two-inch television.

  “Stop it! Turn that off right this minute.”

  Gloria slid the tape into the VCR.

  “Nooooo!” Mrs. Diggs howled. “You can’t make me do this.”

  Gloria pushed play.

  The woman screamed. She snatched the ceramic elephant with red lips and rouged cheeks from the coffee table and hurled it. It struck the edge of the TV stand and shattered.

  The interrogation room appeared on the screen. Two police officers, seen from behind, were seated in metal chairs on one side of a battered metal table that was bolted to the floor. On the other side, a teenage Kwame slouched in a matching chair, his cuffed hands resting on his chest. He was grinning.

  “Get out!” Mrs. Diggs screamed. “Get out of my house and don’t ever come back!”

  She turned toward the end table and grabbed another elephant.

  Gloria bolted for the door. As she pulled it open, she glanced back at the old woman. Mrs. Diggs was rooted beside the snoozing cat, a ceramic elephant in her right fist, her arm cocked. She looked even older now, her eyes leaking and her mouth wide as if she were preparing another scream.

  The video continued playing. As Gloria stepped outside and pulled the door closed, she heard Kwame giggle.

  62

  The type on the printing plates ran upside down and backwards. Once the presses were turned on, the plates would be inked and the images transferred first to the blanket cylinders and then, in mirror image, to the rolls of newsprint coursing through the huge machines.