Madman Walking

by L. F. Robertson

  I scanned them and then gave them, with the kites, to Candace to copy. Best not to draw attention to it, I thought.

  Most of the rest of the files were daily transcripts of Scanlon’s trial. I leafed through them and was able to finish reviewing everything from Scanlon’s case before Candace’s quitting time. With a smile I thanked her and picked up my computer and backpack full of photocopies.

  Over the noon hour, when I knew I wasn’t going to finish reading the files in time to drive home that day, I’d called the hotel and extended my stay for another night. Now I called Mike’s office, but he had left, so I called his cellphone and left a voicemail, saying, “Just found something; give me a call.”

  Mike called back within ten minutes, and I told him about the letter. He was quiet for so long I asked if he was still on the line. “Yeah,” he answered. “This could be huge; I’m just trying to think what we should do. Can you email it to me?”

  I said I could, and as soon as I was off the phone, I opened my computer and sent it to him. Impatient, and lacking much else to do, I decided to make a transcript of it, in an attempt to decipher it. It was dated late December of 1998, and the parts I could read seemed innocuous. “How are you?” it began. “Hope all is well with you.

  It’s been a while, and I thought I drop you a few lines, let you know how I’m doing here. I’m still in the hole. The way [ill.] people are talking I may [ill.] get out in less [ill.] to be a stool pigeon. That’s fucked up isn’t it. Maybe one of these days things will change and they will put me back on a mainline. Hell, I haven’t really been in trouble for a long time! I intend to keep it that way too! I go to my parole board hearing in April. I’m not looking for them to give me a parole date this time. Hopefully in a few years they will. Well I hope you’ve been in good health. Are you still working? How are your homies there? Hope you [and your?] family shared a nice Christmas together and hope you have a great year in ’99. Are you taking up martial arts like you wanted? I think you could [ill.] go somewhere.

  Mail room is holding up my outgoing mail for some reason. My wife says it took a couple weeks to get my last letter. Let me know if you get this late. Well, my friend that is about it. You take care and get back at me when you can.

  Your friend,

  C. McGaw

  It read like a pretty typical prison letter, though strangely lacking in anything but generalities. McGaw didn’t have much to say to his friend Steve.

  If there was anything encoded in it, I couldn’t see it.

  21

  Dot Henley’s house was down a country road outside of Wheaton. It was an ample two-story house, half-timbered in a sort of mock-Tudor style, in a neighborhood of upscale houses on several-acre parcels surrounded by white-painted horse fencing. A Prius and a small SUV were parked at the top of the driveway, and farther down a pickup truck stacked with landscaping tools was pulled over at one side. Two men were mowing the lawn and pulling weeds among the shrubs and trees in the front of the house. The morning was already warm, and a range of hills was visible in the distance across the hazy expanse of the valley.

  Dot Henley answered the door at my ring. I apologized for standing her up for lunch, and she said, “I understand. I hope you got everything done you needed to.”

  “I did,” I acknowledged.

  She led me into a cool and spacious living room, decorated in pale colors, with large windows looking out to the front of the house, comfortable sofas and chairs gathered around a glass-topped coffee table, and framed family photos and pretty china knick-knacks on side tables. The fireplace was behind an old-fashioned painted screen for the summer, and a fan turned gently below the high ceiling.

  At the other side of the coffee table, a middle-aged man in a suit was just standing up from an armchair. “This is my son Bob,” Dot said. Bob reached out and shook hands with me. “Pleased to meet you,” he said. He seemed serious, but not unfriendly.

  Bob was a little taller than Howard and heavier-set, but the family resemblance was visible in his face, with its high forehead and gray eyes set deep in their sockets. His face had a healthy tan, though, instead of Howard’s prison pallor, his cheeks and lips were more filled out, and his iron-gray hair was short and well cut. Dot pointed out the similarity. “Bob and Howard were a lot alike when they were younger,” she said. “They both take after Lyle.” Bob looked as if he wished she hadn’t said that, but didn’t say anything.

  Dot asked if I wanted coffee, and I said I did and offered to help her with it. “Bob, would you like your cup warmed up?” she asked. He thanked her and handed it to her.

  I followed her into a kitchen worthy of the house, a big, comfortable room with lots of counters and oak cabinets and a center island. It merged into a spacious family room with a stone fireplace and French doors onto a shaded patio.

  She set down Bob’s cup and took two others from a cabinet. “Maybe I’ll have some coffee myself,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind Bob being here. I didn’t mean for him to ambush you, but he insisted on stopping by when I told him you were coming to see me.”

  “No, no, that’s fine. I’m glad to get to meet him,” I said. “I love your house.”

  “I’ve always liked it here,” Dot said. “Lyle had it built for us. I love this kitchen. It was perfect when we had a big family and did a lot of entertaining.”

  “I can see that; it’s really nice.”

  She nodded. “But to tell the truth, the house feels too big for me now. My kids don’t want to give it up, though. I’ve been talking with Kevin about maybe selling it to him and moving into a nice condo nearer town.”

  Dot poured coffee from a coffeemaker next to the stove and asked if I wanted milk or sugar. When I said I liked milk, she said, “So does Bob. It’s in the refrigerator door; would you mind getting it?” I did, and added some to his cup and mine. We carried the cups back out to the living room and set them on the coffee table.

  Bob was back in his armchair, reading something on his phone; he put it in his pocket as we came back. I sat down on the sofa, reached for my cup, and took a sip of coffee.

  He spoke first, to me. “I just wanted to meet you,” he said, almost apologetically, “get to know Howard’s new attorneys. His case is important to us—I guess that goes without saying. It hasn’t been easy putting up with Howard all these years, but the bottom line is, he’s family, and he doesn’t deserve to be where he is.”

  “I definitely agree,” I said.

  “Mom and Kevin tried to explain to me what’s going on with his case. He’s got a hearing scheduled about whether he’s actually innocent of the murder, is that it?”

  “More or less. The court is asking what evidence there is that he didn’t commit the crime.”

  “Well, I’m glad they’re asking that question. Howard isn’t all there, but he’s not a killer. And the idea that he’d hire someone and pay him was just b.s., pardon my language. Ray Donahue, the lawyer we retained for Howard, told me the guy who really killed him told a couple of people that Howard didn’t have anything to do with it. He figured he’d have no trouble getting him off at trial. But then Howard fired him,” Bob rolled his eyes, “and the rest is history.”

  “Yep,” I agreed.

  “I got no love for Howard, in some ways,” Bob continued. “He messed my life up pretty bad when we were young. Stole my identity, which got me put in jail and fired from a good job. It took years, and a lot of help from Ray, to finally clear my record. I was ready to let him rot in jail, for all I cared. I even voted for what’s-her-name, Blaine, when she ran for district attorney. But Dad and Mom here pushed me to forgive him, and I guess I have. I wish you good luck, hope he gets off death row.”

  I thanked him.

  “One thing, though. If he’s freed, is there any way you can get him into a hospital, or at least keep him from coming back here?”

  “To be honest, I don’t know,” I said. “I know there are some fairly strict legal requirements that have to be met b
efore a person can be kept in a mental hospital against their will, but I’m no expert on that area of law.”

  Bob nodded. “Yeah, I know something about that. We’ve been through it with Howard. I’ve asked Ray, and he says the same thing. It’s a shame, really. Howard is his own worst enemy; there’s no way he should have been out on his own. I sure don’t want him back here, especially since Dad isn’t around to deal with him.”

  “I wish I could be more helpful.”

  “It’s the system.” He shrugged and shook his head, and said with a chuckle, “Maybe we can just pay him to live someplace like Mexico or Costa Rica.”

  “It might work,” I answered.

  He stood up. “I’m glad we got to talk. I’ve got to get back to work now. Just wanted to come by and meet you and say my piece.”

  I stood, too; this seemed like a good time for me to move on. Bob shook my hand again. “Thank you for working on his case, and good luck. I’ll get the door, Mom; see you later.” He bent down and kissed Dot’s cheek and headed out the front door.

  I helped Dot carry the coffee cups back to the kitchen.

  “I should go, too,” I said. “I need to drive back up north today.”

  “I hope Bob didn’t make you uncomfortable,” she said, as we walked toward the front door. “He really wanted to come meet you, but I didn’t think he’d say all the stuff he did.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “It’s a difficult situation for your family, and it’s good that he was able to let us know how he felt.”

  “He did that,” she said, with a small smile. “Well, we all wish you and Mr. Barry success.”

  I thanked her.

  The morning was growing hot, and the hills were nearly invisible behind a layer of smoky air as I walked out to my car. The SUV was gone, but the Prius and the gardeners were still there. Dot’s family took good care of her, I thought. It would be easy to envy her if you didn’t know about Howard.

  22

  At home, I read through the reports and other papers I’d copied, and listened to the recordings on the DVD.

  Among the numbered discovery documents from the district attorney’s files of Scanlon’s case were a few reports we hadn’t seen before of interviews with people in and around the trailer park. One of the people questioned was Freddy Gomez, the pivotal witness against Howard. He told the police that he’d heard from other people in the park that Lindahl had beaten up Howard and robbed him. Howard wasn’t really a drug dealer, Gomez said, just a sort of babysitter for another guy’s drug business. The guy, whom he refused to name, ran the business out of the trailer park and had taken to leaving some product with Howard when he was out of town because Howard didn’t use, unless you counted smoking weed now and then, and, whatever else people might think of him, Howard was absolutely honest about money. If Lindahl took drugs and money from Howard’s place, Freddy said, they belonged to the other guy, who would not be happy about it. Nothing in the reports suggested that the police tried to find out the identity of the mysterious dealer; presumably the discovery of Scanlon’s confession to the murder and Freddy’s later accusation against Howard had foreclosed that line of inquiry.

  Another resident interviewed said that Freddy had gone to Lindahl’s cabin after the killing and taken a gun belonging to Lindahl. She said the gun was hidden in the cabin, but Freddy knew where it was. Freddy told her he’d tried to sell it to a gun dealer he knew named Indio, but Indio wouldn’t take it. Freddy denied all of it, saying the girl was a heroin addict and had made it all up.

  Among the cassette tapes reproduced on the DVD were the recordings of Freddy Gomez’s statement to a detective about seeing Henley give a gun to Scanlon. We had the transcript of that interview, and there were no surprises except for one point where Gomez hesitated when asked to describe the gun, a brief hemming and hawing followed by, “Oh, right, it was a revolver, looked like a .38.” The pause and the “Oh, right,” were not in the transcript. It was easy to imagine that someone gave him a cue, but with just the audiotape there was no proving whether any such thing had happened.

  Except for the transcript of the taped interview, none of this had apparently been given to Howard or his lawyers. Many prosecutors would have handed it over, but Blaine’s reputation was that she was one of those who generally decided against giving up information when she felt she could get away without doing it—who “tacked close to the wind,” as the Supreme Court put it when writing about prosecutors’ obligation to disclose exculpatory evidence. Looking at the material, it would be easy to rationalize that none of it obviously pointed to Howard’s innocence. The letter, of course, was a different story.

  The name “Indio” rang a bell. Mike had said Steve Scanlon had told him and Dan he’d bought the murder weapon, a Smith & Wesson .38, from a guy he knew only as Indio and, because he needed money, had sold it back to him afterward.

  So now what?

  “Well,” Mike said, when I called him. “We’ve got to see Scanlon again and show him the letter. Dan has been trying to locate this guy Indio, but it’s just about impossible with nothing but a nickname.”

  “What about McGaw? Shouldn’t we try to authenticate the letter through him?”

  “Dead,” Mike said.

  “Damn, these guys don’t live long, do they? What did he do to get on the hit list?”

  “Nothing, actually. His death certificate says he died of a stroke.”

  Rimshot.

  “Can you come with me? Dan’s going to be working on locating and interviewing witnesses from around Wheaton. And with the court cutting my investigative expenses, I can’t afford to pay him for three or four days of travel out of town, but you may be able to bill the court for attorney time. If not, I may be taking advantage of your offer to do some work for free.”

  “Sure—when do you propose to go?”

  “As soon as I can arrange a visit and find some cheap plane tickets to Salt Lake. I’ll let you know.”

  23

  “This place is really in the middle of nowhere,” I said. “It’s like a prison in the sky.”

  “People probably think twice about escaping,” Scanlon said drily.

  “I would think so.” I didn’t feel very conversational. After what seemed like an endless day—a redeye flight to Salt Lake City followed by an eternity of winding, lonely mountain highway, rock walls, and scrubby pine forest—my head ached and my stomach wouldn’t stop churning. Mike said it was probably the altitude; I wasn’t sure I cared.

  Wasatch was a modern prison, all concrete and metal. We had been escorted into a pod, a five-sided space, which contained several attorney visiting rooms, each a glass-fronted segment surrounding a central court with tables and backless stools. Everything in the pod seemed to be made of steel and bolted to the floor. In our visiting room, the table surface was brushed stainless, and the chairs were painted metal with fake leather cushions on their seats. The lighting was fluorescent and shadowless; it made my headache worse. One other visiting room was occupied, but the central court was empty except for an occasional guard or inmate moving through on an errand.

  Steve Scanlon had been brought out without handcuffs, escorted by a single guard. He had greeted Mike and me with an almost courtly courtesy—how do you dos, handshakes, a polite question about how we had found the drive up here. Someone had taught him good manners, it seemed. He was fairly tall—I’d guess a little shy of six feet—and lanky. Even at forty-plus, he was good-looking in a likeable, boyish way, clean-shaven, with straight light-brown hair parted on one side.

  “How does being here compare to California?” Mike asked.

  Scanlon seemed close to cracking a smile. “A lot better,” he said. “It’s high security—they’ve got one guy with a death sentence here—but I’m not locked down. I get to go to the yard with the other guys on my unit—it’s a pretty normal life, for prison. Fucking cold outside in the winter, though.” He spoke easily, in a slight central California drawl.

  �
��What about retaliation from the AB?”

  Scanlon shrugged. “Could happen,” he said. “But the Brand isn’t as big up here, and I’m probably no big deal to them at this point. Business seems to have kind of slowed down in the last ten years or so; couple of big federal RICO cases took out a lot of the higher-ups and shot-callers. I’m not afraid, really. When you go, you go.” He shrugged and gazed briefly out the window into the court. “And it’s not as if I have much to look forward to.”

  “Well, we need you to stay alive,” Mike said.

  “I’ll do my best. How is old Howard?”

  Mike turned to me. “Not bad,” I said. “I saw him a couple of months ago.”

  “Still crazy?” Scanlon asked.

  “Yeah, but he’s calmed down a bit.”

  “That’s good. In the jail he was so wound up everyone thought he was going to have a heart attack.”

  “Did you see him a lot?” Mike asked.

  “Not a lot; I kept my distance,” Scanlon said. “But I heard him—and heard about him.”

  He gave a sideways glance through the windows and got down to business. “So you may have the letter McGaw sent me.”

  “We think so,” Mike said. He leafed through the manila folder of papers he had brought, pulled out a copy of the letter, and placed it in front of Scanlon.

  Scanlon glanced at it. “Have you talked to McGaw? I haven’t heard anything about him; don’t hear much through the grapevine these days.”

  “He passed away,” Mike said.

  Scanlon didn’t seem particularly surprised at the news. “Huh—what happened?”

  “A stroke, according to his death certificate. He was out of prison when he died.”

  Scanlon chuckled. “Imagine that. Guy like McGaw, after all he did, dying in his bed—now that’s irony. So, I guess you’re asking me if this is the letter.”