Madman Walking

by L. F. Robertson

  Laszlo—being oppositional seemed to be a reflex with him—objected. “His prior testimony is public record, Your Honor. I don’t see how he can object at this late date to talking about it.”

  The judge decided to compromise. “I don’t see any need to seal this witness’s testimony, but perhaps we should clear the courtroom. Everyone not associated with this case is instructed to wait in the hall until you are called. Thank you.” The scattering of people in the audience filed out; I could see Niedermeier relax a little.

  Mike began by asking Niedermeier about the reason he had found himself in jail with Scanlon.

  “I was charged with attempted murder and some other things.”

  He had met Scanlon while he was in jail; and he had also met Howard Henley. For a while, they were on the same yard.

  “Did you ever talk with Howard Henley?”

  “Sort of.”

  “How is that?” Mike asked.

  “He wasn’t really someone you talk with, if you know what I mean. He was pretty strange, kind of off-putting. Generally, he pretty much kept to himself. But he must have decided he liked me for some reason. Sometimes he’d come over and talk to me—talk at me, really—about some of his weird ideas.”

  “What kinds of weird ideas?”

  Laszlo objected, and the judge sustained it.

  “Did he ever talk to you about his case?”

  “Once or twice.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Just that they were saying he killed some guy, but he was innocent.”

  “Did he say anything else?”

  “It’s been a long time, and, you know, a lot of the time I couldn’t follow what Henley was saying, but I remember he was kind of hyped up about a conspiracy of some sort. A lot of conspiracies, he was really big on conspiracies.” At the memory, he cracked a faint smile. He said Scanlon had come to him because he saw Niedermeier appeared to be friendly with Henley. “He wanted to know if Henley was mad at him. I asked him, ‘Why would Henley be mad at you?’ I didn’t know there was any connection between them.”

  “Did he say why?” asked Mike. Laszlo objected. “Not offered for its truth,” Mike said, “and statement against interest.”

  “I’ll allow it, subject to a motion to strike,” said the judge.

  Niedermeier looked at Mike. “You can answer,” Mike said.

  “He told me he and Henley were both charged with killing some guy, but Henley was innocent.”

  Laszlo objected to the second half of the statement as hearsay. Mike argued it was admissible for the limited purpose of explaining Scanlon’s statement and Niedermeier’s subsequent actions. The judge agreed.

  “Did Scanlon say anything about why he killed the man?” Another hearsay objection, overruled.

  “Yeah. He said he killed him for the Aryan Brotherhood.”

  “How did he act when he said that?”

  “Kind of proud. He liked telling people he was with the AB. I guess it made him kind of a big shot in the jail.”

  “Did Scanlon ask you to do anything for him regarding Henley?” Mike asked.

  “He asked me to tell Henley he was sorry.”

  “Some time after that, you told the police about what Scanlon said to you, right?”

  “Actually I told a jail deputy, and then a detective came to see me.”

  “Okay. Why did you decide to tell them about it?”

  Niedermeier hedged. “Couple of reasons. I felt bad about Henley—like, he shouldn’t have to go to prison if he was innocent.”

  “But that wasn’t the only reason.”

  “No.” Niedermeier sighed and glanced down at his hands. “I was scared for myself. I was looking at a lot of prison time, and I was hoping for a deal.”

  “Did you get one?”

  “After I testified at Scanlon’s trial, yeah. I got to plead to assault with a deadly weapon and no enhancements. But it didn’t work out well for me.”

  “Why not?”

  “Well, I went to prison with a snitch jacket, and I was greenlighted by the AB. I got stabbed on the yard, almost killed. Ended up getting moved to Nevada ’cause they couldn’t protect me here.”

  “Let me ask you,” Mike said, “you were interviewed by Mr. Willard here and an investigator a few weeks ago, right?”

  Niedermeier gave Willard a glance before answering. “Yeah, they came by.”

  “What happened?”

  “They came to my house one morning and wanted to ask me questions.”

  “You told them you didn’t remember anything about the case, right?”

  He paused. “Yeah.”

  “Was that true?”

  “No, it wasn’t.”

  “Why did you tell them that?”

  “They came to my house without any warning and wouldn’t go away. I have liver disease, and I take medication, and I was feeling pretty bad. I didn’t want to be reminded of that whole part of my life. I still have PTSD from it.”

  “Were you drunk that morning?”

  “Hell, no—sorry, Your Honor—absolutely not. I’ve been in AA for four years. I’ve got liver disease, and I’m on a transplant list. No way am I drinking.”

  Over Mike’s objection, Willard was allowed to take Niedermeier through the sordid details of the crime he’d been jailed for, an attempt to run over an ex-girlfriend and her current lover with his car. Then he exploited Niedermeier’s denial of any recollection of Scanlon’s admissions. “So you lied when you told us that.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “But you say you told the truth about Scanlon’s confession.”

  “Yes.”

  “You lied to us just to get rid of us, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And when you told the detective that Scanlon had confessed to you, you had a much more compelling reason to lie, right?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “What I mean is, you were facing life in prison, and you were trying to get a deal.”

  “Yeah.”

  Mike’s redirect was short.

  “Mr. Niedermeier, you testified at Steve Scanlon’s trial, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Who called you to testify?”

  “The district attorney.”

  And so the day ended.

  Dot and Lillian were alone on the benches in the hallway; even Josh Schaeffer, the reporter, had left. They stood, and Dot walked over and spoke briefly with Mike, as I said a general goodbye and made my way to the restroom. When I emerged, Dot and Lillian were gone. As we fell into step together, he said, “Dot just gave me a check for five thousand dollars.”

  “That’s great!”

  “Did you say something to her?”

  “Yes. I told her the court wasn’t paying us for our expenses, and you were paying them yourself.”

  “Thanks,” Mike said. “I don’t think I could have asked. I’ll definitely be able to use it. I have some more work for Dan, and this will help pay for it.”

  “Glad to be of help,” I said.

  “So—back to the hotel? Got a big day tomorrow with our friend Steve.”

  34

  The ceremonies the next morning began at nine o’clock sharp. The judge took the bench, the bailiff called us all to order, and a moment later two uniformed deputies brought Scanlon into the courtroom. He was dressed in a red jumpsuit, hands cuffed closely to a chain at his waist, and chains around his ankles; and a hood had been placed over his head, so he could not see ahead or to his sides. He stumbled once, and again, as the guards led him up to the witness stand, released the handcuffs from the waist chain, used them to fasten his left wrist to the chair, and released his right arm. They took off the hood, but left his ankle chains fastened.

  “Jesus Christ,” I whispered to Mike. “What is this about?”

  Mike walked over to the courtroom bailiff, who was watching the procession intently from his desk at the side of the courtroom. They spoke briefly, and Mike came
back. “Extra security,” he said, “because he’s got a history of attempted escape and assaulting a guard. Still seems like overkill, though.”

  Scanlon was surveying the room, frowning, his free hand clenched into a fist. He caught sight of Mike and called over, “Hey, Mr. Barry, can you ask these guys to do something about this handcuff? They’ve been too tight all morning, and my hand is numb.”

  “I’ll call the deputies,” the bailiff said. He returned a minute later with two sheriff’s deputies. One of them inspected Scanlon’s arm. “It looks fine to me,” he said.

  “That’s b.s., man,” Scanlon said, his voice tense. “My wrist hurts like hell, and I can’t feel the rest of my hand.”

  Mike got up, and one of the deputies motioned him back, but not before he saw Scanlon’s wrist. Scanlon called out to the judge. “Your Honor, would you please tell these guys to loosen my handcuff? I’m in pain here.”

  Judge Redd turned his head toward him, irritated at being addressed so rudely by a witness, and Mike spoke up. “Your Honor, he’s right. His wrist is raw, and his hand is turning white. They’d better do something, or the jail will have a lawsuit on its hands.”

  One of the deputies weighed in. “Your Honor, Mr. Scanlon here is a security risk. We have to take precautions.”

  The judge’s eyes moved from him to Mike. “This is my witness,” Mike said. “I need him to be able to testify without being distracted by pain.”

  Almost reluctantly, the judge turned to the deputies and said, “Can you loosen the handcuff a little?”

  The deputies, with an attitude that as much as said they would not consider themselves responsible for the consequences, bent over Scanlon in a show of force while one of them unlocked the handcuff, made an adjustment to it, and locked it again. They backed away, and Scanlon moved the fingers on his handcuffed hand with a grimace of pain.

  “Is that better?” Mike asked.

  He nodded. “Yes. Thank you.”

  Mike began his direct examination by asking Scanlon about his criminal history. Scanlon answered in a level voice, starting with his juvenile record and moving through his history in prison. “I started out in fire camp,” he said, “but I kept getting into fights—stupid things, I was just hard-headed back then—and I got sent to Soledad and then to Folsom, got out, and then ended up back in again.”

  Mike then asked Scanlon to explain how he had become involved with the Aryan Brotherhood inmates who ran the yards.

  “I was young and didn’t know any better. These guys seemed like stars, leaders of men. If they like you, they kind of mentor you. One of them takes you under their wing, teaches you the ropes, how to get along in prison.”

  “Did someone mentor you in Soledad?”

  A shadow of sadness crossed Scanlon’s face before he answered. “Yeah, Mack Gentry. He ran the yard there.”

  “At some point, were you required to give something back to them?”

  “Well, they sort of seduce you into believing what they believe. And then after a while they start testing your loyalty, your courage, by giving you assignments.”

  “What kind of assignments?”

  “Lot of them involved beating someone up or stabbing them.” In his debriefing report he had confessed to several stabbings on the yard, and he described them briefly, without emotion.

  “At some point you transferred to Folsom, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did you find Aryan Brotherhood members there?”

  “Yeah; there were a lot of AB there. I knew some better than others. Corker Bensinger, for example.”

  “Tell me about Bensinger.”

  “He was a big man in the AB, a shot-caller. One of those guys, you spend five minutes with him, you’re willing to go out and die for him.”

  “Who else did you meet?”

  “Let’s see—well, Cal McGaw, of course. Bensinger was a big man in the AB, McGaw was kind of a shot-caller, too, but lower in the pecking order, the kind of guy who runs a yard.”

  The judge interrupted to ask Mike what the point of so much background was, and Mike answered, “This is leading up to the Lindahl murder. And I’m taking Mr. Scanlon through his criminal history because if I don’t, Mr. Willard certainly will.”

  “You’re probably right,” the judge agreed, wearily.

  Mike asked Scanlon if he knew Jared Lindahl.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “How did you know him?”

  “I killed him.”

  Mike paused for a second before going on. “Was that an assignment you were given?” he asked.

  “Yeah. There was a hit on the man for selling drugs in the prison without paying tax—that’s the percentage the AB gets when any white guy sells drugs there. I knew he was in the hat, though I’d never met him. He paroled before they could do anything about him. He paroled to Wheaton. McGaw knew that’s where I was from and that I was about to parole soon myself. So I guess the word came down, and McGaw told me I’d been requested to take this guy out. I thought, ‘Sure, I’ll do it if that’s how it has to be.’ I didn’t know any better at the time.”

  “Did you feel like you had a choice?” Mike asked.

  “I didn’t even care. I didn’t really understand what I was doing. I mean, it’s hard to believe you could be involved in so much violence and really not understand what you’re really doing and the effects that’s caused from your actions. It’s hard to believe somebody would be that ignorant. But that’s how I was.”

  “Did you kill Lindahl right away?”

  “Nah. I kept putting it off. They told me before I left Folsom where Lindahl was living, but I paroled late in the year, and what with spending time with my family and the Christmas season and all… I just didn’t get around to it. It was kind of a jolt, actually, getting that letter from Cal.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “Well, like I said, they’d told me where Lindahl was living—kind of a stroke of luck because I knew that trailer park. A cousin of mine that I was pretty close to was living there, so I had a perfect excuse to be around. I figured Lindahl knew he was in the hat, and he might be leery of strangers coming to his place. I didn’t want to get shot at sneaking up on him. So once I decided it was time to go ahead with this thing I spent a couple days kind of cultivating him.”

  “How did you do that?”

  “That park is a bad place, full of lowlifes, drug users and small dealers. I knew a few of them from being around there seeing my cousin. I sort of made friends with a couple of them, and one of them—Freddy Gomez—introduced me to Lindahl. Freddy was kind of an AB hanger-on; nothing in the gang, but a little hero-worship going on. He helped me get a gun, too, from a guy he knew who sold ’em.”

  “That was the man named Indio, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “So what happened then?”

  “It wasn’t too hard to get close to Lindahl, as it turned out. Guy wasn’t too bright, believed that if I was a friend of Freddy’s I was safe. Anyway we had enough in common. We were both ex-cons, in need of money to live on. I’d got hold of a gun, and he had one already, so I invited him to come along on a robbery, and then we were good buddies. You already know how I killed him.”

  Mike asked him to explain.

  “We went out to the back of his place to shoot at cans. I bought a six-pack of beer and asked Freddy to come with us, to kind of give Lindahl a sense of security. We just shot some cans, drank beers, hung out for a while. Then I sent Freddy to the corner store for some more beer—to get him out of the way, really. I kept my gun by my side ready, and right after Freddy left, when Lindahl turned away, I just took aim and plugged him. He went down right away, but I went over and shot him couple more times just to make sure. Then I grabbed all the beer cans because of fingerprints and split before Freddy came back. Took a watch the guy was wearing and a police scanner he had in his pocket. I thought about waiting for Freddy to get back and then getting rid of him, too, but I just lost heart or
something. All I wanted to do was get out of there. I just hoped Freddy’d be too afraid to say anything. I heard he took Lindahl’s gun and sold it.”

  Laszlo objected to the last sentence as beyond Scanlon’s personal knowledge, and threw in a second objection that his testimony was turning into a narrative. The judge ordered the last sentence stricken and told Mike to move on.

  “Did you get any money or drugs from Howard Henley for shooting Lindahl?”

  “Hell, no—pardon my language. No, I never got nothin’ from him.”

  “Did Howard Henley ask you to kill Lindahl?”

  “No.”

  “Did he offer you money or drugs or anything else to kill Lindahl?”

  “No, never.”

  “Did you meet Howard Henley at the trailer park?”

  “Yeah, I met him there. Hard not to.”

  “In what way?”

  “He was someone who’d get in your face. Everyone hated him because he was so crazy. I didn’t mind him much. He had strong views, that’s all, and he seemed kind of lonely for someone to talk to about his crazy ideas.”

  “Was he dealing drugs?”

  “Not in any regular way. Mostly he just smoked weed himself.”

  “Did he have a lot of money?”

  “Nah, man; no one there did. Anyone who could afford it would have moved out of that place.”

  “So Howard never hired you to kill Lindahl.”

  “No. After he got beat up he bitched a little, said he’d like to kill the guy himself, that’s all. But he got over it. I told him, ‘Hey, you win some, you lose some; you just have to do what everyone else does, and stay out of his way.’ I have to say I felt sorry for those guys at the trailer park. Felt I was doing something like a public service in getting rid of Lindahl. But that was secondary. I did him on an assignment from the AB, and that’s all.”

  Mike showed Scanlon the letter from McGaw and asked him if it was a copy of the one he received.

  “Like I told you, yes.”

  “Have you read the letter?”