A River of Silence

by Susan Clayton-Goldner

  While they walked, Radhauser suggested she take depositions from Bryce’s neighbor, Tilly, and from his supervisors at both Gilbert’s Grocery Market and the hospital where he volunteered in the newborn nursery.

  “You know I’ll be called as a witness for the prosecution, but I’m not going to stop investigating this case,” he said. “Even if I have to do it in my spare time. So, feel free to contact me.” He pulled a business card from his wallet and jotted his home phone number on the back. “Anytime. And I mean it.”

  She took the card and tucked it into her jacket pocket.

  “Oh, and one more thing. Here’s a list of things Bryce needs to know about prison.” He handed her a sheet of paper. “He’s a lamb ripe for the slaughter. His neighbor told me he’s a poet. Anyone who commits a crime against a child, or is even accused of one, becomes a punching bag. If someone doesn’t give him a crash course in prison life, they’ll eat him alive in there.”

  * * *

  After spending fifty minutes in her car, digging through the copies of Radhauser’s reports, looking for any detail that might have been overlooked, Kendra took a deep breath, straightened her back, and strode up to the Jackson County Jail.

  Exude an air of confidence. Pretend this isn’t your first murder case. Who was she kidding? This was her first solo case, period. What would her father think if he knew? She toyed with the idea of calling him later. It was a huge case as far as publicity, the kind he loved, and that was pretty exciting, but it was also a first-degree murder charge, and that meant the stakes were high for her client. She decided to wait on telling him until she had a better handle on her defense.

  Once inside the jail, she stopped at the reception area where a pudgy, middle-aged man, with a mostly gray crew cut sat behind a wall of what she assumed was bulletproof glass. Though she visited the prison twice last week with Maria, she’d never seen him before. He wore a black pullover shirt with a stitched badge on the right arm. Beneath the badge were the words Jackson County Jail in gold letters. As Kendra approached, he spat a wad of tobacco into a Styrofoam cup. Nothing like making a good first impression.

  She picked up the sign-in sheet. “I’m here to see Caleb Bryce.”

  “We go by inmate numbers here, pretty lady,” he said, with a twinkle in his brown eyes.

  She opened the folder Radhauser had given her. “Number 4795.” As she recited the number, she felt the wrongness of inmates not being called by their names. The place was dehumanizing enough without being issued a number.

  “Do you have ID?”

  She reached into her purse, pulled out her driver’s license and Oregon Bar Association card, and slid them into the metal tray at the bottom of the window. “My name is Kendra Palmer,” she said. “I’m Mr. Bryce’s attorney.”

  “Lucky him,” he said. “You’ll most likely raise the morale in this joint. Do you know the way to the visitors’ area?”

  In San Francisco, the guard would be slapped with a sexual harassment charge. She fought the temptation to threaten him, and simply nodded. She’d been to the visitor area as part of her training and knew it didn’t offer much privacy. Next time she’d call ahead for an attorney’s room.

  “I’ll buzz you on through.”

  Kendra made her way through the maze of gates and steel doors and took a seat at a scarred wooden stool inside a compartment not much larger than a telephone booth. While she waited, she leafed through Radhauser’s reports one more time. The evidence against Bryce seemed sketchy and circumstantial. He had opportunity—no doubt about that. And he did admit to preparing the baby’s bottle of apple juice. There were two eyewitnesses who’d swear Bryce had threatened to murder Scott—but the witnesses were a four-year-old boy, and Harold Grundy, a cranky old neighbor man bordering on senility.

  Half the neighborhood had overhead Bryce call Dana a selfish bitch on the morning before Skyler’s death. The prosecution would claim he had motive—that he wanted to get even with the girlfriend who’d threatened to leave him.

  The means was another issue. Bryce had no history of alcohol abuse or mental health issues. Why would he have a drug like Haloperidol in his possession and where would he have gotten it?

  It was a high-profile case. Radhauser had been pressured by his captain to make an arrest. She was new at defending alleged criminals, but she’d learned from her father that it would be a rare detective or prosecutor who’d question the gift of a murder weapon found in a suspect’s house—no matter what the circumstances.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Bryce sat on an aluminum picnic table in the yard, watching other prisoners shoot hoops. The warm autumn morning expanded with shouts, threats, and rowdy exchanges of profanities. A thud of multicolored flesh collided on the court, and a long-haired white boy caught a swift elbow in the stomach as he jumped after a rebound. When the wind came up, a lone big-leaf maple tree in the yard shed its leaves in a flurry of huge, golden snowflakes.

  “Yo, 4795,” one of the guards shouted, then strolled up to him. “You got yourself a visitor.”

  “Me?” Bryce said. Who could possibly be visiting him here? He followed the guard inside where he was shackled again. They meandered down the winding corridors, past the other pods where the clamor of prisoners arguing, playing cards, and shouting at a television talk show host sent their vibrations booming and echoing through the hallways.

  The visiting room was divided into small cubicles with a Plexiglas wall separating the prisoner from his visitor. Bryce was still wearing his shackles and waist chain, but his hands had been left free. He thought for the hundredth time just how surreal his life had become.

  Smeared with handprints and lipstick smudges, the glass also held small fingerprints and palm marks, from children who must have pushed against the unyielding pane, hoping to dissolve into the arms and laps on the other side. The sight of those tiny fingerprints filled him with sadness.

  When the guard pointed to the second booth, Bryce shuffled inside, sat on the metal stool and picked up the telephone receiver. He flipped on the amplifying device and stared into the face of a young woman who looked like an Ivy League college student dressed up for Parents’ Day.

  She was slender and wore a tailored, gray-striped suit, with a pale pink satin blouse. Her face was beautiful and flawless, her blonde hair clipped with a barrette at the nape of her neck to hold it in place.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “I’m your attorney.”

  “You look like a kid.”

  She slipped her business card through the narrow slot in the Plexiglas.

  Bryce studied it for a moment. Kendrick Huntington Palmer IV, Office of Public Defense.

  “I understand you requested a court-appointed attorney.” She dove right in. “You can call me Kendra.” She spoke slowly, articulated each word. “I’ll be your representative in the state’s case against you.” She placed her notes on the small ledge that served as a table and held his gaze. Her fingers long and slender, nails unpolished. Her blue eyes were specked with green, and very beautiful.

  “You don’t look old enough to represent yourself,” Bryce said.

  She smiled, a rich girl’s smile, her teeth white and perfectly even. “I’m old enough to have graduated from law school, passed the bar and clerked for a judge. I’m old enough to get a job in the public defender’s office. So, I suggest you stop worrying about my credentials and start worrying about your case.”

  He wasn’t sure how to respond—hadn’t meant to offend her.

  She didn’t wait. “I also understand you’re hearing impaired. Are you able to hear me all right?”

  “You don’t need to speak so slowly,” he said, tired of all the exaggerated mouth movements he’d encountered since his incarceration that morning. “I read lips and can make out what you’re saying just fine as long as you articulate. And face me when you talk.”

  “I assume you’ve been charged by now and know what we’re up against.” She looked straigh
t into Bryce’s face, her clear blue eyes serious and doused with something that looked like sympathy.

  But Bryce watched her mouth, because for him, the mouth revealed more than any other facial characteristic. He could spot a lie through a twitch in the corner, read tenderness in a certain droop that could later darken into indifference. An eye, altered by a shadow or a beam of soft light, could mislead him, but the mouth remained reliable and certain.

  “Tell me why you think you are here,” she said.

  He told her about hitting Scott on the backside with his open hand and what had led up to it. “I lost my temper, and if that’s child abuse, then I guess I’m guilty. As for Skyler, I can’t begin to imagine how anyone could charge me with his murder. I loved that little boy like my own son.” Heat pulsed behind his eyes. He looked away and swallowed. In prison for less than eight hours, Bryce had learned one thing. Don’t show weakness.

  “The state’s going for first-degree murder. Do you understand what that means?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “They intend to prove you killed Skyler Sterling with malice and forethought.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I n…never laid a h…h…hand on that baby. And I certainly didn’t give him some drug I’ve never even h…h…heard of. It makes no sense. If I wanted him dead, I mean…why would I ca...ca…call for help? I gave him CPR.” Bryce shuddered. “I was frantic.”

  She told him what Radhauser already had, about the medical examiner’s findings and the drug residue in the baby bottle. “The state will claim you felt remorse and that’s why you tried to save him.”

  Bryce closed his eyes. He moved his hand away from his ear and slammed it against his right thigh. He was the one who’d made the bottle for Skyler that night. But he sure as hell hadn’t laced the apple juice with some drug.

  When he loosened his grip, the receiver dropped and dangled just inches above the floor. Bryce held his head in his hands. As he slumped on the stool, a steady, throbbing rhythm in the back of his neck echoed the hard, slapping beat of his own heart. And the noise pounded in Bryce’s head, drowning out all other sound.

  “Bryce,” Kendra shouted. Then, getting no response, she beat her fist on the Plexiglas until he finally lifted his head, picked up the receiver and pushed it against his ear again.

  He opened his eyes.

  “Look, you have to listen to me,” she pleaded. “I’ve read your statements and those of Detective Radhauser. I plan to talk with some of your neighbors and with your boss at Gilbert’s. Detective Radhauser believes you are innocent. And, so do I. I’m here to help you, but you have to cooperate. You have to listen. And you have to be involved in your own defense.”

  The imploring tone of the young attorney’s voice and the sure movement of her mouth comforted Bryce. “I’m listening,” he whispered, then licked his dry lips.

  “Detective Radhauser wanted me to tell you a couple things about prison. For your own safety.”

  Bryce was grateful. “God knows I need all the help I can get.”

  “Rule number one. You’ll be in lockdown twenty-three hours a day. Use the hour in the yard wisely. Get some exercise. Rule number two. Keep your mouth shut and your eyes open. Stand up for yourself. Fight only if you have to, but don’t let anyone walk all over you. Once you do that, you’re lost. Rule number three. Don’t trust anyone. That means other inmates, the guards, your cellmate. Trust only me and Detective Radhauser. Rule number four. Don’t stare at anyone, ever.”

  “Is that all? Four basic rules for survival in the slammer?”

  “You’re going to need some things like underwear, socks, soap, shampoo, and a toothbrush. You’ll have to buy them from the commissary. I’ll deposit some money in your account.”

  “I can’t let you do that.”

  “You can’t stop me. You can pay me back when you get out of here. And don’t tell any prisoner or guard how much you have in your account.”

  “I’m scared, Ms. Palmer,” he said. “I know I shouldn’t say that out loud. And I hate to admit it to you or anyone else, but I’m afraid.”

  She moved slightly toward the Plexiglas. “Call me Kendra.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment, ashamed of his confession.

  “I know,” she said. “And I’m scared, too, but I want you to remember something. No matter what happens at your arraignment and trial, I won’t quit my attempts to prove your innocence. And neither will Detective Radhauser.”

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” Kendra said. “And I’ll reserve a conference room. I’ll ask the warden to provide you with pencils and paper in your cell. In the meantime, I want you to review the events of the day Skyler died.” She told him to go over the details again and again, and make notes.

  “I don’t care how insignificant you think something is, Bryce, I want to know about it, okay? A lot of lawyers don’t ask their client to do this because they’d rather not know if he’s guilty. But I want the absolute truth from you. I already believe you’re innocent. So, tell me everything that happened. Every word you can remember that anyone said to you. Everyone you talked to or who came by your house. I want it all. Think of it as a minute by minute accounting—paying special attention to the time after you put Skyler to bed.”

  Bryce swallowed hard, then nodded. He was a poet who liked to write. He could do what she asked. It was up to him now and he intended to fight.

  “One more thing,” Kendra said. “Because of your hearing impairment and the nature of the charges against you, I’m worried about your safety. I’ve requested protective custody—a private cell for you. But with crowded conditions...” She paused, shook her head. “It may take a little while for it to happen. So be very careful.”

  Something about her filled Bryce with hope that he might someday regain the freedom he’d so recently taken for granted. Kendra became, during that first brief encounter, a symbol of everything lost.

  She stood, then packed and closed her briefcase. Within another minute, the only thing left was the faint scent of her perfume, something powdery and sweet—like lilac—seeping through the small opening at the bottom of the Plexiglas.

  Oddly calm now, Bryce followed the guard back to his cell, still wondering how something like this could happen in his world.

  As a little boy, he longed to go hunting with his big brother, Jason, and Isaiah Bryce—the man he’d believed was his father. But when it finally happened, the deer spotted and in his rifle’s sites, six-year-old Bryce couldn’t pull the trigger. His father had been livid and backhanded Bryce across the face. How could anyone think him capable of murdering a baby?

  * * *

  Bryce passed the remainder of the afternoon drifting between the scenes in the prison yard and staring out into the corridor until a bell rang and he was herded into a dining hall for dinner.

  And it was there, seated at a long, metal table with an assortment of other prisoners, that Poncho dropped a torn page from the evening newspaper, The Medford Tribune, onto Bryce’s dinner tray.

  TOT DEAD, SIBLING CLAIMS ABUSE

  By Lauren Armstrong

  Nineteen-month-old Skyler Sterling was buried on Saturday,

  but no one can say why he died...

  As he stared at the article about Skyler’s death and his own arrest, a circle of grease from his gravy-topped mashed potatoes seeped through the headline and slowly spread across the page.

  After dinner, Poncho shoved Bryce into the table, then thrust another newspaper in front of him. “Hey Cryin’ Shame,” he bellowed, loud enough for everyone to hear. “Is that you, man, the faggot poet, turned baby-killer? Why don’t you pick on someone your own size, asshole?” Poncho glared into Bryce’s face, then pranced off, swaying his hips and swishing his hand up and down to the frenzied laughter of his cronies waiting at another table.

  Without looking at it, Bryce folded the paper with trembling hands. He wondered how Poncho could possibly know he wrote poetry. When the bell rang, Bryce kept his gaze plante
d on the floor and hurried back to his cell.

  His bunk was stacked with legal size tablets and a half dozen fat pencils like the ones first graders used. Did they think he was going to stab himself with a pencil?

  Poncho must have gone to the recreation room to watch television or play pinochle before lockdown. Relieved to be alone, Bryce unfolded the newspaper and stared at the headline:

  POET CHARGED WITH MURDER IN DEATH OF TOT

  By Wally Hartmueller

  My precious, precious, child

  Dying was one thing,

  Being left behind you quite another.

  Oh, if we could only change our places.

  Those words are from a poem by Caleb R. Bryce, a poem that appears to have risen out of a gentle man who cherishes children. But the Caleb Bryce who wrote that poem is in the Jackson County Jail in Medford charged with murder in the October twelfth death of 19-month-old Skyler Sterling.

  An autopsy revealed extensive internal bleeding and more than twenty bruises on the child’s battered body...

  An ocean of nausea washed over Bryce. Where had that reporter gotten his poem? He’d filed it away with the journal entries, photographs, and memories of that other dark time in his life he’d tried so hard to forget. How dare they rummage through his personal life like that? It was one thing for Dana to pack up boxes, probably her own things, before she moved out. But complete strangers, newspaper reporters, that was a different issue.

  When he shifted his gaze to the right of the article, he recognized himself staring up from the front page. In the photo he appeared haunted, his dark eyes wide and dead-looking. His matted hair clung to his forehead in sweaty strands. And even though it was his face, the mug shot taken at his booking, even though he remembered every second of what happened, it still seemed unreal to Bryce. It was as if someone awakened him from a deep sleep by throwing a bucket of ice water in his face.

  He read the entire article, the sluggish way someone half asleep incessantly rereads the same paragraph, attempting to discover a correlation between sentences, something that connected the words to his life, to the person Bryce thought himself to be. He yearned for something that made sense to him, something he could believe was the truth.