Cut You Down

by Sam Wiebe

  He nodded as if that went without saying.

  “We’d like your reflections on the program, and of course any advice you could share. We’d also like to follow up with some of its beneficiaries, assess their progress.”

  “The inmates, you mean?” Reclining in his chair, Darian furrowed his brow. “When I started the program, I’d been visiting prisons for a while. I realized, talking to them, how intuitive and perceptive they are. Not dumb men, not all of them.”

  “Sure.”

  “I believed that if I could harness those smarts for education, I could cut down on the misery they might create, trying to express themselves without the proper intellectual and emotional tools. Maybe we could change the trajectory of their lives.” He seemed to speak without thinking back on the events—this was a sermon he’d given before.

  The coffee came, delivered by an assistant about the same age as the priest, who poured silently and left us to perform our own additions. The father took cream and brown sugar.

  “You can’t judge our success only by the people we worked with,” he said.

  “Goes without saying.”

  “Late Start made other correctional education initiatives step up their game, so to speak. We wanted to help people who everyone said couldn’t be helped. Some couldn’t, of course. My feeling was, if we could help just one.”

  I nodded.

  “Truth be told, I think the full effects of our work have yet to be felt.”

  “It must have been intense,” I said.

  “Like you wouldn’t believe. Just imagine it.” He sipped his coffee, leaving me time to imagine it. “You’re in a small locked room with a violent offender, someone who might not have passed high school. A murderer, a rapist, who can barely read a Dr. Seuss or calculate a tip. And it’s your job to challenge him, focus on the areas where he’s ignorant, where he feels most vulnerable.”

  I marveled at that, and asked if there had been incidents.

  “One or two. We were usually well supervised. One instructor was present during a riot, another threatened with a knife. We all received threats, of course. That went with the job.”

  I drank some coffee. It was caramel-hazelnut infused, not my thing. “I’d be keen to see your reports. We’re interested in how you negotiated between results-oriented testing and customized learning objectives.”

  “We preferred tailoring the program to what they needed. Maybe to a fault. Without test score improvements, diplomas, and whatnot, it’s hard to get administrators on board.”

  The father leaned forward to drink, a few drops pattering on his saucer.

  “What really did us in, apart from funding, was students trying to involve us in their legal troubles. My name carries some small amount of weight, and I was asked repeatedly to serve as a character witness.”

  “The others must have been approached, too,” I said. “Though obviously not to the extent of yourself.”

  He nodded. “And that’s what scuttled us—too much working at cross-purposes, people getting a little too friendly. I don’t know if you’ve ever visited a prison, but those people are sharp. Uneducated, maybe, but savvy, on the lookout for weaknesses to exploit.”

  “Was there a specific incident?” I asked.

  “I can’t go into details.” I waited him out, and he added, “It’s neither here nor there, really, but we found one instructor had gotten a little too close to one of her pupils. I’m talking about an ethical breach, you understand. Nothing tawdry.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Was she disciplined?”

  “We separated them, of course.”

  “But nothing beyond that?” I realized that might sound confrontational and pulled back. “Under those conditions, discipline must be hard to enforce. How did you manage it?”

  “Some advice,” he said. “Make sure your own group lays out ground rules, and properly trains its educators. In our case, we were working on a shoestring, all volunteers. How can you discipline someone who’s not getting paid?”

  “It must be tough,” I said. “I’d still like to see those reports, see how you managed. Did you keep lists of which volunteers worked with which inmates?”

  “That I can’t help you with.”

  He pointed his coffee mug toward the computer on his desk, its screensaver a slowly-undulating school of neon fish.

  “A couple of years ago I had someone digitize the archives, scan all our papers—field reports, lesson plans, assessments. It’s a jumble, and I haven’t had time to go through it.”

  “We could help you with that,” I said. “We have a number of employees with filing experience—”

  “I appreciate the thought, son, but I can’t do it.” He stood, a sign for me to do the same.

  Father Darian told me to call if I had more questions. He didn’t walk me out. I drove off in my rental car, wondering how well the priest had password-protected his computer.

  Twenty-Five

  Hamilton had the feeling of a college town that had got its college in the nick of time, right before its industry collapsed. Once upon a time I’d applied to McMaster, never having visited there, but thinking college and a change of setting would improve things for me. Lives unled.

  I met Kay and Blatchford at the Travelodge. We found a chain restaurant with a decent salad bar and tucked into a corner booth to discuss strategy.

  “I want those files,” I told them.

  Jet lag had hit Kay, and she downed refills of Dr Pepper. Blatchford leaned over the table, looking somnambulant, as if at any minute he might use the plate for a pillow.

  “There’s an eight o’clock mass,” I said. “If Darian leads it, and his assistant has gone home for the night, sneaking in shouldn’t be a hassle.”

  “You’re welcome to do it, then,” Blatchford said.

  “I figured I’d distract the sentry, keep him outside. Kay attends the service. Leaves you to do the sneaking—if you’re up to it.”

  “Of course.” He rubbed his face, waking himself up. “Looking forward to it.”

  I leaned out of the booth to check the clock on the wall. Five thirty, two and half hours to kill.

  They both wanted to nap, so I walked with them back to the motel, then called Sonia from the lobby.

  “How was your flight?” she asked.

  “No complaints. Any more bad dreams?”

  “A few. They’re not as bad.”

  “No other nonsense going on?”

  The sound of wind hitting the receiver, a sigh.

  “There’s talk of establishing a Chris Chambers Award,” Sonia said. “A scholarship for low-income students studying criminology. Three thousand dollars.”

  “Maybe I’ll apply.”

  When I returned to the motel, Blatchford and Kay were sitting on the beds in Kay’s room. She looked up at me, stifling a laugh as I came in. I said, “What?”

  “Tim was just telling me about when he met you,” Kay said. “You never told me you worked for Aries.”

  “I apprenticed with them,” I said. “It didn’t last.”

  “You almost got Tim fired.”

  Blatchford was grinning. “I was telling her about the time you, me, and Jeff drove up to the Interior. You remember?”

  I collapsed into the chair near Kay’s bed. “No one wants to hear that story, Tim.”

  “I do,” Kay said. “You never tell me this stuff.” Asking Blatchford, “What was he like?”

  “Dave? Just a kid.” Blatchford turned to me: “Two or three months under your belt, right?”

  “It’s your story,” I said.

  “Aries hired us out to a chemical company. Trademark infringement case. Two farmers in the area refused to buy the company’s genetically modified super-seeds, so the company goes off on them. Trumped-up bullshit—some of their neighbors’ seeds blew onto their land, suddenly they’re violating patents and encouraging others to do the same. Nuisance suits, but they drag on long enough, the bigger company always wins.” />
  “Shitty,” said Kay.

  Blatchford drank and grinned. “Dave thought so, too.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “We were hired to follow the sodbusters around, wear dark suits and shades, act conspicuous. They go out for breakfast at the local waffle house, we’re at a nearby table watching them.”

  Kay looked at me. “You did that?”

  “He wasn’t the only one,” Blatchford said. “I was griping to Jeff, us three sitting in the hotel bar, saying maybe we should take pity on them. These sodbusters didn’t have a clue—the company’s got a legal department, for crissakes, while they’re sharing a library copy of Average Joe’s Guide to the Law.

  “I say to Jeff and Dave, if someone just told them what they were up against, they could pack it in, sell the farm. Otherwise they’re going bankrupt. Jeff’s nodding, half paying attention. We’re just talking about this as a theoretical. And Dave’s sitting there looking thoughtful.”

  “What’d he do?” Kay looked at me. “What’d you do?”

  “He showed them the surveillance file,” Blatchford said, “and did the world’s worst job of leaking it. The clients found out and Bob Aries was pissed. He never did pay me or Jeff. Said it was half our fault for not stopping him.”

  He paused to see if I wanted to add or dispute anything. I continued changing my socks.

  “Anyway, Jeff and I always disagreed over that. He said Dave did the wrong thing for the right reason. Me, I thought it was the opposite—right thing, wrong reason. Because it wasn’t about helping the downtrodden, was it? It was getting to Bob Aries, making him look bad. Right, Dave?”

  “It can’t be both?” I said.

  He leaned back into the headboard and grinned. I was beginning to dislike that grin.

  “I think,” I said, “it was the right thing, for the right reason, just done the wrong way.”

  At seven thirty I pulled on my shoes and zipped up my hoodie. I took a swig from Blatchford’s proffered mickey of Red Label, and passed the bottle to Kay. I said to Blatchford, “You coming?”

  He slowly pulled himself up to a sitting position.

  “Of course,” he said. “Who else is gonna look out for you?”

  Twenty-Six

  At night the church had the look of a Bavarian chalet, its upper windows glowing gold against the cloud-darkened night. I could imagine it as a sanctuary—which begged the question why we had to break into it.

  The southern edge of the church property was a strip of reddish clay, crusted by the autumn chill, bike tracks imprinted over its surface. We parked across the street and trudged through the mud. At the parking lot entrance, Blatchford halted.

  “Cold feet?” I asked.

  “Strikes me I haven’t been inside a church in years. Not since Brendan Jorgenson and I got caught in the gym showers at St. Pat’s.”

  “Other than when you tried to break in yesterday, you mean.”

  “Strikes me yesterday I might’ve wanted to get caught. Like psychologically.”

  I looked at him. He was staring at his feet.

  “All right,” I said. “We’ll swap, then. Can I count on you to wind the guard up for half an hour?”

  He smiled, looking relieved.

  Kay and I walked to the door. “You up to this?” I asked her.

  “Sure,” she said. “I figure he’d want us to.”

  “Who? Tim?”

  “God,” she said. “I figure we’re after someone who’s breaking the sixth commandment. And if we just copy those files, we’re not technically breaking the eighth.”

  In the hallway, a rustling sound reached us from the nave, hymnals being flipped open. Two-dozen-odd voices began a somber tune I didn’t recognize. We took the stairs in single file.

  The lights from the atrium below left the upper hallway in shadows. I turned the father’s office door but it was locked, a brass deadbolt set in the antique wood. I tried using a laminated discount card to jimmy the bolt, but it was wasted effort.

  “Maybe there’s a window,” Kay said.

  Her sneakers made less noise on the wood floor than my Rockports. We skirted the office and tried others. The door to the assistant’s nook wasn’t as well protected. I dug the bent card between door and jamb and retracted the bolt.

  We entered, closed the door. Kay held up her phone, illuminating the room under cool blue light.

  A loud voice from outside—“Stop.” I craned my neck to look out the window. A yellow-jacketed man stumbled out of the mud, in pursuit of a darting figure that must have been Blatchford. The singing continued from below.

  Kay hit keys on the assistant’s computer. A floating password box appeared on the screen. She tried closing it but it sprang up again.

  “Why did you think this would be easy?” she whispered.

  “Check the desk.”

  Kay opened the drawers, directing the light down on their contents. Stationery, correspondence, a cash box in the bottom. In the top right drawer, nestled beside pencils and a three-hole punch, was a spiral-bound notebook. Kay took it, held it up.

  On the front of the notebook was a piece of masking tape with ASSISTANT written on it in smudged black marker. Evidently the job had a high rate of turnaround. Kay flipped pages.

  The music had stopped. Outside, Blatchford and the guard had faded to shadows on the baseball field.

  “Yes.” Kay tapped the back page of the book, a list of passwords. I thought I saw her roll her eyes.

  A stentorian voice filled the silence, Father Darian preaching the word. His cadence was more lyrical than his parishioners’ singing.

  Kay had access. She searched “Late Start” and copied files onto the zip drive. Outside I saw the security guard start back toward the church, winded, limping.

  I watched the progress of the files. The father had called it “raw data.” No kidding—pages of documents with gibberish names filled up the Late Start folder, A27677_B and the like.

  When the transfer was finished, Kay put the computer to sleep. She followed me out, down the stairs. The sermon was winding down, dulcet tones, love thy neighbor. Murmurs of approval, soft amens. We almost collided with the security guard coming through the front door.

  He was shorter than me, maybe twenty years older, still out of breath. Shock fading to suspicion. I put my hand on his shoulder and leaned in, as Kay circled behind us, making an end run for the door.

  “Thank God,” I near-whispered, drawing him toward the stairs. “I don’t know what’s going on, but I saw a guy go up there just now.”

  His eyes widened, putting it together. “Big guy, wide guy?”

  “Yeah, kinda looked like a wrestler. I saw him go up the stairs but I didn’t know who to tell, and I didn’t want to interrupt—”

  He put up his hand, a calming gesture. “Thanks for telling me, you did good.”

  I watched him ascend, then made my exit.

  Kay and Blatchford were already in the car, ready to peel out as soon as my door closed. Kay drove, letting out a yip as we pulled onto the highway.

  “Holy shit,” she said. “I was worried there for a moment, but holy shit, right?”

  I accepted the flask from Blatchford. “No problems?” I asked him.

  “Wish you’d’ve been quicker, but I made it work.” He grinned. “You’re out of practice. If I taught you anything, it’s that, this business, you have to keep your chops up.”

  I closed my eyes and told him to go fuck himself.

  Twenty-Seven

  On the plane ride home, Kay sat in the middle seat, her laptop open, trying to make sense of what we’d stolen. There was no sequence to the documents. Some had been copied from dog-eared or coffee-stained originals, some wrinkled or mussed beyond legibility. It was less like piecing together a jigsaw puzzle than sifting through pieces from many puzzles. I leaned against Kay’s shoulder and directed her sorting—by penmanship, format, or date, but always looking for the name Dana Essex.

  In the win
dow seat, Blatchford snored. Before going through the security gate, he’d ingested whatever was left of his pharmacy. Then shortly after takeoff, he’d slugged back two airplane bottles of Tullamore Dew. He’d be comatose till touchdown.

  As Kay scrolled through the files, a familiar blue script filled the screen. I pointed. “Looks like her handwriting.”

  “I guess you’d know,” Kay said. “When I dropped by your place that morning, she was in there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You slept with her.”

  “How does that help us now?” I said.

  “Sorry, it’s just weird. You don’t think it’s weird?”

  “I crossed a line,” I said after a moment. “She knew I’d cross it, maybe helped push me, but it doesn’t change that this is my fault.” I added, “I’m sorry you got caught in the middle of this.”

  “Don’t be,” Kay said. “I’m having a really good time.”

  We looked at the paper. The middle page of a report, explaining how Essex had spent the hour working with her client on paragraph structure:

  . . . while he doesn’t understand the logical development of supporting ideas, Mr. Henshaw is nonetheless a gifted raconteur. It’s a matter of focusing him, reminding him of the rules. He defaults to upper case letters when excited. I’ve suggested as a stopgap that he continue to write in caps while observing proper margins and punctuation. This method may . . .

  —and done, and none of the surrounding documents seemed to pick up the thread.

  “Henshaw,” I said. “We’ve got a suspect.”

  “Only another thousand pages to go.”

  “There’s no rush.” I remembered something. “Back at the church, you rolled your eyes. What was the password?”

  Kay shook her head disapprovingly, like Father Darian should have known better. “Would you believe, ‘Jesus1’?”

  Twenty-Eight

  The day of our flight home, a pair of unidentified males, wearing matching black drawstring hoodies with THRIVE OR DIE decaled in gold sequins on the back, approached the rear entrance of the Monte Carlo restaurant. Carrying automatic pistols, they forced the busboy, on his smoke break, to let them inside. They swept through the kitchen and rear offices, herding employees into the walk-in freezer. The gunmen singled out Anthony Qiu and his wife, Susan Leung Qiu, ordered them to seal the freezer with the majority of the kitchen staff inside, then walked them toward Qiu’s private office.