by Greg Barth
My first interaction with her was when she served me in the mess line. She placed food on my tray and looked down at me. Chav easily weighed two hundred pounds and stood over six feet tall.
“What? Did we open a daycare or something?” she said in her coarse whisper. She turned to the older woman beside her. “You know what? Fuck. I bet it’s bring your daughter to prison day again, and I fucking missed it. Look at her, Kat. Ain’t she cute?” She turned her gaze back to me. “You let me know if you need any help with your homework, sweetie.”
She passed my tray to the other woman, who placed more food on it. Kat was much shorter than Chav. She was plump and plain looking with dark hair tucked under a hair net, but still in a feminine style. “So cute. You remind me of when I was back in juvie hall. What’s your name, honey?”
“Selena,” I said. “It’s nice to meet you, Kat.”
“Eat good, kid. You’ll grow up into a woman someday,” Kat said.
“Don’t believe what they say. Puberty’s not so bad, kid,” Chav said.
I rolled my eyes and smiled. “I’m thirty years old.”
“Yeah, sure,” Chav said. “Drink your milk, honey. Nap time’s after lunch.”
It was funny that the nurse brought up Chav. In many ways, Chav was more masculine than he was. “I haven’t been with her, but now that you mention it, her? I’d do her for a baby aspirin.”
The nurse’s face scrunched up. He looked down at me with unfiltered scorn. He held the cup of pills up in front of me and poured them into his mouth. He tossed them back like he was drinking a shot. He dry swallowed them. He crumpled the paper cup in his pudgy fist. “Fuck you. I’ll be back in a few hours. I bet you’re more willing to negotiate then. In the meantime, get Chav to bring you something for pain.”
“Can you dim the light on your way out?” I said.
The look of hatred didn’t soften. He opened the curtains wide so that the few other people in recovery had full view of me lying on my gurney. “How’s that?” he said and walked away.
Fucker.
What he didn’t know was that I was no stranger to pain. Sure I like to feel good—what hedonist doesn’t—and opiates were a favorite of mine, but I could handle pain. And there was nothing he could offer that would get him any leverage on me. I’m not above making deals and doing favors for friends, but I take other action with fucksticks like him.
He should hope that I never got the opportunity.
T HREE
Magnus
MAGNUS SAT ON his rocking chair in the shade of his porch and watched the deputy cruiser kick up a cloud of dust as it made its slow way up the winding mountain road.
Magnus spent a good bit of time on his porch. It wrapped completely around his house, so he could sit comfortably any time of day—he could watch the sun rise, watch the sun set, and find a spot of shade in the middle of the day if he was of a mind to.
The view was incredible. His home sat on top of the tallest mountain in the county. At this elevation, his corner of southwest Virginia afforded him a view of the rolling hills and mountains of West Virginia in one direction, Eastern Kentucky in another, and southwest Virginia in yet another. The borders of all three states came together at the tip of the mountain peak that he owned.
Magnus also liked the location, as he could be in any of the three states in a matter of minutes if needed.
The top of the mountain was long and flat and bare of trees. It had been remodeled decades ago by a strip mining outfit until it no longer resembled a mountain, but more of an oblong, Mayan pyramid with giant steps leading down either side. The steps and slopes were nude of mature trees for the most part. The foliage along the steps consisted of scrub saplings and tall weeds. Ponds had developed on the flat surfaces from decades of runoff. Feral goats roamed the wide stretches along the level steps. Whitetail deer emerged from the brush in the evenings to munch on the sapling leaves, and Magnus enjoyed watching them.
Magnus didn’t care for mankind’s destruction of nature or its effects on the landscape. Strip mining was as akin to rape as anything he’d ever seen. Not that he had a problem with rape in itself, but strip mining ruined the beauty of a thing. And that was criminal in his eyes.
But he did like living in a place where you could see people coming at a great distance, and this mountaintop was perfect in that respect. The level steps of the abandoned strip mine were perfect for growing marijuana, assuming you could keep the cops away from it. Magnus had no difficulty with that. The hardest part was getting enough topsoil on the stripped land to give the plants an opportunity to grow to maturity.
As he watched the deputy’s cruiser pull up to his house, he removed a pouch of Red Man chewing tobacco from the back pocket of his jeans and opened it. He fished out a sizable wad, plucked away a stem, and stuffed the loose leaves of tobacco into his right jaw. He folded the top of the pouch over and put it back in his pocket. He worked the tobacco with his tongue and teeth as his jaw stretched to accommodate it. He chewed a few times and spit a stream of brown juice over the porch rail. He stood and straightened the ball cap perched on his head. His hair was long and black and hung down over his shoulders. He smoothed out his full black beard with his fingers. His cheeks were covered with long coarse hair. He kept the front of his beard in a ten-inch braid off of his chin. The mustache on his upper lip was stained with tobacco spit and clumped in places like dreadlocks.
Magnus was tall and lean. He was dressed in faded jeans and a thin, brown flannel shirt. He wore the shirt with the long sleeves rolled up above his elbows and the front unbuttoned over a white t-shirt. He walked down the steps of the porch. A rawboned bluetick coonhound joined him at his side as he walked up to the car.
“Mornin’ Bostic,” he said to the man in the car.
Deputy Frank Bostic opened the door to his cruiser and stepped out of the car.
“Saw your boy the other day,” the deputy said.
“How’s Roman? We talk on the walkie, but I ain’t walked down that way in a couple of weeks.”
“Seemed to be alright. Dropped off a runaway boy I picked up. Roman took him in. Got a spot for him on the farm. Might walk down to visit him if you don’t mind me parking here.”
Roman lived one step lower on the strip mine, about a quarter of a mile away. The roof of his large barn was visible in the distance. Roman’s property was accessible by another road on the other side of the mountain. A well-worn walking path connected the two properties.
“Good to hear. I’ll buzz him on the walkie and let him know you’re coming.”
“How you getting along up here, Magnus? It bothers me, you not having a phone.”
“Never saw a need in having a phone. I do alright without it. Got no computer and no TV either. That bother you too?”
“Just makes communicating a challenge sometimes.”
“Only thing I’ve got to communicate is I’m getting ready to do some planting.”
Deputy Bostic nodded. “Glad to hear it. I’m ready for an income boost myself.”
Magnus spat tobacco juice on the ground. The hound sniffed at it. “You’ll get your cut.”
“You hear about that Carson girl?” Deputy Bostic said.
“Carson girl? Who, you mean Selena?”
“Yeah, killed a bunch of people. Now she’s locked up. Federal prison.”
“That’s a damn shame.”
“It is. I never got ahold of that one, you know?”
“She was something. Back in the day anyway. Imagine she’s all used up by now.”
“The way I hear it, she just went nuts and was killing everybody. I’m talking shotguns, machetes, shit, you name it. Psycho shit. Shooting up restaurants even.”
“Probably a few around here will sleep better knowing that she’s locked up.” Magnus spat in the dirt. “You seen her daddy? How’s he taking it?”
“I’ll be over that way when I can get the time. I’ll let you know.”
“We had some good part
ies up at the Carsons’ after Mrs. Carson passed. Real good times.”
“If Tom Carson is taking it hard, maybe we should throw him a party some time. You know, for old time’s sake?”
“We just might do it. ’Course it won’t be the same without little Selena.”
“I’ll mention it to him. Let you know what he says.”
“You got business for me this morning, Bostic?”
“I do. What brings me up here is, the sheriff’s office is going to commission a chopper to do some sweeps across the county. Now they can’t afford to cover it all. I expect I’ll be able to keep them away from this mountain, but it’d be nice if we found some stuff growing out there somewhere.”
“Well, shit. Buchanan County’s full of stuff to find. But I’d hate to narc on friends.”
“I don’t need to hear it all. Just give me something. Not everybody’s your friend, right? Way I learned it is, competition just drives prices down.”
Magnus grinned, flashed his tobacco-stained teeth. “I expect if you follow the Levisa Fork down from Vansant and then take a run up route 618 to the county line, you’ll find enough to keep busy for a while.”
“That’s good intel, Magnus. I knew you’d come through for me.”
“You didn’t hear it from me.”
“No. I most definitely did not.”
“You want to come in for a spell?”
“It’s tempting. I just might do that. So what’s fresh these days?”
“Got one of the Catlow girls. The one named Natalie. You’d like her. Natural blonde.”
“Natalie Catlow? She was reported as a runaway, I believe.”
“That may be. Just may be. She’s the one I’d recommend.”
“Alright. You’ve convinced me. Natalie it is.”
Magnus walked around the house to the entrance that led down to his basement. Deputy Bostic followed.
They passed by a tractor with a flat trailer hitched to the back of it. Bostic saw an odd shape out of the corner of his eye and turned to get a better look. There was a dead body on the back of the trailer. A young woman. Her eyes were open and unfocused. They were dried and sunken in their sockets, milk white with death. There was blood on her forehead, dried black and clumped in her light blonde hair. Her skin was pale white, but Bostic could see a mottled purple color along the bottom outline of her body, where gravity had drawn the blood down to the lowest points.
“Jesus,” Bostic said.
Magnus stopped short. “You alright?”
“Now it’s that shit right there that I hate to see, Magnus.”
“I could cover her with a tarp if it’d would make you feel better.”
“Nobody wants to see that shit, okay? It’s a fucking hard-on killer. You understand? Now I’m going to be trying to get in with Natalie, and while she’s doing her sweet things, I’m going to have that shit right there on some sick loop in my head.”
“Natalie’ll get your mind off it. Guaranteed.”
“It ain’t fucking right, man. That’s all I’m saying. Goddamned dead girl laying out in the open. Just fucking awful.”
“Got it. It’s part of business, though. Sometimes you go down a path that don’t work out and you gotta cut your losses. Take out the trash, so to speak.”
“Just... cover that shit up, alright? Jesus.”
“Oh, I’ve got the backhoe up the way there. Dug a hole nice and deep. It’ll be covered up.”
Bostic looked at the body more closely. “Wait, is that? Is that the vagrant I brought you a couple months back?”
“That’s the one.”
“Hmm. She didn’t clean up very good, did she?”
“She tried to run,” Magnus said.
“You shot her?”
Magnus spat. “Naw. Got her with this.” He patted a leather pouch on his side. “It don’t let ’em get far.”
“You and that Japanese karate chain.” Deputy Bostic shook his head.
“Whip chains come from China. My granddad brought this one back from Korea. Fucker who had it ripped a man’s throat out with it right before Pappy shot him.”
“Still. Martial arts. Bunch’a movie bullshit, you ask me.”
“Ain’t much art to it unless you’re putting on a show. You get in a fight though, this thing will fuck somebody up before they know they’re fucked up.”
“Girls, anyway,” the deputy said.
Magnus chuckled and scratched at his beard. “Come over to Roman’s next Saturday night and you just might get to see it in action on somebody besides a girl.”
F OUR
Selena
THE REASON IT felt weird when the nurse delivered the message that Pete wanted me to do a job for him inside was twofold. First, my interactions with Pete had been minimal, but he seemed primarily concerned with helping me. His desire to ensure my silence too, but he had delivered that in a understated and delivered in a non-threatening way. The veiled threat didn’t fit. Second, the attorney he provided me gave specific guidance that I stay clean during my time in prison.
Getting myself in trouble was not part of the Plan B we worked out.
Everything the nurse told me did not jibe. There was no Plan C.
So just how does a nice girl like me wind up with a sentence shorter than life without parole in anything less than a high security, full lockdown facility, especially considering the mandatory minimums for federal crimes?
For most people it takes a good lawyer to get off easy. In my case it took one shitty lawyer and one corrupt lawyer.
This is what happened.
My attorney from the Office of the Federal Public Defender representing my district sat across the table from me. His name was Sam Christian. He had his briefcase on the table, open, files spilling out. He was a middle-aged, overweight man whose suit was two sizes too small if he skipped breakfast. The gray hair on top of his head was curly like a poodle’s. Beads of sweat dotted his forehead. He had a tiny bit of a gray neckbeard that was trying hard to be a goatee.
He loosened his tie and unbuttoned his tight collar.
I was dressed in a faded orange jumpsuit three sizes too big. It had the letters D.O.C. in large print across the back of it.
The room we were in was institutional—gray concrete block walls and dirty tiled floor. Ceiling tiles with odd-shaped brown water spots kept a lid on things overhead. A gunmetal gray table sat in the center of the room with mismatched wooden chairs on either side of it.
My hands were cuffed in front of me.
“So, Mister Christian, it’s nice here and all, but when are you getting me out?” I said.
“Selena, I have to be very honest with you. Your situation is not good.” He rolled his eyes. His frown deepened. The frown formed a crease between his eyebrows right over the top of his nose. This didn’t inspire confidence.
“Yeah, but what would Johnnie Cochran do, right? The glove don’t fit? Remember that? You could try some of that shit. That kind of thing works.”
“You don’t know what you’re up against here, do you?”
“They think I shot some people,” I said with a soft voice.
“No.” He spoke with emphasized patience like I was a slow child, and he was a frustrated teacher. “They do not think you shot some people. They have you on camera—video footage—actually shooting people. Big difference. And that’s not all. Do you know what forensic evidence is?”
“Um, fingerprints and shit, right?”
“Exactly. Fingerprints. You’ve left fingerprints everywhere. You’ve left fingerprints on shotguns, machetes, shotgun shells, things like that. You’ve also left your blood and vomit and other body fluids that I really don’t want to go into, but clearly you need to hear it—things like vaginal secretions and saliva on used condoms—in known crime scenes. They found blood from murder victims in a car registered in your name. Body fluids alone—both yours and the victims’—are present in such a quantity that it’s just insurmountable. Frankly, I’ve never seen
anything like it.”
“So you’ve gotta suppress that shit. Challenge the chain of custody. They put that video tape in the back of somebody’s car for the weekend, it gets shook around and all, gets some of those fluids on it... I mean, don’t make me do your job for you, but you get it, right? You have to plant reasonable doubt.”
He sighed. “Selena, you need to confront the reality of your situation. This isn’t a movie. A miracle isn’t going to happen here. Quite honestly I’ve never seen sloppier crime scenes, and that’s saying a lot.”
“You’re looking at it all wrong. It sounds to me like this is the case where you make your name. Become famous. This is your F. Lee Bailey case. This thing should give a lawyer like you a hard on. People will want to read the books you write about how you defended me on this. You’ve gotta rise to it, man. I’ve done you a big favor by getting arrested.”
He dabbed at his forehead with a white handkerchief. “You have to get those notions out of your head. Nobody has a... ‘hard on’... with this case except the U.S. Attorney’s Office, namely Albert Harding. This thing is an appointment opportunity for him,” he said.
“Come on. Where’s your ambition? Did they check out the shed behind the Apple Valley Inn? Fucking torture chamber. And there’s bodies buried in those woods. I know of at least one. They have to check. I know there are more.”
“Yes, and those are the kinds of things that will save your life, but they won’t get you acquitted.”
“What about the fact that these alleged victims have been rapists and abusers—people that severely injured me?”
“That helps too, but why didn’t you simply direct the police to them when they met with you in the hospital?”
