Apocalypse Island

by Hall, Mark Edward

  “We threw a few punches,” Wolf said. “The guy was okay, though. I helped him to his feet and made sure he could walk before I went home. He was a little disoriented but he was alive.”

  “And were there any witnesses to this event?”

  “Yes, my girlfriend, Siri Donovan.”

  “Where is Siri Donovan?”

  “She’s in bed.” Wolf half-turned and looked through the doorway to his bedroom. The bed was empty. “I don’t understand,” he said in confusion. “She came home with me last night. She must have gone out.”

  “Gone out, Mr. Wolf?”

  “Yeah, gone out. What the fuck is this?”

  “This is a murder investigation, Mr. Wolf, and you’re our main suspect. Tell me, does Ms. Donovan have her own place?”

  “Yes,” Wolf said, stunned.

  “Is it possible that she went home?”

  “I suppose so,” Wolf replied, but in his heart he had doubts. It wasn’t like Siri to get up in the middle of the night and just leave.

  “Were you drinking last night, Mr. Wolf?”

  “Yes.”

  “Would you say you were drunk?”

  “Probably.”

  “Exactly what do you remember about last night?”

  “I remember this guy making advances at my girlfriend. She told him to back off but he wouldn’t listen. He grabbed her ass and she slapped him, but still he wouldn’t stop.”

  “Where were you when this was going on?”

  “I was on stage. I couldn’t do anything until the set was over. I told the guy to keep his hands off but he shoved me and said he was going to kick my ass. I was pissed.”

  “Pissed enough to kill him?”

  “No! After the gig we went out back and had a little scuffle. That’s all. The guy went down against the dumpster but he was okay. I helped him up and then I left with Siri. I even offered to call someone but he said he was all right.”

  “Had you ever seen the man before?”

  Wolf nodded. “He was a regular. He wouldn’t take his eyes off my girlfriend.”

  “How did that make you feel?”

  “I didn’t like it.”

  “Shaun Talbot was found in the alley behind the nightclub, at two fifteen this morning by the club owner,” said the detective. “His skull was bashed in. Can you explain that?”

  “I didn’t do it! I swear. I don’t know how it happened.”

  “You can explain it to the judge,” the detective said as an officer slipped handcuffs on Wolf’s wrists.

  Siri never came forward in his defense. She was the only person who could have vindicated him. The night of the incident was the last time Wolf ever saw her. As far as he knew it was the last time anyone saw her. The police tried to find her but failed. She never returned to her job or her apartment. The authorities tried to locate next of kin but failed. It was as if she’d dropped off the face of the earth, or more to the point, as if she’d never existed at all.

  At the trial Wolf swore that he didn’t kill Shaun Talbot. The jury did not believe him. But considering the circumstances—no history of violence, no physical evidence at the scene linking Wolf to the crime, no murder weapon, no witnesses other than the elusive Siri Donovan, Wolf’s own testimony that he had indeed fought with the victim but had left him standing—had been enough to get the charges reduced to manslaughter.

  Wolf received seven to fourteen years in state penitentiary. To date he had served nearly five of those years. A jealous nature and a beautiful woman had conspired to send him to prison. Ah, yes, it was the truth, hard as it was to swallow.

  Chapter 4

  Despite it all, Danny Wolf felt no anger, no need for revenge. He had damped his feelings down long ago—turning instead to the subtle ironies he found in everyday life, making games of them, writing them all down in his memory so that one day he might turn his pathetic life into songs.

  Now, as he sat motionless on the edge of his bunk surrounded by three cold stone walls and a cage door, the dreams still close and claustrophobic in his senses, he had to admit that there was precious little irony in his present situation, and that his most profound hope was for some sort of salvation—not from his sins—that, after all, would require a certain measure of divine intervention, and he had no patience for believers—but from the profound and relentless loneliness that had plagued him for so long.

  He sat with his tear-soaked face in his hands. Another day was beginning at Warren, another in a long procession of days that ran together as one all-encompassing mind fuck. After all this time he should have been used to the tedious rhythm of prison life. Not so. As each day passed, the drudgery only became more difficult to endure. The worst part was killing time waiting; he’d had to learn to wait in line for food and drink, to shower and to shit, to get his turn at volleyball in the prison yard. These days he mostly kept to himself, staying in shape by doing endless pushups and crunches behind the locked door of his cell, as he waited in silent misery, trying not to think about the invisible woman who had so heartlessly betrayed him.

  Most of all he longed for the day when he could step out through the gates of this dark and angry place to a life without the torment. But was that a realistic hope? Would he ever be free of the demons that so fervently plagued his existence? Relief from the boredom of his nothing life inside the walls of Maine State Prison would be enough for now; he’d nearly convinced himself of that, at least.

  On this day, however, there was one small glimmer of hope. Although Wolf’s sentence would not conclude for another two to nine years, he’d been told that a certain psychiatrist who frequented the prison and worked with inmates on a quid-pro-quo basis had taken an interest in his case and would like to have a meeting with him and the warden.

  He entertained no illusions about his chances for an accelerated release date; he’d been there before. He loathed the process; the fake smiles, the files bulging with discipline reports, the psychiatric evaluations, the warden’s condescending gazes, the room rife with innuendo and dashed hopes.

  Wolf had no reason to believe that this would be anything other than another attempt at getting to the bottom of his ‘condition’. Others had tried and failed, even as the word in and around the prison was that Danny Wolf was a hopeless case; a dangerous man with something terrible inside him eating him away.

  He had no clear memory or understanding of the incidents that caused all the talk. But he’d been told that at times he turned into a crazed animal, howling out in rage and shaking the bars of his cell like a lunatic. More than once he’d been beaten away from the bars by guards with night sticks. Even though he had no memory of these alleged episodes he knew something had happened because each morning following an alleged incident his hands and arms would be covered with bruises and contusions. These episodes, coupled with occasional prison-yard fights, his sullen attitude, his long silences and steely gazes were evidently cause enough for both staff and inmates to leave him mostly alone to his own devices. Early on he’d been put in an isolation cell. Although he hadn’t seriously hurt anyone while in prison, the staff feared that it was only a matter of time. Wolf came to enjoy the solitude. He knew there could be far worse penance in state penitentiary than being left to one’s own devices.

  On this morning, however, he would go along once again and play the game. Perhaps the distraction would help to ease the boredom, maybe even get him out of the day’s work detail.

  Yesterday he’d been told to make himself presentable by eight in the morning, that the warden wanted to see him, and that tardiness would not be tolerated. So he hauled his ass out of bed and went about the business of making his appearance as presentable as possible considering the conditions under which he lived.

  Chapter 5

  “Danny boy had another bad night,” the guard said in a playful voice as she led Wolf along the convoluted route to the warden’s office. Her name was Kaleigh Jarvis and she was one of several female guards the prison had hired in recent
years in an attempt to integrate women corrections officers into a system that had always been male dominated. And it seemed to be working; statistics nationwide were proving that female guards were just as effective as their male counterparts.

  It always disoriented Wolf, threw him slightly off kilter, when Kaleigh called him Danny boy, because that’s what she had always called him. But he didn’t like to talk about her. Kaleigh had tried to get him to open up about Siri on a number of occasions but he had always refused.

  No offense to Kaleigh. She was a decent young woman who had taken some sort of perverse liking to him. Wolf knew it was partly because she was an aspiring singer with a part-time band and had found a kindred soul in him. Before going to prison, Wolf, a talented singer/songwriter had had a reasonable amount of success with his music; had actually become somewhat of a local celebrity. Then, just as his music career was taking off he’d found himself serving time for a crime he didn’t commit.

  Kaleigh had said that she could not understand how someone with Wolf’s talent and promise could screw his life up so badly. Wolf had not bothered to defend himself. He’d given that up years ago. What was the use? Prison was, after all, full of innocent men. He would only say that the incident that landed him here was the worst mistake of his life.

  He understood instinctively that Kaleigh’s motives were more complicated than a love of his music. She was a nurturer. She wanted to fix him. She wanted to heal him. It was her job as a woman. Wolf was smart enough to know that perfectly ordinary law abiding women latched onto criminal types every day and sometimes did stupid, not to mention illegal things to be with these men. But Wolf wanted no part of such a scenario. He did not need fixing. He was just fucking fine, thank you very much.

  “Another bad night?” Wolf asked with a frown. “What are you talking about?”

  Jarvis gave him her best sad puppy dog look. God, she was pretty, blonde with a medium build and inquiring blue eyes. Wolf knew that she wanted him. Christ, he wanted her. But no way. No fucking way! He fully intended to get out of this rat hole in one piece and nothing would get him stomped into the concrete faster than a fling with a staff member. Not only was it illegal, but understandably the male guards were extremely protective of their female counterparts.

  “That’s what I said, Danny boy,” Kaleigh replied. “Did you look at yourself in the mirror this morning?”

  “I shaved but I tried not to look.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about. You’re all red around the eyes, like you’ve been crying.”

  Wolf turned his head away in embarrassment. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Why are you so sad, Danny boy?”

  “God, every time you call me that—”

  “I know, it reminds you of her. I could become her if it would make you happy, you know. Did she do special things for you? Did she dress up in special outfits? Did she kiss your tears away when you were sad? I could do all of that for you, you know, and more. Anything you want. Just say the word.”

  “Kaleigh, please don’t.”

  “Okay! God you’re frustrating. Why do you make me ache so inside?”

  “It’s not my fault.”

  “Oh, Danny boy, my dark beauty, if you only knew.”

  “You don’t want me, Kaleigh. You don’t even know me.”

  “Okay, I don’t want you! I don’t know you! There. Does saying it make you feel better?”

  Wolf shook his head frowning.

  Kaleigh rolled her eyes to the ceiling and sighed. “Listen, Danny, are you telling me you don’t remember anything from last night?”

  Wolf stopped walking, staring at Jarvis.

  “The night guards said you had another one of your little...spells.”

  Wolf gave his head a rueful shake. “It was a dream. That’s all. I have bad dreams all the time.”

  “You sure that’s what they are, Danny boy?”

  Wolf frowned. “What else could they be? I’m locked up in an eight by ten cage, for crying out loud. You think I escape at night or something? Roam the prison looking for victims? If I could do that I’d just walk right on out of this rat hole and never look back.”

  Kaleigh gave her head a sad shake and did not reply. They resumed their casual walk along the prison corridor.

  “Christ, I don’t know,” Wolf said after a long moment of uncomfortable silence. “I rarely remember any of the details after I wake up. Only what people tell me. And I don’t believe the assholes in here.”

  “A conspiracy then, huh?”

  “Something like that.”

  “They’re more than dreams, Danny,” Jarvis said adamantly. “I’ve seen you in action and I wouldn’t lie. It’s freaky. Sometimes you act like a...mad man, screaming and howling, and rattling the bars of your cell. And sometimes...other things happen.”

  “What things?”

  “Oh, nothing much,” Jarvis said, feigning indifference. “Just light bulbs popping and toilets flushing and objects flying around the cell.”

  Wolf shook his head in frustration. “I have no memory of any of that,” he said. “And if it’s true I can’t explain it.”

  “You’ve got something all locked up inside you,” said Jarvis. “You’re full of rage, and somehow you project that rage in ways that defy logic. Why do you think everyone here is afraid of you?”

  “I didn’t know they were.”

  “Come on, Danny, they put you in an isolation cell.”

  Wolf shaped a grim smile. “Maybe that’s where I deserve to be. Maybe I’m a monster.”

  “No!” Jarvis said. “I don’t believe it. I know you’re lonely, maybe even a loner by choice, although for the life of me I can’t understand why, but beneath all that, beneath the rage, I see a rational, intelligent and talented human being that screwed his life up. But it’s not something that can’t be fixed. I just don’t see why you need all this extra baggage.”

  “It’s not a case of need, Kaleigh. There’s shit in my head, pure and simple. I don’t know how it got there and I can’t seem to get it out.”

  Kaleigh smiled. “You need a fixer.”

  “Don’t start.”

  “Yeah, okay, I get the picture. You ain’t interested.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just—”

  “Stop!” Kaleigh said. “I don’t want to hear this. Let me have my fantasies. Besides, soon you’ll no longer be my problem.”

  Wolf gave the guard a sidelong glance. “Why do you say that?”

  “Word is, they’re gonna’ spring you.”

  Wolf chuckled. “Yeah, I’ve heard that before.”

  “Well, I’ve got a funny feeling this time it might be true,” said Jarvis. “There’s rumors around prison.”

  “How come I haven’t heard them?”

  “You don’t talk to people.”

  “More like they don’t talk to me.”

  “Same difference.”

  When they reached the warden’s door, Jarvis looked both ways up and down the corridor before getting up on her tip toes and kissing Wolf tenderly on the mouth. Wolf did not pull away even as Jarvis’ tongue intruded and her lips lingered longer than they should have. “Good knowing you, Danny boy,” she said, pulling away, tasting her lips with her tongue. “I’m really gonna miss you.”

  “Yeah, me too,” Wolf said and meant it.

  “Maybe we could get together sometime on the outside,” Jarvis said. “You know, for coffee or something.” She stood back, a slight flush covering her face.

  “I’d like that,” Wolf replied. “But I still think you’re being overly optimistic.”

  “I told you, I’ve got this feeling.”

  “I hope you’re right.”

  “We’ll see, won’t we? So, here you go. Break a leg. And, Danny,” Jarvis whispered in a small, conspiratorial voice.

  “Yeah?”

  “Watch your attitude, okay? The warden’s an asshole, everybody knows it. If you have any illusions about actuall
y getting out of this hellhole, humor him.” Jarvis turned and walked away.

  Chapter 6

  Wolf rapped lightly on the door. A guard from within opened it and stood aside.

  “Come in, Wolf,” said the man behind the desk, flashing a fake smile. His name was Starkey and Wolf wasn’t the only inmate in Warren who’d dreamed of taking him apart. “Sit down, Wolf. Do you remember Dr. Hardwick?”

  Wolf scrutinized the other man in the room. The suit was tailored, the fingernails manicured. He looked to be late middle-age, maybe sixty, solid but of medium build with a full head of wavy gray hair. His blue eyes were hard and unforgiving but filled with an inquiry that seemed more than just casual. He wore his small square-rimmed glasses down on his nose. Finally Wolf shook his head. “Nope, don’t believe I do.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yup.”

  “He testified at your trial, Mr. Wolf.”

  “I have a practice in Portland,” Hardwick added.

  Wolf continued to stare at the man. Then he did remember. Hardwick had been bought by the prosecution, paid to spin ambiguities into warped truths. It happened all the time, should be illegal but wasn’t. There had been no real relevance to his testimony as far as Wolf was concerned; it was only vaguely general. Hardwick had no actual evidence of Wolf’s guilt or innocence, but he’d spewed just enough shrink psychobabble to cluster fuck the jury into a guilty verdict.

  “Right,” Wolf said. “So, what’s the asshole want with me?”

  “Dr. Hardwick is a psychiatrist,” the warden explained, his fake smile turning bland.

  “Yeah, so?”

  Starkey cleared his throat. “He has done some fine work here at the prison and for reasons that are beyond my comprehension he has taken an interest in your case.”

  “Oh?” Wolf said.

  “How much have you told Mr. Wolf?” the psychiatrist asked.