Down To The Needle

by Mary Deal

  “That's him, Arno! Son-of-a-bitch just strolls in like he's won an Oscar.”

  Chapter 54

  Det. Britto had already crossed the lobby.

  “Who, Joe?” Abi asked, looking but not recognizing the tall man whose wardrobe seemed totally out of place, even in their cool climate.

  “Damned! It's Yates.”

  Officers stepped aside and let Det. Britto and Yates make their way back to the office. Det. Britto signaled two officers to remain at the doorway.

  Joe grabbed Yates's shirtfront with one hand and drew back a fist with the other. “Where the hell have you been? You—”

  “Cool it, Arno!” Det. Britto jumped between and prevented Joe from throwing the punch.

  Yates's wandering gaze was from alcohol. Abi stepped aside when she got a whiff of the man's sour breath. Yates took several quick sniffs of the air. He turned to Abi. “You been in my house before.” He looked at her from head to toe. “So that's what the mother of that killer looks like.”

  Joe lunged at Yates again but Det. Britto was closer and forced Yates into a chair. “What you need is black coffee.”

  “I come to look at them pictures and then see me an execution.” Surprisingly, he spoke without slurring. He smiled proudly.

  “You already tipped a few today? You drunk?”

  “Hell, no. Can't see when I'm drunk. It's akin to bein' blind.” He smiled his ugly-toothed grin for all to see. “With all them TV people workin' themselves into a frenzy, I figure I gotta look at them pictures one last time. Then I'm a-gonna see me an execution. Then I'm a-gonna git drunk.”

  Joe stood over the man. “Do you know what you've done?”

  Det. Britto pushed Joe away and made gestures with his eyes that told him to leave well enough alone. Abi wrapped an arm around Joe's waist and forced him to step away.

  The detective turned his attention again to Yates. “We're going to get you some black coffee and a bite to eat. How'd you like that?” He signaled to one of the officers to make the run.

  Yates yelled at the officer at the doorway. “No cream 'n sugar.” He turned back to Det. Britto. “How'd you know I was hungry? Some of you folks is okay, always taking care of me. Here I git my sight back from the mother of the one that killed my family. Now that's justice, ain't it? And now the police is a-gonna feed me. A man's gotta feel right proud when people care.”

  Abi felt as if she might puke.

  While Yates continued to expound about his recent escapades, the officer reappeared with a pot of coffee, Styrofoam cups and reheated left over pizza from the lunchroom. Acting like he was a star surrounded by ardent attendants, Yates forced half a wedge into his mouth and chewed noisily and spoke through the glut. “Bring on them pictures.”

  Det. Britto glanced at the wall clock. As Yates gobbled down the pizza, another commotion erupted through the back door.

  “Take your fucking hands off me!” This time, the handcuffed suspect was a woman in leathers and chains and heavy ghoulish makeup who could resist little despite her rough appearance and ugly disposition.

  From the adjoining holding cell, Sling evidently recognized her voice and began taunting. “Hey, you perverted whore. You still gang-banging?”

  A Sergeant stuck his head into the office and motioned to Det. Britto, who approached the doorway and listened as the Sergeant whispered something and left. Det. Britto turned to Abi and Joe with a finger of caution in front of his lips. They knew the woman was Dara and that Det. Britto didn't want Yates to know.

  After the suspects were told to shut up and sit quietly and wait for processing, and while Yates polished off his meal, Det. Britto motioned for the two officers at the doorway to step inside.

  “Hi, guys.” Yates gave a flimsy salute.

  Det. Britto first switched on the ceiling fan and then brought out two short stacks of photos from the top drawer of his desk. He settled into his chair as if planning to stay until he got what he wanted. The photos were three-by-fives, ordinary mug shots of women in one stack, men in the other.

  Abi glanced at her watch.

  Yates searched his pockets for his eyeglasses and finally put them on. He took his time looking at one stack and commented unnecessarily between loud belching.

  “Cut the sound effects. Just tell me when you recognize someone.”

  Yates persisted. “Bet you don't know where I been.”

  “We tracked you.”

  “Nah, you don't know.” Yates turned over one photo after another as if not interested.

  “Why'd you go to Kansas?” Though Det. Britto spoke nonchalantly, he watched Yates's face for tell tale signs of recognition. Joe and Abi watched also.

  “Well, you're right there. I'm from Kansas City.” He looked up, ignoring the photos in front of him. “In all the time I been blind and couldn't keep track of no one, my family done up and moved.”

  “To Iowa, right?”

  “How'd you know?” He looked at another photo. “It's been so long since I seen my kin, they done up and died off.”

  “That happens. Keep looking.”

  “Found one distant cousin, though, I did.” Yates again showed disinterest in the photos. “He didn't even know me. Imagine that. After all the publicity I done had.”

  “So you had a make-over and disguised yourself as this dashing younger man and took your time coming back?”

  Abi watched and listened and understood the tactics Det. Britto applied to humor Yates. It would be the only way to get through to this sorry sot.

  “Yep, found me a drinking buddy. We tied on a few, but he was keepin' an eye out fer today. I done told him I had this to do back home.”

  “Didn't matter that you'd wait till the last minute, did it?” Det. Britto's voice was restrained, yet practiced at feigning sympathy in order to elicit information.

  “Nope. I figure if I gotta come back to town to see me an execution, I could see these pictures at the same time,” He giggled. “Kill two birds with one stone, so to speak.”

  From where she sat, Abi watched Yates's cheek puff grotesquely as he flashed his foul-mouth grin, pathetically proud of himself. She took deep breaths and held her stomach.

  Joe glanced at his watch and caught her looking at hers.

  Det. Britto looked at her quickly and rolled his eyes in disbelief. She and Joe rose and went to stand beside Yates's chair to look at the photos over his shoulder. Yates affectedly adjusted his glasses, and then adjusted them again. He barely glanced at each photo before flipping to the next one, that of Megan Winnaker. Abi stepped back suddenly to hide her surprise and fright, but Yates soon turned that photo over onto the rest. Abi's jaw dropped open. She closed her eyes and clung to Joe's arm.

  Next was Dara Hines's photo. Yates looked at that one briefly, and then began to turn it over as well. He stopped and turned the photo right side up and studied it again, leaning in closer over it. Then he flipped it over again.

  Finally, he had viewed them all. “Nope. Don't see nobody I seen before.” He began to go through the pile of men's photos showing even less interest.

  “Take your time, Yates.” Occasionally, Det. Britto expressed frustration with a roll of his eyes at the two officers.

  “I told you, I seen a girl through the window.” Yates scattered the rest of the stack on the desktop. “Why are you showing me these guys?”

  “Okay, now I want you to look at these.” Det. Britto retrieved a stack of larger photos from the desk drawer. They were some of Joe's old photographs of homeless people. Yates looked slowly and turned the first few. Next was a copy of the newspaper photo of Megan Winnaker as she appeared in the frame Yates had been holding on his lap all the years of his blindness. He turned it over immediately and went to the next one.

  Abi's knees nearly buckled. Joe held her tightly.

  “Well, looky here!” Yates held a photo containing several people, one of which was Megan Winnaker in the foreground. “This here's that same picture I done seen before.” Again he
studied the picture and nodded.

  “You're sure?” Det. Britto shot another suggestive glance at the two officers who bent in for verification.

  “I told you. I got it all up here.” He pointed to his head. “I ain't never forgot nothin'.”

  Det. Britto glanced again at the officers, his two official witnesses. He turned his attention back to Yates. “You're sure about this picture? This is the one?”

  “This is it, man, and looky here.”

  “Recognize somebody?”

  Yates waved the picture joyously in the air. “She's the one.” “There she is!” He handed the photo to Det. Britto.

  Now Abi's heart fluttered mercilessly. She reached into her purse for her tablets.

  Without expression, Det. Britto studied the photo and then turned it back around on the desktop to Yates. “Show me the one you saw.” The two officers leaned in again. Abi and Joe leaned in.

  “That one there.” He half stood in front of his chair and leaned over the desk to tap a fingertip hard on a face in the photo. A face behind Megan Winnaker.

  Abi let out a yelp and nearly collapsed as Joe helped her to stand.

  “And looky here. I knowed I was right. I just knowed it.”

  “About what?”

  “That thing I saw sparkling in the night, like she was wearing earrings. A cross, I told them people. Looky here.” He tapped the photo again. “Just like the night of the fire.”

  Joe and Det. Britto almost knocked heads as they dived toward the enlarged picture to study it. Abi leaned forward and squeezed in to see. A man stood almost directly behind the girl who stood a few feet behind Megan Winnaker in the photo. He wore a small cross in his earlobe. Yates sat down again and let out a long proud sigh.

  “You sure you don't know this person?” The detective pulled the old newspaper photo of Megan Winnaker from the pile again.

  Yates reluctantly studied the picture one more time. “This is that other one, ain't she?” He compared the old newspaper photo to the photo showing Megan Winnaker in the front of the others. “I get it. You're trying to trick me into being sure. Well, she's the same person in these two pictures, but she ain't the one I done seen.”

  “You sure?”

  “Sure as I'm gonna see me an execution.” He plumped the collar of his shirt and crossed his legs.

  Det. Britto leaned over his desk and pushed the newspaper photo under Yates's nose and held it there. “Well, this picture… this is the girl you identified more than eight years ago.”

  “Nah.” He waved a hand. “You can't fool me. She ain't the one. I remember clear as day.” Det. Britto laid the picture on the desktop and Yates forcefully tapped the face behind Megan Winnaker's image. “That one there's the one I done seen at the window.”

  Det. Britto pointed to the image of Megan Winnaker. “You put your finger on this one the morning after your house burned down. I watched you do it.”

  “Ah, hell, I musta' had the shakes. Musta' been pointing to that other one, like this.” He put his fingertip on top of Megan Winnaker's image but pointed it in the direction of the girl behind. He glanced up toward the ceiling. “I remember the night of the fire. Me and a drinkin' buddy went out on the town before and—”

  “Then you made a mistaken identity back when this all started.”

  Relief flooded through Abi's nervous system. Megan Winnaker was innocent. Yates could not have known that he IDed the wrong person because he went blind almost immediately and couldn't have identified her in court months later. They had to rely on the picture he barely saw through a drunken stupor.

  “I ain't made no mistake. I meant that one right there.” Again, he placed his fingertip on top of Megan Winnaker's face and pointed to the girl behind. “I told them which one was guilty. Maybe some of your guys done tipped a few that night too. Couldn't see straight neither.”

  The practiced detective's face held stone cold emotion. He rummaged through his desk drawer and came up with another photo. It was a smaller version of Joe's head to knee shadow shot of Megan Winnaker, with her hand opened against her thigh and wearing that big SS ring with the Swastika on it. When Abi leaned closer to see, she almost fell over Yates.

  Yates almost jumped out of his chair. “There's that ring.” He compared the girl wearing the ring to the one he had pointed at and shook his head. He pulled the picture close to study the face deep in the shadow shot. “How come this one's a-wearin' it now? That other one had it on when she threw the danged brick.”

  “No mistake?” Det. Britto's expression intensified, like he had him this time. “Close your eyes, Yates.”

  “What?”

  “Just do as I say. Close your eyes a second. I'm going to put something in your hands. Without opening your eyes, I want you to tell me what it is.”

  Yates smiled like a child and then closed his eyes to play the game. He held out long bony eager hands. Det. Britto placed a framed photo face down in his upturned palms. Yates grasped it and tipped his face toward the ceiling as his fingertips examined the item. “I know what this is. I been a-holdin' it all these years. I'd know it if I was blind.” He laughed proudly but laughed alone. “It's the photo of the girl my sister done cut out of the newspaper for me to hold. I told her to git me the picture of the one that burned my house down.” With eyes still closed and face upturned, he turned the frame right side up and continued to feel around the edges. “My sister framed it so's it would last. You can't fool me.”

  Det. Britto placed the loose newspaper photo of Winnaker on the desk right in front of Yates. “Okay, open your eyes.”

  Yates opened his eyes and looked, then opened his eyes even wider and jerked his head forward. His mouth dropped open as he compared the two pictures. “Is this some kinda' joke or somethin'?”

  “No, man, that's the girl you identified eight years ago.”

  “It ain't, I tell you. It ain't.”

  Det. Britto goaded Yates as the two officers witnessed. “That's the one who's picture you've been holding on your lap praying to see die.”

  “I ain't held her on my lap.”

  “Your sister wouldn't play a joke on you, would she?”

  He thought for a moment, fingered the frame again and shook his head once. “I guess she wouldn't.”

  “So why would the newspaper print this picture if you hadn't identified her?”

  “They made a mistake, I tell you. Imagine people in their position makin' that kinda mistake.” He thumped a knuckle on Winnaker's framed image. “She ain't the one. All these years, I been a-holding the wrong picture?”

  “You just said that's the very same frame and photo you've had in your hands all these years. You even knew it with your eyes closed. Your sister let us borrow it before her house was torched.”

  “Wha-at?” He dropped the frame onto the desktop.

  “'Course, you wouldn't know that because you were out good-timing it, right?”

  He leaned forward in disbelief. “They done burned Hazel's house?” He put a hand to his head. “What about my dog?”

  “You left him behind too, didn't you?

  “My sister'd take care of him. Where is he?”

  “Musta broke loose. We didn't find any barbequed meat laying around.”

  Yates began to whine. “Oh-h, where am I a-gonna stay now?”

  Yates cared only about himself and clearly had not gone to Hazel's house yet. He didn't even ask about his sister's welfare. No one in the room cared where he would live, except that they had to keep track of him through the proceedings that would surely follow.

  Now Det. Britto would act on his arrest warrant. “We'll get you a place to stay. We've got a real shelter for folks like you.”

  Yates perked up. “A shelter? In one of them places is where I met my drinking buddy. Yeah, I'll go there.”

  Det. Britto tapped a finger on the glass over Megan Winnaker's photo. “Let's get back to this.”

  Yates further delayed as he gulped the rest of his coffee
and swallowed hard. “Well, that girl there, she ain't the one.”

  “Show me again which one.”

  Yates made sure he clearly pointed to the girl behind Megan and shook his head. Then he halfway turned in Abi's direction, held up Megan's picture and said, “You mean this one here's yer daughter?” Yates certainly had not kept up with the news and the events that had taken place. He had no way of knowing Megan was not Becky. He wouldn't understand if they wanted to explain.

  Det. Britto's look of satisfaction said no reason existed to clarify anything to Yates. The man knew all he needed to know. Det. Britto held the enlarged group photo up for all to see. He thumbed in the direction of the holding cells. “We've got our perps.” He hurriedly gathered up the photos and yelled over his shoulder as he ran from the room. “We've got to get this to the Governor,”

  They watched him bound up the stairs two and three at a time, heading to the Chief's office.

  Chapter 55

  The snow line had dropped drastically the night before and blanketed the surrounding hills with a layer of blue-white. The wind contained a bite that would keep the snow on the ground as low as the Tono foothills.

  Media and police vehicles with horse trailers and demonstrator's cars not only lined the road for a mile leading to the prison, but also glutted the approach to the gate. Stringers shouldering cameras sloshed through the soupy exhaust-blackened snow. Fires burned in old metal barrels. Everyone was bundled in heavy winter gear. The usual throng of demonstrators had multiplied to unbelievable proportions. The scene was a media circus. Two officers on horseback arrived to escort the Range Rover.

  Police and prison guards attempted to keep order. The crowd became even more boisterous as they approached. Not until she saw the sign that said No Sodium Pentothal did Abi understand the others that said No Pancuronium Bromide and No Potassium Chloride carried by the protestors most assuredly against lethal injection and capital punishment. The activists seemed divided into two groups, perhaps by the police, one on each side of the road. Demonstrators on the right side carried signs proclaiming Megan Winnaker's innocence. The nasty crowd on the left screamed, “Death to the torch! Death to the fire bug!” and gave thumbs down as they passed. As expected, all cameras focused on them through the car windows.