Life or Death

by Michael Robotham

  ‘Yes, sir, I reckon I am. You’ve had a busy morning.’

  ‘And it’s still early. What can I do for you?’

  ‘I’m here to help you look for Audie Palmer.’

  ‘I appreciate your offer, but the FBI and local police have everything under control.’

  ‘The Feds know shit!’

  ‘Pardon?’

  ‘You’re dealing with a cold-blooded killer who should never have been allowed into a medium-security facility. He should have gone to the chair.’

  ‘I don’t sentence them, Sheriff, I just keep ’em locked up.’

  ‘How’s that going for you?’

  Colour drained from the warden’s cheeks and a throbbing red cloud of burning cinders drifted across his eyes. Ten seconds. Twenty. Thirty. He became conscious of blood thumping in his temples. He finally managed to speak. ‘A prisoner escaped on my watch. I take responsibility for that. It’s an exercise in humility. You should try it some time.’

  Valdez opened his palms and apologised. ‘I’m sorry we got off on the wrong foot. Audie Palmer is of special interest to the Dreyfus County Sheriff’s Office. We arrested him and prosecuted him.’

  ‘I accept that, but he’s no longer your concern.’

  ‘I believe he may try to return to Dreyfus County and hook up with his former criminal associates.’

  ‘Based upon what evidence?’

  ‘I’m not at liberty to share that information, but I can assure you that Audie Palmer is extremely dangerous and well connected. He owes the state seven million dollars.’

  ‘It was federal money.’

  ‘I believe you’re splitting hairs with me, sir.’

  Warden Sparkes studied the younger man carefully, noticing his lack of sleep and the acne scars that pocked his cheeks.

  ‘Why are you really here, Sheriff?’

  ‘I explained myself.’

  ‘We only announced Audie Palmer was missing at seven o’clock this morning, by which time you’d already been parked outside for at least an hour. So I figure you either knew he was going to escape or you came here for some other reason.’

  Valdez got to his feet and tucked his thumbs in his belt. ‘Warden, do you have a problem with me?’

  ‘You might make a better impression if you pulled your head out of your ass.’

  ‘Four people died in that robbery. Palmer was responsible for their deaths whether he pulled the trigger or not.’

  ‘That’s your opinion.’

  ‘No, that’s a fact. I was there that day. I stepped over body parts and through pools of blood. I saw a woman burned alive in her car. I can still hear her screaming…’

  Any pretence of camaraderie had vanished like a fish spitting a hook. The sheriff smiled without showing his teeth. ‘I came here to offer my services because I know Palmer, but it seems you’re not interested.’

  He placed his hat on his head, adjusted the brim, and left, pushing the door instead of pulling the handle, muttering under his breath. The warden watched from the office window until he saw Valdez emerge from the front gate and cross the parking lot to the pickup truck. Why would a county sheriff drive two hundred miles to tell a chief warden how to do his job?

  7

  Moss has spent a sleepless night in The Hole, nursing his ego more than his bruises. He doesn’t blame the guards for giving him a beating. By losing his temper, he gave them a reason. He ‘enabled them’, his shrink would say. Anger management has always been a problem for Moss. Whenever he’s put under pressure or suffers from stress he feels as though a small bird is trapped inside his head, humming away, trying to get free. He wants to crush that bird. He wants the sound to stop.

  The moments when he completely loses his temper are almost euphoric. All his hate, fear, anger and pride, his triumphs and failures, come together and his life seems to mean something. He’s freed from a world of darkness and ignorance. He feels alive. Intoxicated. Untouchable. But now he understands how destructive this force can be. He’s worked hard to control his temper and escape his past, to become a different man.

  Rubbing his finger where his silver wedding band should be, he thinks about Crystal and what she’ll say when she visits him next. They’ve been married twenty years (and he’s been inside for fifteen of them) but some unions are written in the stars … or not. Crystal was seventeen when he met her at the San Antonio Rodeo. She was on the arm of a boy with buck teeth and a face like a pepperoni pizza, but she seemed to be looking for someone more interesting, although maybe not quite as interesting as Moss turned out to be.

  Her mother had always warned her about boys like Moss, but that only made Crystal more curious. She was a virgin, Moss discovered. Once or twice she’d wanted a boy to fling her onto the bed and teach her what it was all about, but she kept hearing her mother’s voice in her ear about lust being a deadly sin and teenage pregnancy a life-wrecker.

  Moss had gone to the rodeo to check out the security and recce the gate takings, but gave up on the prospective job when he saw how many state cops were on duty. So he bought himself a corndog and shot a dozen metal ducks in the shooting gallery, winning a Pink Panther. Later he saw Crystal watching the rodeo parade. She was nowhere near as pretty as some girls he’d known, but there was something about her that heated his blood.

  Her boyfriend had gone to get her a soft drink. Crystal floated off with Moss, laughing at his flattery and listening to the music. He wanted to show off. At the shooting gallery and coconut shy he won her a Daffy Duck, two helium balloons and a doll on a stick. They sat together to watch the rodeo. Moss knew what effect it would have on Crystal – seeing cowboys riding bulls and horses. In his opinion, more pregnancies could be blamed on rodeos than almost any other form of entertainment, except maybe for male stripper revues. Crystal was giddy with excitement and Moss knew that he had her. She would do anything for him. He would take her back to his place, or they would do it in the car, or even a quick knee-trembler behind the haunted house.

  But he was wrong. Crystal kissed him on the cheek, ignoring his best lines, and gave him her phone number.

  ‘You will call me tomorrow evening at seven o’clock. Not a minute before or a minute after.’

  Then she walked away, swinging her hips like a metronome, and Moss knew he’d been played like a cheap ukulele, but in the same breath he realised that he didn’t care. She was smart, sexy and spirited. What more could a man want?

  A guard hammers on the door. Moss gets to his feet and faces the wall. They shackle him again and take him to the showers and then to the reception area – not the main visitors’ block, but a small interview room normally used by attorneys visiting their clients.

  The prison shrink, Miss Heller, is waiting outside the room. The inmates call her Miss Pritikin because she’s the only woman in the prison who weighs less than two hundred pounds. Moss sits and waits for her to say something.

  ‘Am I supposed to start?’ he asks.

  ‘You’re not here to see me,’ she replies.

  ‘No?’

  ‘The FBI wants to talk to us.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘Audie Palmer.’

  Miss Heller had always reminded Moss of a speech therapist who took him for elocution lessons when he started high school because he couldn’t roll his ‘r’s or pronounce a ‘th’ sound. The therapist was in her twenties and would stick her fingers in his mouth, showing him where to put his tongue when he said particular words. One day Moss got an erection but the therapist didn’t get angry. She gave him a shy smile and wiped her fingers with a paper towel.

  A door opens and a caseworker leaves, nodding to Miss Heller, who is next in line. Moss waits, his legs splayed, eyes closed, head against the wall. Convicts are experts at killing time because they age in dog years. They can read the same magazines and books over and over; watch the same movies, have the same conversations and tell the same jokes, making months and years disappear.

  He thinks about Audie and tries
to picture him enjoying freedom, sleeping with a Hollywood starlet or tossing empty champagne bottles off the back of a yacht. Unlikely, he knows, but the mental images curl the corners of his lips.

  After Audie survived his ‘title fight’, he began sitting with Moss at chow time. They rarely spoke until they’d finished eating, and then it was usually small talk and observations rather than ruminations on life. Audie was still a target because he was young and clean and the money preyed on men’s minds. It was only a matter of time before somebody else tried to break him.

  An inmate called Roy Finster, who called himself Wolverine on account of his lupine facial hair, bailed up Audie outside the shower block and began swinging punches. Moss leapt onto Roy’s back and rode him to the ground like a lassoed steer before putting his knee across his neck.

  ‘I need the money,’ Roy said, wiping his eyes. ‘My Lizzie is gonna lose the house if I don’t do sumpin’.’

  ‘What’s that got to do with Audie?’ asked Moss.

  Roy pulled a letter from his shirt pocket. Moss gave it to Audie. Lizzie had written to say the bank was going to foreclose on the house in San Antonio and that she and the kids were moving back to Freeport to live with her folks.

  ‘I won’t get to see ’em if they move to Freeport,’ sniffled Roy. ‘She says she don’t love me no more.’

  ‘Do you still love her?’ asked Audie, still breathing hard.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Do you still love Lizzie?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  ‘Do you ever tell her?’

  Roy took umbrage. ‘You saying I’m soft?’

  ‘Maybe if you told her she might try harder to stay.’

  ‘How do I do that?’

  ‘Write her a letter.’

  ‘I’m not real good with words.’

  ‘I’ll help you if you’d like.’

  So Audie wrote a letter for Roy and it must have been something special, because Lizzie didn’t take the kids to Freeport and she fought to keep the house and they all kept coming to visit Roy every other week.

  A door opens and a guard kicks the back of Moss’s chair, telling him to wake up. Climbing to his feet, Moss shuffles slowly into the room, hunching his shoulders so he appears smaller. Humbler. There is a teenage girl waiting in the interview room. Not a girl, a woman with short bobbed hair and studs in her ears. She flashes a badge.

  ‘I’m Special Agent Desiree Furness. Should I call you Moss or Jeremiah?’

  Moss doesn’t answer. He can’t get over her size.

  ‘Is there something wrong?’ she asks.

  ‘Did someone put you in a tumble dryer ’cos I swear you been shrunk about five sizes?’

  ‘No, this is my normal size.’

  ‘But you’re so itty-bitty.’

  ‘You know the biggest problem with being short?’

  Moss shakes his head.

  ‘I have to look at assholes all day.’

  He blinks at her. Grins. Sits. ‘That’s a good one.’

  ‘I got loads of them.’

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Willy Wonka called and said he wants you to come home. Ding dong, didn’t you hear the witch was dead? Weren’t you in The Lord of the Rings? If you were Chinese, they’d call you Tai Nee…’ Moss is rocking on his chair laughing. His manacles rattle. ‘… I’m so short I tread water in the kiddie pool. I need a ladder to get to the bottom bunk. I hit my head on the ground when I sneeze. I need a running start to reach the toilet. And no, I’m not related to Tom Cruise.’ She stops. ‘Are we done now?’

  Moss wipes his eyes. ‘I didn’t mean no offence, ma’am.’

  Desiree goes back to the folder, unmoved by his apology.

  ‘What happened to your face?’ she asks.

  ‘Car accident.’

  ‘You’re a funny man.’

  ‘It helps to keep a sense of humour in a place like this.’

  ‘You were friends with Audie Palmer.’

  Moss doesn’t answer.

  ‘Why?’ she asks.

  ‘Why what?’

  ‘Why were you friends?’

  It’s an interesting question and not one Moss had ever really contemplated. Why are we friends with anyone? Shared interests. Similar backgrounds. Chemistry. None of these things applied to him and Audie. They had nothing in common except for being in prison. The Special Agent is waiting for his answer.

  ‘He refused to surrender.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Some men rot in a place like this. They grow old and bitter, convincing themselves that society is to blame and they’re just victims of shitty childhoods or unfortunate circumstances. Or they spend their time railing against God or searching for him. Some paint or write poetry or study the classics. Others pump iron or play handball or write letters to girls who loved them before they threw their lives away. Audie didn’t do any of these things.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘He endured.’

  She still doesn’t understand.

  ‘Do you believe in God, Special Agent?’

  ‘I was raised a Christian.’

  ‘You think he has a grand plan for each of us?’

  ‘I don’t know about that.’

  ‘My father didn’t believe in God but he said there were six angels – Misery, Despair, Disappointment, Hopelessness, Cruelty and Death. “You’ll meet every one of them eventually,” he told me, “But hopefully not in pairs.” Audie Palmer met his angels in pairs. He met them in threes. He met them every day.’

  ‘You think he was unlucky?’

  ‘That boy was lucky when he didn’t get bad luck.’

  Moss drops his head and runs his fingers over his scalp.

  ‘Was Audie Palmer religious?’ asks Desiree.

  ‘I never heard him pray, but he did have deep philosophical discussions with the jail preacher.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Audie didn’t believe he was unique or that he had some sort of destiny. And he didn’t think Christians had a monopoly on morals. He used to say that some of them could talk the talk, but their walk was more John Wayne than Jesus. Know what I’m saying?’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘That’s what happens when you spend two thousand years lawyering the Bible, trying to justify bombing the shit out of people when the Book says you’re supposed to be loving thy neighbour and turning the other cheek.’

  ‘Why did he escape, Moss?’

  ‘I honestly don’t know, ma’am.’

  Moss rubs his hands over his face, feeling the bruises and swelling. ‘Places like this run on contraband and rumours. Every nigga will tell you a different story about Audie. They say he got shot fourteen times and lived.’

  ‘Fourteen?’

  ‘That’s what I heard. I seen the scars on his skull. It must have been like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again.’

  ‘What about the money?’

  Moss smiles wryly. ‘Folks say he bribed the judge to escape the chair. Now they’ll be saying he bribed the guards to let him escape. Ask around – every nigga got a different story. Some say the money is long gone, or that Audie Palmer owns an island in the Caribbean; or he buried the cash in the East Texas oilfields, or his brother Carl is living the high life in California married to a movie star. Place like this is full of stories and nothing fires the blood like a fortune in untraceable bills.’ He leans forward. The ankle chains rattle against the metal legs of his chair. ‘You want to know what I think?’

  Desiree nods.

  ‘Audie Palmer don’t care about the money. I don’t think he cared about being in here. Other men counted the hours and the days, but Audie could stare into the distance like he was looking across an ocean, or watching sparks floating above a campfire. He could make a cell seem like it had no walls.’ Moss hesitates. ‘If it weren’t for the dreams…’

  ‘What dreams?’

  ‘I used to lie on my rack listening, wondering if one night he might suddenly blurt
out where he hid the money, but he never did. Instead I used to hear him sobbing. It sounded like a child lost in the corn, yelling for his mama. I used to wonder what made a grown man cry. I asked him, but he wouldn’t talk about it. He wasn’t ashamed of crying. He didn’t fear the weakness it bespoke.’

  The Special Agent looks at her notebook. ‘The two of you worked in the library. What did Audie do there?’

  ‘Studied. Read. Stacked shelves. He educated himself. He wrote letters. He prepared appeals for other people, but never himself.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I asked him that.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘He said he was guilty.’

  ‘You know he was due to be released yesterday?’ she asks.

  ‘I heard.’

  ‘Why would he escape?’

  ‘I’ve been thinking about that.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘You’re asking the wrong question.’

  ‘What should I be asking?’

  ‘Most guys in here think they’re tough, but they get reminded every day that they’re not. Audie spent ten years trying to stay alive. Barely a week went by when guards didn’t visit his cell and beat him like a redheaded stepchild, asking the same questions that you’re asking. And during the day it was the Mexican Mafia, or the Texas Syndicate or the Aryan Brotherhood, or whatever stupid, craven punk wanted a piece of him.

  ‘There are also people in here with particular compulsions that have nothing to do with greed or power. Maybe they saw something in Audie they wanted to destroy – his look of optimism or sense of inner peace. Scum like that don’t just want to hurt other men, they want to consume them, they want to rip open their chests and eat their hearts until the blood runs down their faces and their teeth are stained red.

  ‘Whatever the motivation, there was a contract out on Audie from day one and it was doubled a month ago. That boy was stabbed, strangled, beaten, glassed and burned, but he never showed hatred or remorse or weakness.’

  Moss looks up, holding her gaze.

  ‘You want to know why he escaped, but that’s the wrong question. You should be asking why didn’t he do it sooner.’