Riven

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  “Dad, listen, really, I didn’t mean to push your buttons. I’m sorry. Even if we don’t see eye to eye on the God stuff, I admire what you’re doing here or trying to do.”

  “I’m doing nothing here, Dirk. I have wasted my life.”

  “Surely you’ve brought comfort and inspiration to someone in here.”

  “That’s not what I’m here for! I am here to introduce these lost men to God, and I feel like a blind man in a mine shaft, trying to show people the way.”

  “I don’t know how else to say it, sir. I was out of line. I’m going to go now.”

  Did God still answer prayer? When was the last time He had for Thomas? Dirk and Ravinia were prime examples. Was Thomas praying in the wrong way for them? Was he really asking for something that was not in the will of God? And how could it not be?

  As Thomas left at the end of the day, Gladys moved directly into his path.

  “Excuse me, dear,” he said, but when he went to slip past her, she blocked him again. He sighed.

  “Hold on there a minute, Reverend,” she said. “I need to tell you something. I like the new you.”

  “I really need to get going, Gladys. Can we talk tomorrow?”

  “We can, but you’re going to hear me right now. For a lot of years you’ve been known as the easy mark, the milquetoast man around this place.”

  “I’ve worked on that.”

  “And you’ve succeeded, at least with the inmates. But I’m talking about with your coworkers. I like to see a little fire in you.”

  “Well, thank you. Can I go now?”

  “Don’t ask, man. Just go. Be the new Thomas.”

  Thomas had no idea what that was all about. He certainly didn’t feel new. He felt like a frustrated old man who’d been through the same thing so many times he could hardly imagine bearing it again.

  And now he had this haunting encounter with the Heiress Murderer to plague him. Well, it was time to put God to the test once again. Apparently his first prayer about this man had been answered. There seemed to have been planted within Thomas some kernel of compassion or concern or care. But it meant nothing if the inmate never asked to see him again.

  What kind of a policy was that anyway? Hire a chaplain, give him an office and a huge congregation, but don’t allow him to talk to anyone without their permission?

  Craziness.

  But in spite of himself, Thomas felt led to pray for the young man. But how? And for what exactly? God knew. And so Thomas’s petition took the form of simply repeating the inmate’s name to God, over and over.

  The newspapers always called him by all three names.

  Brady Wayne Darby.

  55

  Brady didn’t know what to make of how he was feeling.

  First he was cold. He pressed his bare back up against the concrete block wall and endured the shock until a little warmth developed there. But he had to wrap his shins in his forearms and tuck his head between his knees to keep from shivering, and even that didn’t help much.

  He hated this about himself, but his need for a cigarette was actually allowing him to forget what he had done, at least for a few seconds at a time. Brady even considered pleading with a passing guard, offering him anything for a smoke. But as he understood it, not even the staff was allowed to bring tobacco into the facility. He was going cold turkey and that’s all there was to it. And each time he got that into his brain, his body seemed to scream for nicotine all the more.

  But then the horror of the murder came rushing back. How could it not? Desperate as Brady was to push it from himself and think of anything else, he could still smell the gunpowder, the blood.

  He could still see Katie hurtling from the car in a torrent of flesh and gore.

  He could still feel the cool pavement on his palms as he perched there, braying as his life too was ending.

  All he wanted was to die, and if there was a way to accomplish that before three years passed, he would do it.

  Brady was also lonely, but he couldn’t think of a person he wanted to talk to except Katie. That was so strange. He couldn’t expect a bit of sympathy from a soul, but did anyone understand that he had suffered a loss too? Yes, he had done it. He had murdered the Katie who so repelled him and had made clear that he had been duped, played, betrayed. But with her had gone the woman he had loved as he had never loved anyone else in his wretched life.

  That was the Katie he missed, the one he could talk to, the one who teased him, flirted with him, held him, and kissed him.

  Brady was smarter than people gave him credit for, evidenced by the high school teachers who always seemed surprised at his reading ability. But he had never considered himself an intellectual and so now wondered if there was a description for what had happened to him in all this.

  Shock? Maybe. But not physical. He had not been injured. Yet as soon as he had moved from his hands and knees in the street to sit with his back to the borrowed car, it seemed his entire past and future passed before his mind’s eye. Nothing was unclear anymore. It was as if he had taken his best hit of dope ever.

  Brady had thought of every family member, loved one, friend, acquaintance he had ever had. And this had happened in an instant. He had been aware that the terrified people in the neighborhood, who kept their distance while making it clear he wasn’t going anywhere until the cops showed up, were relentlessly talking, sometimes to him. But he wasn’t listening.

  Rather, Brady had been seeing his future as clearly as if he had already lived it. It never crossed his mind to try to get out of this mess to end all messes. Other than to kill himself, escape was not an option. He wouldn’t lie, deny, excuse, anything. He wouldn’t stay silent or demand a lawyer. No, for the first time in his life, he would accept the consequences.

  He had committed an unthinking and unthinkable act, and as he heard the blaring sirens in the distance, he saw himself cuffed, searched, Mirandized, ushered into a squad car, interrogated, delivered to County, processed in, and assigned a defense attorney. That hadn’t taken any special powers of foresight. He’d been through this many times, though not on this scale and never for anything with so many mortal repercussions.

  Brady had to admit he had not expected it to be so hard to simply insist on a death sentence and have it finally come, and the mandatory appeal process still frustrated him. But otherwise, none of this had been a surprise. He had watched it unfold from some dark spot deep within his soul. Oh, the various personalities had been unique, and he had not imagined the supermax to look or be like this, but he knew this was where he would wind up.

  No clock. No food. No cigarettes. Nothing to read. No clothes. He wasn’t sure what the point was. Wasn’t his accepting the ultimate punishment enough for these people? He didn’t care, really. It just didn’t make sense. Maybe they felt the need to personally make him pay. Fair enough. It simply irritated Brady that he began to long for those things that were deprived him.

  “Excuse me, guard,” he said, “what time is it?”

  The man looked offended that Brady would even address him. “First of all, don’t call me guard. I’m a corrections officer. As for what time it is, scumbag, it’s time for you to shut that hole in your face before I come in there and shut it for you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Get smart with me, you’ll be in here for a week before you get a cell.”

  “Sorry.”

  “The only response I want from you is silence!”

  Brady held up his hands. What did he care what time it was anyway? It wasn’t like he had a schedule.

  He guessed it was half an hour later when he heard guards—officers—making the rounds for roll call. What was he to say? “Here, sir,” as he had done in phys ed class years before?

  An officer stopped before his cage. “Brady Wayne Darby!”

  “Yes, sir!”

  “On your feet! This is the standing roll call so we can verify you’re in one piece.”

  “I am.”

&nbs
p; “Shut up! You haven’t received your induction packet yet, have you?”

  Brady wanted to say, “Do you see one in here?” But he knew saying anything seemed to upset these guys. So he simply shook his head.

  “I can’t hear you!”

  “No, sir, I haven’t.”

  “Dinner’s comin’.”

  Instinct told him to say thanks, but Brady resisted the urge. He was hungry, maybe for the first time since he’d been arrested, and even the mention of dinner made it worse. Funny, he hadn’t slept or eaten much while at County during all the briefings and hearings and pleadings. He had lost weight, he was sure, and now wondered if he would ever be hungry again.

  But the next visitor was an officer who slipped an envelope into the meal slot. It slapped onto the floor. Brady decided he wouldn’t be able to concentrate enough to read it before he ate anyway.

  When his tray finally came, Brady found one slice of lunchmeat bologna between two slices of slightly stale white bread with neither butter nor any other condiment. This was accompanied by a room-temperature box of some kind of fruit juice that was more sugar than real. Had it not been for the tepid liquid, he would not have been able to force down the dry sandwich. And hadn’t the warden said he would get only two meals here in twenty-four hours?

  He set the tray aside and opened the large envelope. It was full of pamphlets and booklets. One contained page after page of hints on how to get along behind bars. He’d seen similar before, naturally, but Brady had never been in a supermax, where he would have zero personal contact with another inmate ever.

  As he read, he learned of all the services offered and the procedures required to take advantage of them. He was stunned to see that he would have no electricity or reading material or exercise his first ninety days. It wasn’t that he thought he was entitled to any privileges or even common necessities, but this was going to do nothing but damage to his state of mind.

  Needless to say, no one cared about his comfort, including Brady. But when he allowed himself to consider merely existing until the state put him out of his misery, he knew it would require at least a few things to keep him sane. How ironic that they watched him constantly to be sure he didn’t kill himself before they had the chance to do it.

  One brochure, reserved for only the death row inmates, told him his method of execution was his choice: lethal injection (described as the most humane and the choice of 95 percent of the condemned), gas chamber, electric chair, and hanging.

  Well, he didn’t have to decide yet, but Brady was almost certain he would choose the first. He knew himself, knew that at his core he was a coward, that he was not really likely to kill himself and would want to go in the least painful way possible.

  He wasn’t ever again going to embody the courage he’d had when he thought that sawed-off still had a live shell in it.

  Brady found one more pamphlet, this one outlining how to get counseling, medical care, a chaplain’s visit, books or magazines, or a meeting with a lawyer.

  Chaplain. The guy with the Bible had to be the chaplain. And one had to fill out a form and wait for a decision to get him to so much as visit your cell. Like that would happen.

  Brady shook his head as he read the fine print. None of the above were available to the inmate during his first ninety days except in the case of medical or legal emergency.

  It was going to be one long night and an even longer first three months.

  56

  Adamsville

  Remission.

  Such a technical, medical word, and yet how sweet it sounded to Thomas Carey.

  For the first time in months, Grace was walking without help, getting in and out of bed on her own, able to get to the bathroom and even shower by herself.

  It was temporary, Thomas knew. Everyone knew. Even the volunteer caregivers from Village Church who were now getting a few days off from the normal rotation. They still checked in on Grace when Thomas was at work, and she was careful not to overdo things. But it thrilled him to see her sitting in the living room when he got home from work each day.

  She read. She sewed. She watched TV and DVDs. While they agreed she should not undertake baking or big meal-preparation chores, Grace enjoyed fixing herself snacks and often had something ready when Thomas arrived.

  She had even taken to wearing a little makeup, and seeing her in anything but nightclothes during the day made life seem normal again. Once Thomas splurged and paid to have a hairdresser make a house call. The next day he drove Grace to church, where she sat weeping through the entire service.

  “It was like heaven,” she said.

  The problem was, while Grace’s leukemia was in remission, Thomas’s spiritual life was in depression. He did everything he could to put a happy face on things, and there was no question he was warmed and encouraged by her rally—short-lived as the doctor warned it would be—but after nearly four decades of marriage, there was no hiding things from Grace.

  She talked with him, counseled him, encouraged him, prayed for him, sang to him. “I’m no Pollyanna, Thomas,” she said one day. “Frankly, I wish our lives and Ravinia had turned out differently. But I still believe we were called to serve and that we should do that and leave the rest to God. If our reward comes only in heaven and not here, so be it.”

  He knew she was right. Thomas also knew he would be admitting defeat if he allowed disappointment and frustration to interrupt his devotional life. His spiritual life needed to be fed.

  And that was the rub. Many were the days at the state penitentiary where he felt incarcerated too. Maybe it was only eight hours a day, but it was in many ways as much a prison to him as it was to the men in the cages.

  Only four inmates had asked to see Thomas in the past few weeks. All were lifers. One was a Native American complaining that the sweat lodge was inadequate and insisting that Thomas interact with tribal authorities and do whatever was required to bring it up to code, regardless what that meant.

  Thomas did what was asked of him, willing to honor another man’s faith, no matter what he believed. He just hoped that perhaps by doing his part, as required by his job description, he might earn the right to discuss spiritual matters with the man someday.

  But when Thomas raised the sweat lodge matter with Frank LeRoy, the warden said, “Yeah, no. He knows religious rights extend only so far as they don’t threaten security. You know what happened, don’t you? That man lost his last chance at parole after assaulting an officer while being escorted to the sweat lodge.”

  The other three men Thomas talked with during that quarter told him of bad childhood experiences in church but pleaded for family phone calls—none of which met requirements. One settled for having Thomas lend him a couple of books from the chaplain’s library, but these soon were delivered back, apparently unread. Thomas had not heard from any of the three again.

  Was it too much to ask that someone would ask to see him who was sincerely interested in spiritual things? Apparently it was.

  Death Row

  After sitting twenty-four hours in his undershorts and ingesting as much as he could stand of two single-slice, dry bologna sandwiches and two lukewarm boxes of fruit juice, Brady had suddenly become the man of the hour again. Four officers showed up, one toting Brady’s new clothes. But rather than allow him to change, he was instructed to back up to the meal slot to be cuffed, then was asked if he could be trusted to cooperate so they could open his door before manacling him at the ankles.

  “Like I’ve got a choice,” he said.

  “You’ll behave or you’ll wish you’d never been born,” one of the officers said.

  I already wish that.

  It made sense, he figured, that they would treat him as the murderer he was, but Brady wondered if there was another con in the whole place who was less interested in violence now that he had committed the ultimate violent act. Brady had been involved in a lot of brawls, in and out of jail, with cops and civilians, other cons, you name it. But these guys at A
SP had nothing to worry about with him. He had lost the will to live, let alone to fight.

  Brady found it hard to believe, but his need for a cigarette soon drowned out everything else in his mind. Maybe that was for the best. He knew he was just this side of insane anyway.

  Why did they feel it necessary to parade him through the other pods and cells and security checkpoints in his underwear? He wanted to ask, but he had already learned that they resented questions. It was bad enough the whole place smelled and was variously too cold or too hot. Again, everyone seemed to know who he was. He was met with screams and whistles and comments all along the way. Brady just kept his head down and shuffled as quickly as he was able.

  The reason for not letting him dress became clear when he was delivered to his unit and ushered directly to the shower, hands and feet unfastened, and handed a safety razor. “That comes back to us in one piece or you’ll regret it.”

  His clothes were left just outside the stall. The water seemed to come on and go off on its own schedule, so Brady just hurriedly showered, shaved quickly in front of a reflective sheet of metal on the wall, handed the razor back, and reached for his clothes. He found strangely inviting the idea of finally being clothed.

  “Not so fast. Body cavity search.”

  Brady complied with this humiliating exercise, wondering what bit of contraband he could possibly have found between the intake cell and here. Finally allowed to dress, he was hooked up again and led to his final home, which the people inside referred to as his house. His was on the lower left of a ten-man, two-level unit on death row. Every one of the other nine men would pass his cell when led to their thrice-weekly showers or to the exercise area for their one hour of each twenty-four.

  Brady was released from the cuffs and shackles again, handed his induction packet, and finally locked away. Once the officers were gone, the noise became almost unbearable. Besides the radios and TVs and conversations, everyone within earshot began calling out to Brady, asking him obscene questions about the heiress, describing the murder, recounting everything they had heard and read about it, demanding that he answer.