by David R. Dow
Judge Stream was a pilot. The gods were winking at me, and my plan began to form.
For the entire two hours he was there, nobody else came or went. I wrote down the tail number of the plane and later learned Stream was its registered owner. Over the next few months I discovered he spent time in the air every other Saturday, weather permitting, so on a beautiful spring day, I flew to Bastrop to eavesdrop.
At airports without control towers, pilots communicate with one another on a common frequency, alerting aircraft in the area of their location and their plans. That way, two pilots will not try to land at the same time, and nobody will line up to take off as someone else is landing. I wanted to know how Stream phrased his calls. Ten miles north of the field, I flew in a tight circle at three thousand feet and listened to him on the radio, announcing his intentions to anyone who could hear. I made an audio recording of his calls on takeoff, approach, and landing. When he announced his final landing, I turned north and flew back home.
* * *
• • •
On my thirty-seventh birthday, Tieresse brought two glasses of fresh grapefruit juice into our bedroom while I was still asleep. She opened the shades and said, Rise and shine, birthday boy, I have a surprise.
We got in her car and she drove south toward the coast. I said, Galveston? But she said, Shhh, no guessing, and before we got to the causeway, Tieresse turned onto a pockmarked road and drove west. After a few minutes more we pulled into what I thought was a farm. Around back stood a prefabricated aluminum building, an unpaved runway, and a large twin-engine turboprop plane. Tieresse was taking me skydiving.
It was just the two of us. We sat in a space like a classroom with a dozen folding chairs and a whiteboard and played footsie as two jumpmasters lectured about safety precautions and things that could go wrong. After two hours they asked whether we wanted a bite to eat before going up and Tieresse said, I can assure you, young man, that would be a very bad decision. Now let’s get in the air already.
Tieresse and I followed the two experts onto the plane. There were no seats, just two benches running parallel to the fuselage. The pilot was already on board, running through a checklist. Tieresse stared out the window as we climbed sharply and banked steeply to the left. She was giddy. I was not. At fifteen thousand feet, with my wife and myself attached to people I sure hoped were experts, we jumped. Within seconds we were falling at more than one hundred miles an hour. I saw Tieresse’s mouth moving, she was saying something, but the roar of the wind in my ears drowned out her words. I tried to read her lips, but she just smiled. The young man I was attached to tapped an altimeter I was wearing on my wrist, reminding me to check the altitude so I would not forget to deploy the parachute at five thousand feet. I reached my right arm back, flailing for the rip cord. The jumpmaster took my hand and placed the cord inside. I yanked. The chute opened and we jerked to a slow descent, and soundlessness replaced the deafening noise of a moment before. I could hear Tieresse hyperventilating and my jumpmaster asking whether I was okay. To the north I could see Houston’s downtown skyline, and then we pivoted 180 degrees and I stared out over the Gulf of Mexico to the south. We landed simultaneously in a field of cordgrass that sloped down to a brackish pond.
Tieresse ran over and hugged me while my arms were still shaking. She said, Happy birthday, my love.
I said, That was terrifying. Thank you, corazón.
She said, You’re welcome. When you get your color back, let’s do it again.
And so we did.
I remembered something else as well, a scene from my childhood. We were living in Chiapas. Mamá and I were standing at the edge of a field blooming with coca. The plantation was owned by the Mexican man my father worked for, but the field hands were mostly from Guatemala and spoke a dialect I couldn’t understand. They laughed, and my mother eyed them warily. She held my tiny hand in one of hers, and with her other she shielded her eyes from the setting sun. She said, Mira tu papá, él está muy bajo. I turned to see my father flying parallel to the rows of green, not fifty feet above the ground. In an instant he rolled, and he was flying upside down. I believe I might have squealed with delight. The Guatemalans seemed to cower. As he shot by my mamá and me, he waved, and I could see his grin and the light in his eyes, and I jumped up and down and clapped my hands.
Out of those two memories came my plan. So early Monday morning I drove to the aviation academy near my home. I told the instructor I was not interested in becoming an elite expert in performing eight-point rolls or 180-degree inverted turns. I was merely interested in taking aerobatic lessons to be a better and safer pilot. I kept the real reason to myself. Aerobatics was my excuse to buy a parachute.
The following month I enrolled in a skydiving course. I paid cash in advance for a package that would have me certified after twenty-five solo jumps over two weeks. But once I was reasonably sure I could land more or less where I wanted to, assuming the wind was not terribly strong, I told the instructor I was having sinus problems and would have to take some time off. He said how sorry he was, but considering he had my money already, I held some doubt as to his sincerity. I told him I’d call him when I was healed, and I shook his hand. I planned to never see him again.
Days got shorter. Kansas got cold. Two feet of snow covered the ground. I spent another two nights in the silo to make sure it was warm. The timers worked, the temperature was comfortable, the water was clear. I did wake myself twice coughing, so I made a note to replace the air filters. If I hadn’t had six years of practice (and, of course, the knowledge I could walk out whenever I wanted to), the claustrophobia of spending two nights belowground buried beneath the snow and ice would have made me suicidal. But the point is, I had.
I began spending more time at the diner, choosing a booth instead of a spot at the counter. I’d order a bowl of soup or a BLT, and I’d nurse my meal while I sat there and wrote. I told anyone who asked I was writing a book. It would be about my life with Tieresse and what happened to me when that life ended. Susanna refilled my coffee and asked if I had a publisher.
I said, Not yet, but I’ve got time.
In fact, three literary agents, two in New York and one in Hollywood, had gotten in touch with me and promised they could sell my story for a million dollars, which proved to me they didn’t know my story, which is why I did not even bother to reply to their queries. A famous movie producer left a message on my phone. I called my lawyer and asked her to please not give out my number. She said, I’ve never given out your number to anyone except Reinhardt and I don’t intend to. I apologized and ended the call, and spent the rest of the week worried it was possible for strangers so easily to find me.
My book swelled to more than two hundred pages. The snow continued to fall. Farmers planted winter wheat.
Earlier that year I had started buying MREs from the army surplus store in Leavenworth, military meals, pretending these were what I ate when I traveled. I had accumulated enough food for two people to survive three years. The packages sat on industrial metal shelves on level 5 of my silo, next to the automatic dog food dispensers I had programmed to drop three meals a day. In another few weeks, I would have all the MREs I would need. According to the labels, they would expire in five years. But the ambient air temperature on level 5 was in the upper fifties, so I was thinking they might last a year or two longer. Either way, I wasn’t concerned. If the meals expired, my prisoners could eat rancid food, just like I had.
On Christmas Day I flew to a town near Big Bend in West Texas, took a shuttle to the park, and spent ten nights in my tent. Before dawn broke I would look up at the stars that tiled the sky like a planetarium and talk to Tieresse. She told me not to do anything I might regret. I answered her by saying I had gotten to the place in life where regret has no meaning.
She said, There is no such place.
I said, I didn’t used to think so either.
* * *
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• • •
During my second year on the row, a few days after I’d paid McKenzie a hundred dollars for a six-pack of Valium, my house got tossed by a helmeted crew while he stood outside and watched. As they confiscated my stash and left, he said, Find a better hiding place, scumbag.
Sargent had been standing behind his door, watching. He’d been here longer than I had. He knew what I was thinking. He said, Long as they be capable of pissin’ you off, Inocente, they be winning, you feel me? He sent me a kite with four small white pills and two Sufi meditative chants. The next week McKenzie sold me back the same pills I’d already paid for once. I hid them in the same place I’d kept them before.
For Christmas I bought everyone in the diner a gift. They were grateful and surprised. They knew my story, but not that I was rich.
During the first week of the New Year I was in Austin, sending forged e-mails and writing fake texts. Moss wrote she hoped next year they would be spending New Year’s Eve together, together and under the sheets, she said, and she apologized again for not being with him two nights earlier. Stream texted back an emoji of a crying face and said, I understand. But I’ll see you for lunch tomorrow
As I set up to land at my home back in Kansas, I put my right hand on the right seat and was surprised to feel Tieresse’s thigh. She had visited several times since my release, and I talked to her often, but never before had I physically felt her presence. Again I wondered whether it was a sign of healing. She said, In business, angry men make bad decisions. I said, I know, mi corazón. But I am not angry. I am indifferent, completely indifferent, and nothing could feel more liberating. As I spoke those words to her, I felt her lips brush my cheek, and I knew for the first time beyond any doubt my plan would succeed.
It was now just a matter of time. Using different public computers around the state, I would periodically enter each of their names into a search engine. Most of what I learned was banal, like Stream being honored at the annual gala to raise money for the Fraternal Order of Police, or Moss giving the keynote address at the Constitution Day luncheon of the DAR. On Easter Sunday, though, I finally struck gold.
According to a newly issued press release, Judge Stream was scheduled to give a presentation on stand-your-ground laws at a program put on by the American Bar Association in Key West, Florida, the following May. I had just over a month to work out the details.
I flew to Padre Island and checked into a chain hotel. After breakfast the next morning, once my room had been cleaned, I hung the Do Not Disturb sign on the door and flew to the grass field where my car was parked. I drove to Austin, parked outside his house, and wrote her a text. It read, Not sure if you saw I am giving a talk in Key West in May. One big boondoggle. How about coming with me? I pushed send and drove across town. Parked on the block next to hers, I wrote, I’d love to honeybuns. What are the dates so I can set up the story? I headed back to his house. I wrote, I love a meticulous woman. Let’s work out the details Monday after our lunch. He signed it with an emoji of a man winking and blowing a kiss. I flew back to Padre Island and got drunk enough that night to be noticed at an oyster bar on the beach. The next afternoon I flew back home.
I’ve never been a religious man. Even on my worst days on the row I was never tempted to pray. But that night I did. I prayed for good weather for the third Thursday in May.
* * *
• • •
At the field where Stream kept his plane, I landed on Wednesday morning and parked across the strip from his hangar. Using a handheld radio to monitor the traffic, I trotted across the runway and checked the door. The main was locked but it didn’t take me long to jimmy open the pedestrian door around back. From inside, the main hangar door opened with a doorbell button. I left it closed.
His plane was unlocked, and the key hung from the ignition. There were two headsets in the plane, top-of-the-line avionics, and paper sectional maps covering most of Texas, Louisiana, and Oklahoma in the back. Stream’s flight bag holding his log book was in the luggage compartment. He’d made cross-country flights across Texas, and as far east as Alabama. The engine oil was clean, and both gas tanks were full. The pilot’s operating handbook was in a pocket behind the right seat, and I opened it to the limitations section. Fully fueled and with five hundred pounds of passengers and baggage, the plane had a range of eleven hundred nautical miles. I quickly calculated how much fuel I would need to burn and hoped it would be enough.
My radio crackled. Someone was inbound from five miles north. I jogged back across the runway and waited by my plane. A taildragger came to a stop fifty yards away, and two slender middle-aged women emerged. I asked one if she knew whether there were hangars for rent here and whether there was fuel. She gave me the name and number of the family who owned the field, and the cell number for a fuel truck that all the locals used. I said, Thank you kindly, ma’am. I tipped my hat and hoped neither was paying attention to my face or the tail number on my plane.
By the middle of the week, I had purchased paper sectional maps for East Texas, southern Florida, and all the area in between. A direct flight to Key West would be nine hundred nautical miles, but nearly all that distance would be across the open water. I wondered whether Stream was the kind of pilot who would fly directly across the ocean at night in a single-engine plane. I certainly wasn’t, but he was going to prove a braver pilot than I.
I headed south. At a gun show in McAllen I bought a .45 automatic, a .38 revolver, and ammunition for each. I’d never shot a gun in my life. I’d have to watch a video to learn how to use them. From a different vendor I bought a knife with four-finger fist rings and a serrated six-inch tungsten blade. At a sporting goods store I bought a headlamp and, at a department store, a duffel bag, a small overnight suitcase, a casual dress, a navy sport coat, and underwear for a woman and a man. I divided the clothes into the two bags, along with toothbrushes, razors, and the three-pack of condoms I’d bought close to three years before, and I placed the bags in the back of Tieresse’s plane.
Sargent had told me that several years before I arrived, back when death row inmates were still allowed out of their cells to work, five guys had tried to escape. They wrapped themselves in corrugated cardboard and duct tape and sprinted toward the fifteen-foot-tall razor-topped fence. Guards opened fire, shooting over their heads. Two of the escapees lay facedown and surrendered before ever reaching the fence. One dropped to the ground after climbing halfway up. The fourth dropped down on the other side but immediately raised his hands in surrender. The fifth kept running.
For a week and a half he was a legend. Texas troopers fanned out across the state searching. They formed a noose at the border crossing points to Mexico. They searched empty cabins and set up random checkpoints on the interstates and two-lane roads. Using tracking dogs and on horseback, prison officials scoured a perimeter that grew longer every day.
On the tenth day a fisherman found him floating in the Trinity River. His body was bloated with gas. The cardboard that kept the razor wire from disemboweling him as he flopped over the fence had grown waterlogged and heavy when he jumped into the river to hide his scent from the dogs. His mother later told investigators he couldn’t swim. The lone escapee had probably drowned within an hour that very first day. Searchers had been chasing a corpse.
Sargent said, Same shit that saves you can kill you if you ain’t careful. Two faces a Janus. I had said, I only understand about half of what you tell me, Sargent. He’d laughed and said, That ought to be enough.
I went over my plan again and again, certain I was missing something. What was the unknown that might kill me? It’s not that I was afraid to die. I wasn’t, and I had no fear. But I did still have my pride.
* * *
• • •
/> I’d been capturing his keystrokes with a program I had installed on his home computer when he clicked on a link in a phishing e-mail alerting him to suspicious activity on his credit card account. I wondered if I would have a chance to remove the program once he disappeared and, if I didn’t, how big a risk it presented.
Judge Stream had bought a ticket to fly from Austin to Key West, with a stop in Miami, departing Thursday morning and returning Saturday afternoon. Because the real Judge Moss was not attending the conference, she had not bought any commercial tickets, but I had to do something about Stream, so I intended to cancel the reservation once I ensured he’d be unable to discover what I had done. And then I entered the danger zone.
On Wednesday morning I flew to the airport where Stream kept his plane for what I hoped was the third to last time. This was one part of my plan I couldn’t entirely control. But I was lucky. Winds were calm and nobody was there. I taxied to Judge Stream’s hangar. I entered through the back as I had done three times before and hurriedly raised the main door. There was just enough room for my plane, wing to wing next to his. I took the suitcase and duffel packed with clothes and loaded them into Stream’s plane’s baggage compartment. The day before, I had called the fuel truck, pretended to be Stream, and asked to have both tanks topped off for a long cross-country flight. Later I would spend a nervous two hours burning off that fuel, but first I needed to get my hands on the judge. I got on my bike and set off on the twenty-five-mile ride to his house. My backpack held the guns and the knife I had purchased in South Texas, a bottle of water, two pillowcases still in their packaging, three pairs of handcuffs I bought at a police surplus store outside Dallas, a wool blanket, and a roll of duct tape. If a DPS trooper decided to search me, I was probably going to jail.
