The Sienna Sand

by Jeff Siebold

  The last knife. He rinsed it off and slid it into his pocket, the pocket with the rip at the bottom, to let the blade hang through.

  He thought hard. This was the last, but the most dangerous killing by far. The prison guards were nervous, watching. The Warden had called in those consultants to figure this out. Cappy remained free from suspicion, but only by keeping his head down and acting, well, stupid. Which was not his favorite role.

  The target was O.Z.

  Oh, the blackie was clever. And he was pretty slick. Fast with words and street smart, savvy to the point of it being an instinct. And Cappy knew that O.Z. would give him up as quick as a wink.

  Cappy went to the yard and walked around the track, not fast, not slow, just shuffling along with no apparent purpose. Other inmates passed him by; some shouldered him implying dominance. Some ignored him. He looked at the ground, at his feet.

  O.Z. was sitting on a stainless steel picnic table with one of his protectors, Bo. Bo had a bandaged eye and seemed despondent, moving slowly. O.Z.’s other bodyguard was nowhere in sight. His street name was Caesar. Cappy had heard the rumor that Caesar’d been beaten by a girl. Not just beaten, but put in the prison infirmary.

  He shook his head to himself.

  Cappy’s circular path took him around the outside of the exercise yard. When he got close to O.Z. he stopped walking and moved to the bench. O.Z. sat on the tabletop, with his feet on a bench seat.

  “What’s up, little man?” asked O.Z.

  “Uh, well the guards gave me something to give to you,” Cappy said.

  “We need to get together, then,” said O.Z. “Tonight.”

  Cappy nodded and looked at the floor. “Sure.”

  “After dinner, after you clean up the dining room, meet me at the warehouse.”

  The ‘warehouse’ was a prison storage area for supplies, such as clothing, shoes and shower sandals, underwear, blankets and sheets, towels and linens. It was routinely locked, but O.Z. knew that as a trustee Cappy had a key.

  “Yessir,” said Cappy. “I’ll meet you there after I clean up from supper.”

  Chapter 24

  The sun was low on the western horizon, all but blocked by the prison buildings as Cappy Askew unlocked the exterior door to the warehouse and stepped inside. He waited a moment, listening and letting his eyes adjust to the dim light. Then he closed the door and turned on an overhead light.

  He patted his right pants pocket absently, confirming that the steak knife was still in place, the blade still hanging through a small slit in the bottom of the pocket. Cappy felt the tension start to build up in his chest.

  The tension was a familiar feeling. It had started for him when he was a boy, when his father had gotten drunk and beat him for some imagined infraction of house rules. Cappy’s mother had left long before that time, with a man who had come to town to help build a bridge across the bayou when the railroad expanded. They had met in a bar one afternoon and Cappy’s mother, sick of her abusive husband and sick of her meager life, grabbed on to ‘Uncle Jack.’ She held on tight and eventually escaped south Louisiana and the bayous, accompanying the man to Shreveport, and then to Houston, last anyone heard.

  The boy, who had never gotten along well with his father, made himself even more scarce around the house. He fell in with a gang of boys who before long were stealing cars and selling them to a local chop shop.

  But when his father got drunk, he was a mean drunk. The night of Cappy’s accident, the night Renee Coulson died, his father’d been drinking and had refused to bail Cappy out. When Cappy was finally released the next day he headed home, dreading talking to the old man. He’d felt the same tightening and tension in his chest then. And his father, drunk, knocked out one of Cappy’s front teeth with a punch to the face. It had hurt like hell that day, but now Cappy thought it helped him maintain a fairly stupid look. A missing tooth did that.

  A short time later the whole episode with Renee Coulson’s lawyer-father began. And Cappy had ended up in federal prison.

  * * *

  “What you got, little man?” asked O.Z. as he walked through the warehouse door. His remaining protection, Bo, entered first and held the door for O.Z., then closed the door. Cappy turned on a dim light.

  “More tabaccy,” said Cappy, bobbing his head up and down. “Yes, sir. You’ll like these. You bring the money?” asked Cappy.

  O.Z. nodded absently and started tearing one of the boxes open. Inside the box, O.Z. found cartons of a variety of cigarette brands. A second box contained chewing tobacco.

  “Bo, go get the money,” he said.

  Bo moved toward the door.

  Cappy said, “Let me cut off the light,” and flipped the light switch as Bo left the warehouse. When Cappy failed to turn the light back on, O.Z. said, “Hey now, how ‘bout some light up in here?”

  Using O.Z.’s voice to judge distance and direction, Cappy quickly struck with the knife, blindly aiming it toward O.Z.’s throat. The wide knife missed, but it pierced the front of the black man’s shoulder. He screamed as Cappy quickly withdrew the knife and plunged it again toward the sound, this time piercing his chest.

  It was over in a quick minute. Cappy turned on the light and assessed the situation. O.Z. was lying on the floor in a pool of blood, holding his wounds. He was in shock. Cappy’s overalls were covered in blood. It’s alright, there’s other overalls stacked in here, thought Cappy.

  Cappy stepped to the door and threw the lock. He said, “I’m sorry, little man. Nothing personal.”

  Suddenly he heard the doorknob jiggle, and then Bo’s deep voice calling out. “Hey, lemme in there!”

  There’s a witness, this time. Then he thought, It don’t matter.

  Cappy crouched down behind O.Z. and cut his throat.

  * * *

  “This one was a pretty quick death,” said Doctor Hinken, the County Coroner. “And they found the body about ten minutes after he died. It was on the floor in a warehouse area.”

  Zeke and Kimmy sat in the chairs across the desk from the doctor.

  “Similarities with the other killings?” asked Zeke.

  “They’re still investigating. But I did a preliminary inspection of the body and it looks like he was stabbed twice before his throat was cut. Most likely died from blood loss. His carotid was partially severed. The warehouse area was cordoned off, and the prisoners put in lockdown immediately following the murder.”

  “Sounds a lot like the other four killings,” said Kimmy.

  “Why was he found so quickly?” asked Zeke.

  “Another prisoner reported hearing noises coming from the warehouse. He said he tried the door, but it was locked.”

  “Did he say anything else?” asked Zeke.

  Hinken shook his head.

  Zeke nodded. “Do they have any suspects?”

  Hinken shook his head. “Nada.”

  “You identified the body?” asked Zeke.

  “Yes. An inmate named Oscar Lamar,” said the doctor. “The guards said he went by O.Z.”

  * * *

  “That’s the last one,” said Cappy Askew. He was talking on an illegal cell phone from the prison laundry. The person on the other end of the phone line said, “Uh-huh.”

  Cappy was a member of the Devil’s Disciples and had been since he was first incarcerated for vehicular homicide. Back then, he was a teenaged boy, small and wiry, weighing a hundred and fifty pounds. So his choice was clear.

  “You ain’t gonna make it in here less you belong,” said an inmate named Bobby Falcone. He was big and white and muscular and went by ‘Falcon’. “You gotta have someone looking out for your back in here, or you’ll end up someone’s bitch. You can’t do it alone.”

  Cappy had seen the wisdom of those words after an incident with two blackies in the shower. They had cornered him and beat him, taking his shower slippers and his pride. As soon as he was out of the prison infirmary, he’d talked to Falcon and joined the Disciples.

  “We
need scouts and dealers,” Falcon had told him. Cappy signed up to be a scout, to keep watch for guards and other prisoners when a drug deal was going down, or when an inmate was being disciplined by the gang. In return he received the protection he needed.

  Cappy liked the work. Plus he was good at it and he was fearless. His troubles on the outside were heaping up, with Renee’s father filing a civil suit against him and his own father’s half-hearted attempts to provide adequate defense. So Cappy gravitated to a world in which he could thrive.

  It wasn’t long before he was asked to participate in drug deals, and then in more serious activities on behalf of the Devil’s Disciples. Eventually he became an enforcer.

  When he was transferred to Cumberland, the Disciples decided he should play an even different role. And Cappy became their assassin.

  * * *

  “I did what you said, kept my head down and didn’t cause no trouble,” said Cappy, talking nervously on the cell phone. “Got all the way to trustee, and I was in a position to do my part. I got ‘em all for ya.”

  He was stalling, trying to get Falcon, who was on the other end of the call, to bring up their arrangement. Their money arrangement.

  “Don’t worry, the Disciples will take care of you,” said Falcon.

  Cappy nodded, although no one could see it.

  “I did my part. Sure did,” said Cappy, almost excited.

  “And no one saw you? No one suspects?” asked Falcon.

  “Nah, nobody. I’m just ole Cappy to everyone here. I’m invisible.”

  Falcon said, “Nice work.”

  “Why these particular guys?” asked Cappy.

  “All of those guys crossed the Disciples.”

  “What’d they do?” asked Cappy.

  “They took something that wasn’t theirs,” said Falcon. “Took something that belonged to the Disciples.”

  “How’d they do that?” asked Cappy.

  “Nothing too creative,” said Falcon. “One of ‘em fenced some weapons that were stolen from us,” said Falcon. “He bought them from the others.”

  “Which one was that?” asked Cappy.

  “That punk, O.Z. Thought he was smart.”

  Cappy said, “Tell me about the others.”

  “Nothing to tell,” said Falcon. “They knocked over one of our drug houses. Armed robbery on a Devil’s Disciples operation. Robbed our guys who were guarding the meth before it went out for distribution, stole it all and all the money and automatic guns we had stored there. He used an Uzi. That was James Green. He was a nut job anyway.”

  “He died alright,” said Cappy.

  “We heard,” said Falcon. “And good riddance.”

  “What made him a nut job?”

  “He was a perv. Certifiable. He didn’t care about nothin’. He used to make this girl, Carolyn Autry, his girlfriend I guess, service the guards so he could get more privileges.”

  “That happens,” said Cappy, thinking.

  “Sure, but this one, she got off on being humiliated. When he found out about that, it was like Christmas morning. He kept her pretty busy. Guards and ex-cons he knew.”

  “How about this last guy?” asked Cappy, being cool about it.

  “O.Z.? He thought he was slick. He fenced the Disciples’ weapons and some drugs, from the robbery…”

  “Was it meth?” asked Cappy.

  “It was. We make our own meth,” said Falcon. “Pretty stupid move, really, stealing from the Disciples. You know? Someone’s gonna figure out where it all came from…”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, they’re all gone now,” said Falcon. “And you’re richer by a bunch.”

  * * *

  “We’ve got a killer loose in the prison,” said Zeke. “But the victims are all over the board.”

  Clive Greene thoughtfully picked at an invisible piece of lint on his knee. “True, we haven’t been able to find a common denominator between the victims. Frustrating, you know.”

  Kimmy, also in Clive’s office, said, “It is frustrating.”

  “Maybe the common factor or factors are outside of the present situation. Outside the box,” said Zeke.

  “The box, yes,” said Clive. Then, under his breath he added, “This killer must be as mad as a box of frogs.”

  “Let’s go this way,” Zeke continued, thinking aloud. “What did each of the dead inmates have in common before they arrived at Cumberland FCI?”

  “Yes, I see,” said Clive. “A long memory and all that. Do you think these were all executions?”

  “Let’s see what we can find out,” said Zeke. “Can we get Sally to work her magic?”

  “Yes, sure, we’ll put her on it. And we should put Carl on the scent, also,” said Clive. “Work it inside and outside.”

  Zeke nodded. “Looking for something these inmates had in common, before they were incarcerated here. It could lead to a motive.”

  Kimmy nodded. “Good plan,” she said.

  “Meantime, I have something that I need to do,” said Zeke.

  * * *

  Carolyn Autry shifted in her chair and tugged at the hem of her short skirt.

  “Like I said,” she repeated, “you caught me on my way out.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Zeke. “I’m sorry. This won’t take but a minute. It’s about your fiancée, James Williams.”

  She looked up, her eyes brimming with tears. She nodded.

  “You helped him out in prison sometimes, didn’t you?”

  She nodded and swallowed hard. Regaining some control, she nodded and said, “Yes.”

  “What did he ask you to do?” asked Zeke.

  “Mostly, he told me to get him privileges. They was rough on him inside. I was just trying to make it easier on James.”

  Zeke nodded. “And how did you know what to do?” he asked gently.

  Carolyn Autry looked at the ground for a minute. “James tole me. He’d find out and tell me what to do.”

  “Were you degraded when you did these things?” asked Zeke.

  “Degraded? Well, sometimes. Those men had me do some things. But then I’d think about that I was doing it for James and I got through it. He always appreciated it.”

  “He said so?” asked Zeke.

  “Uh-uh, no, that wasn’t James’ way. But I knew he did.”

  “Who are these men he asked you to see?”

  “Mostly prison guards, and only once in a while. Like when he wanted more time out in the yard, or one time when he wanted to work in the laundry,” she said.

  “And you arranged it for him?”

  She tugged at the hem of her skirt again. “Sometimes.”

  “You had sex with these prison guards?”

  Carolyn Autry nodded. “I had to do whatever it took,” she said. “James tole me to.”

  Zeke nodded as if this were an everyday occurrence. “Who else?”

  She looked at him, confused.

  “You said it was ‘mostly prison guards’. Who else did James make you see?”

  “Oh. Uh, well, sometimes it was a guy who used to be a guard,” she said. “He had a big pickup truck.”

  “Where did you see him?”

  “In town,” she said. “James made me go to his house in town. Tole me not to wear any underwear.”

  Zeke nodded. “Other times?”

  “Well, mostly it was at the prison, after visiting hours. I’d stay behind and the guards always seemed to know what James had tole me to do.”

  “And you did it to get James privileges,” Zeke repeated.

  She nodded, her face red. “It was embarrassing, some of the things he made me do. Sometimes they’d use their handcuffs on me.”

  Zeke said, “Were there other men?”

  “A few prisoners sometimes,” she said. “I didn’t have much time with them, so’s I just did something quick.” She squirmed in her chair and tugged the hem of her skirt yet again.

  “Which prisoners?” asked Zeke.

  “Ther
e was a couple,” she continued. “But there was this one inmate I saw a lot. ‘Cuz James tole me to.”

  “How did you get time with an inmate?” asked Zeke.

  “I think he’s a trustee or something. He got us in the laundry storehouse, mostly.”

  “What’s his name?” asked Zeke.

  “Cappy. He calls himself Cappy.”

  * * *

  “You know who really runs the prisons, right?” Zeke asked.

  Clive and Kimmy were sipping tea in Clive’s library-like office overlooking Pennsylvania Avenue. The bright sunshine lit the room with a cozy warmth.

  “It’s an unspoken thing, but the gangs do, actually,” he continued.

  “How do you figure?” asked Clive.

  “Well, most prisons are understaffed. And many of the guards are gang members who’ve infiltrated the prison system, or they’ve joined a gang after they were hired. Sometimes their families are threatened.”

  “Yes, I remember,” said Clive.

  “So, as warden, how do you keep order? You’re effectively hobbled.”

  “Sure, with part of your staff reporting to the gangs.”

  “One solution would be to form an alliance with the gangs. Let them police their own and keep order in the cell blocks.”

  Clive said, “You’d effectively divide the prison into several factions, then.”

  Zeke nodded. “It would be a natural division, I think. It would gravitate toward black gangs, white gangs, Hispanic gangs. And probably one of each. But you could create an arrangement that assured some level of control.”

  Clive nodded.

  Kimmy said, “This is so not like Israeli prisons.”

  “I imagine,” said Clive.

  Zeke said, “But back to the prisoner killings.”

  “Yes, where are we on that?”

  “Carolyn Autry, who was James William’s supposed girlfriend, said that she’d spent some time at James’s request with one of the prisoners, a trustee named Cappy Askew,” said Zeke.