Key Witness (3 page)

She wanted a family, a husband: every girl’s dream, was that so much to ask for?

She was beginning to give up hope. But not completely; it would flare up when she least expected it. Tonight she was going to go dancing with her two best friends, and she was going to get wild. Within bounds, of course. She was more wild in thought than deed. She was an officer in her union, and she had worked too hard to get to where she was to act like someone who was like what she had come from.

T
HEY BROUGHT DWAYNE THOMPSON
down to the city under supertight security.

Two veteran guards rousted him in his cell, waking him from a bad dream. All his dreams were bad. You didn’t have any other kind in here.

“Rise and shine, bright eyes.”

“What the fuck?” He’d barely been asleep an hour, so he was discombobulated, disoriented. His cell was windowless. It could have been high noon or the middle of the night, he didn’t know. Six of one, half a dozen the other, like he could give a shit.

The one guard reached down and grabbed him roughly by the neck of his T-shirt, jerking him off his bunk. He had been in isolation for two weeks for breaking some chicken-shit rule, he couldn’t even remember now what it had been. The prison system had a million bogus rules, and over time he’d broken his share of them. So what—what could they do to him they hadn’t done already?

“Grab your shit.”

They led him down the long concrete corridor that connected his wing of the prison to the central control area. Four guards flanked him. He had a small ditty bag in his hand, everything he would take with him. It was early nighttime—he could see the sky turning as he looked out the barred windows.

Two state marshals were waiting. His escorts. Tough old boys, ex-marines, they’d as soon break your arm or leg you gave them any shit.

“Prisoner been to the can?” one of the marshals asked the prison guards. “Four hours’ drive, and there ain’t gonna be any pit stops. Don’t wanna hear no whining about his weak bladder or whatever.”

“He’s done his duty,” the guard said.

“I’ve been having the runs lately,” Dwayne ventured. “Can’t control my bowels.”

The marshal shrugged. “Worse things in the world than shitting your drawers. Last fella couldn’t wait, we made him eat it.”

“Least I’d have a hot meal,” Dwayne answered.

The marshals grinned at each other. “This could be fun,” the other said.

“Just don’t play country-western, that’s all I ask,” Dwayne went on. “That definitely qualifies under the cruel-and-unusual clause.”

They shackled him from head to foot—waist chains connected to handcuffs, connected to heavy leg-irons—standard procedure for transporting a felon like Dwayne. The marshals double-checked the locks on his irons and signed the release forms.

“Be careful with this one,” the deputy warden on duty warned the marshals as he handed over the keys to Dwayne’s irons. “He’s got no conscience whatsoever.”

“We hear you,” the lead marshal replied.

Dwayne showed no emotion at hearing this. He’d heard it before, countless times.

Dwayne Thompson didn’t look particularly dangerous. In his late thirties, he was about average height and build, rough-handsome like the photos you see of authentic cowboys. Blond hair almost white, milk blue eyes the color of a dry sky. A woman had once told him he looked like Robert Redford, the actor, but he attributed that to drunkenness and wishful thinking.

His most distinctive feature was the dozens of tattoos all over his body: up and down his arms, all across his chest, his legs, his back. They were real works of art—some of the most famous tattoo artists in the country had made their contribution to Dwayne Thompson’s needle-inflicted flesh. The most outrageous tattoo, also the largest, covered his entire back, neck to ass crack. It was a reproduction of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, in stunning color and detail. Except that Satan, finger extended, took the place of God.

Dwayne’s body was tight. He kept superbly fit by doing sit-ups, push-ups, and chin-ups by the hundreds in his cell. He didn’t use the weights in the yard because he didn’t do much of anything that would put him in close contact with other prisoners. He went his way and everyone left him alone.

At the main entrance, after clearing final security, the marshals were handed back their side arms, 9-mm automatics that could seriously hurt. They strapped the guns into their holsters and escorted their prisoner out the gates of Durban State Penitentiary, the number one maximum-security prison in the state system. They don’t sentence you to do your stretch at Durban unless you are a really bad guy with a lot of hard time to do.

Dwayne qualified on both counts.

He had a jacket several inches thick. Armed robbery, assault with intent to kill, forgery, rape, strong-arm coercion—you name it, he’d done it. He’d also, some years back, murdered two men in cold blood that no one except him and one other man knew about, and that man would take his secret to the grave. Of that Dwayne was certain, because he had the goods on that guy for shit he’d done, crimes that were as bad as any Dwayne had committed. So although this current stretch was a long one, Dwayne wasn’t doing life without parole.

Except that when he finished doing this stretch there was a pending case he was going to be tried on, another felony assault—if he had a specialty, that would be it. And under the newly enacted three-strikes law in the state, if he was convicted on that one, he would be a lifer for sure.

For now he wasn’t sweating that. When his release date came closer, he’d start thinking about it, how to work it, beat it. Right now, since he was already in, why worry about something he couldn’t control anyway?

The marshals were moving their prisoner in a plain-wrap Ford Taurus station wagon with regular tags, a nice comfortable vehicle nobody notices. They didn’t want to attract attention, hence the unmarked car instead of one bearing state tags and door ID, or a prison bus. It’s easier driving at night, less traffic, you make better time, and there is less chance of a foul-up with the prisoner. Not that they had any worries about him trying to escape—with the quantity of metal he had on his body and the small amount of play in the leg-irons, he couldn’t run a hundred yards in five minutes. And he couldn’t go for one of their guns because his hands and arms had virtually no mobility, and anyway, he was in the security cage in the backseat, locked in. They were in the front.

The only problem would be if they got into an accident. He could be trapped, unable to escape. The gas tank blew up, he’d be roasted.

The odds on that were about ten thousand to one. Acceptable.

They rode in silence except for the Garth Brooks tapes one of the marshals had brought. Dwayne hadn’t said anything when they started playing them. “Either of you have any cigarettes?” was the only thing he’d asked, shortly after they hit the interstate. They drove at a comfortable sixty-five. Outside it was overcast, the stars obscured by cloud cover.

“Don’t smoke,” the driver had informed him.

“Can we stop and get a pack?” Dwayne asked. “I’ll pay for them.”

All the prisons and jails had gone to No Smoking for over three years now. It made cigarettes as valuable a commodity as marijuana or cocaine. A single cigarette could go for five bucks, a full pack for a hundred. Men in Dwayne’s cellblock had been severely beaten, and worse, over a disputed pack of contraband Pall Malls.

The shotgun rider shook his head. “No can do.”

They had food and water in the car, in a small hamper under the shotgun rider’s feet. After about an hour he looked back over his shoulder at Dwayne. “You want something to eat?”

“What do you got?”

“Ham and cheese, and turkey. And some Hershey bars. There’s water, also.”

“Which one doesn’t have mayo? I don’t feature mayo.”

The one who wasn’t driving pulled a couple of sandwiches out of the hamper and unwrapped them. “They both do. Mustard and mayo both.”

“Well, shit. All right, fuck it, give me a turkey. And some water. And one of the Hershey’s. With nuts if you got it.”

The marshal passed the sandwich back through the narrow slot in the bulletproof divider that separated the front seat from the rear. Then he handed back a small dental-office-sized paper cup of water, spilling some on the floor at Dwayne’s feet.

“Sorry ’bout that.”

“Can I have the Hershey bar too?”

“Not unless you eat up all your dinner first.” Both marshals laughed. Then the one who wasn’t driving passed back a candy bar.

“Gracias,” Dwayne said.

“You’re welcome,” the marshal replied. He unwrapped a sandwich for himself, and another for the driver. “Let me know if you want me to drive at some point,” he told his partner.

“I’m fine.”

The tape finished playing. They ate in silence. The road passed under their wheels.

“A
RE YOU SURE YOU
still want to go out?” Wyatt asked, rubbing his hair vigorously after his shower. They were upstairs, in their bedroom.

“Well …” Moira held two different earrings up to her face, trying to decide which one went better with her dress.

“What about Michaela? Maybe we shouldn’t leave her here alone tonight.”

Michaela was their daughter. An only child, she was a junior in prep school. Like many only children, she was the sun and the stars to her parents.

“No burglar’s going to come within a million miles of here tonight—isn’t that what the policeman promised us?” she said with a mocking edge to her voice, a tone he wasn’t used to hearing from her. “Anyway, in case you didn’t notice, Michaela isn’t here. She’s over at Nancy Goodwin’s working on a science project. We’d be home long before her. In fact, we could swing by and pick her up on our way back.”

She settled on a pair of earrings. Then she sat on the edge of the bed and pulled on her panty hose, revealing a flash of dark pubic hair under sheer underpants.

Wyatt watched her as she dressed. She looked good tonight; she always looked good, she was a great-looking woman, but when she got all dressed she could really get heads turning.

Moira was tall, almost five-ten, with long, long legs. In heels, standing next to him, they were of identical height. She had a prototypical Audrey Hepburn kind of model’s figure of the sixties that clothes hung perfectly on—slim boyish hips, small breasts. Gamine-cut jet-black hair, large hazel eyes. Her face didn’t show much age—someone looking at her would never figure her for forty-six.

“Okay,” he agreed readily. “Getting out for a couple hours will help get rid of the bad taste.”

She started applying mascara. “We need better security, Wyatt.”

“We have a good system already. If that had happened here the police would’ve been here in five minutes. Less.” He began dressing—sports coat and slacks would be formal enough—he wore a suit and tie all day long at the office.

“So how come they weren’t at the Spragues?”

“Maybe their system doesn’t work as well.” He paused. “Or maybe it was an inside job,” he reluctantly ventured—he had been thinking about that since the Spragues had told them what had happened.

“That’s comforting. Anyway, five minutes could be forever. You could be dead in a lot less than five minutes.”

“So what do you want to do? Build a moat? Put up electric fencing? The yard would be littered with dead birds.”

She applied lipstick, blotted with a tissue. “We could get a dog. A big one. Or better yet, a gun.”

He froze in place. “You’re kidding.”

She turned to him. “No, Wyatt. I am not kidding.”

“So an intruder could take it and use it on you? Like what happened to Enid?”

“That wouldn’t happen to me.”

He finished getting dressed. “Forget it,” he told her. “We are not going to have a gun in this house. That’s how people get killed.”

“Maybe some people deserve it,” she answered back.

He thought before speaking. “Maybe some people do,” he agreed. “But that’s not for us to decide. Not like that.”

She came close to him. “If someone was threatening your life … or mine, or Michaela’s, you couldn’t kill them? If it was us or them?”

“I’m sure I could. I hope I never have to make that choice.” He took her hand. “Come on—this is getting too grim. Let’s have some fun.”

As they were leaving the house—Wyatt double-checked the door to make sure it was locked, and that the alarm system was on—Moira turned to him. “Enid should’ve pulled the trigger,” she said.

Was she serious? “Would you have?” he asked, trying to keep the alarm out of his voice. More than alarm: fear.

“If I owned a gun, and it was me standing there, and some intruder was coming at me? Who might rape or kill me? Yes—I would have pulled the trigger.”

“T
HIS BAND IS
HOT
.”

“They are
great.
Didn’t I tell you?”

They were at
Teddy’s,
one of the city’s primo dance bars—three women dancing with each other, bodies pressed against them from all sides. Hot, sweaty, loud.

The band was fronted by a woman singer, a local favorite. They were playing classic bluesy rock ’n’ roll: Van Morrison, Otis Redding, Janis Joplin.

“We’re going to close this place down tonight!” one of them shouted. The dance bar was basically a big old barn, you had to yell pretty loud to be heard over the din.

“Unless we get lucky.” One of the women laughed, a deep alto vibrato. She was black, the other two were white. She was the youngest, the prettiest, the sexiest.

“You let a man from here pick you up and take you home, you’ve got to be crazy.”

“Beggars can’t be choosers,” the laughing woman shot back over the music.

“Who you calling a beggar?”

“Three ladies in their prime, without a man between them, out dancing with each other, what would you call us?”

“We’re choosy.”

All three of them laughed. Violet and her two best friends, Peggy and Paula. Peggy was a nurse, a friend from the old days at the hospital. Paula was a coworker on the slaughterhouse floor.

Both of the other women were divorced. Peggy for a long time, Paula recently, less than a year. Paula still wasn’t comfortable—or at least accepting—of her status as a single woman. All the stuff that goes with being with a man—feeling his bulk up against yours when you’re sleeping, his sweat from the heat, lovemaking on a regular and frequent basis, cooking him up a good meal, a shared bottle of wine, laughing, fighting, the whole nine yards—all those things were essential to her, almost as basic as eating and sleeping.