Fox River

Jake chuckled. “He doesn’t know you as well as he thinks.”

She smiled, but it died quickly. She told Jake what Bard had said about Julia sketching on the wall. “I’m going to see her again today.”

“Do you want me to come along?”

Maisy considered before she shook her head. “No. One of us needs to stay in Bard’s good graces. If you don’t come, we can preserve the illusion that you don’t completely agree with me.”

“And that’s an illusion?”

“Do you agree?”

He came over and took cups out of the cupboard, setting them on the counter in front of her. Then he went to the refrigerator for the cream. “If you’re going because you want to be sure she has choices, you have my full support.”

“I just want the best for Julia.”

He set the cream in front of her. “You sound remarkably like Bard.”

The warm glow of Julia’s rebellion only lasted until the early hours of the next morning. She awoke when the morning nurse came in to check on her. She heard the woman’s soft gasp and hasty exit.

The jig was up.

By the time she had showered and finished breakfast, she knew she was overdue for a visit from her psychiatrist. She had to commend his self-control.

When Dr. Jeffers finally arrived, she was sitting by the window, listening to the rain falling on a wet landscape. She could picture the autumn leaves, heavy-laden and resistant. But they couldn’t resist for long.

“So, Julia, we have here a little protest.”

She had been contrite until she heard Jeffers’ tone. Had he not sounded as if he were talking to someone with the IQ of an earthworm, she might have apologized.

Now she was angry again. “I will not be kept from doing the things I need to in order to get better.”

“And you think defacing our walls will make you better?”

She was teaching herself not to play his game. “When I checked myself in, I expected rules. This particular whim of yours was simply cruel. You’re unhappy with my so-called lack of cooperation, so you’re taking away the things that mean the most to me.”

“You sound suspicious of my motives.”

She considered that. “You may well think you’re doing this for my benefit, but the result is the same.”

“And the result would be?”

“Let’s stop dancing around. I’m not going to improve if I spend my whole time butting heads with you. I’m willing to stay, but I want to be able to have visitors and art supplies.”

“Supplies you can’t see.”

“I see pictures in my head as clearly as I ever did.”

“Tell me about them.”

She considered that, too. “Not until I can trust you to hold up your end of the bargain.”

He gave a dry laugh. “Oh, so it’s a bargain, is it? Is that how your life works, Julia? You withhold favors until you get what you want?”

“A healthy person doesn’t give too much without the confidence she’ll get something in return. I’m asking for simple things anyone else would take for granted.”

“It’s difficult to tell exactly what you had in mind when you were drawing. I’m sure it would be clearer if you could see, or if you’d had better tools. But I think I’m looking at a landscape of some sort. Hills? Perhaps a stream?”

“I don’t think we’ve reached a decision.”

She thought he sighed. “I’ll have to give this some thought.”

She heard the scrape of a chair, as if he was standing up. She ventured one parting shot. “Dr. Jeffers, let’s face the fact that this might not be the best place for me. If we can’t come to an understanding, then I’ll check myself out. No hard feelings.”

“I’m not sure I can let you do that.”

She was taken aback. “I admitted myself voluntarily. You’d have trouble painting a blind woman as a threat to anyone.”

“You might well be dangerous to yourself, as that stunt last night proved. I’m surprised you didn’t burn down my clinic.”

A touch of panic gripped her, an old friend by now. “The fire was out and I was careful.”

“But what comes next? I think you’re seriously depressed and capable of acting out. A bad combination.”

Oddly, instead of anger she experienced a surge of relief, which pruned the panic at its roots. Now she knew what she had to do. “I think we’re done here.”

He was silent, and she wished she could see his expression. When he did speak, he was farther away, at the door, she guessed. “You have an appointment this morning with our internist.”

“I had a physical at the hospital.”

“Will you argue about this, too? We like to be thorough. Then you and I have an appointment at four-thirty. I’ll see you, then.”

She wouldn’t see him. She would be gone by then. Any ambivalence she’d had about leaving had disappeared in the wake of his threats.

At three o’clock Julia heard Jake’s pickup. By three-fifteen she knew Maisy had run into trouble, because she still hadn’t arrived at Julia’s door. Julia rang for Karen and waited impatiently until the young nurse came to her room.

“Karen, my mother’s here again to visit. Would you find out what’s keeping her?”

Karen sounded unhappy. “They aren’t going to let her up here to see you, Mrs. Warwick. Dr. Jeffers says it runs counter to your treatment plan. Security has orders. I’m sorry.”

“Is she still here?”

Karen hesitated, then she lowered her voice. “I’ll find out. Do you want me to give her a message?”

“Yes, tell her to wait for me.”

“Wait?”

Julia was on her feet. “I’m coming down. I’m going home. This is outrageous.”

“But you can’t do that. You signed yourself in.”

“I’ll sign myself out. And I’m going to do it right this minute, so don’t ask me to wait.”

“Dr. Jeffers isn’t here to—”

“Good.”

“But we can’t take you down there. We have orders—”

“Damn it, I’ll find my own way, then. And if I break my neck while I’m at it, my mother can sue Gandy Willson.” Julia started toward the door. She felt her way past the desk and dresser before she bumped into Karen.

Now Karen was pleading. “You’re going to get us in real trouble.”

Julia hesitated a moment; then she shook her head. “I’m sorry. Just tell Jeffers the truth. You tried to reason with me. I refused to listen. I am refusing, that’s no lie.”

“Let me call him.”

“Do whatever you want. But he can’t get back before I leave.”

“Let me talk to your husband.”

“Good luck. He doesn’t listen very well.”

Karen’s voice caught. “Please, don’t do this. Wait until—”

Julia was a small woman, but she drew herself up to her full height. “Please get out of my way.”

“But you’re going to get hurt,” Karen wailed.

“I hope you’ve moved.” Julia started forward, feeling for the doorway. She brushed Karen as she wiggled through.

In the hallway now, she realized how disoriented she was. There was an elevator by the nurses’ station, but she remembered being told that operation depended on a key. Dr. Jeffers had apologized for not having any vacant rooms on the first floor, which were state-of-the-art and handicapped accessible. He had promised her the first one that became available. At the time it hadn’t mattered. Now she realized how convenient this was for him. She was a prisoner of her own sightlessness. She was going to have to navigate the stairs alone.

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me which way to go?”

“I can’t,” Karen said clearly. In a much lower voice she said, “Are you absolutely determined?”

“I’m leaving.”

She lowered her voice still more. “Go right. At the end, go left. The stairs are on your right, at the very end of that corridor. I’ll meet you there.”

Julia understood. No one would fault Karen for giving in at that point and helping her patient to the first floor. She would be negligent to do anything else. But first Julia had to make it to the stairs alone.

Julia took a deep breath, buoyed by the knowledge that at the very least she wasn’t going to tumble headfirst down a full flight of steps. She turned and took a step, then another. The hall was eerily silent. She wondered where the other patients were. Making pot holders or brownies in occupational therapy? She’d met no one since she arrived. No one had attempted to make her socialize. As she adjusted, Dr. Jeffers had wanted her to be alone with her thoughts.

She slid her hand along the wall beside her, taking another shuffling step. Each time she put her foot down, she expected anything but solid floor. She was falling into darkest space, disoriented and more frightened with each step. But the alternative frightened her more. If she was forced to stay, the depression Dr. Jeffers had cited would grow to be as real as the blindness that held her in its sway.

The wall dropped away, and startled, she jerked her hand back. Her feet were still planted firmly. She stood still for a moment, trying to picture her predicament. She realized that she must have encountered an open doorway, that there would probably be more than one on the hall. She lifted her left foot and replanted it in front of the right, feeling first with her toe to be certain the floor hadn’t suddenly dropped away, as well. Satisfied she kept moving. After what seemed like several yards she felt the wall again, but closer than it had been, as if she’d veered off course.

She straightened and continued on. She had no idea how far she would have to travel. The hall could be a few more yards or many. She had driven by the clinic a thousand times, and now she tried to picture the building. Were the wings long? They were additions to an antebellum mansion, which was now the central reception area, but the additions were old, as well.

She didn’t know how long she took to find her way to the end. She counted six doorways before she sensed something in front of her. She was sweating, even though the hallway was chilly. She was also trembling, afraid that each step would pitch her into space. Too well she remembered the terror of flying through the air, the sudden vision of total paralysis, the knowledge that she was about to hit the ground.

The realization that she could no longer see.

She stretched out her hands, but she touched nothing. She inched forward, arms extended, until her palms contacted glass. She was at the end of the hall, at a window, she guessed, and now it was time to turn left.

She turned, right hand still touching the window to help orient her. Relief was seeping through the fear. She was going to make this terrible journey in time to reach her mother. Maisy wouldn’t leave without a drawn-out fight. But she had to hurry.

Julia took a step, then quickly, another. Her toe caught on something just in front of her, and before she could steady herself, she pitched forward to her knees.

Her cheek rested against the branches of a tree. She stifled a cry, then felt for her bearings. She had stumbled over a plant of some sort, a small tree in a pot. An interior decorator’s vision.

She didn’t linger. She used the pot to steady herself and got to her feet. She had fallen and lived through it. She had gotten back up. She was moving. She might trip again. She would keep moving.

Nearly at the end of the second hallway, she heard a warning just before she stumbled over what felt like the edge of a carpet and sprawled chest down on the floor. This time it took her a moment to catch her breath. Pain shot through her right knee, but before she could find her way to her feet, she felt strong arms helping her up.

“Damn it!” Karen sounded as if she wanted to weep. “I don’t care if I lose my job. There have to be better places to work. If your mother’s gone, I’ll drive you home myself. I have a little boy at home. I just didn’t want—”

Julia felt for Karen’s hands. “I’m going to need help. Come with me. At least until you can find a job you like better.”

“I’d like flipping hamburgers better than this.”

“Let’s go find my mother.”

“Can you make the stairs?”

Julia managed a smile. “I’ll do anything to get out of here.”

“Don’t forget I’ll have my arm around you. Just put one foot in front of the other.”

Julia found that was a lot easier with Karen walking beside her.

4

The inmates at Ludwell State Prison left Christian Carver alone. That hadn’t always been true. When he had arrived as a frightened twenty-three-year-old, he had snagged more than his share of attention. Athletic and strong, he was also lean-hipped and slim. And at twenty-three Christian hadn’t yet learned the importance of feeling nothing, so that he truly had nothing to hide.

In a matter of months he had learned—the hard way—everything he needed to survive a life sentence. Who to befriend and who not to let out of his sight. How to tolerate the noise and the smell. How to find some common denominator with men who had broken into houses or set them ablaze, maniacs who had murdered old women and raped small children. The right balance between anger and hate, so that he could endure but not be consumed by the fire within him.

He had made a peace of sorts with his life. One of the guards had taken an interest in young Christian’s welfare and moved him into a cell with an old man convicted of murdering his wife. Alf Johnson had smothered his beloved Doris at her own request when the cancer eating away her lungs made every breath a torment. In the pre-Kevorkian days of Alf’s trial, Doris’s death had simply been premeditated murder.

Alf had used his years in prison to pursue the education his life on the outside had never allowed, and he had taken the young man under his wing. Before his death a year later, he’d taught Christian how to have a life behind bars, as well as one important motto to live by.

Only one man can imprison your spirit.

Now, as always, Christian was employing everything he’d learned.

“I don’t give advice.” Christian examined the golden retriever puppy at his feet. Seesaw had a coat as shiny as polished nuggets and liquid brown eyes that noticed absolutely everything. “Seesaw, sit.”

The dog sat obediently, her plump puppy body wiggling with pent-up energy. But Seesaw stayed where she was, despite instincts that told her otherwise.

Christian reached down to pet and praise her.

The man beside him spoke. “I don’t need advice, man. I just need to know how to get Tyrell off my back.”

“Same thing.” Christian snapped the leash on Seesaw’s collar. “Heel, Seesaw.”

“Hey, you been here a long time—”

Christian straightened. “And I’m going to be here a lot longer. So I know better than to say anything that might get me in trouble.”

“How’d telling me what to do get you in trouble?” The young man walked beside Christian as he and Seesaw slowly paced the indoor track that the prison dog trainers used for walking their canine charges. Timbo Baines was new to Ludwell, young, black and terrified. He had chosen Christian as his mentor, a job Christian didn’t want but wasn’t quite embittered enough to refuse.

“Look, Timbo. Tyrell has friends here. Friends talk to friends. You’ll talk to some of them. You’ll mention me.”

“So what if I just stay out of his way?”

“Make it a priority.” Christian stopped to gently scold the puppy, who was beginning to strain at the leash. “He has a short attention span.”

“He? I thought Seesaw was a girl.”

“Not Seesaw. Tyrell.”

“Yeah? Oh, yeah. I get it. Okay.”

“Think you can take over? Don’t raise your voice. Praise her if she does what you want her to. Don’t jerk on the leash.”

“Don’t know how I got stuck training dogs.”

“Guess you were just lucky.” As well as convicted for selling cocaine to middle-class teenagers who’d been sight-seeing in Richmond’s inner city.

Christian started back toward the kennel.

“Christian?”

He hadn’t noticed the Reverend Bertha Petersen at the end of the first run. An overweight woman in her fifties, she wore jeans and a sweatshirt with a bandanna covering her closely cropped salt-and-pepper hair. A barrel-chested guard stood stiffly nearby, watching every move Christian made.

Christian approached her, stopping several yards away so as not to worry him. “Hello, Pastor. We weren’t expecting you.”

“It’s good to see you. How are the new puppies?”

“It’s too early to tell. But no real problems so far. The Lab’s a little excitable. She may calm down, but we’ll watch her.”

Bertha Petersen was the director of Pets and Prisoners Together and an ordained minister in a small fundamentalist sect with a long name. While many of her cohorts were busily converting the heathen, Bertha had turned her own considerable energy to good works.

The purpose of Pets and Prisoners was to raise and train helping dogs for the physically or mentally challenged. Ludwell was the first prison in the program to train dogs for the blind, turning over two dozen a year to organizations that did the final portion of the training and placed them. Christian had been in charge of the Ludwell program for two years.

“So, did you just drop by to check on us?”

“I like to keep up with everybody if I can.” Bertha’s gaze traveled to the guard, then back to Christian. “Why don’t you show me the dogs in training? How many do you have right now?”

Ludwell had two separate programs in progress. A new program, of which Seesaw was a part, evaluated puppies who had been bred to become guide dogs. The second and more established, brought in young dogs who had already been socialized by a host family and trained in good manners and family routine. They received intensive training from the prison staff for three months before they were passed on to one of several programs.

Christian would have liked to finish the training of each animal, but the final month involved working with the dog’s new master, often on city streets. And no one felt safe sending the blind to a prison or prisoners to the blind.

But what did that matter compared to everything else the men were denied?

“We have four dogs left,” Christian told the pastor. “We started this session with ten.”

She turned to the guard. “Officer, we’re going over to the other kennel. Will that be all right?”

He didn’t answer directly. Instead he picked up his two-way radio and spoke into it, then he gave a brief nod.

The second kennel was on the other side of solid steel doors. Christian and Bertha waited as the doors opened, then closed behind them. They walked down a short corridor flanked by video cameras. The second kennel looked much like the first, but the track was considerably larger, and a yard fenced in mesh and topped with razor wire was visible through a window.

The guard on duty here was used to Christian and hardly gave him a glance. He was busy watching one of the other inmates walk blindfolded through an obstacle course. A chocolate Lab wearing a leather harness led him through the maze. Javier Garcia, a huge man in blue jeans, walked confidently behind him.

Christian and Bertha strolled over to the guardrail overlooking the course and watched.

Christian explained what they were viewing. “That’s Cocoa. She’s had a little trouble with overhead obstacles.” The dogs had to be trained not to lead their new masters into low-hanging obstacles like tree branches and awnings, even if their masters urged them forward. Guide dogs were trained to practice “intelligent disobedience.” Their own good instincts had to supplant their blind master’s commands.

“She’s catching on?”

“Cocoa’s a winner. Very bright. She’ll make it. But we had one of her litter mates who flunked out the first week. He jumped at loud noises. Very distractible for a Lab. Hopefully by checking out the puppies earlier, we’ll avoid these problems.”

The pastor was silent for a moment as she watched Javier and Cocoa move flawlessly along the track. Then she turned so she could see Christian’s face. “Christian, I’ve been considering this conversation carefully.”

He waited stoically, another survival skill he’d learned.

“I’ve heard something.”

He supposed Bertha heard lots of gossip as she moved from prison to prison. Ludwell wasn’t the only penal institution that trained helping dogs.

She continued. “I suspect I could be accused of interfering with proper procedure for telling you this. Certainly for jumping the gun.”

“I’m listening.”

“Have you heard of a man named Karl Zandoff?”

Christian devoured the newspaper whenever he could. Anyone who could read had heard of Karl Zandoff. He gave a short nod. “He’s on death row in Florida. His appeals are almost up.”

“His execution date’s been set for December.”

“Yeah, and it looks like a date he’ll be keeping.”

“He’s been talking to the authorities.”

“So?”

“Apparently he’s confessed to another murder, one they didn’t suspect him of.”

“Nothing like a rendezvous with Old Sparky to get the juices flowing.”

“I’m told he might confess to more before this is over.”

Despite himself, Christian was growing curious. “Maybe confession’s good for the soul. You’d believe that, wouldn’t you?”

“How about you?”

“I haven’t seen much God in here, Pastor. If we were ever on speaking terms, we haven’t been for a long time. If I had anything to confess myself, I’d do it to my lawyer.”

She didn’t miss a beat. “Zandoff told them where to look for the body, and they found it. A case solved. The girl’s parents can finally put her to rest.”

“Girl?”

“A college student in Tennessee. She disappeared ten years ago.”

“I thought all his crimes had been committed in Florida.”

“Now they’re looking at other unsolved murders in the South. Turns out he drifted for a while. Worked construction, followed the jobs. Then he settled in with a wife and couple of kids in the Sunshine State. But he didn’t stop preying on young women.”

Christian knew Zandoff had been caught with a young woman’s monogrammed barrette and a brand-new shovel covered with Tallahassee’s sandy clay loam. That was the crime he’d been arrested for. And when the body was finally located, the two in shallow graves beside it had earned him the death penalty.

Christian searched the pastor’s face impassively. On the track beyond them he could hear Javier praising Cocoa for a job well-done. They only had another minute at most to finish the conversation before Javier joined them.

“I’m unclear as to why you’re telling me this. I’m not Karl Zandoff. I didn’t kill one woman, much less an interstate sorority. If you think his example is going to stir my conscience, forget it.”

“Christian.” She shook her head, as if she really was disappointed in him. “I know you as well as anybody does. You didn’t kill Fidelity Sutherland.”

He studied her. “There were people who knew me as well as they knew themselves, and they questioned it.” One woman in particular, whose face he still hadn’t been able to erase from his memory.

She glanced at the track. “I’m telling you because there’s a rumor Zandoff spent time in northern Virginia between nine and ten years ago. He’s hinting that he murdered a woman here, as well.”

For a moment Christian didn’t make the connection. Then he shrugged. “Lots of people disappear or die mysteriously every year.”

“He worked construction. They’re looking at records.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Somebody working the case told me. I want to call your attorney. Your interests should be represented.”

Javier reached the railing with Cocoa in tow. He had black hair that fell straight to his shoulders and an incongruously narrow face that didn’t fit his broad body. “Did you see that? She’s catching on, and she goes with a real light touch. She’ll be perfect for a woman.”

“Hello, Javier.” Bertha greeted him warmly. “I spoke to your wife last week.”

The big man beamed. “She doing okay, Pastor?”

“She says you have a good chance with the parole board. Should I start scouting out a job for you?”