I went over to the trophy case and looked inside. It was all marksmanship trophies, given out to the guards with the best scores. There was a trophy for each year, going back a good thirty years. It was interesting psychology, displaying these trophies to the people who were here to visit the inmates.
After a few minutes I heard a door buzz behind me. A man came into the waiting room. He was a large man with a crew cut. He looked like a drill sergeant. “Mr. McKnight,” he said. “I’m Browning.”
I shook his hand.
“Right this way,” he said. He led me back through the same door. We came to another window, with another guard behind it with more clipboards on the wall. “Just step through here,” he said as he walked through a metal detector.
“I’m going to set this thing off,” I said. I stepped through and heard the beeping.
The guard opened his door and handed me a little plastic tray, just like at an airport. “Put it all in here, sir. Watch, keys.”
“It’s a bullet,” I said. “It’s in here.” I pointed to my heart.
Browning and the guard looked at each other for a second, and then the guard pulled out his hand unit and waved it over me. It gave out a long wail when he passed it in front of my chest.
Browning stood there in front of me, rubbing his chin. “Rose did that?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Are you sure you want to see him?”
“I have to,” I said.
“Right this way.” He turned and led me down the hallway. I knew there were two types of visitation areas. One for family, with couches and chairs so you could sit with an inmate, even have physical contact if you only went so far. Take away the guards and it would almost look like a living room. But it was empty now as we walked past it. He took me to the other visitation area, the one you picture in your mind because you’ve seen it in the movies. A thick wall of glass, a pair of telephones. He led me to one of the booths, sat me down, and then left me there. The chair on the other side was empty.
I waited there for a few minutes, thinking about what was going to happen. All the time I was driving down here, I was thinking about what to ask him, about what questions I needed answered. I wasn’t really thinking about that day in Detroit when he shot me. But when that metal detector went off, it all came back to me. I’m going to see the man who shot me three times and killed my partner. Fourteen years later, I’m going to see his face again.
I heard a heavy door close. I saw a guard pass by on the other side. Behind him, moving slowly, a man in a prison uniform. He sat down in the chair without looking at me. He had long hair and a long beard. It was all streaked with gray. He was thin. His wrists looked so frail you could snap them like pencils. He finally looked at me.
It was him.
I knew those eyes. Everything else about him had changed, but those eyes were the same. I would have known them anywhere. Even out of context. Forget the jail, forget that I was expecting to see him. Dress him up as a deliveryman, send him to my front door. As soon as I saw those eyes, I would know it was him.
He sat there looking at me, the same way he did before he shot me. The fear came back to me. I knew in my mind that I was safe, but still I couldn’t stop the physical reaction to seeing him.
I fought it down, trying to focus on why I had come here. I picked up the phone and waited for him to do the same. When he did, I cleared my throat and spoke to him.
“Do you remember me?” I said.
He just looked at me through the glass.
“I was a police officer in Detroit,” I said. “You shot me.”
“Yes?” he said. His voice was flat. It barely sounded human. It could have come from a machine.
“You killed my partner,” I said.
“Go on.”
“That was a long time ago,” I said. “That’s not really why I’m here.”
“I know why you’re here,” he said.
“You do?”
“Yes,” he said. “You want information.”
“How do you know this?”
“I have been here a long time. I have become a wise man in many ways.”
It was hard to look at him. His face was drawn and haggard. His hair went in every direction, like Medusa’s snakes. It made his eyes all the more terrible. “Do you know a man named Raymond Julius?” I asked.
He looked at me like he hadn’t even heard me.
“Wisdom is a precious metal,” he said. “Information is the ore from which wisdom is, what’s the word, smelted?”
“Do you know the man?” I said.
“Is that the right word? Smelted?”
“Raymond Julius. Do you know him?”
“You all want information, don’t you,” he said.
“Who? Who’s all of us?”
“All of you,” he said. “Lawyers, psychologists, scientists. You want the information so you may become wise. You all think you can trick it out of me.”
I took a deep breath. “I’m not a lawyer or a psychologist or a scientist. And I didn’t come all the way down here to smelt any wisdom, all right? Can you talk to me like a human being for one minute?”
“When I was first discovered, I said some things. There were two policemen. I remember them. They came to my apartment.”
“Oh, for the love of God,” I said. “I told you, I was one of those policemen.”
“Then they captured me and tried to make me talk. A man was supposed to represent me at the trial. He tried to make me say that I was crazy.”
“Rose, did you hear me? I said I was one of those policeman.”
He shook his finger at me and gave out a little laugh. It sounded like a chain rattling. “Very clever,” he said. “I can see why they sent you. You even look like him. An excellent ploy. I must commend you.”
“Rose, I was there. You shot me, remember? You shot both of us.”
“Yes, I shot both of you. Both of them, I mean. See, you are trying to trick me.”
I squeezed the phone. This was hopeless. “Okay, you win,” I said. “You’re too smart for me. You’ve obviously been doing a lot of smelting in here.”
“You’ll never make me tell you,” he said. “I’ll never reveal my plan.”
“Of course not,” I said. “Perish the thought.”
“I am strong,” he said. “Every passing hour, I grow stronger.”
“I can see that,” I said. “You look great. You’ve been working out?”
“You mock me.”
“You’ve lost some weight, too. What are you down to, about ninety pounds?”
“You dare to mock me.”
“Yeah, Rose, I dare to mock you. You wanna know why? Because you’re a crazy motherfucking piece of shit, that’s why. You want me to tell you about the man you killed? You want me to tell you about his wife and his two kids?”
“They sent you here, didn’t they.”
“He had two daughters, Rose. Two little girls.”
“I know they sent you here.”
“They had to go to their daddy’s funeral, Rose. Two little girls standing next to a hole in the ground because you killed their daddy.”
“Tell them I can’t be bought,” he said. “Tell them my information is not for sale.”
“What’s it like being in prison, anyway?” I said. “Looks like you’re in the main population here, aren’t you. I bet you’ve made a lot of new friends.”
“I can leave anytime I want.”
“So why don’t you? Why don’t you leave right now? We’ll go have a beer.”
“I choose to stay for the time being.”
“Sure you do. You must like it here. They must treat you real nice here. How many times have you been raped since you’ve been here?”
For the first time since he sat down, he looked away.