They stopped before another rising grille. Rebecca watched the steel curling into the ceiling.
“I’m not impressed much by criminals. The images the media creates — supercriminals, evil geniuses... I’m a career corrections officer who rose up through the ranks. I’ve worked with all kinds of felons, all my life, and I’m here to tell you that every single one of them, almost to a person, is in essence a pathetic excuse for a human being, a narcissistic, low-intelligence opportunist, and a failure. Weak-minded predators, all. So when I say that Trait is an exception, understand that I am not given to hyperbole or mislaid awe. This institution, built to break such men as Luther Trait, hasn’t even touched him yet. On the contrary, he seems to be thriving. The regimen, the military routine, the ascetic existence: I believe this place has been good for him. He is a better man here than he ever was in any other lockup, and certainly better than he was on the outside.”
A dying fly flopped on the floor and the warden stooped to pick it up before continuing ahead.
“The Brotherhood of Rebellion gang he headed up at Marion was unique among disruptive groups. It was more than just a criminal racket hiding behind tribal colors: It was a culture, a religion. He had members of different races and backgrounds all willing to fight and die for him. And they ran Marion from the inside, which was no playschool itself. The BR was the biggest threat to the security of the American prison system we’d ever seen, and Trait was both its czar and messiah.”
They arrived at the Command Center, an imposing, circular guard station like a phantom tollbooth. Double doors opened inward to find eight guards working the room like air traffic controllers, monitoring dozens of viewing screens and issuing instructions into headset microphones. Assault rifles, handguns, and boxes of ammunition were stored inside glass cabinets at the compass points of the room. One man walked away from his post to tell the warden that Trait was on his way, pointing to a computer screen showing a black man in drab gray clothing and chains walking down a hallway surrounded by a phalanx of helmeted men. On another monitor nearby, Rebecca noticed the words Visitor: LODEN, R. superimposed above the time, date, and her current location, C. Center. Between the lines of text, a small red graphic animated her rising pulse rate.
The warden explained that the penitentiary was designed so that the entire facility, the gates, doors, cameras, lights, thermostats, and alarms, could be operated from within the Command Center, the fortified brain of ADX Gilchrist. It was to be the last post evacuated in the event of an emergency.
They stepped through a small sallyport trap into a new hallway, short and bright and sealed off on either end with steel grilles, blocking stairs she would not want to descend. The walls were different there, a sad, gray concrete that left the corridor still and cool. She was suffering through the dreamlike dread of knowing she was in a place she should not be.
The first door on the right opened into a small room where a corrections officer stood waiting against a side wall. There was a closed door near him that perhaps led to a bathroom, and a Formica-topped table with two blue chairs. Nothing else but the walls.
Warden James said, “Trait’s pod in Echo Unit is underground, closed off from the outside hallway by grilles and an electronic door that seals off noise. For security reasons, no one from the outside is allowed into Echo.”
“No complaint from me.”
“This is the disciplinary hearing room. Our kangaroo court — right, Carlos?”
Carlos grinned behind square-rimmed, top-tinted eyeglasses. “Yes, sir.”
“Carlos came over with me from Florence. He’ll wait with you here. Normally we would do this in our visiting area with each of you on opposite sides of a Plexiglas wall, but Trait has never been allowed that far up front, and I’m of the opinion that certain inmates should remain generally ignorant of prison geography. So special arrangements have been made. You’ll be face-to-face here. No extraordinary restraints. Trait will be wearing a stun belt, activated remotely at the extraction team’s discretion, delivering an immobilizing electrical charge. If by chance Trait does misbehave, your interview will be terminated and he will be removed. The encounter will be recorded, of course.” He indicated two cameras in the corners of the ceiling. “I don’t suppose I have to instruct you not to initiate any physical contact with him. Oh, by the way — we could not, by law, compel him to attend this interview. The choice was his. Were you aware that he has turned down every other media request for an interview, until today?”
“No,” she said. “No, I was not.”
“This is going all the way back to his tour in Marion. Can you think of any reason why he would desire to meet with you in particular?”
She was spooked now. “No — certainly not.”
The warden shrugged, smiling obliquely, and walked to the door. “I hope you get whatever it is you’re looking for.”
“You’re leaving?” she said.
“It’s best that I wait back at the Command Center. My presence here would only be a distraction.”
Carlos showed her to a chair at the table and then returned to the wall without a word. Rebecca tried to get comfortable, overthinking her posture and conscious of the body alarm electrode pasted over her heart. Her nerves were on display inside the Command Center. It was not the rate of her heartbeat that troubled her, but rather its force, its bass depth, the heaviness of which seemed to dislodge something in her chest that rose to obstruct her throat, a lump of intimidation she tried to swallow back. Why had Luther Trait agreed to this visit?
She heard chains approaching and clasped her hands underneath the table.
The door opened and the room was scanned by two men in riot gear: helmets, flak vests, jackboots, lineman’s gloves, black truncheons. They entered and Trait followed in his chains, backed up by two more men in riot gear and a fifth, the team leader, wearing yellow latex gloves.
Trait wore prison scrubs, thick blue cotton washed to gray. Both his leg irons and handcuffs were shackled to a belly chain that draped around his stun belt like the tassels of a ceremonial dress. He did not shuffle but instead used the entire length of ankle chain to stride from the door to the table. His eyes were fixed on her, and images from his criminal trial came flooding back to her mind: slow-motion video of him walking in and out of court, staring defiantly at the cameras, smiling when his verdict was read. Rebecca tried to meet his stare across the table, certain her body alarm was going to go off screaming. ADX Gilchrist was an athenaeum of killers, and these librarians had just brought to her table their rarest book.
The team leader held the plastic back of the chair as Trait sat. A pair of guards remained at the door while the other two moved peripherally away from him, almost to the walls. The lead man remained between Trait and the door, muttering softly into his headset. His hand was poised over an instrument on his holster belt that must have been the stun-belt trigger.
Luther Trait looked no older since his trial, only slimmer and more compact. His forearms, neck, and face had all lost muscle, his brown skin appearing to have faded in tone. Still, he bore none of the criminal ugliness one usually sees in a murderer, but rather a sense of nobility and pride. Only his eyes hinted at his malevolence. Light brown, nearly yellow, the irises blemished and cracked like gems miscut by a jeweler, they were eyes that had split public opinion: To some, they were evidence of a mystic intelligence attributed to Trait; to others, they were an outward manifestation of his evil soul. Still others found symbolism in their shattered appearance, with regard to the abuse he had suffered as a child. To Rebecca, they stood out like negative images in an otherwise developed photograph. It seemed to her that eyes so singular in appearance must also view the world singularly.