“Wait for me here,” Stanton said.
The facility was massive. Buildings spread out over a large clearing in what was essentially a forest. He stood near the entrance almost ten minutes, quietly pacing back and forth, before going in.
He walked to the X-shaped cluster of white buildings. They were surrounded by electrified barbed wire fencing and a small box was by the entrance. He pressed a button.
“Yeah?” a voice bellowed.
“Detective Stanton, San Diego PD. I have a visit scheduled with Noah Sherman.”
“Yeah, I got you.”
The fence slid open and Stanton stood a few moments, staring at the white steel door a guard had opened. He had a rifle slung over his shoulder and looked to Stanton, motioning with his head for him to come over.
He walked to him and the guard nodded and held the door.
Prison, any prison, has a smell to it. Sweat and flatulence and rotting food and rotting flesh. The corridors and reception area held only the slightest trace of the zoo contained a few hundred feet away and Stanton was given a visitor’s pass by the front entrance guard and led to a small room. He was sat on one side of a glass partition on a cold stool that was bolted to the floor. There were phones on both sides of the thick glass and he pulled out a small digital recorder and began recording.
He ran his hand along the glass and then over the concrete border. The ceiling had exposed water pipes and he followed them with his eyes to each wall. There were three other stools and glass partitions, but no one was using them.
A bolt on a door on the opposite side of the glass slid open and the metal creaked at the hinges. A muscled guard with tattoos running up his forearms walked behind a handcuffed Noah Sherman, the handcuffs wrapped in chains that ran around his ankles. The guard sat him down and then held up his hands, indicating ten minutes, and Stanton nodded. The guard went back out through the door and left them alone.
Sherman was in a yellow jumpsuit with white shoes, the laces removed. His hand went to the phone and he put it to his ear. Stanton picked up his end and could hear his breathing through the receiver.
“How are you, Noah?”
“You never ask a prisoner how they are. Then you put them in the position to either lie or talk about how miserable they are and they don’t want to do either. You’re supposed to say, ‘How you holding up?’ or ‘How are they treating you?’”
“How are they treating you?”
“I was raped my first night here. Do you know what it’s like to be raped, Jon? I bet you don’t. Two inmates paid a guard off with some weed and they were given a half hour with me. They took turns.”
“I’m sorry,” Stanton said.
“You’re sorry?”
“I didn’t put you in here.”
There was silence between them a long time.
“What the fuck do you want, Detective?”
“I wanted to talk.”
“You haven’t been here for two and half years and now you want to see me? Bullshit. Did they find another one of my bodies? There are more you know.”
“I know.”
“Are they still looking?”
“I don’t think so. Not in San Diego County. I heard they had a task force in Los Angeles.”
“I heard that too.” Sherman spread his legs in a wide stance and leaned forward. “So, you got a few minutes. What do you want to talk about?”
Deception or circumlocution, he knew, wouldn’t work. He would have to take a bold stance and stick to it. “Did you kill a girl named Tami Jacobs? Blond, twenty-three. A small apartment in La Jolla. It would’a been about a month before you went in.”
“You really think I’d be honest with you if I had?”
“Yes, I do.”
He grinned, exposing yellowed teeth. “Why?”
“I don’t know. Pride maybe.”
“Maybe.”
“Do you remember it?”
“I would need to look at a photo.”
Stanton pulled a small picture from his pocket. It was of Tami with her family in her University of Iowa sweatshirt.
“Pretty girl,” Sherman said. “Do you have any of her after the deed was done?”
“No.”
“You didn’t bring any?”
“No.”
“Why?”
“Because you would masturbate to them later.” Stanton noticed that Noah began gently rocking back and forth. He had seen him do this before, and had never paid attention to it until now. “Was it you?”
“Do you ever ask yourself why I would send you to that closet knowing what was there?”
“Yes.”
“And why do you think I did that? I wanted to be caught?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“Your first murder was probably immaculate. Little evidence, never told anyone … but by your fifth and sixth you started forgetting things. Little things at first and then it just became more and more chaos. Eventually you couldn’t remember anything. You probably had forgotten what was in the closet until you told me.”
Sherman made a sucking sound through the gap in his front teeth.
“Was it you, Noah?”
“No. It wasn’t me.”
He put the photo back in his pocket and rose to leave. He hung up the phone and Sherman said something through the glass but he couldn’t make it out.
Stanton stepped into the hallway, the door slamming shut behind him. He leaned against it and saw the sweat rings under his arms and wished he’d brought a shirt to change into. He could hear the madness contained just a few feet away. Men that had become ghosts to their families and friends, and animals to each other. He wanted to put his hands to his ears but instead he began walking toward the exit.
On his way out the guard at the front entrance said, “Them two boys that cornholed him, they ended up dyin’ some months later.”
“How?”
“One was burned in his cell. The other had his junk bitten off or somethin’ and bled out in the showers. We know the muthafucker did it but there ain’t no good proof.”
Stanton nodded to the guard and stepped outside. He had specifically asked for a room that wasn’t being monitored. If Noah knew their conversation was being listened to, he would’ve lied. Stanton would have to speak to him again. But he decided it could wait.
He looked around and realized the cab had left.
15
It was dark by the time Stanton landed back in Southern California. The air was different here, salty and warm like it had been exhaled from someone’s body. He found his car in short-term parking and drove to his apartment.
A neighbor was out on their patio when Stanton got home. It was an older gal, smoking a cigarette in the dark. He saw her silhouette and the bright pinpoint of red that would get brighter at her mouth and then darken when she lowered it.
“How are you, Suzie?”
“Doin’ fine, handsome. How are you?” she said. Her voice was grainy from the tobacco and alcohol she coated it in day-after-day.
“Not bad,” he said, taking a seat on the first step leading up to his apartment.
“Heard you workin’ with the cops again.”
“Who’d you hear that from?”
“Melissa stopped by tonight to see you. She told me.”
“Oh.”
“You miss her?”
“Yeah, I guess I do.”
“I like her. She went outta her way to say hello to me.” She finished one cigarette and put it out in an ashtray sitting on a table next to her before lighting another one. “When you gonna have your boys over again?”
“Next weekend. We’re going to Disneyland. They say they’re sick of it but I know they always have a good time.”
She blew out a puff of smoke and took a sip out of a can of beer. “I ever tell you I got kids?”
“No.”
“I got three. One of ‘em, Cindy, my youngest, still lives round here. My two boys moved though. I think to Vegas but I don’t know. I ain’t talked to ‘em since Clinton was president. I remember that cause Clinton was on the tv last time I talked to ‘em lyin’ through his teeth about blow jobs or somethin’.”
“You know what the president of France said when he heard Clinton got a blow job in the White House?”