Harris County Jail, Houston, Texas
Contrary to the universal depictions on TV, the Harris County lockup did not have the row of booths separated by Plexiglas with telephone handsets on either side. Instead, four rows of cafeteria tables, with uncomfortable benches and indelible plastic tops, were arranged under the watchful eyes of four armed deputies and four surveillance cameras.
Karen Stokes sat at one of the tables, watching her youngest son enter the room, the orange jumpsuit hanging loosely from his wide shoulders. He seemed so young, so innocent. She didn't see a man almost thirty-five years old. She saw her baby boy, the one who always ran to keep up with his brothers, little legs churning as he raced after them down the street.
When he saw her, his face set in that stubborn look she knew so well. He looked exactly like his father when he did that, for good or bad. She rose, and despite all the years she had spent as a public defender, all the times she had been in rooms like this in jails across Texas and much of the southwest, she still moved to hug him as he came to the table.
"Um, Ma'am," said the guard with almost embarrassed formality, nodding to the sign posted on all four walls.
"No touching."
"No loud voices."
"No exchanges of items."
"No photographs or recordings."
"Oh," she muttered, flustered. "Of course. Um, hello, Nicky. We've missed you."
He stood, and might have left, had the guard not placed a hand on his shoulder. Her son looked at the guard, and shrugged. He sat down, handcuffs clanking dully on the plastic tabletop.
The guard took three steps back, to a taped line on the floor, which theoretically offered them a measure of privacy. Karen swallowed hard and tried to sound cheerful.
"I've been over this with your father, and he agrees that we should get Cameron Little to take over your representation, before the arraignment if we can do it. At the very least we need to get you out on bail and home so we can discuss what to do about all of this dreadful mess."
He finally spoke.
"Go home, mom."
"What?" She shook her head. "Now Nicholas, you may think that I'm just another fretful mother looking out for her son, but I've been working as a PD in this state for almost 45 years. I still have my license, and I'll defend you myself if I have to."
"No, mom."
"Your father will resign the bench, Nicholas, if he has to. We're not going to sit here!"
"Yes, you are." He leaned forward, so intently that the polite guard perked up a bit and watched carefully as Nicky spoke in urgent tones to Karen.
"I have to ask you to trust me, mom, and that I know what I have to do. Don't make calls, don't call in favors, and don't say anything to the press or anyone except 'No comment.' I have to know that you'll do that for me, mom."
He waited, looking at her with an intensity she did not remember. Who was he? Who was this young man with the soft voice and the red-rimmed eyes, the outthrust chin and the big hands making and releasing fists on the table? Where was her baby?
"You can't tell me anything at all?" She watched him, watched him struggle for just a moment, and all her years as a lawyer told her that he was trying not to lie to her.
"How's Lauren?" The question caught her off guard. She blinked away a tear and nodded her head.
"She's good. She's sick. Very sick. But good, you know how it is. We, we haven't told her, anything. About this." She gestured vaguely around the room.
"Good." He stood up. "I have to go. Give a message to dad, would you?"
The guard moved in to take Nick by the shoulder and steer him back to the lockup.
Karen rose, and held the edge of the table for support as age and emotion dueled with balance for a moment.
"Tell him I'm pleading guilty. He should know what that means."
She watched, the world spinning slowly around her, as her youngest son was taken back to his cell. She left, passing though the security checkpoints and claiming her purse and phone and keys in a daze.
She headed back to the hotel, wondering what Justice Jack Stokes would have to say when he arrived from Dallas in a few hours. Maybe he'd understand and tell her what was going on. More likely, they'd both put a brave face on it and try to bluff their way through, trusting in the end that they had done their jobs and raised Nick right. She wanted to have faith in him, wanted to believe it would all work out.
In the back of her mind, she saw a four year old with short legs churning, arms pumping, racing down across the lawns of the neighborhood, shouting, "Wait for me! Wait for me!" to the backs of his older brothers.
- - -
Captain Jim Brass' office, LVPD, Las Vegas, Nevada
Brass looked into his coffee cup, watching two fingers of bourbon swirl around the indelible stain of too much bad coffee. The sour taste in his mouth had been there all day, but the bourbon wasn't helping.
He took another pull and swallowed, ignoring the taste. That's not what it was for. He looked again into his cup, like reading tealeaves, but the future was a dark stain, drenched in alcohol older than some of his rookies. Maybe there was something to that fortune-telling thing after all.
"Again?" His guest was holding out the bottle, one eyebrow raised. His voice was soft and cold in the dark office, lit only by the glow of the muted TV. They had all been watching the same reports, the local commentary or the live feeds from Dallas.
"No thanks. I'm…" he had been about to say 'I'm good,' but it wasn't true. "I'm tired."
"Me too," allowed his guest, taking another long drink from the cup of bourbon he held, settling his feet back up on Brass' desk. "I thought we'd learn more. Anything. I figured we'd learn something."
"Gil," Brass said, rubbing his red knuckles over his tired eyes, "we learned nothing. Nearly nothing. Sealed indictments, plea bargains. It's got to be drugs, or maybe RICO. Something the Feds leaned on the Dallas PD for, right?"
"Nick drove a cruiser for Dallas PD," Grissom remembered, wearing a groove in the record they had been spinning all day. "Three years, then Houston for the degree, then one year as an intern there, and then here."
Grissom lowered his feet from the desk and finished his drink.
"Son of a judge, former cop, with a conspiracy charge and accessory to conspiracy. How tough is it going to be, Jim?"
Brass closed his eyes. "It's gonna be tough, Gil. Huntsville time is hard time, what the locals call your bad actors. If they leave him in General Population, I give him six months, maybe a year. They put him in Unit 5, with the cop-killers and serial offenders, he actually might do better. More guards, less hanky panky. Still, I give him a year, maybe two."
Gil placed the bottle of bourbon back onto Brass' desk with the deliberation and exaggerated care of the thoughtful drunk.
"They gave him a lot more than two years, Jim."
Brass stood up, and turned off the TV, letting the office fade into darkness as they headed out the door.
"I know they did, Gil. I know."
- - -
Transfer/Intake Prep area, Huntsville State Penitentiary, Huntsville, Texas
His biceps, uncovered in the strap-shouldered t-shirt he had been issued, were well muscled but pale, smooth with the pallor of the night shift and four months in lockup prior to the trial. His hands, neat nails and soft fingertips, used to delicate work, but with a few distended knuckles from old injuries, gripped the arms of the barber chair with casual strength.
He knew without being told that the arms of this chair included wrist straps that could have secured a man twice his strength. Instead, he sat, eyes fixed on his reflection in the hazy metal mirror that hung in front of the barber chair.
The barber, a Trustee named Morely with a facial tic and the nimble hands of a pickpocket, ran the clippers from Nick's brow straight up and back over his crown, down to the nape of his neck. Dense, wavy brown hair fell away, and Nick blinked the stray hairs out of his thick lashes.
"So's you got friends here, fish?" Morely spoke softly, not whispering but not calling attention to himself. "Pretty-looking white boy like yourself, you might wanna get yourself some friends here, fish. I could put a word in."
"No thanks." Nick stared straight ahead, holding his own gaze in the mirror and the right side of his scalp was reduced to pale stubble.
"Don't you think you're too smart, fish," Morely droned on, moving to trim off the rest of Nick's hair. "Take more than a flat top cut to get you along inside. It'll take friends, like, uh…"
His words cut off along with his clippers, and he stood back a moment, just for a moment, surprised and a little uncertain. As the hair fell away behind Nick Stokes' left ear, the blued black arms of a swastika tattoo were clearly revealed on his scalp. Nick continued to stare into the mirror, at the lantern jaw and the normally expressive mouth fixed in a thin line, the normally lively eyes now two points of darkness, holes in the cloth of the night, feral and primal and almost deceptively sleepy looking.
Nick stood up.
"I don't need friends, old timer," Nick told the barber, rolling his head from side to side and working the tension out of his neck. "I just need time. Oh, and call me fish or newbie or meat, anything funny like that again? I'll cut out your tongue with your own razor. See you around."
The guards moved in and put his shackles back on, and they moved him across the unit towards the cellblock where he would be spending the next fifteen years of his life, without the possibility of parole. He held his head up, his shoulders back, and he said not a word as they delivered him into the maximum-security block of Unit 5.
- - -
An Apartment, Las Vegas, Nevada
She took another sip of wine, the dark red merlot sliding across her tongue and going down easily. She was taking small sips, trying to really taste the wine. She knew that she could very well let another day slip away from her, sitting in her matching black cotton tee and panties, drinking merlot and re-reading the letter.
She held it in her hands, and she felt the contrast of the cheap, slick paper and the expensive, delicate stem of her wine glass. It was almost noon, and she was running out of merlot. Closing her eyes, she unfolded the paper carefully, reluctantly setting down her glass on top of a dog-eared copy of Lee's Crime Scene Handbook.
She opened her eyes, and once more read the words he had written, and had left for her.
Dear Sara,
I'm sorry I can't be there to explain to you, to all y'all, what has happened. Maybe some of it can't be explained. I can't tell you anything here, since if knowledge of this letter were to come out, I'm sure you would be subpoenaed. I don't want anyone else getting into trouble for things I have done.
You have always been a friend, and I figure you more than most can understand that choices we make, or don't make, well... I don't mean to be cryptic. Maybe someday I'll be able to explain it all for you.
For now, know this: Many of the things they'll be saying about me aren't true. Sadly, some of them are. All of that aside, I still am the guy you knew, and don't let them make y'all think I was something different.
Your friend,
N
She looked at her empty glass, and then to the empty bottle. She could either open that bottle of chardonnay and start mixing her wines, of she could take a shower, maybe go for a run. Running would let her work out her anger and her frustration, would sweat out the alcohol and the bitterness.
The chardonnay would numb the pain and the confusion, and let her stay in this reflective place, mulling over what had happened. The chardonnay would buy her another two or three hours, trading weakness for regret and disbelief. Kicking the blanket off her bare legs, she got up off the couch.
She walked past her sweats and running shoes, into the kitchen. She opened the chardonnay.
- - -
Cell 1138, Huntsville, Texas
"So, where you from? It true you was a cop once?"
The voice came from below him, high and clear in soft tones. Nick had avoided anything but names when he was brought into his cell, but his cellmate, Tucker, had not given up trying to draw him into conversation. Now, with the lights out on his second night in the cell, Nick was wearing down.
"I hear you're from Texas. Local boy." Tucker could talk for hours, and did, without regard to whether he received any response. "Not me. I'm from Louisiana. Not that crappy Bubba Gump po' white trash shit neither, I'm from Shreveport. Well, that's where I was living before. Originally I'm from Metairie."
"Do you ever shut up?" Nick wondered aloud.
"Well he speaks!" Tucker pounced on Nick's words. "Howdy, partner! Shit, thought I was gonna have to carry both sides of this conversation for the next fifteen years."
"Please, shut up," Nick sighed.
"Well, fuck me for a three-dollar whore, ain't you polite?" Tucker chuckled at his own wit. "Listen pal, you gotta learn, in here you are either begging or ordering. There's no choice C, it's one or the other. Now me, I'm a beggar. The first time I tried ordering somebody around in here, they broke out my front teeth, know what I mean."
Nick knew that convicts would sometimes knock the teeth out of their bitches' mouths, to prevent them from resisting forced oral sex. It had been part of the preparation he had done waiting for his trial, studying the prison culture. He reflexively checked his own teeth with the tip of his tongue.
"Okay, then, shut up." He smirked in the darkness. "That's an order."
"Very funny, Nicky. Funny guy. Tell you what, you talk to Bobby the Wolf like that, some of those wop boys, see how that flies a'ight? Or maybe you want to carve out a piece of the Aryans. I saw the tat when you was sleeping this morning. It'll take a fuck lot more than a tattoo to get in with the Aryans. Them boys is crazy, especially Otto. I heard he had one of his own boys shanked for letting some Latino finish pissing when Otto was on his way to the can. That muthafucker's harsh."
"Tucker, you don't shut up and let me sleep, you'll dream of crazy Otto and his boys, got it? He hoped he sounded harsh.
Tucker quieted, muttering for a few more minutes but not trying any more direct chitchat.
Nick stared at the ceiling, letting the dark wrap him like a blanket. Tomorrow, he'd exercise in the yard. Tomorrow he'd meet Otto, or some of his boys. Tomorrow he'd start working on his plan to get out of this place.
Assuming, as always, that he lived through the night.