Hostage Zero

“Comfortable is not the word,” Brady said. “Not when you factor in the mission. But I am certainly a regular. Secretly, I think they all want me to prevail in the cases I represent.”

“Murderers?” Gail’s voice demonstrated more shock than she wanted it to.

“Human beings,” Brady corrected. “Over the years, the corrections staff develops relationships with these men. It’s hard to watch them walk off to their deaths for crimes that were committed so long ago.” As they approached yet another door, the attorney added, almost to herself, “If politicians were half as human as the worst of these guys, we’d be done with sanctioned murder.”

Under the circumstances, those were the politics that Gail had expected.

“Sometime soon,” Brady continued as they walked, “probably in the next three or four days, they’ll transfer Frank to the death house at Greensville. That’s about thirty-five miles from here. I’ve even seen a few tears among these COs when inmates depart for the final trip. This is an emotional business.”

For reasons that no doubt made sense to someone, the Commonwealth of Virginia had decided to separate death row from the execution chamber. In fact, the death house was located in a medium-security prison. You had to love bureaucrats.

After another door, Gail and Brady arrived at the tiny glass-walled interview room. To Gail’s utter shock, the furniture was spotless-shiny, even, carrying forward that oppressive, astringent sterility.

“You know I’ve got to have the recorder on, right, Marie?” the guard asked, his first words since they started their long walk.

“I do,” Brady replied with a smile. To Gail, she explained, “Normally, my talks with Frank are privileged. But since you’re not an attorney, and you’ll be hearing what he says, the state gets to listen in, too.”

Gail found this alarming, though she could not say why.

“That explains the importance of all questions being directed at me,” Brady went on. “If anything you ask even knocks on the door of something Frank shouldn’t be saying, I’ll cut you both off. I’ll ask you not to question that decision until after we are out of the prison.”

Gail agreed. The lawyer was impressive, she thought. It wasn’t everybody who could rattle off instructions like that and not seem patronizing or haughty.

Within a minute or two, a door opened on the opposite side of the room from where they’d entered, and a different guard escorted Frank Schuler into the room in a full shackle rig. He looked twenty years older than his eight-year-old induction photo. Thin to the point of appearing frail, he sported a pate of sparse gray hair. He moved with the institutional shuffle of a lifer. He needed no instruction as he turned to make his wrists more accessible to the correctional officer’s key.

With his hands free, and clearly resigned to his ankles remaining restrained, he shuffled to the table and accepted Brady’s warm embrace. “They said something about Jeremy,” he said in a rush. “Do you know something? Tell me it’s good news.”

“Frank, this is Gail Bonneville, a private investigator from Fisherman’s Cove.”

Recognition came instantly. “That’s the town where the school is,” he said.

Gail offered her hand, and he eagerly shook it. “It is the same town, but I’m afraid I have no news for you,” she said. The lie tasted especially foul under these circumstances.

The prisoner’s face fell. “Then why are you here?”

Gail indicated the chairs. “Let’s sit.”

“Let’s stand,” Schuler countered. “Why are you here?” Desperate fear emanated from him like a hot flash.

“I’ve been hired by the school to do an independent investigation.”

“How could something like this happen?” Schuler said, his institutional pallor reddening along his jawline. “They’re children, for God’s sake! Why isn’t there security?”

Gail again swallowed the temptation to set his mind at ease. “I’m working for Resurrection House, Mr. Schuler. I don’t work at Resurrection House. I’m trying to get a handle on who might have taken your son, and why they would have done it.”

“How about finding where they took him?”

Gail paused before answering, a tactic used in interviews to take some of the wind out of angry people’s sails. “It’s all part of the same packet, sir. We’re hoping that the who and the why will lead us to the where. I know you’re upset-”

“You think?”

“-but ranting about what is past does nothing to advance the future.” Gail tuned her voice to being the ultimate in reasonableness.

The redness deepened in Schuler’s face, but something changed behind his eyes. He shot a look to his lawyer.

“She’s the real deal,” Marie said. “I think you should talk to her.”

A moment passed in which no one moved.

“Let’s sit,” Brady said, pulling a chair out for herself. With that, it was done. She’d let him vent a little, let Gail respond, and now it was time to get on with the business at hand.