Текст книги "Dance of the Bones"

Автор книги: J. A. Jance

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 14 (всего у книги 22 страниц)

CHAPTER 19

ON THE WAY BACK TO the village, Turtle and the children met Horned Toad—Mo’ochwig. Turtle asked Horned Toad to go tell the women that Shining Falls had been hurt and that he, Turtle, was bringing the children home. Horned Toad ran quickly to carry the message. As soon as the women in the village heard the news, they hurried up the mountain—some to meet Turtle and the children and some to help Shining Falls. But when they reached Shining Falls, the Evil Giantess was already lifting her up.

Ho’ok O’oks told them, “There is no place in your village for someone who is sick. I will take this girl to my home in the mountains, the one that is made of saguaro sticks.”

Because they were afraid of the Evil Giantess, the women consented, but they brought a bed and some food to the shelter, and sometimes they sat with Shining Falls.

Ho’ok O’oks told the women it was foolish for them to waste their time looking after a sick girl. “I am a medicine woman,” she said. “I will sing the songs and bring the medicine that will make her well.”

Ho’ok O’oks went away and returned with a bag of feathers. Some of the feathers were gray, some were white, and some were red. Ho’ok O’oks put the gray feathers around the girl’s injured foot, then she waved the red and white feathers over Shining Falls’s face. Slowly the girl’s eyes closed.

When the women saw this, they decided it was time to return to their work, but the next day, when they returned, Shining Falls was still sleeping.

WHEN I MADE IT BACK to our condo at Belltown Terrace in the early afternoon, I was not a happy camper. I do not like to shop. I have never liked shopping. I hated it back in the old days when Karen and I were married and we didn’t have two nickels to rub together. My financial situation has changed remarkably since then, but my attitude toward shopping remains the same. So after spending most of the morning and part of the afternoon being dragged from one furniture emporium to another with Jim Hunt, our interior designer, I was beat and cranky.

And my mood didn’t improve when I found a message on my machine from some guy named Brandon Walker, claiming he was a friend of Ralph Ames. He said he was hoping I could give him some help with a case he was working for Ralph’s cold case group, TLC.

My initial assumption, of course, was that Mel had somehow ratted me out to Ralph. I suspected that the two of them were conspiring behind my back to bring me into the TLC fold whether I wanted to be involved or not.

Still, I went ahead and returned the call because that’s who I am—someone who returns calls rather than ignores them—but I wasn’t exactly cordial.

“Brandon Walker?”

“Yes.”

“J. P. Beaumont here. You called?”

“I hope you don’t mind,” he said, sounding genuinely apologetic. “I believe I mentioned this in my message—I got your number from Ralph Ames. Do you know anything about TLC?”

“Some,” I admitted with a singular lack of enthusiasm. My terse answers weren’t exactly encouraging, and neither was my tone of voice, but Walker plowed on anyway.

“I’m working a case down here in Arizona that may have connections to a cold case from up your way. I’m looking for some help.”

“Which case?”

“The dead guy’s name is Kenneth Myers,” he told me. “At least that’s the name he was going by up in Seattle at the time of his death. Down here he was known as Kenneth Mangum. His mother had reported him missing years earlier, but because of the name confusion, it took a long time before someone up there connected your cold case with the missing persons report in Arizona.”

“What time frame are we talking about?” I asked.

“Hold on. I have some files here that may include all those details, but I’ll need to go out to the car to look through them. Do you want me to call back, or do you want to hang on?”

“Tell you what,” I said. “Why don’t you call me back in ten?” As soon as the call ended, I immediately dialed Ralph’s number. “I’m sure you and Mel have been burning up the phone lines this morning,” I grumbled when he came on the line.

“We’ve done no such thing,” Ralph replied. “In fact I haven’t spoken to Mel since right after you managed to drag her out of the trunk of that car. What’s she up to these days? Keeping out of trouble, I hope.”

“I hope so, too,” I said. “She’s spending the weekend in D.C. at a Homeland Security conference.”

“Tell her hello from me when she gets back,” Ralph said. “Now, what do you need?”

“What’s the deal with Brandon Walker?” I asked.

“He’s a good guy who used to be sheriff down south in Pima County,” Ralph answered. “He’s been a part of TLC not quite from the beginning, but close. He’s a neat guy. I like him. His wife, Diana Ladd, is a fairly well-known author. I think she and Mel would hit it off.”

Ralph’s enthusiasm resembled that of a matchmaker setting up a blind date. I wasn’t amused. I didn’t figure Brandon Walker and I would ever be best buds, and neither would our wives.

“Tell me the truth, Ralph. Was Walker’s call today purely coincidental, or did you and Mel join forces to sic him on me?”

“Mel and I are innocent of all charges,” Ralph assured me. “I didn’t know a thing about any of this until Brandon called me this morning asking for your number.”

“All right,” I said grudgingly, “I’ll hear him out. In fact, he’s calling back right now. Gotta go.” I switched over to the other line. “That didn’t take long.”

“Look,” Walker said. “I can tell you’re not thrilled to have me intruding on your weekend. This case is an odd one, and if you’re not interested in helping . . .”

Odd is something that appeals to me. “What makes it odd?” I asked.

“The initial homicide, the one I’m working on, happened forty-plus years ago. A guy named John Lassiter was convicted—twice over—of murdering a former pal of his, someone named Amos Warren. I was the investigating officer on that original case, and Lassiter has been in prison for thirty years or so. An outfit named Justice for All recently negotiated a plea deal, but he won’t take it—because he won’t plead guilty to something he didn’t do.”

“Surprise, surprise,” I muttered. “Where have I heard that before? You didn’t fall for that old line, did you? Is Lassiter the one asking you to reinvestigate the case?”

“Earlier this morning I talked to Lassiter’s daughter, Amanda Wasser. She’s the one who got JFA involved, but, yeah, Lassiter asked to see me because of my connection to TLC. The guy who prosecuted Lassiter isn’t exactly pure as the driven snow, so I decided to do some asking around. A few minutes ago, I finished interviewing Lassiter himself. I’m going with my gut here, but I think he’s the real deal.”

Walker may have been a believer, but I wasn’t. Busting my butt for a convicted killer wasn’t my idea of how to spend a quiet Saturday afternoon. Still, I was a little curious about the unsolved case here in Washington.

“What about the other case you mentioned,” I asked, “the one up here? Can you give me any further details on that?”

“I have a box full of paper files,” Walker said, “but I don’t want to try going over those by phone. Lassiter’s daughter has been amassing information on the case for years. That’s the box of files I just told you about, but she says she has digital copies of everything she gave me. If you would give me your e-mail address, I can have her send you the digital copies of everything pertaining to the Kenneth Myers homicide.”

I gave him my e-mail address. “Tell her she’s welcome to send me the stuff, but I’m not making any promises.”

The call ended. I made myself some coffee, went into the family room, took a seat in my not-recliner, and picked up my computer. I intended to send Mel a note telling her about what Jim and I had found on our shopping spree along with photos of what we’d ordered, but when I opened my mail program I found a series of e-mails from [email protected]. The first one was entitled SPD. Archives. KMyers.

I opened the attached file, intending to glance at it briefly and move on, but I didn’t.

The first page was nothing more or less than your basic bureaucratic CYA disclaimer:

The following information is being sent to Ms. Amanda Wasser in answer to her request under the Freedom of Information Act. It is the policy of the Seattle Police Department to cooperate fully with such requests when releasing information to the public is not considered to be detrimental to ongoing investigations.

The next page included an overview along with photos of the items in the evidence box, and there wasn’t much: a frayed leather belt, the remains of a pair of leather shoes, a gold pendant engraved with the names Calliope Horn and Ken Myers, a pair of prescription glasses, and two bullet fragments that were identified as .22 longs. There was no notation that the fragments had been sent out for testing, but that was hardly surprising—that kind of testing costs money. After all, solving cold cases wasn’t necessarily a top priority back in the early ’90s, and since these were skeletal remains only, the Kenneth Myers case was stone cold from day one.

But this was a new century and a new time in solving cold cases. Before continuing, I made a note to myself to ask my friend Seattle PD assistant chief Ron Peters to have the two .22 bullets sent to National Ballistics Laboratory.

The next scanned page revealed the cover sheet of what I easily recognized as an SPD murder book. In the middle of the page was a struck-through John Doe. Written in pen next to it was another name: Kenneth Myers a.k.a. Kenneth Mangum. The next page, the one listing the names of investigating officers, was the one that stopped me cold. Three names leaped out at me: Detective S. Danielson; Detective P. Kramer; and Special Homicide Investigator M. Soames.

Sue Danielson is someone I see often because all these years later she still haunts my dreams. We were working as partners when she died in a shoot-out with her estranged husband. Realistically I know that her death was an act of domestic violence and that it was not my fault. Still, that doesn’t keep me from blaming myself and torturing myself with questions about what I could have done that would have meant the difference between Sue’s living and dying.

Phil Kramer was and is a jerk—a brownnosing, butt-kissing clown, whose undeserved—as far as I’m concerned—promotion to captain shortly after Sue’s death was the catalyst that caused me to pull the plug on my career at Seattle PD.

Then, of course, there’s Mel. She’s my wife, but one of the jobs she was tasked with on Ross Connors’s Special Homicide Investigation Team was searching through multistate missing persons files and trying to match those reports with unidentified homicide victims in Washington State.

Ignoring my coffee, I performed my first duty as one of Ralph Ames’s TLC volunteers. I settled in to read.

AGAIN GABE AWAKENED IN DARKNESS. This time, the first thing he realized was that the truck wasn’t moving. Then, somewhere nearby, he heard a strange buzzing sound. It took a moment for him to recognize what it was—the sound of a cell phone buzzing because the ringer had been turned off. It wasn’t his phone. If it were, he would have felt it. That meant the phone belonged to the other prisoner. He still didn’t know for sure if his fellow inmate was Tim. What was important was that someone was calling—someone was trying to reach them, but neither of them could answer. Moving closer, he was able to touch his companion’s pocket and feel the phone through the cloth. Before he could extricate it, the phone gave one last buzz and fell silent.

Frustrated and helpless, Gabe resumed his former position. “Are you awake?” he attempted to mumble through the tape. What actually came out of his mouth was nothing more than a garbled moan, but an answering moan told him that his companion wasn’t sleeping.

That was when Gabe realized that he needed to pee, desperately, and there was nothing for it but to do it, letting the wet warmth run through his underwear and puddle around his butt. When the urine encountered the entrance wounds from the cactus, it hurt like hell. Surprisingly enough, that shocked him out of his strange lethargy.

If he’d been Lani, he might have tried singing a song just then, a song to Elder Brother asking for help, but he doubted I’itoi would be listening. Gabe needed help that was closer at hand.

Then he remembered something important about his friend Timmy. Tim was actually several months older than Gabe. For Tim’s birthday, just after Christmas, Carlos and Paul had given their little brother his heart’s desire—a switchblade knife. The school campus was, of course, a weapon-free zone. There were signs on every door that said so. That didn’t mean, however, that any of the kids paid attention. Timmy, who liked to carve his initials on trees and to whittle little figurines out of pieces of mesquite, took his knife to school with him every day, wearing it tucked inside his sock.

It occurred to Gabe that if Henry Rojas hadn’t been smart enough to take his prisoner’s cell phone away, maybe he had failed to go looking for a possible weapon as well.

With some effort, Gabe managed to use one of his shoes to peel off the other. Then he ran his sock-covered foot along the pant leg of the person lying beside him. It took only a matter of seconds for him to find it. The knife was here—he felt it under the cloth. If Tim was bound the same way Gabe was, the knife would be out of Tim’s reach, but with any kind of luck, maybe Gabe could retrieve the knife and somehow manage to cut them both loose.

Knowing the knife was there and being able to lay hands on it, however, were two different things. It took time to figure out how to approach the problem. Finally, by throwing his legs over Tim’s in a way that formed a human X, Gabe was able to slither snakelike far enough down that his fingers touched the handle of the knife. Extricating it from the sock was another whole exercise that left Gabe out of breath, sweating and exhausted.

Back in his original position he had to rest for a bit—rest and think. How much time had passed? Was it day or night? Their cage—that’s how he thought of it—was gradually heating up, probably due to the warmth of the two bodies trapped inside it and maybe from sunlight, too—but not direct sunlight. Even in March, if the black truck had been parked in the sun, the boys would have died from heatstroke by now. So where were they then? Gabe suspected the truck was parked inside some kind of shaded structure, far enough off the road that there were no sounds of passing vehicles.

Why do we still have air? Gabe wondered. There had to be some form of ventilation that he couldn’t see. Were there ventilation holes that kept them from running out of oxygen? If so, he wondered if that meant that he and Tim weren’t the only people who had been transported in the back of Henry Rojas’s pickup truck.

Tim moved impatiently beside him as if to say, What’s the holdup?

Somewhat rested now, Gabe clicked the button. The knife sprang open with such force that it almost shot out of his hand. It was awkward to hold it, but Gabe was gratified to discover that his exertions had somehow weakened the grip of his restraints. He had more range of movement than he’d had earlier. That meant that he should probably be the one wielding the knife blade, even though he’d be working in the dark. And, clumsy as he was, he’d be working with his right hand. If Tim used the knife, he’d be using his left.

Gritting his teeth, dreading that the smallest slip of the blade might mean slicing into Tim’s arm, Gabe snuggled over until their two bodies were once again touching. Then, after ascertaining where the tape started and stopped as best he could, he began to pick away with the tip of the razor-sharp blade. He couldn’t see in the dark, but biting his lip, he concentrated as though he could and hoped that I’itoi or maybe one of the night-flying bats that had filled his dreams would be there to help him.

As he did so, Gabe felt a surprising sense of joy rise in his heart. He was doing something. He was taking action, and for a change he wasn’t afraid.

Maybe I’itoi had heard him after all.

CHAPTER 20

THE NEXT DAY, NAWOJ, MY friend, when the women came again, Shining Falls was still sleeping. The women tried to awaken her, but she would not open her eyes. The women were frightened. When they tried to question the Evil Giantess, Ho’ok O’oks hid in the black cloud of her hair and would not answer them.

But there was one thing the Evil Giantess did not know and that the Indian women did not know, either. While Ho’ok O’oks was singing and waving the feathers over Shining Falls’s face, she had dropped a single white feather. It was Alichum S-toha A’an—Little White Feather. Shining Falls had put her hand over it, and while she lay sleeping, she held Little White Feather ever so tightly in her hand.

After a time, Little White Feather grew very tired from the weight of Shining Falls’s hand and cried out for help. Some White-Winged Doves—O-okokoi—heard Little White Feather’s cry for help. It was really a song, and it goes like this:

White Feather, White Feather, child of my mother,

You in the air look down on your brother.

Alone am I here in pain and in trouble.

One of the White-Winged Doves said to the others, “Why, I believe that is one of my feathers calling to us.”

You must understand, nawoj, my friend, that it is the law of the desert that you must always answer a call for help, so the White-Winged Doves circled in the air to try to learn what the trouble was.

BRANDON WAS SPEEDING SOUTH ON Highway 77 when his phone rang. He answered it through the Escalade’s sound system, and Diana’s voice came out through the speakers.

“Have you talked to Lani today?” she asked with no preamble—without asking where Brandon was or what he was doing. That was unusual in and of itself.

“No, why?”

“Gabe’s gone missing,” she said.

“From Kitt Peak?” Brandon asked. That was the last thing he had known about the weekend’s plans—that Gabe and Lani were going to camp out on the mountain on Friday night and that the whole family planned to make a daylong expedition to the book festival in Tucson on Sunday.

“Not exactly,” Diana said. “Gabe and Lani evidently got into some kind of hassle, and he walked off the mountain. He made it home, but now no one can find him. Later, after Gabe left, Lani witnessed a shooting—heard it rather than saw it—in which two boys from Sells were killed. It’s a mess, and Lani’s really upset about it, but I have another panel to go to . . .”

“Not to worry,” Brandon said. “I’ll call her right now.”

He did so. “What’s going on?” he asked when Lani answered.

“You’re not going to believe it.”

“Try me.”

Brandon listened patiently to the whole story, but he noticed there were undertones of things not said. “I know Gabe,” Brandon said when Lani finally came to a stop. “He’s a good kid. And I’ve met Tim, too. I can’t imagine either of them getting mixed up in any kind of smuggling enterprise.”

“I believe it all started with one of Tim’s older brothers. Max was caught up in it to begin with. Then, after he got sent up for something or other, he must have passed his part of the business on to his younger brothers.”

Brandon and Lani had always been close, and he could tell from her voice that she was holding back.

“Okay,” he said, after a moment. “You’ve told me Dan and Leo are out looking for the boys, but I get the feeling that you left out a few pertinent details. How about telling me the rest of it?”

His question seemed to catch her off guard. “How did you know?” she asked.

“You’ve never been that good of a liar. Now spit it out.”

“I don’t think Gabe and Tim are just missing, Dad,” she said at last. “I think it’s worse than that. I’m afraid they’re both dead—Tim for sure and maybe Gabe, too.”

“Why?”

“Because there was another shot, one I haven’t mentioned to anyone but you,” she said. “A while after the first two volleys of automatic gunfire, I heard another shot, a single one that time. I couldn’t tell exactly where it came from, but it sounded like it was close enough to Rattlesnake Skull charco that it could be related.”

“You’re saying you think whoever killed Carlos and Paul José may have killed Tim, too?”

“Yes,” Lani answered, her voice trembling with emotion. “The poor kid is probably lying out there in the desert in a place where we’ll never find the body. I know the FBI agents are aware Tim has a phone, but I’m not sure they’ll be in any hurry to put a tracer on it. Finding the phone might not show us where he is now, but it would be a starting point.”

“Surely the FBI will get right on that.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“Why?”

“Remember how you always used to complain about having to work with the FBI?”

“I do, but what does that have to do with this?”

“Believe me, it would have been a lot worse if you’d been Indian instead of Anglo back then,” she said. “That female agent barely gave me the time of day. The FBI probably will get around to tracing Tim’s phone, but only when they’re good and ready and have a properly drawn search warrant in hand. Tim José is an Indian, Dad. When it comes to Indian kids, you could say the FBI has no real sense of urgency. I need to find someone who will go looking for Tim’s phone right now. Do you know of anyone who could do that for us, maybe someone from TLC?”

“Not offhand,” Brandon answered. “TLC’s brief is with cold cases rather than new ones, and I’d hate to think about what will happen if we get caught up in the middle of an active FBI investigation. Still, let me give it some thought. I’m coming up on Oro Valley right now. I may stop and grab a bite to eat. Give me a call if you hear anything about those boys, will you?”

“Yes,” she promised. “I’ll be sure to let you know.”

“And don’t worry,” Brandon added. “It’ll be okay.”

That’s what he told his daughter, but it was an outright lie. Brandon had been in law enforcement long enough to understand that if Gabe Ortiz and Tim José had gotten themselves crosswise with drug smugglers, they were most likely already dead, just as Lani feared. Brandon also knew that losing Gabe would break Lani’s heart, and she was the one Brandon was worried about.

That’s what fathers do where their daughters’ hearts are concerned. They worry.

I WON’T PRETEND THAT READING through the Kenneth Myers murder book was easy. Most of the entries were written in Sue Danielson’s back-slanted handwriting. Seeing that again after all those years came as a shock, and it wasn’t surprising that it was sometimes difficult to read the words themselves because tears kept blurring my eyes.

The skeletal remains had been discovered in 1990 by a highway department crew clearing brush during the completion of the I-90/I-5 interchange. The case had been assigned to Detectives Kramer and Danielson. There were autopsy notes showing some blunt force trauma, but the presumed cause of death was a shooting; two close-range bullet holes were in the back of the skull, either one of which would have been fatal.

A search of public records for the names on the pendant, Ken Myers and Calliope Horn, had eventually led Kramer and Danielson to a woman named Calliope Horn, who had in turn identified the dead man as someone named Ken Myers, Calliope’s former boyfriend, who had gone missing from a transient encampment in 1983.

That piece of information itself went a long way to explain why so little had ever been done. At the time, bum-bashing was more or less a popular spectator sport. Hazing at UDub fraternities often included tracking down bums and beating the crap out of them. If one of them died? It was no big deal because nobody really cared. In fact, I distinctly remembered Kramer waxing eloquent on the topic one day in the break room—talking about how taking down people like that was doing society a favor. I couldn’t help but wonder now if he and Sue had been working this very case at the time.

With that in mind, it was no surprise that Sue Danielson had done the lion’s share of the work. She was the one who had tracked down Calliope Horn and done the interview. I knew I could go down to Seattle PD and request a look at the interview tape. It wasn’t something I was looking forward to, because I dreaded seeing Sue’s face again. But it turned out I didn’t have to, because Amanda Wasser had worked her Freedom of Information Act magic. The next file I opened included a PDF transcript of the Danielson/Horn interview.

Transcripts are to interviews as raisins are to grapes. They’re lifeless and flat. They don’t contain the facial expressions and hand gestures that let homicide cops know when someone is lying, but they can still deliver a lot of information, even when done—as this one evidently had been—with some low-cost character recognition program that couldn’t make heads or tails of either Calliope or Puyallup. Fortunately I was able to fill in those information gaps, telling myself all the while that if I needed to see the tape itself, I could always do so. But even with the character-recognition difficulties, I could see that Sue hadn’t exactly handled Calliope Horn with kid gloves.

S.D.: For identification purposes, your name is Calliope Maxwell Horn and you were born in Puyallup, Washington?

C.H.: That’s right, that’s who I am, but why did you bring me here? Am I under arrest? What’s going on?

S.D.: You’re not under arrest, but tell me. Were you once in a relationship with someone named Ken Myers?

C.H.: Yes, I was. It was a long time ago. Kenny and I were sort of engaged. I mean, I didn’t have a ring or anything, but he’d asked me to marry him, and I’d said yes, but then he took off for Arizona. He told me that when he came back he’d have enough money that we’d be set. We’d be able to get our own apartment and start over. That’s what he told me, but it’s also the last thing he ever said to me. He left, and I never saw him again. But you still haven’t explained why I’m here.

S.D.: Are you aware that human remains were discovered last week at the I-90/I-5 interchange?

C.H.: I guess I saw something about that in the paper. But what does that have to do with me?

S.D.: The victim, a male in his late twenties or early thirties, died of homicidal violence, shot in the back of the head with a .22. I’m sorry to tell you that he was wearing a pendant shaped like a heart, with two names engraved on it—Calliope Horn and Ken Myers. If I’m not mistaken, you’re wearing a similar item. Is this one engraved the same way?

C.H.: (nodding) I still wear it. (holding up a necklace) He didn’t have enough money for a ring, so he got us matching pendants instead. But are you saying Kenny is dead? That he never went to Arizona? That he died right here in Seattle? That’s not possible. He can’t be dead. He can’t. (sobbing)

S.D.: That’s how we found you, Ms. Horn, because of the pendant. Calliope Horn is a distinctive name. We were able to locate you through your driver’s license records. Unfortunately, we’ve found no trace of Mr. Myers. No birth records; no driver’s license. Are you sure Kenneth Myers is his real name?

C.H.: That’s the name he gave me. I didn’t exactly ask him to show me his ID. As for his license, he told me he lost it. Because of a DUI, I think.

S.D.: Do you know where he came from? Or do you have any idea who his next of kin might be so we can notify his family?

C.H.: (shaking her head) He came from somewhere in Arizona. Phoenix, I think. Or maybe Tucson. I told him Phoenix was a place I’d always wanted to visit. It sounded warm.

I remembered seeing notes in the murder book that Sue had checked with authorities in both Phoenix and Tucson, looking for someone named Kenneth Myers. She’d come up empty, of course, because cops in Arizona knew Myers by the name of Kenneth Mangum.

S.D.: Do you remember when Mr. Myers left town?

C.H.: May 1, 1983.

S.D.: You remember that date exactly after all these years?

C.H.: Yes, I remember it. When you’re in love, you remember things like that. At least I do.

S.D.: How did you and Mr. Myers meet?

C.H.: We were both homeless and living in a tent city up on the hillside just east of I-5. A shelter had been cobbled together using old tarps and pieces of canvas. There must have been twenty of us or so living in camp at the time, but I didn’t really notice Kenny until we were standing in line for a Thanksgiving dinner offered by the Salvation Army. It was cold and rainy. It was nice to be inside, out of the weather, and to have a hot meal for a change. We got our food, sat at the same table, and then started talking.

S.D.: What happened then?

C.H.: We hit it off and started hanging out together—and drinking together, too. We were both drinkers then. Eventually we started to trust each other, but I don’t think either of us ever expected to fall in love. A homeless camp doesn’t sound very romantic. (laughter) But it was for us. People teased us and said that we walked around in a funny little bubble.

It turned out Kenny and I had a lot in common. We’d both come from broken and abusive homes; we’d both dropped out of high school our sophomore year. We’d both done time. There’s nothing like spending time in the slammer to give you something to talk about. (laughter) After I got out on good behavior, I couldn’t find work. That’s how I ended up in the camp—me and plenty of others. Just because you get out of jail doesn’t mean you get your life back.

S.D.: What did you get sent up for?

C.H.: I’m sure you’ve got my record right there in front of you.

S.D.: Tell me anyway.

C.H.: Domestic violence. Manslaughter. I killed my ex. Ray came home drunk and was beating the crap out of me. He tried to choke me. I kicked him in the balls hard enough that I got loose. He liked to play ball with the guys, and his baseball bat was standing in the corner of the living room, behind the front door. I grabbed that and bashed his skull in.

We’d both been drinking that night. I had enough cuts and bruises that it should have been considered self-defense, but I had a worthless defense attorney, and the prosecutor argued that I had hit him more than once after he was down. Which was true. I hit him way more than once.