Across the aisle, Tina was studying the map again, but she was also chewing her lower lip like she was trying not to smile.
* * *
On the way to Glenwood Springs, the site of The Defendant’s second escape, we drove by the Pitkin County Courthouse, the site of his first. We wanted to see for ourselves the window from which he leaped during a recess in his pretrial hearing for the murder of Caryn Campbell. Over the years, I’ve read accounts that claim it was the third floor from which he daringly absconded. But I was there, and it was the second floor. People always want to make him more than he was.
“It’s nine? Ten feet?” Carl estimated as he wrote it down.
“I would have fucking jumped too if I got the chance,” Tina said. “What were they thinking, leaving him alone in there?”
In just a few months I’d be in law school, where I would be warned against exploiting my knowledge to make the weaker argument strong, taught that was a technique only sophists employ. From that introductory course of civil procedure onward, I’ve nurtured a slow-burning contempt against every member of law enforcement and the legal profession who went on to suggest that The Defendant’s move to represent himself was all a part of his master plan. That he had worked out his argument to the judge—free rein at the law library as a constitutional right—ahead of filing the pro se motion. That he was always ten steps ahead.
There is substantive evidence that points to no plan at all, points to nothing but ego as his predominant guiding force. Representing himself was always about the appearance of education, of calibrated, strategic thinking. The opportunity to escape arose as a by-product of the status-obsessed actions of a man who failed out of the only third-rate law school that would take him, and then, instead of working harder, he cheated and lied his way back into the classroom, taking a spot from someone who actually deserved it.
And yet the myth of his mastermind persists, though a few Google searches is all it takes to corroborate the truth.
When my daughter was young, I found myself telling her what my mother had told me—that she had to wait at least an hour to swim after eating. Why? she would argue, tiny fists on tiny hips, chocolate ice cream ringing her frowny mouth. Because you’ll get a cramp and drown. Recently, my daughter forwarded me an article debunking some of the most common old wives’ tales. Waiting to swim after eating was first on the list. The Red Cross Scientific Advisory Council had come out and said there was not a single reported case of eating contributing to drowning. We laughed about it; it was one of those rules that had led to some of our most legendary fights.
Sometimes I think The Defendant is just another old wives’ tale. That law enforcement backed up his self-purported claims of brilliance to cover up their own incompetence—in interviews they gave the media, in testimonies they made before the judge—and it all cemented from there, hardening into a generational truth passed down from mother to daughter. Consider this my own warning: The man was no diabolical genius. He was your run-of-the-mill incel whom I caught picking his nose in the courtroom. More than once.
* * *
Glenwood Springs was a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it kind of town, population 4,993—4,994, congratulations to the O’Toole family, read a handwritten amendment affixed to the welcome sign off the exit. We stopped for lunch at a place called The Stew Pot. Skis propped against the log cabin exterior, water trapper mats at the front door, and college guys in duct-taped down jackets.
The waitress came bounding over with the energy of someone who spent all her free time outdoors, her face freckled and tanned by the winter sun. “What can I get you folks today?”
I ordered the chicken club. Carl, the chili.
“Which one do you prefer,” Tina asked the waitress, “the prime rib or the filet?”
“Depends what you’re in the mood for,” she said. “The filet is my favorite, but on the smaller size. Prime rib has more marbling, and it’s”—she demonstrated with her hands, big, heavy slab of meat—“so it really depends on how hungry you are.”
“I’ll have the filet,” Tina said, “and the prime rib to go. With a side of carrots and mashed potatoes. Where’s the bathroom?”
The waitress pointed, and Tina balled up the paper napkin on her lap and left it in a wrinkled wad on the table.
“Good conditions this weekend,” the waitress said to us as she collected our menus. “You came at the right time. March is our busiest month, but I’ve gotten my best runs in January.”
“Actually,” Carl said, “I’m from the Tallahassee Democrat. Do you mind if I ask you your name?”
“The Tallahassee Democrat?” The waitress’s demeanor turned instantly guarded. “Is this about the election?”
Carl glanced at me curiously. “It’s the name of a newspaper in Florida.”
The waitress looked down at us with a long sigh. “Uh-huh” was all she said.
“We don’t know anything about an election,” I promised her.
“Well, you should,” she said sharply, “if you’re here to do a story about all of it.”
“Would you be willing to speak to me?” Carl asked. “On or off the record, your choice.”
“You’re free to use my name,” she said, shifting the tall menus onto her hip and tapping the name badge on her blouse. Lisa. “I’m disgusted by what’s going on here, and I don’t care who knows it.” Lisa nodded at another group of diners, over our heads, who were signaling her for the check. “Come back tomorrow around this same time. I’m off after breakfast service.”
We were scheduled to fly back later that evening.
“I’ll be here,” Carl said before I could explain that we’d be gone by then. Lisa nodded and hurried off.
“I can’t stay,” I said when she’d gone. “I have to get back tonight.”
“But it’s the weekend,” Carl said, tearing open a dinner roll and stuffing a cold pat of butter inside. “What does it matter?”
“We’re moving back into The House on Sunday, and I need tomorrow to get everything in order.”
“Is that really a good idea?” Carl sank his large teeth into the hard outer crust of the roll, sending crumbs flying everywhere.
I reached across the table for Tina’s napkin, sweeping golden flakes into an open palm. “I actually can’t imagine a safer place for us to be. Everyone’s eyes are on The House right now. He’d be a fool to come back.”
This was the argument I’d put forth to the rest of the girls, the one I wholeheartedly and foolishly believed.
* * *
The Sheriff’s Department in Glenwood Springs contained nine jail cells, and one of them had been repurposed into a visitors’ room. There was a lumpy old love seat and a bistro dining set that not only looked like something someone had donated when they decided to pull the trigger on new furniture but, Tina pointed out, sported whittled metal legs that were not even bolted into the floor. The three of us sat at the table and waited an hour past our scheduled appointment. Apparently, Gerald had been assigned to do some yardwork at one of the national parks, and the job had to be completed before the sun set. At long last, a man wearing a prison-issued parka and knit cap appeared, a stone-faced guard at his heels. The prisoner smirked at his captor, who unlocked the door to the visitors’ cell and gestured for him to step in first.
“Always the gentleman, Sammy,” said the prisoner, and he had to raise both his hands to mime tipping the brim of his hat because they were cuffed. This was Gerald Stevens. “I’m starving,” he said, drumming his belly demonstrably, and Tina popped the lid on the take-out container.
“It was hot,” she said.