“And it’s not just you who thinks that way, either, right, Marty?” Josh chimed in.
“No, it’s almost all the inmates on the row—at least the ones who have any contact with him at all . . . which isn’t much, by the way. Those guys stay in their cells for twenty-three hours a day. They don’t get rec time the way you think they do, like they did in that Shawshank movie. Whatever free time they get, they spend alone in an animal pen.”
Lucas motioned for Marty to hold that thought. He dropped his messenger bag onto his lap and pulled out his digital recorder. “You mind?” he asked.
Marty gave the recorder the side-eye, then shot Morales a look. “You weren’t kidding,” he said, then turned his attention back to Lucas. “You’re really going to quote me on this stuff?”
“As an anonymous source. And only if you let me. You won’t be named.”
Marty leaned back in his seat, the chair groaning beneath his weight. He was grinning, as though someone had just promised him a gig on TV. “Hell, I’ll let you put my family photo in your book if it didn’t cost me my job. It would give my wife something to brag about to that windbag of a mother of hers. The mother-in-law always did like giving me crap for not making much of myself.”
“See,” Josh said. “You tell me to get married, and then you follow up the suggestion with shit like that.”
Lucas exhaled a laugh and placed the recorder on the table. A small light glowed red next to Eperson’s sweating beer glass. “Okay. You were saying that you think Jeffrey Halcomb is creepy, that all the inmates you interact with share the same sentiment.”
“Off the record?” Marty asked one last time.
“Yes, off the record,” Lucas assured him.
“Most of the guards that work the row think he’s damn weird, too,” Marty continued. “But as I said, you can’t really figure out what it is about the guy that makes him so strange. He’s just got this . . .” He moved his hands in front of him in crude semicircles, searching for the right word.
“Vibe,” Josh cut in. “Tell him about that one guy. Halcomb’s neighbor.”
Neighbor.
Lucas’s thoughts were momentarily derailed, his attention tumbling away from the conversation and to Jeanie 150 miles away. A sickening sense of having chosen the wrong option crept beneath his skin. What if he returned to an empty house? What if he stepped inside and Jeanie was gone, lost forever, all because he had to take a meeting, had to chase the dream of fixing his broken life by writing another blockbuster? Did he really believe that a million sales would win Caroline back? Would she care, or would she simply smile and hand him divorce papers and murmur sorry, Lou, before climbing into asshole Kurt Murphy’s brand-new sports car?
“Yeah, his neighbor,” Marty said, pulling Lucas’s attention back to the conversation. “There was a guy a few years ago, he was new to the row. Schwartz. He came in on murder charges. Double homicide. My memory is fuzzy because he wasn’t around for long, but I’m pretty sure he slashed up his wife and kid.”
“Was he transferred to a different facility, or . . . ?”
Marty shook his head. “No, no, he stabbed himself to death, right in the neck.” Marty gripped a butter knife in his hand, as if considering a reenactment. “And that was pretty damn strange, because of the stuff I do remember, that Schwartz guy was a tough bastard. The kind that taunts the guards. Not a nice person. He was no soft heart bleeding out guilt behind bars.” He paused, gave Lucas a sideways grin. “That’ll make a good quote, huh? It’s got a nice ring to it. Anyway, Schwartz left a note that said he was going to join his wife and kid in the afterlife, but he didn’t say afterlife, he said eternal life.”
If you live right, you can live forever. Echo’s words.
A shudder cartwheeled down his back.
“And who do you think gave him that idea?” Josh asked, raising both eyebrows at him.
“Wait . . .” Lucas peered down at the recorder, held his tongue until the waitress—who had returned with his water—took their orders and meandered away. “So, this inmate, Schwartz,” Lucas continued. “He was in the cell next to Jeff Halcomb?”
“Yep.”
“And he was there for . . . how long?”
“I don’t know, a few months, give or take. Oh, and get this: he stabbed himself with a cross.”
Lucas’s mouth went dry. His thoughts tumbled to the cross Halcomb had left at the front desk—no, that someone had left at the desk for Halcomb. The prison would have never allowed an item like that in a supermax cell. Yet somehow, there it was. Those guys could kill a man like Marty in two seconds flat, and yet Schwartz had used the weapon on himself rather than on somebody else.
“Jesus Christ,” Lucas said.
“If that’s who you believe in.” Marty popped another cheese-covered nacho into his mouth.
“How did he get something like that inside to begin with?” Lucas asked.
“I don’t know, really. I wasn’t on the case, I just heard about what was going on from other guards. But stuff like that happens on occasion. We get some clever visitors now and again, folks trying to smuggle stuff in every which way . . .”
“You don’t wanna know which way,” Josh said with a snort.
“And Schwartz wasn’t a suicide risk?” Lucas asked.
“Not that I know of,” Marty replied. “As I said, he was more of a riot risk than anything. He was edgy. The guards didn’t like him. He was definitely the kind of guy who would slash your throat if you gave him an inch.”
It seemed impossible. How could one man convince another to kill himself? How could one man have so much influence over a complete stranger—over a convicted murderer, no less?