Faces in Time (8 page)

It’s not likely that anyone will be suspicious. Contraband finds its way into prisons in much the same way that the roaches do—any little crack and it’ll reshape itself to fit through it and invade. No one will investigate much into a change of street clothes and a razor making their way into a three time felon’s cell. In fact, it sounds likely.

Add to it all that today is the day a local news team is coming to film a piece on the prison, a day that the prison will be filled with street-clothed visitors, and it appears flawless. Rutherford isn’t a man of morals, but he isn’t stupid, having devised a plan that should leave him completely in the clear.

Edmund shoves his head through the neckline of the gray drugstore shirt, completing his street garb, and he immediately stares at the lock. Despite his earlier threats on getting to Rutherford if he didn’t uphold his end of their bargain, he’s feared a double cross from the first raised eyebrow of their negotiations. An alliance in prison is a sculpture made in the shadows, one never knowing what it will look like when it’s brought into the light, or if it will bear any resemblance to the words that formed it or the desired image in one’s head.

Surely if Edmund were caught now, face and head shorn too smoothly for the regulation safety razor, standing in street clothes, it wouldn’t bode well for the length of his prison sentence. Contraband can add time, especially in the case of the razor which is considered a dangerous weapon, and an attempted escape is a guarantee of more time.

Their discussions began a few months before and were mulled over and refined until finalized two weeks ago. It all started when Detective Paul Andarus came to the prison to ask some questions about one of Edmund’s acquaintances who was a suspect in a homicide investigation. Edmund was offered time off his sentence for cooperation, but he kept his mouth shut. He didn’t say whether he knew anything or not. He didn’t say a word. Both the detective and Rutherford were sure he knew something, but there wasn’t a whole lot else either of them could legally do to make him talk.

The detective seemed almost relieved that Edmund didn’t get a reduced sentence, and Rutherford, while irritated on the outside, made a mental note of a man with a colorful record who could keep his mouth shut. That’s when the eyebrow first raised; that’s when Edmund knew the deputy warden might bend to the right persuasion. The unrecovered money from his armed robbery quickly grabbed the interest of Rutherford, and the engine of avarice revved into redline, kicking out the polluted beginnings of the plan.

The quiet buzz of an electric hum causes the door to pop open. It’s excited Edmund every time he’s heard it, but never quite like what he feels now. Everything else tells him to run. Tear down the hallway. Escape.

But, malice causes him to smile and be still. Patience has been his adversary as far back as his brain will let him remember, and he grasps it now with two anxious hands as it’s the only medicine to satisfy the growling rage rampaging in his chest.

Deputy Warden Rutherford’s hand releases the button, and his body turns quickly from it toward the end of the hall. His hand is grasped in an angry, gloved grip. Bewildered, Rutherford looks wildly past the hand that has grabbed him, down the uniformed arm, and up to the face of his aggressor. The clenching hand releases him as roughly as when it just clasped him.

“Chapet—” is all that makes it out of Rutherford’s mouth.

Sting burns into his side as 50,000 volts rush through his body.

The floor seems to reach up and smack the side of his face. Twitching and pulsing flip and flop him on the ground in a quiet excruciation. The only sounds are the flickering and popping of the electricity and a meek, shrill whine that comes from deep within him.

The whine comes in the same rhythm as the pulses of the Taser, much like someone saying a long, drawn out         “a-a-a-h” while smacking one’s throat at a consistent interval. His whimpering releases memories of the sound his hunting dog once made when bitten by a snake.

Rutherford
’s vision is jumble, but it’s a blur of his newest correctional
officer
looming over him.

It’s supposed to be a five-count. Rutherford has felt this before as all officers are required to experience a five second blast from a regulation Taser. He tries to count in his head without much success. He’s certain it’s been longer than five seconds, but certainty and neurological discomfort don’t mix well.

It’s not a physical pain, but a helpless discomfort that leaves him feeling violated and completely defeated. Each pop of the current is a chime remindim that he is immobile on the floor and incapable of moving any part of him to prevent whatever trauma will come next.

Every muscle is involuntarily listless; every fiber is full of surrender.

His eyes are now on the shiny black shoes of the man lording over him; they come in and out of focus, as fuzzy as the pulse of the Taser. His mind is in a glacially slow panic; the Taser taking its effect there too. The word Taser passes his mind’s eye, then each letter spelling it out, and for a reason that he can’t connect, Tom Swift also comes to his mind.

The popping stops.

Moving past his eyes, the hand inside a thin glove smashes a piece of duct tape over his mouth. He feels the gloved hands grabbing at his armpits and pulling him off the floor. His shoes drag across the ground, scuffing his polished shine. Shoved forward, his waist hits a laundry cart, his body bends over its rail.

Quickly, he’s shoved again, and his body falls headfirst into the cart, his nose smashed and stretched to the right against the bottom seam of the off-white cloth bin inside the metal frame of the cart. The seam roughly presses across his face. His knees rest where they are pressed into and stretching the front side of the cloth cart, while his head is jammed into the bottom rear.

His hands push against the cloth, and he struggles to get a grip to reposition his body so he can lift his head. His hands push into the canvas, stretching it, and his head rises off the bottom. Lurching forward, the cart rolls. Losing all leverage, his hands slip, and his face crashes into the bottom of the cart again.

Rather than trying to hoist himself a second time, his hands move toward his face. Grabbing clumsily at the tape, his fingers struggle to get a hold on an end. Finally, they grab a corner and roughly yank it off.

Just as his lips begin to call out, “Help,” the cart stops, and he feels a large, powerful, bare hand come down on the back of his neck. The other ungloved hand grasps his belt and lifts him out of the cart.

Hoisted in the air, panic spills over his face as he recognizes the bits of hair on the floor of the cell he is in.

Looking at Chapetta standing several feet before him, the strong hands send him flying toward the concrete floor. Rutherford’s left shoulder hits first with a sickening snapping noise, and the vision of Edmund’s towering frame comes into focus just as his boot comes down on his throat.

Pinning the deputy warden to the ground wih the standard issue shoe, he looks to Chapetta, “You’re a good man; you take care of that little girl.”

“Thanks for the chance to do it.”

Nods and adds, “You better get outta here.”

“You too.”

“My offer’s still good about the cash,” at which Rutherford begins to squirm but is met with more foot pressure on his throat.

Chapetta shakes his head, “No, just ‘cause I pushed him in the trap he put out for me, doesn’t mean I’m a scuzzbag like him. You do this fast before I come back to my senses and turn both of us in.”

As the young corrections officer turns away pulling the cart behind him, Edmund whispers intently, “Chapetta, one more thing.”

Chapetta places his hand on his Taser holster as he looks back into the cell.

“Rutherford wanted me to tell you he’s sorry it had to be this way.”

Glancing down at his boss that is about to be his boss no more, “Yeah, me too.”

Rutherford watches his patsy walk away, the only man who could possibly patrol this wing during the next few hours, taking with him all reasonable hope of leaving the cell alive. The panic swells, and he begins to thrash his body back and forth trying to break free of the foot at his throat.

Without warning, the foot releases his neck. The light shining down on his prostrate body changes suddenly as Edmund lunges straight up into the air. Rutherford rolls onto his side trying to deflect the blow, but Edmund’s feet crash into his hip, side, and ribs. His lower torso feels mangled, filling him with the compulsion to wheeze and cough, but he makes little more than a whine.

The inmate grabs the cell keeper by his neck, pulling him off the floor. With two quick steps and a shove with his choking hand, Edmund sends Rutherford’s head crashing into the brick wall.

Heat and sting are all that the deputy warden knows.

With a tightening on the throat, he pulls Rutherford off the wall about a foot and quickly slams his head back into the bricks again. Deep red streams run down the wall. Rutherford’s e roll back, and Edmund lightens the squeeze on his throat as he steps toward him, putting his mouth within an inch of his victim’s ear.

“Sorry for the ruse, Mr. Deputy Warden Rutherford, but we needed your prints on the door switch.” Air and blood resume their flow, and the deputy warden squirms. Edmund grunts and tightens his grip to maintain his control on the flailing and continues, “Wish we had a nicer way to take you out, but this’ll just have to do.”

Legs kick at the bed, trying to gain a grip on something in the hopes of pushing off hard enough to break the hold of the powerful arm holding him in place and its hand squeezing the life out of him.

“You see I’m a bad man, but I ain’t no one to hurt a child. Our good friend, Mr. Nathan Chapetta, is taking care of his retarded niece,” the struggling body moving slower, “I can’t have you offing the only person who could take care of her. Foster home ain’t no place for a kid like that; been there myself.”

While the crimson escapes the back of his head, the blueness begins to overtake the red of his lips, and his tongue hangs out the corner of his mouth. With wide eyes, Rutherford sends a knee flying into the air, on perfect course to crash between Edmund’s legs.

Without even glancing downward, Edmund notices the movement in his periphery, and quickly turns and raises his thigh. The knee crashes into his meaty thigh, and his hand loses its grip on the neck holding up the bleeding head.

Rutherford gasps desperately.

Edmund’s fist connects hard into Rutherford’s chest, knocking the breath that he just sucked in back out of him.

Swinging an uppercut while he gasps again, Rutherford connects with Edmund’s mouth. Lower jaw smacks the top one, catching the tip of his tongue in between. Blood seeps onto his lips. Uglier than that is the expression to which Edmund’s face contorts as he pummels Rutherford with a fast combination of punches, all pounding his head until he flops back to the floor, resembling a mannequin broken at all of its joints and collapsed in an awkward pose.

Bending down Edmund grabs Rutherford by his throat. The deputy warden’s eyes stare at his attacker but are glazed over and devoid of energy. Dragging him by his throat, Edmund hauls him across the tiny room and drapes his neck over the rim of the stainless steel toilet seat. He jams his foot across the back of Rutherford’s neck and holds it pinned tightly.

“Have to admit that was more fight than I was expectin’ from you.”

Edmund spits into the sink. It is bloody, and some of it runs over the edge of the sink with a few drops hitting the floor.

Looking down at the pinned body beneath him, he still sees twitching and a straining to breath.

“Hehe, kinda funny, Rutherford, that you’re getting smashed into that same toilet you were running your mouth about earlier.
Your
toilet. It’s all yours now.”

Rutherford’s eyes strain to see. The shiny metal bowl in front of him glistens in the dim light from above, both on the water and the bowl itself. The yellow begins to turn to a flesh-colored orange. On the orange his suffocating thoughts materialize.
Cold metal. Squished throat. Death…Tom A. Swift and his Electric Rifle…It’s Taser. Acronym…That’s it...
A hint of a smile twitches at his lips which gasp for air that isn’t coming. His face turns pale with harsh blue lips, the look of winter, colors of freezing.