The Euthanist (25 page)

The impulse to burst out my door would mean rolling on the pavement. Even if I survived the spill out onto the highway, a car rounding the bend in the opposite direction could plow into me. Poof! I’d be gone like Dad. I couldn’t see any guards yet, but I imagined them. Law enforcement types, barrel chests in uniforms straight off of a propaganda poster. I imagined the tight rows of cells in there, and imagined one particular cell, where a familiar figure laid atop a charcoal wool blanket, his blond hair still immaculately coiffed.

He slowed the car down as we approached the entry gate, and I unlatched my seatbelt and lunged for the door handle. Leland seized my wrist, right where the cuffs had gone. “Don’t be stupid. I’m not arresting you. This wouldn’t even be the place to do it. I’ve had every opportunity to bust you and I haven’t. Look at me.” Catching myself after a moment of paralysis, I wrenched my arm free. “This is not why we’re here.”

I was certainly thinking about captivity, but not mine. “Gordon Ostrowski is here.” He would always be here. When he died, they would bury him in the prison graveyard with a numbered marker. “I told you that wouldn’t be part of the deal. I’m not seeing him.”

“We’re not here for Gordon. He won’t know you were ever here.”

“I don’t believe you.” I jostled the door handle.

Leland threw the car into park and pulled his gun out of his holster. I should have grappled. That’s what they teach you in self-defense. Charge a gun, run from a knife. But in the moment I froze, considering the potential canon boom of a gun in a tight steel box, the likelihood of shattered windows and ricochets. The bullet might zing around and rip through us both. Before I could properly react, he handed it to me, grip first. “Kill me if I’m lying.” I took it from him and held it like a live grenade. Leland waited for a reaction. Daintily, I drew my seatbelt back across my chest and fastened it.

“We’re here to see Walter Gretsch.” Of course that’s why we were there. I’d been too self-involved to remember who else was locked inside the facility. Not that I wanted to be there anymore now, but my fingers released the door handle.

“Don’t let the guard see it.” We drove around the chain link fence while I dropped the gun in the glove compartment. We arrived at a checkpoint. Through the windshield, I saw an armed guard step out of the booth. He was in his midtwenties—my age—and his full black beard reminded me of a young Fidel Castro.

When he rolled down his window, the guard joked, “Lost?” Leland flashed his badge. It didn’t earn any smiles, but within a few moments the white picket barrier lifted and we entered the compound. A small sense of suffocation squeezed my lungs once the fence was behind us.

The inner compound looked like the worst miniature golf course I’d ever seen. They’d built the sniper tower to resemble a small lighthouse. I couldn’t see any guards up there, but bullhorns crowned the top. The main entrance reminded me of a medieval castle, but faced in stucco, complete with peaked cathedral windows and a flat rooftop with crenellations, originally designed for archers. The paint on all of it was the color of bird shit, but occasionally the paint and plaster flaked off to reveal brick. Instead of guards patrolling the rooftops, swiveling cameras perched like crows on every building, watching us from every angle.

“You know why they call it San Sebastián?” Leland asked.

I thought about the guys in the department who regaled me with stories about California history. You go on enough rides with them, you pick up something. “I assume there was a Mission San Sebastián here at some point.”

“You’re almost correct. There was a Spanish mission here, but it was Mission San Ramon. It was renamed. In the early 1800s, let’s say 1830 or so, there was an
alcade
—that’s a mayor—up here named…” he had to come up with it, “Fermín Rubio. He was a friar, but he also got saddled with running the politics. He was the local magistrate—that’s what guys like that did. Anyway, other than a random assortment of settlers, he was close with the indigenous locals, the Miwok tribe. Got to pick up some of the customs. He was good with a bow and arrow, so good the chief gave him a bow covered in snakeskin. You understand, this was a good gift—he was on good terms with everybody. But then Rubio’s own people had to go and screw it all up. Mexico was newly independent, and local Mexican rancheros were kidnapping Miwoks to work on their ranches. Sometimes they’d just slaughter a whole bunch so the rest wouldn’t resist. To sort it out, Fermín Rubio found these people, and when he did, he executed them. He’d sworn off guns, but he was handy with a bow, so he would strap the victim to a tree, this tree,” he pointed to a gnarled oak by the front gate, with a thick trunk and twisted branches, “and plug him full of arrows.”

“Just like Saint Sebastian.” We passed the tree and cut through rows of cars in the parking lot as we drove toward the main entrance.

“Till he looked like a sea urchin. So Rubio renamed the mission to send a warning out to the criminals. Given the history of the place, eventually it turned into a prison.” He pointed to the crenellations by the roof. “The architect that built the new building in the 1920s designed those as a nod to Rubio, a set of nooks where archers could mete out the traditional sentence for a criminal nasty enough to deserve it.”

Two guards waited for us by a parking space that had been kept vacant with orange cones. One of the men waved at Leland as we pulled in. They were huge, bigger than the bearded guard at the gate. Their uniforms were short-sleeve beige tops with forest green pants and gold badges over the left chest, something I’d expect to see on park rangers. Both had smooth faces and shaved heads. In some history class I’d learned that Alexander the Great banned beards in his army so that enemy combatants couldn’t tug them in battle. In the chaos of a prison riot, I supposed it would pay to be clean-shaven. More massive and less defined then the boys I worked with at the fire department, they might have been former football players, former semiprofessional wrestlers, or former bouncers. Their overly serious expressions had the bottomless gaze of sharks cruising for fish.

When we stopped, Leland reminded me, “It can’t stay in the glove compartment.” With no holster and no purse, I had no place to keep his gun on my person, so I opened the glove compartment and gave Leland’s pistol back to him. Watching us through the window, the guards looked confused as Leland reholstered his sidearm.

The one by the driver’s side shook Leland’s hand when he emerged from the car. “Took you long enough.” He had the slightest trace of a Southern accent, rare in the Bay Area. Either he’d been here long enough or practiced long enough that I only heard it in the extended vowels.

Leland gestured to me. “This is she.” To me, he explained, “Meet Leonard Royce and Milton Kearns.” Royce was the one who knew Leland. He stood an inch taller than Kearns with thicker arms. Kearns loitered behind him like a kid brother. Both had shiny scalps, but Royce would have been mostly bald anyway. Kearns might age that way. Both nodded at me, but neither offered to shake my hand, maybe worried if they stuck out an arm I might jab a needle into it.

Royce said to Leland, “You know Helena Mumm was here this morning, paying him a visit.”

“That’s news, but doesn’t surprise me. She probably wants to see him before her time is finally up.” Leland said to me, “Maybe someone reignited the old flame. Wrong love is still love.” I tried to remember what I had said to Helena.

Royce handed me a laminated identification card with my photo on it. “Put this in your wallet.” I barely had time to look it over before he explained, “If anyone asks, you’re agent Frances Kali.” Indeed, the card spelled it out in bold letters. My headshot was the same fuzzy camera-phone snapshot Leland took of me in the Clayton cabin; the same photograph he’d posted on the sex offender registry. My expression worked equally well in the role of a government employee.

The guards led us through the turreted entrance. Through two checkpoints, they talked to the guards while Leland signed us in. I flashed my fake identification a few times. Each hallway was a combination of cinder blocks, stainless steel, and the kind of glass I’d expect could fortify a shark tank. Through every door my stomach twisted a bit, especially when the sunlight vanished and the sounds from the outside faded.

We were on our way to see Walter Gretsch, but I didn’t know what would happen when we saw him. What we could possibly talk about. The uncertainty made me feel as powerless as when Leland had chained me in Clayton. I could have been in a submarine at the bottom of the ocean.

Left, left, right, left, right, right…the prison interior networked into a tight labyrinth of hallways. Turning another corner, I’d gotten foggy on where we were going and simply stared at our escorts’ calves. The hallways collected a lonely alkaline smell with a hint of organic compost, perhaps from the unreachable rat turds behind the walls. Leland handed me a tissue and whispered, “Wipe your forehead. You’re sweating. And keep your head up. Act like you belong here.” Royce gave me a dirty look over his shoulder, warning me that I might blow this, whatever it was.

I hissed at Leland, “This can’t be safe.”

“You’ve taken bigger risks. So have I.”

“I’m fucking serious,” I insisted. Ahead of us, Kearns shot me an anguished look to shush me. He nodded to a camera that clung to the ceiling. I kept my voice down and tried to appear calm enough so that anyone hovering over the security monitors would merely see two federal agents working through a professional disagreement. “Are you leading me through a prison block full of men?”

“I wouldn’t do something like that.”

Royce spoke loud enough to convey that the security cameras didn’t have microphones. “We’re not going through a cell block. We’re headed to the courtyard.” Some of the guys in the fire department had been in the military, and his clipped monotone hinted that he’d had the same training. I admit it did make me feel safer.

We abruptly stopped at the midpoint of a long corridor, dim as a mineshaft. Leland and the two guards huddled by the wall, and Royce pointed to the camera directly overhead. “We can’t be seen here.”

Royce seemed to loosen up. He was cordial, if not jovial. He shook my hand and avoided giving me a bone crusher. “Ma’am, thank you for coming.”
Ma’am
. I’m a sucker for archaic politeness. This made me want to curtsy.

I confirmed, “Can anyone hear us?”

“No.”

“No security cameras on us at all?” I wanted to be sure.

“When you get to know the compound, you learn there are a few places the cameras never see. This is one of them.”

Leland relaxed a bit too, more comfortable around these guys than he ever was around me. He put on the wry grin I was used to seeing when he goaded me. “I call Leonard the convict whisperer. He has a knack for getting inmates to do what he wants without having to break anything.”

So we were chitchatting now. I tried to play along. “Laws or jaws?”

Royce cracked a smile, but his tone was all business. “I listen to the inmates, so they tell me things.”

“What does someone like Walter Gretsch tell you?” I asked.

“He doesn’t say much. He likes to ask about my kids.” I thought that Royce must hate his job some days. “He found out through the Internet that I have two boys. He called out their names to me and commented on their swim team results. We took away his computer privileges after that.”

Royce waved us forward, and we continued until we reached another steel door. Above it, a grated portal let in a grid of sunlight. “The courtyard’s through there. He’ll be waiting.” He asked me, “Your stepfather is here, is that right?” This might have unsettled me, but he looked at me kindly. I nodded. “But you’ve never visited here.”

“No.”

“Is this your first time at a prison?”

“It is.”

“And your first time with a man like Walter Gretsch.”

Leland said, “You’re making her nervous.”

Royce asked Leland, “You’re sure she’s up for this?” He looked back at me. “I mean no disrespect when I say that.”

“She’s has a knack for adapting,” Leland said.

Royce gave me an iron gaze that, when needed, probably intimidated inmates. “Remember,” he cautioned, “Walter Gretsch is a dangerous man. He might come on quiet, but you’ll see how bad he is if you give him a chance.” He warned Leland and me. “Don’t give him that chance.”

When we walked out into the courtyard, everything bleached to sunburst white. In the twenty minutes we’d trolled through the concrete maze, the sun had burned off the residual fog from the morning. Cirrus streaks draped across a blue sky. Anywhere else, it would have been a nice day.

I could smell the crisp brine of the Bay water, but the prison wall, twice as tall as a basketball hoop and coated in that bird shit paint, blocked our view of the ocean. There was no getting over that thing without a rope or a ladder—a ten-finger boost wouldn’t get you very far. With cellblocks around us, we found ourselves in a playa of asphalt, cracked in places for ambitious weeds.

As my eyes adjusted to the daylight, I saw chain link fences that partitioned the open space into livestock pens. Guards in their park ranger outfits stood on the far sides of these fences and on the rooftops.

Leland scoped out the area, his flat hand an eave at his brow. The guards were mildly curious about us, but none waved. None were close enough to talk. They rested matte black weapons on their shoulders, and while two guards looked straight at the only woman there, I didn’t get the sense that they took an active interest, not any more than I was interested in the flock of Canadian geese that presently flew over us.