No Sanctuary

Exhaling in relief, Bay threw a load on her own welder. She began the bottom weld on her lance and was immediately lost in her work.

How long was it before she picked up on the change…the smell? Two minutes. Three?

It couldn’t have been much longer. In any case, the strong odor, wholly unnatural to their environment and so clearly wrong prompted her to throw up her hood and sniff again.

She turned around. “Jesus.”

Smoke was coming from Glenn’s table, so much smoke that she couldn’t see him. Nevertheless, the nauseating smell told her he was there. Swatting the hood off her head, she ran to his machine, flipped off the ignition switch and scrambled over lines to reach him. While her reaction was fact, her movements automatic, her mind froze on one thought. Heart attack. The stench gagged her as much as the smoke did, speaking too clearly of burning clothing and worse. As horror urged retreat, she grabbed the lead to get the stinger out from beneath him, at the same time pushing against his shoulder to roll him off it. In that instant something struck her forearm.

Through tearing eyes and suffocating smoke, she saw a metal rod—no, one of the Maiden’s lances.

The spear was impaled through Glenn’s back.

1

Six years later

Gatesville Unit, Texas Department of Corrections

Gatesville, Texas

Wednesday, May 9, 2001

“Butler! Shut it down, you have a visitor.”

About to drop her hood to weld the rest of a handrail, Bay Butler hesitated and glanced over at Sergeant Draper scowling at her from the doorway. At first she thought she must be hearing things, then the woman squeezed into a size-sixteen prison guard uniform aimed her baton. Bay shut down the machine.

What the hell…?

She couldn’t imagine who wanted to see her. She had no family, so-called friends had abandoned her ages ago, and the most rabid reporter had long lost interest in her. Nevertheless, she knew better than to question when a prison guard gave a directive, particularly this one. Bay got along well enough with most of the staff—they left her alone, while she pretended they were part of the concrete and steel surrounding her—but Draper had made it clear from day one that she thought Bay belonged on Death Row.

Setting her hood on top of the welding machine, Bay approached the woman whose face would make a plastic surgeon think, “Windfall.” Keeping her own expression passive, she dealt with an unwelcome rush of adrenaline. Why hope? Hope, she’d learned the hard way, was for babies, brides and fools. Yet Draper knew something. Suspicion and trouble were unpleasant scents to season Bay’s memory as she struggled to remember what she might have done wrong in the last six days, never mind six years. It had to be a trick of some kind; no one on the outside cared whether she lived or rotted here and she had no assets, therefore, no need for a beneficiary to encourage her early demise. Her life had been reduced to its lowest common denominator.

Six years…in another six weeks. Any more sixes, she mused, and she was going to start wondering if the Bible-thumpers—whom she avoided as diligently as she did prison troublemakers—were right about the antichrist already being present on earth. That, too, said bad things about her state of mind.

Wary, Bay followed the surly guard’s directives down the hall. She knew better than to ask questions. As far as Draper was concerned, if you were at Gatesville, you were guilty and should serve your full term, and the guard did her best to make sure Bay understood that went doubly for her.

The cloudless Texas sky blinded Bay as she crossed the prison yard, and the packed clay tested her bones and joints as much as the concrete floors of the prison did. Gatesville was the state’s main women’s facility, located about an hour west of Waco, hard country that fooled you. Gently rolling terrain let you believe over the next slope was a lake, a stream, maybe an oasis of woods when the only break from the incessant sun was the scrub brush and rain-starved cedars. For as far as she could see the dusty, heat-scorched vegetation littered the land like storm debris. Bay never yearned for the soothing shade of the piney woods more than when she was ordered outside to fulfill state requirements for “fresh air and exercise.”

The plant-bare yard was speckled with a number of women cloistered in a corner like chickens without feed and unionizing in protest. Several called to her, whistled and blew taunting kisses. Bay had a certain reputation among the inmates, not for any unpredictability or violent tendencies, but for her refusal to make group alliances. It wasn’t a focused intent, she simply wasn’t and never had been tribal, didn’t join clubs and other variations of so-called support groups as a means of feeling secure. An only child raised in what any first-year psych student would recognize as an unorthodox manner, her social skills weren’t only untapped, they remained buried rootstock, or worse, like invisible seeds on Mars.

Unfortunately for her, Bay resembled the very people who came from various ministries to attend to the needs of her soul. Slim to the point of gaunt, having saved her sanity by plunging herself in relentless work, she was as pale as a chronic anemic. What color she did have was welding burns. Add her artist’s feverish, unblinking stare and she could pass for a seer, or someone in need of a white jacket with sleeves that tied, which explained why all but the most fearless inmates avoided her, as one would any unknown commodity. It was those predators, the ones who traveled in the strongest packs that refused to be permanently thwarted. Bay carried a few scars from them—the chronic ache of cracked ribs, a broken finger and damaged spleen.

It was her skill with metal that had kept her alive, that and the fact that the new warden, after a visit to the infirmary, had done her homework. Upon reading Bay’s file, the woman assigned her to the prison mechanic shop. Ever since, Bay worked at repaying her by methodically cutting down on the list of repairs and improvements needed at the facility, those frequently put off due to budget constraints. The move hadn’t stopped the diehards from their taunts, though. As she crossed the yard they stuttered, “B-b-b,” or called, “Hey, Baby Butt Butler!” or “Yo! Bitch Bonnie Bay.” But, as always, unless someone addressed her as “Bay” or “Butler,” she tuned them out.

After the debilitating heat it was a relief to enter the visitors building, although the air-conditioning sounded as though it was ready to go at any second. Either that or souls from previous inmates were haunting the ventilation system. Still, it was a good twenty degrees cooler than outside, almost thirty better than at the shop. But what caused Bay to shiver was the reminder that she hadn’t been in here since her first month at Gatesville and that she’d forgotten procedure. Hesitating once too often after a directive earned her Draper’s scorn.

“Hell, Butler, has inhaling those gas fumes numbed your brain?” the guard snapped as they stood outside the last set of gates. “I said pass through.”

Bay intended to…but she’d spotted whom she was being handed off to, a great hulk of flesh with a face that made Draper a beauty queen. Would he insist on a body search, too, before she was allowed to see if any of this was worth it?

Bay clenched her teeth and stepped into the cell-like corridor. Then she stood staring through the bars at the door of mystery while the WWF reject attempted to get his jollies, only to discover he was wasting his time, since she was flat going and coming.

Muttering in disappointment or disgust, he directed her to the visitation room. “Cubicle six,” he recited in a voice that Disney Studios might contract to play a drowning grouper. “Stay seated, use the phones, no passing anything over the partition. No body contact whatsoever. Any infraction and the meeting’s over. You give me any lip and the meeting’s over. You try something stupid and you go into Solitary. Clear?”

“Yes, sir.” Bay’s automatic reply hid her consternation. Sixth cubicle. Six-six-six.

Her trepidation didn’t ease once she arrived at the designated spot. Not only was the man waiting for her a total stranger, he had all of the markings of a lawyer, the successful kind. She took in the educated, pampered face, the manicured hands, the salon-styled, flaxen hair and the suit she figured cost more than her court-appointed attorney had made handling her entire case, and considered doing an about-face. What stopped her were his eyes. He resented being here as much as she did the prospect of having to speak to him.

As curiosity won out over pride, she sat down and matched him stare for stare. What helped was that he was as fine-boned as he was fair—her male counterpart. He picked up his phone, then waited for her to reach for hers. That’s when she noticed the condition of her hands—black from grease and dirt. Certain that he’d noticed, she took her time to wipe them on her thighs, further staining the already soiled orange jumpsuit.

“I’m Lyle Gessler,” he snapped as soon as she brought the receiver against her left ear. “Mrs. Ridge-way sent me.”

All reluctance and embarrassment evaporated like summer drizzle on sun-baked Texas earth. If the name Ridgeway had clout in this state, it had double that with her. One thing she believed—the widow of oil tycoon Herman Ridgeway and daughter and sole heiress of the late grocery-distributor magnate Duncan Holt was the only reason she didn’t call Death Row home. For Madeleine Ridgeway, she would listen.

“As you know, Mrs. Ridgeway has continued to protest your situation.”

Continued? “She was supportive before and during the trial. But since…I couldn’t say.”

Mrs. Ridgeway had sent a note right after her arrest saying she would be following the trial and offer herself as a character witness for the defense, but Bay had refused for fear of public opinion turning on the good woman. Later she’d learned from her lawyer, court-appointed Mary Dish, that Mrs. Ridgeway had spoken to some influential political friends who had somehow convinced the D.A. that while a conviction was likely, a Murder One charge would be risky. For that, if nothing else, Bay would always be grateful.

“Then allow me to enlighten you. After saving you from a date with the Lethal Injection Boys, she expanded her own investigation—and at no small expense. It’s a result of that, the evidence we’ve unearthed, that I’m here. Your conviction has been vacated.”

Bay struggled to figure out what the hell that meant without looking like a fresh-hatched chick. She was sensitive about her lack of formal education. Schooling she had, having gone through the whole welding school apprenticeship and being mentored by some of the best journeymen in the business. But the rest of it, the college-range curriculum had been denied her. She’d used some of her time here trying to catch up, improving her reading skills and sense of history and politics, anything to fill the endless days; however, the sense of stigma remained.

“I don’t understand,” she admitted at last.

“We convinced the D.A. to agree with your defense attorney and request that your trial be set aside.”

He might as well have announced her the winner of a jackpot lottery. “How?” she whispered, surprised she could speak at all. She’d had a full trial, the whole gamut of legalities and jury and media humiliation.

“What does it matter? The point is you’re getting out.”

As much as she wanted to believe him, Bay stared at the stranger with the feminine nose and pinched lips reading him like a Times Square billboard. Not only didn’t he believe what he was spouting at her, not only didn’t he care if she did or not, he thought coming here undeserving of his time.

“Excuse me.” She gripped the phone tighter, aware that manners counted in such moments and that she had to hang on to what was left of hers. “I don’t mean any insult, and I am…I’m in shock. What I’m trying to say is that no one listened during the trial. What’s changed?”

“Facts.” The attorney focused on the unopened file before him. “It appears new evidence finally surfaced that was unknown at the time of the initial investigation. The deceased was recently discovered to have had a gambling problem. Apparently—”

“The deceased had a name. Glenn English.”

“—Mr. English’s debts,” Lyle Gessler continued frowning at the closed folder, “had gotten so out of control that a collector was sent after him.”

“Bull.” Bay would never have stood for that kind of behavior, and Glenn had known it because her father had been a compulsive gambler. Glenn had witnessed the worst of what that meant; in fact, he’d almost been as hurt by the effects of her father’s addiction as Bay was. They’d come a cold sweat away from losing the business and Bay the pitiful roof over her head. No way would Glenn have allowed himself to become consumed by the same weakness. He’d cared, cared too much.

“Look, I don’t specialize in appellate law, but Mrs. Ridgeway found someone who does. He, in turn, found the right investigators and we ended up with the testimony from a small-time crook by the name of George ‘Catfish’ Tarpley, who knew the hit man sent to settle things with Mr. English.”

“Hit man?”