Chapter Fourteen
Johnny Ortega was scary.
He was huge, to begin with. Six-seven, and at least three hundred pounds, Annie guessed. He wore a prison-orange jumpsuit, long sleeved but with the sleeves rolled back to expose forearms bigger around than her calves. Nearly every inch of skin Annie could see was inked. Most of the tattoos had been done in prison; the only colors black, dark blue, and a little red, inks easily available in ballpoint pens. Between his eyes was a tattooed eye, about the same size as his real ones but more symmetrical, wide open and staring. Lightning bolts flared out above his brows, leading away from the center of his forehead. When he blinked, Annie saw that even his eyelids had been tattooed with more open eyes. Tattooed tears ran from the outer corners of both eyes. A life-sized rattlesnake head threatened to bite his right eye from its position on his cheek; its body extended down his neck, wrapped around it a couple of times, and its rattles rested on his left cheek. Beneath the snake’s coils on his neck were voluptuous women, struggling against the serpent’s bulk. Letters crept from the beneath his very short black hair, but if they spelled anything Annie couldn’t make it out.
He was sitting behind a cigarette-scarred wood laminate table. Chains encircled his ankles and waist. His enormous hands were cuffed together, resting on the tabletop. He didn’t look up when she was buzzed into the interview room, and the expression on his face, as blank as if he were comatose, didn’t change. The stink of sour sweat and stale smoke seemed to have sunk into the little room’s atomic structure. She wasn’t sure that burning the place would help—those smells would probably permeate this spot until the planet was lost in the sun’s supernova.
“Hello, Johnny,” Annie said. “My name is Annie O’Brien.”
His lips moved a little. If he said anything, Annie didn’t hear it. “You’ll have to speak up for me, Johnny. I had an accident and my hearing isn’t so great.” She drew back the chair across from him, pulling it a couple of feet away from the table. She’d left her gun in the car, knowing she wouldn’t be allowed to carry it in here, and she didn’t feel safe anywhere within his reach. Now that she looked at him, she was not at all surprised the jury found him guilty so quickly.
“I said, you don’t look like no lawyer.”
“I’m not a lawyer. I’m—I was—a cop. In Arizona.”
“What you want here then?”
“I’m working with an organization called Operation Delayed Justice. Have you heard of them?”
He might have shrugged. Then again, he might have been shaking off an invisible fly. It was hard to tell—a tiny movement around his shoulders. His chains clinked together.
“They think you’re innocent. Or that you might be.”
“I am.”
“That’s what I’m here to look into. But I’ll need your help.”
“Why?”
“Why will I need your help?”
“Why bother?”
The tattoos on the backs of his hands were so close together it was hard to determine form or design. They looked like lines and blocks of ink. But now she saw that on the four metacarpals of his right hand, not counting the thumb that faced away from her, the letters F-U-C-K had been tattooed, beginning at the little finger. On his left hand, in the valleys between the metacarpals beginning between index finger and middle finger, were the letters Y-O-U.
Why bother, indeed?
“Because if you’re innocent you shouldn’t be in here.”
“Here. Somewheres else.” Another shoulder wiggle that could have been a shrug.
She couldn’t argue with him. He looked like a guy who belonged in the system, not on the street. He was probably more comfortable behind bars anyway. Holding down a steady job in the straight world would be a challenge, to say the least. Unless the freak show was hiring.
“How are they treating you in here?” She had never been in the position of trying to get someone out of prison, only putting them in. She wanted to hear something that would make the process easier for her.
“It’s okay, I guess. There’s fights sometimes. But there’s a blond lady bull gives some of the cons blowjobs sometimes, says she likes inmates and wants to make our time easier. So it like balances out, I guess.”
“A guard?” she asked. If she could get a name, she could get the guard fired, at least. But that would take away what was probably one of the only pleasures these men had in life, and any guard who regularly performed oral sex on the inmates was riding an out-of-control train that would take her over a cliff pretty fast. She decided she would let it go.
“Yeah. Kind of heavy, you know, but she does it good.”
“Did you kill those teenagers?” Annie asked, desperate to change the subject. “The ones they say you did?”
“Not me.”
She hadn’t picked up a trace of emotion from him since she walked into the room. His blank expression really did reflect his inner self. At least, as far as she could tell from here, but the better her hearing grew, the more she needed to touch anyone to pick up impressions from them. She scooted her chair closer to the table. “Johnny,” she said. “I’m not supposed to touch you.”
“Okay.”
“Do you mind if I do? Just on the hand?”
“Why?”
“I can’t tell you that. It doesn’t mean anything, not really. It’s just I get a better sense of people if I can touch them once.” She meant it more literally than he could ever know—as her hearing improved and her empathy faded, it was only through touch that she could pick up any but the most powerful emotional impressions.
He obviously wasn’t afraid of her, so the fear that gripped her as she reached forward was all hers. She looked through the reinforced windows, but the guard outside was picking at his fingernails, not paying attention. “Is it okay?”
“Okay.”
She brushed trembling fingers against his knuckles, close to the C and K on his right hand. A quick, tentative contact, and then she pulled her hand back, scooted the chair away again. Now the guard looked up, probably wondering what all the chair noise was about.
“Did you kill them, Johnny?”
“I told you.”
“Tell me again, please.”
“No.”
Nothing had changed. His face was the same. Even with the glancing touch, she could read nothing of his inner state.
“What were you doing that day? The day they said the kids were killed?”
“I don’t know. Driving, maybe.”
“You don’t know?”
“Was a long time ago, right?”
“Four years ago. In a week, it’ll be four years exactly.”
“I don’t know, then.”
“But maybe driving.”
“Maybe.”
“Okay, Johnny. That doesn’t give me much to go on, but I’ll look around. If you’re innocent, I’ll do my best to get you out of here. All right?”
“Okay. Whatever.”
Whatever. Life and death didn’t seem to make any difference to him. The idea that he might die here didn’t worry him. The idea that he might get out didn’t please him.
Could any human being really be so vacant inside? Like an abandoned house, his body was just a shell that might once have contained life but didn’t anymore.
“I’ll keep you posted, Johnny.”
He didn’t answer. Annie waved for the guard. The door buzzed, and she left Johnny Ortega where he was.
Where he no doubt belonged.