Lucky Girl

Chapter Four

Charlie followed Kavanaugh and Wurtlizer down the corridor of infamy, while looking through a manila envelope holding the effects he arrived at Death Row carrying. They didn't amount to much: a Velcro wallet on a chain, a digital watch, a silver hoop earring, a red asthma inhaler, and a flip-phone that had been filled with pre-paid minutes right before he'd been arrested. Those five objects, plus the actual clothes on his back, were all he had to show for his life at the age of thirty-five.

He looked to his right, into the cells; there was Johnny Pallenberg performing a yoga headstand against the wall. Johnny was infamous for tossing hookers into a barbeque pit on his backyard property. When the cops discovered his hideaway, they unearthed the bones of forty-seven women. Upon getting locked up, Johnny scrawled that number in the center of his forehead using a razor blade and filling it in with ink.

To Charlie's left, was Angel Trejo, wearing prison whites, reclined on his cot, and reading the "Tibetan Book of the Dead". Charlie wondered if Angel trying to figure out the odds of encountering one of the more than twenty men, women, and pets that he'd skinned and sacrificed, in the afterlife.

These men had been Charlie's neighbors for the past four and half years, and thankfully, he barely had to interact with them. Death Row wasn't like basic jail; there's no mingling between prisoners, no communal dining, no group television time, and although the isolation was crippling, Charlie imagined it beat spending quality time with guys like Johnny and Angel.

The hallway stretched on and on, far longer than Charlie remembered. It never hit him, until he was free, just how many prisoners the state had earmarked to die. And trust me, the state would have killed each of them already, had it not been for pesky things like courts of appeal, an occasional liberal governor's pardons, and a growing societal revulsion against capital punishment. So you ended up with something far sadder, lots of men waiting twenty-five years to die, or passing on from natural causes before the state got it's shot, which is a form of death in itself.

"Gillis. You fuckin' chickenhawk", screamed out Brett Frost, who had used his career as a birthday party magician, to come back after the festivities, and wipe out whole families. "Come back and let me give you a goodbye kiss."

Charlie turned around. Frost had his face pressed between the bars and his lips puckered. Wurtlizer and Kavanaugh stopped dead; fingers teasing their holstered triggers; mace at the ready; knowing this could get ugly.

"Hey," they shouted in sync. "Back away from him, Gillis."

Charlie approached the bars. "I'm ready."

Frost licked his lips. "Know the difference between you and me?"

"I wasn't a birthday clown."

Frost wagged his tattooed index finger. "Magician." He laughed, dark and deep, his mouth open so wide Charlie could see how many fillings he needed. "I could give that blonde bitch who comes to visit you what she really wants. I satisfied lots of ice bitches in heat looking for the master's bone. That's what they all are."

Charlie moved closer to Frost. "The fuck you say about her?"

"Your Daddy knew how to take care of those bitches too. Like when he shot your Momma in the brains. Only mistake, he did himself too, overcommitted to the act."

Charlie was about to reach through, grab Frost and throttle him, when Kavanaugh, built like a linebacker gone to utter seed, swung his truncheon against the bars, forcing Frost to scramble into the corner like a cockroach when you turn the kitchen lights on. Next, he put his burly ham-hock of a hand around Charlie's waist to lead him away, back to Wurlitzer, who tried to avoid physical altercation at all costs:

"Killer, it'd behoove you not to be a such a fuckin' hothead..."

"...You hear what he said..."

"...There's a buncha people past the gates looking to get a piece of you. You gonna take them all on too?"

Charlie raised an eyebrow.

"Lotsa folks aren't thrilled you're out," Kavanaugh continued. "And they're gonna put you down before you get a chance to go rabid again. Fix the mistake the law couldn't. And they're right and justified in the lord's eyes to do it." He turned and glared at Charlie. "Hell, I may even help them."

Charlie fell silent, then. "You got no beef with me. I didn't do anything. Why I'm walkin' outta here today."

"Right," said Kavanaugh. "Your prints just happened to be on the weapon, which you were found holding. And all the victim's DNA happened to be on it too. Some coincidence, killer."

Charlie had to admit, what Kavanaugh said was true, and made freedom a sticky proposition. Charlie's prints and the victims DNA were, and would always be, on the murder weapon, and even he'd been unable to explain it, outside of conspiracy theories about being framed by the real killer, who coincidentally, appeared not to have racked up any new victims since Charlie went inside. These unavoidable facts caused Charlie to ask, for the thousandth time:

Who did this to me and why'd they frame me?

And more importantly, one that had only recently begun to bubble in his brain:

Now that I'm out, which one of us is going to find the other first?