36: A Novel (12 page)

“That’s just great,” I groused.  “But it doesn’t help me.  I’m dead.  Right?”

“No, Mr. Whitman.  You’re alive and well.  Robert Tracy is dead.  No one is looking for him and no one will.  That’s what matters.”

“OK,” I said with a huff of resignation.  “You’ve got me.  I get that.  Maybe I should be grateful, but I’ve grown cynical over the past ten years as a guest of the state.  Now how about telling me what’s really going on?”

“How about we get some fresh air?”  He asked, standing and straightening his jacket sleeves after adjusting his tie.  “Ready to get out of that bed?”

“Yes,” I said, surprised, and at the same time expecting him to laugh and say he was just kidding.

But, he didn’t do anything of the sort.  Dragging his chair out of the way, he leaned down and released the restraints on each of my ankles.  Moving up, he undid the strap across my chest before freeing my hands.

“OK, easy,” he said, slipping a giant hand beneath my upper back.  “You haven’t been on your feet in a long time.  You’re going to be weak and unsteady.”

He helped me sit up on the edge of the mattress.  I looked down at my pale legs sticking out of the hospital gown, amazed at how skinny they were.  Johnson pushed a small button on the outside frame of the bed before he helped me stand.  I swayed and would have fallen backwards if not for his steadying grip on my upper arms.

The door opened a moment later and the nurse stepped in.

“Agent Johnson?  You buzzed?”

“Let’s get Mr. Whitman some clothes,” he said.

“Of course.  Right away,” she said and disappeared.

While we waited, he held on to me as I took a few tentative steps.  He was right.  I was weak as hell and if not for his assistance wouldn’t have been able to walk a straight line.  We made a couple of slow laps around the room before the nurse returned and placed a neatly folded pile of clothing on the foot of my bed.  A pair of simple, white, rubber soled shoes sat on top of the stack.

Johnson eased me into the chair he’d occupied and began handing me the clothes.  It took some doing, but eventually I was dressed in a set of scrubs and slipped the shoes on my feet.  Standing, I swayed dangerously, holding a hand out to stop the Fed from helping me.  I had to learn to do this on my own again.

Gaining my balance, I slowly followed him as he led the way out of the room.  Outside was a circular nurses station, equipped with monitors to help them keep an eye on their patients.  There was also apparently a live video feed, and I could see the room I’d just exited on a large screen. 

Five other rooms were arranged around the central area, the nursing station at the core of the circle.  All of their doors were open.  Each room, other than mine, was dark.  I was apparently the only patient on this ward.  Still getting used to being upright, I wobbled and reached out to steady myself against the wall.  When I touched it, my fingers felt like they had just contacted hot acid.

“What the hell’s wrong with my hands?”  I asked, looking down at them.

“New prints,” Agent Johnson said.  “We changed your face, but if someone fingerprinted you the ruse would fall apart.”

“What do you mean they’re new?”

“A rather complicated process, actually,” he answered, motioning me to walk with him.  “Several layers of skin are removed.  Not just your fingertips, but your palms as well.  Once we’ve gone deep enough to ensure they’re completely erased, new skin that was grown from your own cells is grafted in place. 

“There’s no rejection because it’s your skin.  It takes nicely, and at key times throughout the healing process a computer controlled laser is used to etch new prints into the virgin flesh.  It’s all quite detailed, and I’m told extremely painful.  That’s the main reason you’ve been kept sedated.  To spare you the pain.”

I had come to a stop at a pair of doors that exited the ward.  Standing there, I stared at my hands and carefully touched each fingertip with my thumbs.  It hurt like hell at the slightest pressure.  Lifting my hands, I peered at them and could make out the loops and whorls on the end of each finger.

“So you’re telling me I could walk into a police station and have my prints run and they wouldn’t come back as Bob Tracy, convicted murderer?”

“Correct.  They’d come back as JR Whitman, truck driver.”

Johnson smiled and motioned again for me to keep moving.  I followed him through the doors and into a stark corridor.  It ended at a T intersection and he turned right.  A few steps farther and we reached a blank, steel door. 

A flat key card reader with a single red light was on the wall next to it.  He pulled a plain white piece of plastic, about the size of a credit card, out of an inner jacket pocket and held it against the reader.  With a loud click, the lock released and he pushed the door open.

It was dark outside, which was probably a good thing as my eyes were bothering me just from the fluorescent lighting in the hallway.  As the door swung open, fresh air smelling of the sea rushed in and I immediately felt rejuvenated.  Johnson stepped through and I followed, looking all around as I emerged into the night.

We took several steps on a steel deck and I came to a stop, turning my head in all directions, examining my surroundings.  Looking up, I saw a soaring superstructure, a red light at the apex flashing regularly to warn low flying aircraft.  There was a steady breeze that was warm and humid, and I breathed deeply of the clean air as I followed Johnson to a waist high rail. 

Looking down, I saw the dark surface of an ocean, visible in the light of a full moon.  It must have been a hundred feet, or more, below our level.  Looking in every direction I saw nothing other than a dark horizon.  I was on a massive, offshore oil rig.

16

“Hello, Mr. Whitman.  It’s a pleasure to meet you,” the thin woman said as she breezed into the conference room.

The room was small, but not cramped.  A table occupied the center, half a dozen well upholstered chairs surrounding it.  Agent Johnson and I were seated on the side opposite the entrance, waiting for her arrival. 

It was three days following my brief stroll around the outside of the oil rig.  I still didn’t know any more about what was going on, and curiosity was driving me nuts.  I’d spent the past two days meeting with a psychiatrist each morning and most of the afternoons on treadmills.  Getting my strength back.

The conversations with the shrink had been odd.  At least to me.  I’d never talked to one before.  Some of the questions he asked were just weird.  And he seemed to be obsessed with my sex life.  I had to disappoint him.  I hadn’t had a sex life for a very long time. 

People seem to think that when you’re in prison, you’ll inevitably succumb to need and find a willing, or unwilling, partner of the same sex.  Sure, a lot of guys do.  But there are a lot that don’t.  I was in the second category, and he almost seemed disappointed with my answer.

We’d had a lengthy discussion about the two murders I’d committed, though I refused to acknowledge that I considered what I’d done as murder.  The fuckers were going to kill my family, and I had little doubt they planned to leave my body in the desert for the vultures and coyotes.  They started the chain of events that led to their deaths.  All I did was finish it, and my only regret was the impact on my nice, quiet life.

He asked what I felt about Monica.  I was honest when I answered that there hadn’t been a single day in prison that I hadn’t thought about her.  Missed her.  Hoped she’d found someone who was treating her right. 

She had visited me regularly during the first couple of months leading up to my trial.  That was when I actually had hope that the truth would come out and exonerate me.  She had met with my lawyer and offered to testify, but she only knew what I’d told her.  He rejected her offer, explaining why she couldn’t help, and when I found out I exploded.  The last thing I ever wanted was for her to get dragged into my mess.

I told her to stop coming.  It was one of the hardest things that I’ve ever done, and I’m sure I broke her heart.  But she honored my wishes.  Not that I didn’t cherish every second I got to see her face and hear her voice, but there was no point.  At best, I could hope for life in prison.  At worst?  In Arizona, murder of a peace officer is a capital crime.  Punishable by death if the jury unanimously arrives at that sentence. 

Once I was convicted, the penalty phase began.  I wasn’t really sure which sentence I wanted.  Would death really be that much worse than rotting in a cell until I died of old age?  I’d already seen some of the lifers, a couple of them so old and decrepit that they were no longer a threat to anyone.  They weren’t even capable of harming a fly.  But they were going to die in prison.  Not a dignified way to spend your waning days.

So, despite numerous problems which caused a mistrial of the penalty phase, the court finally got its shit together and empaneled a jury of my peers that decided I deserved to die for what I’d done.  By the time this was all over, seven years had passed.  I’d already been in prison, and the only thing that changed for me was when I was transferred from a shared cell in the general prison population to a private cell on death row.

The shrink wanted to know about all of this.  What I had been feeling.  What I thought.  Even what I fantasized about.  He didn’t appreciate my first answer that I had fantasized about his mother.  But we got past that.  And I had another appointment with him this afternoon.

“Doctor,” Agent Johnson said, getting to his feet when the woman entered the conference room.

He smacked my shoulder and gestured for me to get up.  I hadn’t had a lot of opportunities to practice my manners over the past decade or so.  Feeling sheepish, I stood and looked at the new arrival.

She was not just thin, she was painfully thin.  My atrophied arms were larger than the sticks she called legs, which stuck out of the bottom of what I think used to be called a pencil skirt.  Today, who the hell knew what the name for the style was.

Her blonde hair was cut short, almost mannish, and she wore a white lab coat over a wildly printed blouse.  A thin gold chain was around her neck, suspending a pair of battered reading glasses against her chest.

Johnson nudged me again and I turned to look at him.

“What?”

“When someone comes in a room and tells you it’s a pleasure to meet you, you respond.  Don’t just stand there like a dork.”

“Fuck you,” I said, grinning when I saw the storm cloud pass across his face.

“You’ve been locked away from society for a long time,” he said patiently.  “You’ve forgotten how to act around anyone other than convicts.  Pay attention so when the time comes, you don’t draw attention to yourself.  You’re going to need to be able to move in any circle.  You’ve got the lazy, redneck asshole part down pat.  Now, let’s try something new.”

He grinned back at me, knowing what he’d said had hit home by the sudden blush that started at my neck and went all the way up.  I looked into his dark eyes for a few moments, then nodded.

“Very nice to meet you, too,” I said, turning back to the woman.  “But I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.  I don’t know your name.”

We had TV in prison before I was put on death row.  Between the manners my mother had tried to instill in me, and watching TV, I knew the words to say.  They just weren’t automatic.

The woman looked me in the eye and smiled.  A genuine smile of surprise.

“Very well done, Mr. Whitman.  My name is Doctor Johanna Anholts.  I will be briefing you on our little project.  And don’t let Agent Johnson get under your skin.  He’s really just a big, soft teddy bear.  Now, gentlemen, if you’ll please take your seats, I’ll begin.”

I started to sit, but Johnson reached out and grabbed my upper arm, preventing me from lowering my ass into the chair.  I looked at him and he nodded at Dr. Anholts.  I glanced over and saw that she was still standing, connecting a laptop to a projector.  Once she was done, she pulled a chair back and sat down.  Johnson released my arm and I slowly lowered myself onto the upholstery.

The projector flared to life and displayed an image on a screen attached to the front wall.  A stylized logo of a clock face with streaks of light swirling around it steadily sharpened as the device auto-focused with a faint whine.  Arcing across the top of the logo were the words
Athena Project
.  Completing the encirclement of the logo at the bottom was a Latin phrase,
Adhuc Hic Hesterna
.

“Welcome to the Athena Project, Mr. Whitman.  The things of yesterday are still with us.”

“What does that mean?”  I asked, wondering if she wasn’t just a little bit touched.

“The Latin, Mr. Whitman.  Adhuc hic hesterna.  That’s what it means.”

She pressed a button on the keyboard and the logo was replaced with a photo of me standing in front of a large 18-wheel truck.  Well, not the me my parents would recognize.  The new, surgically altered me.

“This is Joseph Ryan Whitman,” she said.  “Long haul truck driver living in Dallas, Texas.  Single.  Does nothing other than drive and keep to himself.  He is actually an undercover FBI agent who volunteered for this project.  Your new features were modeled after his.”

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“I have a lot to tell you.  I just wanted you to see this man first.  To understand the amount of effort that has been expended to get you here and looking like you do.”

“I got that,” I said.  “But I don’t understand why you want me to look exactly like an undercover Fed.”

“So you have a real identity, Mr. Whitman.  Robert Tracy is gone.  You have to be someone if you’re going to interact in the world again.  And, despite popular fiction, it really isn’t that easy to create an identity from scratch.  Not for an adult, at least.

“A competent detective, or reporter, would be able to find holes in whatever legend we tried to concoct.  There should be birth records, immunization records, school records, photos in yearbooks, bank accounts, old girlfriends…  Oh, my, the list goes on and on.  The agent’s name is not Whitman, any more than yours is.  The real Mr. Whitman passed away quietly two years ago from terminal cancer.