Authors: Stuart Woods
Heat
Stuart Woods
Atlanta Federal Prison swam slowly out of the smog asâ¦
Jesse walked into the punishment cell, and the door wasâ¦
Jesse had trouble climbing the stairs to the roof, becauseâ¦
Barker took a seat at the opposite end of theâ¦
Jesse sat at the dining table of a twelfth-floor suiteâ¦
Jesse stood at the bathroom sink and looked at himselfâ¦
Jesse found what he wanted at the third car lot; itâ¦
Jesse walked down the main street in the early morningâ¦
Pat Casey strolled into the police station, walked over toâ¦
Jesse strolled down Main Street, taking stock of the town.
Jesse pulled up in front of the house and gaveâ¦
Jesse packed his things, then checked out of the motelâ¦
When Jesse woke there was a gray light in theâ¦
Jesse washed his dishes, dried them and put them away.
Jesse barely made it to work on time.
As Jesse walked up the front steps of the houseâ¦
Pat Casey got out of his car and walked towardâ¦
Jesse had been at St. Clair Wood Products for nearly aâ¦
Jesse sat on the hood of his truck, which wasâ¦
Almost as soon as Jesse had begun to operate theâ¦
Kurt Ruger picked up Melvin Schooner at the motel andâ¦
Jesse stood by the truck and looked at the Firstâ¦
The four men arrived separately in Seattle: two at Seattle-Tacoma Internationalâ¦
Jesse left work on Monday afternoon and drove into town.
He's made you,” Kip Fuller said.
Jesse sat and stared at the machine.
Jesse stood at the kitchen counter opening the wine whileâ¦
Jesse spent an entire day photographing the Wood Products plant,â¦
As Jesse was loading Jenny's car for the trip to theâ¦
Jesse left the hotel at eight o'clock the following morning,â¦
Pat Casey sat in Kurt Ruger's office at the bankâ¦
Jesse had been back from New York a week whenâ¦
Jesse had been regularly attending Sunday morning services at theâ¦
Jesse thought for several days about what he had seenâ¦
Jesse gulped.
They went to a Christmas morning service at the churchâ¦
They were married on the Sunday after Christmas, in aâ¦
Jesse spent an hour at the office, making a listâ¦
Jesse was leaving his office on Wednesday, two days beforeâ¦
Jesse woke up feeling elated.
Pat Casey stood on the path and looked down intoâ¦
Jesse spent half an hour going through the suite atâ¦
On their first day in San Francisco they walked.
Jesse and Jenny arrived home late on Sunday evening, exhaustedâ¦
Jesse went back to the office and spent the morningâ¦
Jesse waited until the end of the week before heâ¦
On Sunday afternoon after lunch, Jenny was helping Carey withâ¦
The fax arrived on Tuesday morning.
Jesse arrived at Washington National at seven in the evening.
Jesse drove slowly down Argyle Terrace, then back again, casingâ¦
Jesse sweated National airport, even though he had told Kipâ¦
Jesse arrived at the office the following morning to findâ¦
Saturday was Jesse's first whole day with Carrie in moreâ¦
Jesse pored over the charts until midnight, then he beganâ¦
At lunchtime on Tuesday, Jesse made what he was sureâ¦
Wednesday.
Jesse arrived precisely on time and was shown into Coldwater'sâ¦
Ruger had been at it for half an hour, andâ¦
Jesse drove slowly down the long driveway, and, at theâ¦
Jesse thought as he fell.
At dawn Jesse was yawning, trying to stay awake.
Fifty miles out of Las Vegas, Jesse tuned in the unicomâ¦
The door slammed behind Jesse, and he turned to seeâ¦
Jesse stopped into the village post office for his mail.
A
tlanta Federal Prison swam slowly out of the smog as the helicopter beat its way south from Fulton County Airport. Kip Fuller was transfixed by the sight.
In his three years in law enforcement Kipling Fuller had never been inside a prison of any sort, and Atlanta held a place in his imagination on a level with Alcatraz and Leavenworthâespecially Alcatraz, since that was a prison of the past, as was Atlanta.
Alcatraz was permanently closed, though, while Atlanta had been partly reopened to handle the overflow of federal prisoners. At its peak the prison had held a population of nearly four thousand, but the current number was closer to eight hundred. The prison had been a temporary home to Cuban refugees, Haitian boat people, Colombian drug lords and the occasional special prisoner. It was a special prisoner that Fuller would meet todayâor, rather, meet again.
To avoid breaking the FAA regulation prohibiting flights over the prison yard, the pilot made a turn that took him parallel with the wall, a few yards out. They
were at five hundred feet now, aiming for the big H painted on the prison roof, and Fuller could see into the yard. As he watched, two figures met in the middle of the open area, and the other prisoners immediately rushed to surround them, leaving a small circle free for the two men, who were now swinging at each other. At the outskirts of the crowd, uniformed guards could be seen trying to push their way to the center, but Fuller thought they weren't trying very hard. He brought the microphone of his headset close to his lips.
“What's going on down there?” he asked the assistant warden sitting next to him.
“That's your man,” the official replied.
“What, you mean fighting?”
“That's right. Every time he gets out of solitary, he gets in another fight, and back in he goes.”
“How long has this been going on?”
“Fourteen months; the whole time he's been inside.”
“Jesus,” Fuller said.
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Jesse Warden sat on the edge of the examination table and watched through his swollen left eye as the male nurse pulled the thread tight, knotted it and snipped it off with the surgical scissors.
“There you go, Jesse,” the man said. “How many stitches is that I've put in you the last year?”
“I've lost count,” Warden said in his native hillbilly twang. It hurt when he moved his lips.
“So have I,” the nurse said, placing a large Band-Aid over the cut under the eye. “That's it,” the nurse said to the guard.
“Let's go, Jesse,” the guard said. The guards didn't call him by his last name, as they did the other prisoners; “Warden” was a term of address saved for prison management.
Warden let himself down slowly from the table and preceded the guard through the door, trying not to limp. The guard gave him plenty of room; no guard had touched him since the first fight.
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Fuller jumped down from the helicopter and followed the assistant warden across the prison roof toward a door; shortly they were walking down an empty corridor, their footsteps echoing through the nearly empty building.
“It's kind of spooky, isn't it?” Fuller said.
“You get used to it,” the AW replied. “In the old days this place would have been full of noise, like any prison, but with the population out in the yard for exercise right now, it's dead quiet.”
Fuller followed the man through a door, across a waiting room to another door, where the AW knocked.
“Come in!” a voice called from behind the door.
The AW opened the door, let Fuller in and closed it behind him.
The warden stood up from behind his desk and offered his hand. “J. W. Morris,” he said.
“Kip Fuller, from the U.S. Attorney General's office,” Fuller replied.
“I've been expecting you, Mr. Fuller. Have a seat; what can I do for you?”
Fuller sat down and took an envelope from his inside pocket. “You have a prisoner named Jesse R. Warden here.”
“We do,” the warden replied.
Fuller handed the envelope across the desk and waited while Morris read the paper inside.
“This is unusual,” the warden said.
“Is it?” Fuller had no idea.
“Normally, when a federal prisoner is released to the custody of the attorney general, it's by court order
and a reason is statedâlike the prisoner is needed to testify in court.”
“Not in this case,” said Fuller, who had read the document during his flight from Washington in the Gulfstream government jet.
“Could I see some ID?” the warden asked.
“Certainly,” Fuller replied, offering his identification card.
“âSpecial Task Force,'” the warden read aloud. “What does that mean?”
“Just what it says, sir,” Fuller replied. “That's all I'm at liberty to tell you.”
The warden nodded. “I see,” he said. “I wonder if you'd mind stepping out into my waiting room for a moment?” He didn't return the ID to Fuller.
“Be glad to,” he replied. The man was going to call Washington, and Fuller didn't blame him a bit. He left the room and closed the door behind him. The waiting room walls were bereft of pictures, and there were no magazines lying around. Fuller paced the floor slowly, measuring the dimensions of the little room. About the size of a cell, he guessed. The door opened, and the warden waved him back into the inner office.
“Looks like you've got yourself a prisoner,” Morris said. “When do I get him back?”
“The AG's order says âindefinite custody,'” Fuller replied.
“Does that mean he's not coming back? The man's serving two consecutive life sentences; with the most favorable consideration he's in for twelve, thirteen more years, and his conduct so far has not been such to warrant favorable consideration.”
“I'm afraid I can't answer your question, Warden,” Fuller said. “I'm just a pickup and delivery man.” He was more than that, but the warden didn't need to know.
The warden took a form out of his desk and rolled
it into a typewriter at his side. He filled it out, hunting and pecking, then whipped the paper out of the machine and pushed it across the desk with a pen. “I'll need your signature,” he said.
Fuller read the form and the paragraph at the bottom:
Received a prisoner, Jesse R. Warden, no. 294304, at the personal order of the Attorney General of the United States, from the Federal Penitentiary at Atlanta, Georgia, this date, for indefinite custody.
Fuller signed and dated the document. “Where is Mr. Warden now?” he asked.
“In solitary confinement,” the warden replied, “where he always is.”