12. #2
The current occupant was an older guy who called himself Wicked Willy. He was grizzled and had cratered scars across his chest
from having been shot in an argument over a craps game. At the moment, he was working out, which he did constantly—a hundred
or more push-ups at a time. His muscles were blessed, even if his soul was condemned. That’s what he said.
When he wasn’t working out, Wicked Willy wrote letters. The men on the row were allowed as much paper as they wanted—which
was an honest kindness—and most kept pen pals across the country. Being sentenced to death, Wicked Willy had joked, was like
joining one of those newfangled online dating sites. You’re guaranteed to meet lots of pussy. But the chance of actually getting
some? Not so much.
Mitchell didn’t like the pen pals. He thought most of them had bad reasons for writing to him. They wanted to pretend to themselves
that they believed he was innocent, but that was a layer of lies on top of the truth: They thought he was guilty. They were
titillated by the thought of his guilt and wanted to dance with death. It turned them on.
Not for him.
He dropped his hands from the bars. The cell wasn’t much bigger than a king-sized bed.
The cot was narrow, but at least they kept it clean here.
Every week the cells were turned, and trustees were allowed to clean.
Besides the narrow cot cemented to the floor, there was a rusted sink, a lidless toilet, and a small writing desk.
He was allowed five books at a time. That was the limit, because the cart only brought so many.
The first few years of his incarceration, Mitchell had been in what could only be described as shock. The prison doctor had
visited him regularly, concerned. His heart rate was always high, his blood pressure off the charts, and yet his affect was
slow, muted. They wanted to keep him healthy for death. The death row inmates got better medical care than most inmates. They
got better food, better everything. It was a prestigious place to be inside a prison. Even the corrections officers treated
them nicer. The worse the crime, the more the guy got treated like a celebrity. Because Mitchell had killed some white lady
in a high-profile crime—or so they thought—they wanted to slaver at him, too, which he found repulsive, when he was finally
able to think. So he turned away from others. From life.
He spent two or three years in that twilight, he reflected now. Then attorneys started visiting. That was the other benefit
of death row. If he had been an innocent man sentenced to life in prison, he would have been well and truly fucked, because
no one gave a rat’s ass about those thousands of men—and women. The prisons were filled with innocents, or at least those
with some plausible deniability, and plenty of nonviolent offenders, but no one was lining up to sign petitions for them,
or raise money for their appeals. Once he was sentenced to death, Mitchell was promoted from riding in the germ-infested coach
class where others were likely to pummel you over a dried bread heel to the first class of legal accommodations: endless appeals
that were now, finally, it seemed, ending. It was a plush ride, sure, he thought. But one that always ended in the worst possible
way.
He had been gifted some of the best attorneys of the region.
They had come, smelling strongly of cologne that seeped through the round hole of the scratched visiting room glass, and slowly, he had awakened, because those attorneys instilled the first burning ember of his new life, which was hope.
He was forced to participate because they asked questions.
He answered, his voice rusty at first, but trying.
Asked why the officers never took a booking photo—because it would have shown him beaten to snot—he answered truthfully: I don’t know.
For seven years, he had coasted on hope. The appeals failed. But there was always another appeal, a new attorney at the window.
New cologne. Sometimes the old cologne. Young fresh clerks, the zeal of true belief in their eyes, who made grandiose promises—We’re going to get you free, Mitch—and then vanished without ever asking him if he liked to be called Mitch. He did not.
But then suddenly the process ended, and the final die was cast. No more appeals. It was over. This final attorney, Terrence,
was more like an undertaker than an advocate. He was the man who was there when the plane went down.
And the exonerator. I found out there’s an investigator who specializes in these cases, Terrence had told him a few days before Ruby arrived. She agreed to come help out. Better late than never, right?
Mitchell wanted to tell him now, Maybe not.
You know what’s funny? Terrence had asked, trying to lighten the mood a bit in these last aching weeks. I was trying to figure out what else I could do—anything to try, you know? I heard this voice on the way to work the other
morning. It was like someone talking to me. Not talking—showing. I got this word in my head: exonerator. I got to the office and made some calls and what do you know, there is a woman called by that name. Isn’t that something?
But Mitchell was not surprised.