Page 39 of The Writer
CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
THE DRIVE UPSTATE to Dannemora takes a little over five hours. By the time Cordova gets inside the correctional facility, it’s after four.
Ruben Lucero looks rough.
Cordova hasn’t seen him since the trial, and he appears to have aged a decade. His thinning hair, shaved close to his scalp, is gray at the temples. His former baby face is now impressed with deep lines. There’s a cut on his right cheek, maybe a week or two old, repaired with sloppy black infirmary stitches. The skin surrounding his left eye is the deep yellow of a partially healed bruise. As a convicted sex offender, the murderer of a fourteen-year-old child, and a generally creepy asshole, Lucero, Cordova knows, spends much of his time in protective custody. Even in prison, there’s a pecking order, a hierarchy of social classes, and sex offenders, particularly those with an eye for the young, are on the lowest rung, targeted by all the others.
Lucero is sitting behind one-inch-thick ballistic glass, stained and smeared with God knows what, his head tilted to the side, eyes nothing but slits. Cordova takes the seat opposite him, plucks the phone receiver from the wall on his left, and brings it close enough to his face to speak without letting it touch his skin. It smells like stale onions and sweat.
Lucero scoops up his receiver, balances it on his shoulder, says nothing. Letters spelling out punk cover four cracked knuckles on one hand. Typical prison tat, the kind made by carving letters into the flesh and applying heated ink from a ballpoint pen. Sometimes the word was still readable when the infection was over, sometimes not.
Cordova nods at the man’s hand and breaks the silence. “New ink?”
Lucero glares through the glass. “What the fuck do you want?”
This particular visitation room has six booths. All of them are occupied. Most people speak in hushed tones, but a woman down at the far end is shouting into the phone, screaming at the inmate opposite her. Something about her son getting picked up for dealing. Their son, Cordova suspects, given the way the man is eyeing her. He’s trying to look tough, but there’s a quiver in his chin. Cordova doesn’t have children. He was married once, but the job put an end to that. Back in the late ’90s, he’d come home from working a double to find an empty closet and a note on the refrigerator that said, simply, Sorry, I can’t anymore.
Cordova loads a photo of Lieutenant Daniels on his phone and presses the screen against the glass. “Do you know this man?”
Lucero’s eyes remain on Cordova for a few seconds, then shift to the small screen. He doesn’t say whether or not he recognizes the man, just leans back in his seat and looks at Cordova. “What’s it to you?”
Cordova returns the stare. He’s not easily intimidated, and if being on the job for thirty years has taught him anything, it’s how to read someone who doesn’t want to be read. Lucero most certainly recognizes Daniels. He knows Cordova can review visitor logs, so why attempt to conceal it? He turns the phone back around, types in Denise Morrow, and finds a recent photo of her standing on the courthouse steps after being released on bail. “What about her?”
This time, Lucero hides nothing. “Yeah, she’s been here. So what?”
“What do you talk about?”
“What do you think?”
“Has she been here recently?”
“Why do you care?”
This time, Cordova goes quiet, face dropping into his best You know why smirk. He eyes the other man until he breaks and starts talking.
“She’s some reporter or some shit,” Lucero finally says. “Come up here a few times. Said she’s writing a book on all the ways you and your partner fucked me over. Gonna get me out.” He lifts his arm. “This is still fucked from when your partner busted it. Can’t raise it above my head half the time. I get out, you know I’ll sue the shit out of you for the arm, false arrest, false imprisonment.” He points at Cordova, then at himself. “You and me, we’re gonna trade places. Your bitch-ass partner too.”
Cordova notes that the man’s arm seems to be working just fine. He swipes through the images on the phone and finds one of Geller Hoffman. He holds it up. “What about him?”
Lucero’s eyes go wide, then narrow again as he leans forward to get a better look. A mix of emotions cross his face as he studies the image. When he drops back in his seat, there’s nothing left but frustration. “Why you coming to me with this now? You didn’t want to hear it back in the day. Why now?”
“What do you mean?”
The woman at the far end of the interview room slams her receiver down on the table, smacks it against the glass, then jumps up and points at the inmate she’s been speaking to. “You ain’t never been a father to that boy! He learned nothing from you but how to be some gangsta, and considering that got you here, he ain’t no better off. He end up here, that’s on you!”
With a harsh kick at her chair, she storms off. The corrections officer stationed in the room does nothing but open the door for her. Just another day.
Cordova tries not to let it all distract him. “What do you mean?” he asks Lucero again.
“What good’s it gonna do me to tell you now? At least she’s trying to get me out.” His frustration shifts to agitation. “You actually think I belong here. You’ll put in some kind of word for me? Reopen my case? Fuck no. You let this truth out, and your world comes crashing down. Think I don’t know that?”
Whatever this is, it’s got Lucero fired up. He shifts in his chair, eyes Cordova, the interior door, the corrections officer who likely brought him in here and who’s still standing by that door.
Cordova tries to calm the man down. “Look, if we missed something on your case, good or bad, you can tell me. If a mistake was made, I’ll do what I can to correct it.”
Lucero lets out a soft laugh. “Ain’t that some bullshit.”
“Tell me.”
Lucero scratches his chin, then tentatively brushes the black stitches in his cheek. “Show me that last pic again?”
Cordova raises the phone; the image of Geller Hoffman is still on the screen.
“I told you I was watching out for that girl that day in the park. I tell you the truth, and what do you do? You played that video. Told the jury I was following her. You never once showed them a video of the man I said was following her. Not once. That was on you.”
“We searched all the footage and didn’t see anyone but you. You know that.”
“You didn’t find him ’cause you didn’t look hard enough. Easier for you to pin it on me.”
“What exactly are you saying?”
“What I’m saying is that’s the guy,” Lucero says, tapping the glass between him and Cordova’s phone. “That’s the guy I saw following her.”
“Geller Hoffman?”
“Think I thought to ask him his name? Think I’d be in here if I had? Fuck no.” He slouches back in his seat. “The first guy you showed me? I told him all this when he come up here. He didn’t do a damn thing about it. Left me to rot. Fuckers. All of you.”
Cordova swipes back to the photograph of Lieutenant Daniels. “You told this guy?”
Lucero nods. “Damn right I did.”