Kathleen has real power at the GPFW. Or she did. She got to decide who was recognized and who was rejected, who became famous among the inmates and who remained in obscurity. I wonder if this might have something to do with why certain inmates are after her, assuming what I’ve been told is true. I wonder what the real reason is for her being moved as I think of what Tara Grimm said about the family murdered in Savannah on January 6, 2002, and Jaime Berger’s recent visits to Bravo Pod.
“I was an English major in college, wanted to be a professional poet but instead went into social work, got my masters in that,” Kathleen tells me. “
January 2002 was when Dawn Kincaid came to Savannah and met Kathleen for the first time, or so Kathleen claims. Possibly Dawn was here in Savannah when the doctor and his family were murdered. Hacked and stabbed to death, a category of violence Benton describes as personal, hands-on, often accompanied by a sexual component. The perpetrator is aroused and stimulated by the physical act of penetrating a victim’s body with a blade or, in the recent case of the boy in Salem, penetrating the skull with iron nails.
“We have our editorial meetings in the library to review submissions and go over the layout with the design team.” Kathleen is talking about her magazine .“While I have the final say about what gets published, Warden Grimm approves everything, then each person whose original piece is selected gets her picture on the cover. It’s a really big deal and can cause hard feelings.”
“What’s happening to your magazine now?” I ask, as I wonder if Lola Daggette might have known Dawn Kincaid and is aware that Kathleen is Dawn’s mother.
“Of course they’re not letting me do it,” Kathleen says resentfully. “Someone else obviously is. I was working in the library, like I said, but I can’t do that, either. That’s how I funded my commissary account. Twenty-four dollars a month, and buying a treat now and then, paper, stamps, and it doesn’t take long. Who’s going to send me money from the outside when what I’ve got runs out? Who do I have to help? How am I supposed to buy a damn bottle of shampoo so I can wash my hair?”
I don’t answer. She’ll get nothing from me.
“The rules are the same for everyone in Bravo Pod, whether you’re PC or a mass murderer. I guess that’s the price you pay for being kept safe,” she says, and I’m struck by how harsh she looks, as if something hideous inside her is working its way out. “Except I’m not safe. I’ve been stuck right here with danger right over my damn head.”
“What danger is over your head?” I ask.
“I don’t know why they’d do that to me. They need to move me back.”
“What danger is over your head?” I ask again.
“It’s Lola who’s behind all this,” she says, and the circle is complete.
Jaime Berger has been coming to the GPFW to talk to Lola Daggette, who’s connected to Kathleen Lawler, who’s connected to me. I don’t let on that I know who Lola Daggette is as I continue to entertain the possibility that she is somehow connected to Dawn. I don’t know how or why, but all of us are in the circle.
“She wanted to get me moved over here so I’d be near her,” Kathleen says angrily. “We don’t have a separate pod for death row. Lola’s the only one on it right now. The last woman was Barrie Lou Rivers, the one who killed all those people in Atlanta by mixing arsenic in their tuna-fish sandwiches.”
The Deli Devil. I’m familiar with the case, but I don’t show it.
“Same people every day getting the same tuna special and she smiled at them, just as nice as she could be, as they got sicker and sicker,” Kathleen goes on. “Right before she was supposed to die by lethal injection, she choked to death on a tuna sandwich in her cell. What I call one of life’s black ironies.”
“Death row is upstairs?”
“Just a maximum-security cell like any other, no different from the cell I’m in now.” Kathleen is getting louder and more upset. “Lola’s upstairs and I’m down here, one floor below her. So she’s not yelling at me directly or passing kites directly. But her words get around.”
“What words have you been hearing?”
“Threats. I know she’s making them.”
I don’t point out the obvious, that Lola Daggette is locked up twenty-three hours a day just as Kathleen is, and it’s not possible for the two of them to have physical contact. I don’t see how Lola can hurt anyone.
“She knew if she got people riled up and placed me in danger, they sure as hell would move me to the same damn pod she’s in. Which is exactly what they did,” she says in a scathing tone. “Lola wants me nearby,” Kathleen adds, and I don’t believe Lola Daggette somehow willed Kathleen to Bravo Pod.
Tara Grimm did.
“Have you had similar problems with other inmates in the past?” I ask. “Problems that necessitated moving you?”
“You mean moving me to Bravo Pod?” Kathleen raises her voice. “Hell, no. I’ve never been in segregation before because why would I be? They need to let me out. I need to go back to my life.”
Officer Macon walks past the windows of the visitation room. I’m aware of him looking in at us, and I avoid looking back as I think of the poem Kathleen sent and the prison’s literary magazine that she edited until several weeks ago. I wonder how often she published herself and passed over others. I glance at my watch. Our hour is almost up.
“Well, it’s nice of you to bring me this picture of Jack.” Kathleen holds the photograph at arm’s length and narrows her eyes. “I hope your trial goes all right.”
The way she says it catches my attention, but I don’t react.
“Trials aren’t a picnic. Course, I usually just plead guilty in exchange for the lightest sentence I can get. Save the taxpayers money. Have had a few suspended sentences because I was honest enough to just say yup, I did it, sorry about that. If you don’t have a reputation to protect, just plead guilty. Better than getting a jury of your peers,” she snarls, “who want to make an example out of you.”
She isn’t thinking about Dawn Kincaid, who will never plead guilty to anything. A sensation begins in the pit of my stomach.
“Now, you do have a reputation, Dr. Kay Scarpetta. You have a reputation as big as the great outdoors, don’t you? So it’s not all that simple for you, is it?” She smiles coldly, and her eyes are flat. “I sure am glad we finally met so I could see what all the fuss was about.”
“I don’t know what fuss you’re referring to.”
“I got sick as hell of hearing about you. I guess you haven’t read the letters.”
I don’t answer her about the letters she and Jack supposedly wrote to each other. Letters I’ve never seen.
“I can tell you haven’t read them.” Kathleen is nodding and grinning, and I can see the gaping spaces where she’s missing teeth. “You really don’t know, do you? It makes sense you didn’t. I have to wonder if you would have had any contact with me if you knew. Well, maybe you would but maybe you wouldn’t be so smug. Maybe you wouldn’t think you’re so high and mighty.”
I sit quietly. Perfectly composed. Nothing shows. Not curiosity. Not the anger I feel.
“Before e-mail, we wrote real letters on paper,” she says. “He always wrote to me on lined notebook paper like he was still a schoolboy. This would have been in the early nineties, and Jack was working for you in Richmond and miserable as hell all the time. He used to write that what you needed was to be fucked but good. That you were a frustrated crazy bitch and if someone just went ahead and fucked you good maybe it would improve your disposition. Apparently he and that homicide detective you worked with all the time back then used to joke about it in the morgue and at crime scenes. They’d joke you’d been in the cooler too long and with too many dead bodies and somebody needed to warm you up. Someone needed to show you what it was like to be with a man whose dick could still get stiff.”
Pete Marino was a homicide detective in Richmond when I was chief, and I realize why I’ve not seen any such letters. The FBI would have them. Benton’s the criminal intelligence analyst, the forensic psychologist assisting the Boston field office, and I know for a fact he’s read the e-mails that Kathleen and Jack exchanged. Benton has given me an overview of what is in them, and I have no doubt he would have read any letters written on
