The Greensville Correctional Center is located just outside of Jarratt, Virginia, an hour’s drive south of Richmond. He pulls up to the gate-house, rolls down his window, shows the guard his driver’s license and the letter from the warden. His car, a white Ford Crown Victoria with a moonroof, is immaculate; he spent the previous night in Richmond, and before he left this morning he ran it through a car wash. This car’s a rental, and it hadn’t gotten all that dirty in a few hundred miles of high-way travel, but he likes a clean car, always has. Keep your car washed, your hair combed, and your shoes shined, he likes to say, because you never get a second chance to make a first impression.
He parks where the guard indicates, no more than thirty yards from the main entrance, over which the facade is filled with the institution’s name: greensville / correctional / center. The name’s scarcely necessary, the structure could hardly be anything else, squat and rectilinear and hinting at confinement and punishment.
There’s a briefcase on the seat beside him, but he’s already decided not to take it inside, to avoid the nuisance of having to open it time and time again. He opens it now, takes out a small spiral-bound notebook. He doubts he’ll need to take notes, but it’s a useful prop.
Before leaving the car he checks himself again in the rearview mirror.
Adjusts the knot of his silver tie, smoothes his mustache. Tries on a few expressions, settling on a rueful half- smile.
18
Lawrence Block
He locks the car. Hardly necessary, as the likelihood of someone breaking into a car in a prison parking lot in the very shadow of the guards’
tower strikes him as infinitesimal. But he always locks the car upon leaving it. If you always lock it, you’ll never leave it unlocked. If you’re always early, you’ll never be late.
He likes catchphrases like that. Pronounced with the right degree of certainty, even of solemnity, they can make a remarkable impression on others. Repeated over time, their effect can verge on the hypnotic.
He strides across the tarmac toward the entrance, a trimly built man wearing a gray suit, a crisp white shirt, an unpatterned silver tie. His black cap-toe shoes are freshly shined, and the rueful half-smile is in place upon his thin lips.
The warden, one John Humphries, is also wearing a gray suit, but there the resemblance ends. Humphries is the taller by several inches and heav-ier by fifty or sixty pounds. He carries the weight well and has the look of an ex–college athlete who never lost the habit of gym workouts. His handshake is firm, his authority unmistakable.
“Dr. Bodinson,” he says.
“Warden.”
“Well, Applewhite’s agreed to see you.”
“I’m glad of that.”
“For my part, I wish I had a better sense of your interest in him.” He nods, grooms his mustache with his thumb and forefinger. “I’m a psychologist,” he says.
“So I understand. Yale doctorate, undergraduate work at UVA. I was at Charlottesville myself, though that would have been before your time.” Humphries is fifty-three, ten years his senior. He knows the man’s age, just as he knew he’d graduated from the University of Virginia at Charlottesville. The Internet’s wonderful, it can tell you almost anything you need to know, and this particular bit of knowledge is responsible for his having included UVA on his own resume.
“Yale tends to impress people,” he says, “but if I ever amount to anything in this world, the credit should go to the education I got here in Virginia.”
All the Flowers Are Dying
19
“Is that a fact?” Humphries looks at him, and it seems to him that his gaze is less guarded, more respectful. “And are you a Virginian yourself?” He shakes his head. “Army brat. I grew up all over the place, and mostly overseas. My four years in Charlottesville was the longest I ever stayed in one spot in my whole life.”
They reminisce briefly about the old school, and it turns out that their respective fraternities were friendly rivals. He’d considered making himself a fellow member of Sigma Chi, but decided that would be pushing it.
He’d picked another house, just two doors away on Fraternity Row.
They finish with their old school ties, and he explains his interest in Preston Applewhite. This interview, he tells Humphries, will be one part of an extensive study of criminals who steadfastly maintain their innocence in the face of overwhelming evidence of their guilt. He is particularly interested, he says, in murderers facing the death penalty, insisting on their lack of culpability right up to the very moment of execution.
Humphries takes this in, frowns in thought. “In your letter to Applewhite,” he says, “you indicate that you believe him.”
“I was attempting to give that impression.”
“What’s that mean, Doctor? You think he’s innocent?”
“Certainly not.”
“Because the evidence offered at his trial—”
“Was overwhelming and conclusive. It convinced the jury, and well it might have.”
“I have to say I’m relieved to hear you say that. But I don’t know that I understand your motive in suggesting otherwise to Applewhite.”
“I suppose one could argue the ethics of it,” he says, and smoothes his mustache. “I’ve found that, in order to win the confidence and cooperation of the men I need to interview, I have to give them something. I’m not prepared to offer them hope, or anything tangible. But it seems to me permissible to let them think that I believe in the veracity of their protestations of innocence. It’s easier for them to pour their revelations into a sympathetic ear, and it may even do them some good.”
