Chapter 63
People called different places home. For her, it was an eight-by-ten green concrete cell with a plastic chair, a steel toilet, and two bunk beds bolted to the wall. There was also a tiny window which she tried not to look through. Looking at the sky only made her feel sad, and life was tough enough inside the jail.
She spent most of the day sleeping. Sleep was the antidote to the black hole her life had become. In sleep, everything was peaceful and sane, her dreams filled with chirping birds and long walks in the forest and beautiful sunsets. The hard part was waking up, when she had to erase those beautiful images from her mind.
Today had been a little better. She’d been allowed outside for a walk in the yard with the other female prisoners. Looking up, she’d seen a chalky white cloud in the shape of an exclamation mark, and taken it as a promise of better times ahead.
She’d spent the afternoon reading an adventure novel given to her by another inmate. It was about a fishing guide named Thorn who helped people in the Florida Keys. She’d become lost in it, and did not hear the guard until he was standing outside her cell.
“You’ve got a visitor,” the guard said.
She put her book down. “I do. Who’s that?”
“Kimberli Bronson, your lawyer.”
The guard led her to the visitor’s room, where Bronson sat behind an five inch-thick wall of plexiglass. Bronson wore a dark blue suit and had her hair tied in a bun. Nice-looking, but not a show-off. She pulled up a chair expectantly.
“I have wonderful news,” Bronson said.
Wonderful was a relative term when you lived in a concrete cell.
“What are you talking about? What’s happened?”
“The governor of Nevada has pardoned you.”
Time seemed to stand still, and a pool of darkness appeared before her eyes. She took several deep breaths until her composure returned.
“Did you hear what I just said. You’re going to go free.”
“When?”
“Today, right now. The governor signed the papers a short while ago, and his office called me. I thought I should deliver the news in person.”
She cried without making a sound. The guard, who’d been standing dutifully behind her, handed her a Kleenex. She thanked him and blew her nose.
“Do you know why?” she asked.
Her lawyer leaned forward, smiling. “The governor wouldn’t tell me. I know a woman who works in his office, and asked her. She said a consultant named Tony Valentine struck a deal with him. Valentine got him to do it.”
She leaned back in her chair, the Kleenex clutched in her hand. “Tony Valentine did this for me?”
Bronson lifted her eyebrows and nodded.
“That’s so wonderful,” she said.
With her lawyer by her side, she went to the jail’s booking area, and signed a stack of papers that she didn’t bother to read. The man behind the desk flashed her a smile and said, “Well, I guess then you’d like your things back. Full name, please.”
“Karen Farmer,” she said.
The man got a plastic bag with her things and dumped them on the desk. It was all there — jewelry, purse, belt, shoelaces — and Karen quickly collected the items, then went into a small room, and changed out of her prison jumpsuit into the clothes she’d been wearing the day she’d been arrested. Then, she followed her lawyer outside the Washoe County jail and into the sunshine. The day had gotten more beautiful, the desert colors bleeding through like paint on a canvas. Her lawyer pointed at a Subaru parked nearby.
“Can I give you a lift somewhere?”
Karen hesitated. Bronson had gone the extra mile for her. She didn’t want to take advantage of her any further, and said, “Are you sure it’s no problem?”
“Of course. Where are you going?”
“To the Cal Neva lodge,” Karen said. “My car is still parked in the hotel valet.”
“You going back to Sacramento?” her lawyer asked.
“It’s the only home I’ve got,” Karen replied.
The drive to the Cal Neva was straight uphill, and her lawyer spent more time maneuvering her Subaru than talking. Karen enjoyed the silence, and watched the scenery with a sliver of fresh air blowing in her face. Forty minutes later, her lawyer pulled into the Cal Neva’s winding entrance and braked at the main entrance.
“Well, here you go. Good luck.”
Karen reached over and squeezed her lawyer’s hand. “You’ve been awfully good to me. Thank you.” Then, she climbed out of the car and walked over to the valet. As the Subaru pulled out, she turned and waved. Her lawyer was already on her cell phone.
Karen give her stub to the valet.
“You checking out, ma’am?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Any luggage?”
She felt a catch in her throat. Her clothes and toiletries and wedding dress were probably still somewhere inside the hotel, waiting to be claimed. And so were Bo’s things, his tux and work clothes and the funny tee shirts he liked to wear to bed.
“No,” she said.
She was soon on the road. The sun was blinding, and she dropped her visor and saw something fall into her lap. It was the size of a parking ticket, and she didn’t look at it until she was sitting at a traffic light a short while later. It was a snapshot of Bo taken at a neighbor’s backyard barbecue a few months ago. She stifled a sharp cry.
“Oh, baby,” she said.
In the snapshot, Bo was smiling like the cat who’d just eaten the canary. The devilish look on his face said he’d just done
She pulled into a gas station and parked in a shady spot. For ten minutes she cried her heart out. When she’d run out of tears, she kissed the photograph and tucked it into her purse. God, she was going to miss him.
Then, she got back on the road, and drove the three hundred twisting miles back to Sacramento, all the while dreaming about the life she might have lived.
Author’s Note:
In 1998, a computer regulator with the Nevada Gaming Control Board’s Electronic Surveillance Division was arrested for stealing hundreds of jackpots from Nevada’s casinos. This novel is loosely based upon that story.
