Page 40 of The Chain House

By the time she pocketed her phone, Carl was pulling into a corner-lot Walgreens. As soon as he parked, she opened her door and jogged into the store. She found a pack of pencils, a sharpener, and typing paper in the Back to School section, paid with her debit card, and hurried back out to Carl’s truck. From the passenger seat, Jennifer ripped open the pencil pack and ream of paper and started sharpening one of the pencils with Carl curiously watching beside her.

Before putting pencil to paper, she closed her eyes, sucked in a deep breath, and was relieved and terrified simultaneously to find his face still vividly etched in her mind.

She opened her eyes and started drawing.

Ten minutes later, she’d filled out the page with a face that had at one time haunted her dreams on the Freedom Ranch. The man’s short dark hair was parted down the middle so cleanly the line in his scalp resembled a straight road. His face was wide, his lantern jaw stubbled with a cleft at the chin. His eyes dark and bottomless, his nose crooked, flat, with wide nostrils. But it was the scar she spent the most time drawing, raised like a mountain range on a map and running diagonally from the inside corner of his left eye, across the bridge of his nose, and ending in a puckered mass of scar tissue that took up much of his right cheek.

By the time Jennifer finished drawing, she was panting, gasping for air and close to hyperventilating. She began to calm only after she placed the pencil down.

Beside her, Carl said, “Who is that?”

“Justice Minks.”

“The mystery man?”

“Yes.”

“Ugly motherfucker.”

She nodded, thinking he looked like a modern-day Frankenstein. “I saw him when I was a girl. On the ranch. He always wore a mask, but one night, I saw him without it.”

CHAPTER18

SAM STILL COULDN’T believe he was here.

Inside the warden’s personal office. Inside the State Penitentiary. With Sal Batise, for what might be the rest of the day? The rest of Sal’s life, in fact, which was due to end in less than twelve hours.

He felt guilty for feeling enthralled, and reminded himself he was sitting only a few feet away from a man responsible for the murder of at least nine people, and probably more.

From everything Sam knew about death row, that he was here at all was unorthodox. A last meal was one thing, or maybe a final hour in the sunlight or watching the stars, but this was something else altogether. The relationship between Batise and Warden Wren seemed not only unconventional and at times contentious, but like Batise was the one in charge and somehow pulling strings. When Warden Wren was in the office, Sam noticed him constantly checking the wall clock or his watch like he was counting down the hours.

Sam felt sure Batise was holding something over the warden.

Two armed guards remained in the room with them, and Batise was in shackles and chains as he sat in the middle of the room, his chair an island to itself.

“What’s going through that head of yours, Sam Harper?”

“Nothing,” Sam said from his chair, five feet away from Batise.

“Not true,” said Batise. “Although when everything is going through one’s mind it can often be construed as nothing at all. What to do next, what to pick first, it all becomes too much, and we end up sitting and doing nothing at all. Twiddling our thumbs.”

In other words, Sam thought, quit wasting time. Show him the sketch.

Jennifer, via text message a minute ago, had sent Sam a sketch she’d apparently just drawn—had just remembered, in fact—of Justice Minks, and he’d been reluctant to show it to Batise, fearing any negative reaction at this point might shut him down.

When he’d asked Jennifer: Why are you just now remembering this?

She’d responded: Seeing Batise was a major trigger. Will explain later.

If Jennifer was with him, she would have had half of Batise’s life story from the man by now.

Show him the picture, Sam.

He ignored his inner voice and instead asked one of the pre-planned questions from their initial list for the interview. “The motive for the Hawthorne murders has been discussed from every angle. Why did you send Nancy Tanner, Sylvia Purell, and Annie Blackburn to the Hawthorne mansion that night in May 2006?”

Batise watched him coldly. Sam immediately felt uncomfortable, then fearful he’d already closed him off, when Batise said, “Answering that question might incriminate me into admitting I had anything to do with it.”

“All three of them, Nancy, Sylvia, and Annie—Sal’s Angels, they were called—testified, under oath, that they’d been given direct orders. By you.”