The Walk
by Kevin Tipple
“Tower Four, radio check.”
The scratchy voice was barely indiscernible from the background noise. The old radios were damn near worthless. State budget cuts meant that replacement radios weren’t coming anytime soon.
“Tower Four Operational.”
He had to say it again before dispatch was able to break through the static long enough to for him to hear, “Acknowledged. Stay cool.”
The mandatory hourly check-in completed, the solitary man on the watchtower wiped his brow and put his tan ball cap back on his head. Two hours down and probably at least two more before he had his chance. He was new to the prison located deep in southwest Texas. Being the new man had drawn him the assignment in the sweltering tower that had no working air-conditioning. With no working AC, it was a little bit cooler outside on the catwalk than inside the tower. Unlike the other guards, he could not hide inside behind the glass. That suited his purposes perfectly, so he pretended to grumble for the benefit of the other guards while relishing the opportunity.
Mom always said every Sunday on the way to church, “There’s no rest for the wicked, not even on Sunday,” and it seemed like divine providence that he was assigned that tower. The old louvered windows were open as wide as they would go. Prayers for a breeze hadn’t worked; the tower was broiling. The sweat frequently rolled down into his eyes despite his cap and he worried that a drop would slip into his eye at precisely the wrong time.
He stepped out the door onto the old metal catwalk, as he had several times each hour, and glanced quickly at the nearest tower. The guard there ignored him like he had all morning, which also suited his plan perfectly. The novelty of watching the new guy suffer had worn off quicker than he had thought possible. He didn’t know him or any of the other guards on the towers around him and didn’t expect to live long enough to know them. While he cradled his rifle and kept a finger lightly on the trigger, his eyes scanned all around the flat Texas desert for any signs of life. Far to the north somewhere sat Midland, lost in the heat haze. All he saw were heat mirages and the occasional buzzard riding the thermals under the blazing June sun.
His radio squawked and he glanced at his watch. After he gave approval, the small procession began to cross the dusty inner courtyard below. The four guards surrounding the prisoner were also nameless faces to the man on the tower. None of them mattered. The prisoner in the middle of the procession filled his rifle’s scope nicely and he knew everything he needed to know about him. The bespectacled rail-thin man still didn’t look like much as he shuffled behind the front two guards. His hands cuffed, his ankles hobbled, everything hooked and clanking against a large belly chain, he certainly wasn’t going anywhere fast. Liberal Michigan had screwed up by letting this vermin, Jason Tyler, out early on parole. The God-fearing people of Texas were going to make sure he died strapped to the gurney as soon as possible.
That wasn’t going to make up for him gunning down Uncle Will on his way home from work back in Tamarisk. Locked away in prison and awaiting his execution meant, according to Aunt Ruth, he wouldn’t be killing anyone else. She was thankful Jason Tyler was locked up. All it really meant to the man in the tower was that Jason Tyler was still alive every damn day while Uncle Will was still very much dead. The man on the tower sighted down on the prisoner’s head, feeling the trigger tighten against his finger. Killing Jason Tyler here and now wouldn’t bring Uncle Will back, though it would make the solitary man feel so much better. Aunt Ruth had begged him not to take the law into his own hands.
He tracked the procession through his scope as the five-man group slowly worked their way across to the old limestone administration building. The urge to kill Tyler, one ripping shot at a time, built steadily with every shuffling step he made. The picture through the scope began to shake more and more while dust rose around their feet in little puffs, only to fall back nearly where it started. All he had to do was fire that first shot. Just a little more pressure on the trigger would do it. It seemed like it took hours, but finally they disappeared under the roofline of the administration building. The watcher on the tower sank to his knees. Sick with the knowledge that he had failed, he vomited the bitter acid of his failure all across the catwalk.
***
Out of sight and unaware that he had again temporarily escaped retribution, Jason Tyler moved deeper inside the old limestone building. The cool air revived him and he studied his surroundings while they worked their way down a long hall. He sensed the annoyance of the guards at his slow pace. Not that he could really do anything about it, even if he had wanted to, thanks to the way they had him tied up. Tyler carefully kept his face neutral while he savored the cooler air. Say what you wanted about Texans and their egos, but they knew how to make air conditioning work.
He wasn’t used to the Texas summertime heat and wasn’t looking forward to growing accustomed to that and the legendary Texas hospitality. Prisons were, by and large, all the same. Bars and cameras everywhere with plenty of overweight, long-term, hard-edged cons and young thin baby punks thinking they were tough until he taught them otherwise. This one was no different in that sense. Not that he was a career criminal or anything like that. It was very hard to have a professional criminal career when folks kept locking you up. No, he thought of himself as misunderstood and a product of a world gone mad in so many ways. In a different time and place he would have been a heroic knight serving his king.
But, in the here and now, he wasn’t. There certainly weren’t any worthy damsels in distress worthy of saving anymore either though the occasional hooker gave him temporary relief. His short laugh brought a hard look from one of the guards in front of him and a terse order to shut up. That guard liked the baton a little too much so Tyler kept his mouth shut. No need to ruin a perfectly good summer day with another beating. A beating wasn’t part of the plan today.
The group halted at a plain brown wood door and then, amazingly, the chains came off. He was shoved forward through the now open doorway into the small office of the warden and then pushed down into the small wooden chair sitting in front of the desk. The door closed behind him, leaving him alone with the warden.
Losing the chains and shackles as well as being left alone with the warden was different, but just about everything else was what he had expected and experienced before. Typical warden crap with his plaques and honoree knickknacks though the framed poster on the wall of some snowcapped mountains in the majestic Colorado Rockies was a bit different than normal. Tyler had expected the obligatory western art and, true to form, a small statue featuring a rider on a bucking horse sat on one corner of the desk within easy reach. The brass statute certainly looked heavy enough to do the job. The sharpened pencil next to it might be better and a little less messy.
The fat fireplug of a man in his cheap polyester suit, presumably the warden, continued to keep his nose in some file, so Tyler took the time to look around the small office a little more. There just wasn’t much else to see. While the crappy color scheme was different here, when you’ve seen one jail, you’ve seen them all. Much like their offices, wardens always seemed to be cut from the same cloth, and so was the man sitting before him. When they were young they were full of idealism and thought cons could be redeemed. When they got old like this one, they knew better. The tone changed and they tried to act like they were the baddest mother in the room. They weren’t and most wardens usually knew it. When it really came down to it, they never had the guts to do what needed to be done.
Tyler silently berated himself. If he just hadn’t stopped at that dumpy Dairy Queen in Tamarisk, he could have been sitting happily somewhere down in Mexico with plenty of cash, women, and all the booze he could handle. He shook his head ruefully. For once he had been paid well and completed the job cleanly, and yet had still bungled the escape.
Surprisingly, unlike their TV counterparts who knew nothing beyond media reports, the court appointed shrinks who examined him hadn’t claimed that he wanted to get caught. They blamed poor impulse control and rage syndrome exacerbated by mommy issues. If they only knew.
The warden was sitting there staring at him when he looked up. He stared back, waiting for the warden to break the silence. Let the game begin.
“Inmate, I asked you if you knew what brought you here.”
“Your guards, Warden.”
The warden stared hard while the killer laughed and shifted in his seat, enjoying the freedom of a captive audience.
“Small crowd, Warden. I usually play to packed rooms and a nationwide TV audience. Once they lock you up, nobody cares anymore.” Tyler laughed and then said, “I shouldn’t say nobody. I still get the occasional love letter from some freak on the outside.”
The warden started to speak but Tyler cut him off.
“Warden, you asked if I know what got me here. Yes, I know. I’m not stupid. Coming to Texas from Detroit because all the good jobs were supposedly down here sealed my fate. The rust belt was dying and everyone said go to Texas. They didn’t tell us back home about the cheap labor, all the stupid sales taxes, the country hicks or the godawful heat. Might not have listened anyway. I needed to hit the road and Texas was as good a place as any to end up.”
“You’ll be here awhile, Inmate.”
He said something else, but Tyler had tuned him out, captivated by the poster on the wall. It showed the majestic Colorado Rockies covered in a blanket of snow. Not only did he feel a little cooler when he looked at the poster, it reminded him of a job that had gone very well. Tyler was lost for a moment, reliving the memory of his one perfect crime that no one knew about.
He realized the warden was looking oddly at him, and he gestured at the poster before saying, “They say no two snowflakes are the same. Maybe they are and maybe they aren’t. All we have as proof is a bunch of scientists claiming it is true and scientists can’t be trusted. If they could be trusted to really know anything, we could safely eat what we want, the planet wouldn’t have global warming, germ warfare crap, that weird infection stuff that can kill you in a heartbeat, and all of the rest of it.”
He leaned forward and grasped the glass pitcher and a glass that sat on a tray on a corner of the warden’s desk. The warden flinched at the move and Tyler smiled. It never took long for a warden to learn Jason Tyler was something different from the normal prisoner. He wasn’t sure where the power came from, but relished letting just enough out to rattle their cages.
“May I?”
The warden nodded and Tyler poured a glass full to the rim and drank it down silently, his throat moving much like a snake swallowing a small rodent. He’d had “666” tattooed across his throat years ago in some back-alley dive somewhere in Tucson and loved the unintended look. The middle six was directly on top of his Adam’s apple, which meant that when he drank it moved up and down something like a number in a slot machine. It seemed to have quite a hypnotic effect on others and was occasionally the very last thing they saw. All too soon the water was gone and the show was over. For now.
Tyler sat back and resumed his lecturing tone as if he were still the promising grad student, saying, “What is true, Warden, is the fact that no two people are alike. Most people go about their lives in quiet drudgery. Quiet desperation, if you will, even if they aren’t fully aware of it. They go to college, have sex and drink like fools, get married and all that. They have kids they usually don’t want in the first place. They can’t parent because they weren’t parented themselves. And some of the kids and their relatives eventually wind up here, Warden.”
Jason Tyler, in his late thirties, shifted in his seat and pulled his glasses off to briefly polish them. It was a mannerism that he had used to great effect on women over the years. It also gave him time to examine his options since the glasses were nothing more than a prop. His ice blue eyes worked just fine.
“Now, that isn’t the way things happened with me, Warden. None of the classic talk show stuff about being abused as a child. No priest ever looked at me funny, I never did drugs, and I never did much of anything wrong, now that I think about it.” He laughed before adding, “Well, nothing but what got me here.”
The glasses went back on his face and he got ready to make his final point. The warden just sat there staring at him and Tyler knew time was fast slipping away from him.
“All I can tell you, Warden, is that I was just born different from everyone else. Don’t know why. It’s just the plain fact of the matter. Something I learned a long time ago. Unlike those talking heads at my trial, I really know why I did it. They talk to me an hour or two and think they know everything. I didn’t shoot that man just to watch him die like they said. Or because he interrupted me when I was talking to that cute girl with the fine ass like the judge said. No, sir. I walked back inside and put a bullet through that guy’s head just because I wanted feel something again.”
The question came just like he knew it would.
“Did you, Jason?”
“No. Not a damn thing.”
The pencil seemed to fly into his hand from the desk and it was over in a matter of seconds. The warden sputtered, choked and burbled while blood jetted in ever-decreasing arcs from the side of his neck. The coppery smell of blood filled the room and Jason Tyler wiped his slick hand on the warden’s suit.
“Damn, still nothing.”
He turned and stepped quietly to the door. He’d taken the bloody pencil with him from the desk, but he knew it would be no match for the guards’ guns. If they were still there. He’d been fast and efficient, yet there still had been some noise, so he was a little surprised they hadn’t come in and quickly shot him down. So far, everything was going according to plan. His nameless benefactor had been right.
Tyler stood at the closed door for a long moment and listened. He couldn’t hear anything so he gently turned the knob and then eased the door open. As promised, the guards weren’t there. So far, so good.
As quietly as he could, he ran down the long hall. He had been told it would be clear but hadn’t really believed it. The closer he worked his way to the light streaming through the windows in the door, the freer he felt. He still had to get across the courtyard and then somehow get to the main gate. It was going to be difficult but not impossible. He had escaped better prisons than this one. This was the first time he had inside help.
He stopped at the door and looked out through the small glass pane at the two towers he could see. One guard was inside and one was out. The one outside had his rifle slung over his shoulder and seemed to be staring off into the distance with his back to the courtyard. That guard was supposed to be some young and stupid new guy, so maybe he could just fake it. Tyler crossed his hands and put them at his waist and began to shuffle through the doorway outside into the glare. The same trick had worked in Reno years ago, and maybe it would work one more time.
He shuffled forward, making sure to act like he was chained-up. Faking it wasn’t hard. Keeping from just flat-out running while he waited for the impact of the first bullet was the hard part.
By the time he reached the middle of the courtyard, he began to think he just might make it. If he could get all the way across the courtyard, the next stage of the plan would kick in. His benefactor had come through so far. Tyler had done his part. Just a few more feet and he would be free. He could almost taste his freedom and the border with Mexico wasn’t that far away.
The first shot, which took his left arm off at the elbow, quickly convinced him otherwise. The second shot through his heart stopped everything. The third shot that tore through his tattooed throat, nearly removing his head, meant nothing.
***
The man on the tower watched through the scope as Jason Tyler — what was left of him — crumpled and began to water a small patch of dusty courtyard. He’d never fired the shots. It had to have been one of the other guards. But which one? Or was it all of them? Why? The radio behind him came to life and for once was very clear.
“Welcome to tower justice.”
Kevin R. Tipple ©2012, 2021
When not offending someone in person or online due to his strange sense of humor, Kevin reviews books, watches way too much television, and offers unsolicited opinions on anything. His short fiction has appeared in magazines such as “Lynx Eye,” “Starblade,” “Show and Tell,” and “The Writer’s Post Journal” among others and online at such places as “Mouth Full Of Bullets,” “Crime And Suspense,” “Mysterical-e” and others. His most recent story, “The Damn Rodents Are Everywhere,” appeared in the May 2021 issue of “Mystery Weekly Magazine.” He hopes they, unlike many other publications, survive the experience.
