Sleeping Beauty (28 page)

T
he Oregon State Penitentiary is located near the I-5 freeway in Salem, Oregon's capital. At ten o'clock on Monday morning, Ashley parked in the visitor's lot. A tree-shaded sidewalk ran past a row of small white houses that served as offices for the prison staff. At the end of the walk, across a stretch of asphalt, was the prison with its egg yolk–yellow walls topped by razor wire and guarded by gun towers.

Ashley checked in at the visitors' desk, then took a seat in the reception area. While she was waiting for the guard to call her name, Ashley almost changed her mind about meeting Joshua Maxfield. She was that frightened of him. Delilah had arranged for the interview and had volunteered to go along. Jerry had also volunteered, after his attempts to talk her out of the meeting had failed. She'd turned them both down, because she believed that she had a better chance of getting the death-row inmate to talk if she was alone.

The guard summoned Ashley to the metal detector. After she walked through without setting off an alarm, he escorted her down a short ramp to an enclosed area sealed off by two sets of movable bars. Inside the enclosure, behind bulletproof glass, were several members of the prison staff. One of them hit a button. There was a loud buzz and the bars in front of Ashley slid back. She entered the holding area and pushed her driver's license through a slit in the glass while the bars slid back in
place. As soon as her identity was verified, the guard pressed another button and a second set of bars slid back, admitting her to a narrow hallway that led to the interior of the prison. The walls of the hallway seemed to close in on her, and the clanging sound that the bars made when they slammed shut reminded Ashley that she was now locked in prison.

After a short walk her escort stopped in front of a thick metal door with a small window in its upper half. Ashley stood aside while he unlocked the door and admitted her to the visiting area. To the right was a large open room filled with prison-made couches and low wooden tables. A few vending machines stood against the far wall. At the end closest to Ashley a guard sat on a raised platform that gave him a view of the room. Her escort identified Ashley before returning to the reception area.

Ashley looked around the visiting room nervously while the guard phoned death row and asked to have Joshua Maxfield brought down. She had never been in a prison before. She half expected to see tattooed bodybuilders and greasy Hell's Angels eyeing her coldly with rape on their minds. Instead she found the room filled with unspectacular-looking men dressed in jail-issue jeans and blue workshirts, who were talking quietly to family members and friends. One middle-aged man with a potbelly and a shaggy mustache was sitting on the floor playing with a little girl Ashley judged to be four. A shy young man in his late twenties was holding hands with a tired-looking young woman who was in the last stages of pregnancy. At the far end of the room, a short, skinny black man was laughing at something an elderly black woman had said.

After a fifteen-minute wait, a new guard entered the visiting room and spoke to the officer on the platform. A few moments later, he took Ashley across the hallway to another visiting section, where the only furniture was the hard metal bridge chairs that stood opposite windows of thick glass. Behind these windows, in narrow concrete rooms sat prisoners deemed too dangerous or too much of an escape risk to be allowed into the main visiting area. The guard led Ashley to two doors at the far end of the room. He opened one of them and Ashley found herself in a tiny cubicle. The only furniture was a bridge chair that faced a glass window. A small metal shelf protruded from the bottom of the window. There was a narrow slot at the bottom of the glass through
which sheets of paper could be passed. Above the slit was an equally narrow metal grate that permitted people on either side of the glass to speak to each other.

“They're bringing Maxfield down, now. He'll sit in there,” the guard said, pointing at an identical cubicle on the other side of the glass. “This is the only place where visitors are permitted to talk to the inmates on death row. When you're ready to leave, go back to the desk and we'll have someone come down from reception and get you.”

The guard left Ashley alone in the room. The air was close and she started to feel claustrophobic. Delilah had told her that it would be impossible for Maxfield to get at her, but she had been afraid of him for so long that she had to convince herself that he did not have supernatural powers that would enable him to break through the thick glass and concrete that separated them.

The door to the other cubicle snapped open with a metallic click, and a guard prodded Joshua Maxfield into the narrow space. His hair had turned partially gray and his skin was pasty from lack of exposure to the sun. Ashley remembered how fit he'd looked on the day they'd met outside the gym. Now his skin looked slack. The only thing that had not changed was his eyes, which never left her while the guard unlocked his hand and leg irons.

“What a pleasant surprise,” Maxfield said as soon as the door closed behind the guard, but he did not look pleased.

“Thank you for seeing me, Mr. Maxfield.”

“Credit my appearance to curiosity. Except for my lawyer, I haven't had a visitor since I was sentenced. And I would never have guessed that you would be my first.”

“Are you being treated okay?” Ashley asked, trying hard to hide her anxiety. As soon as the words were out, she realized how inane the question sounded, but Maxfield took it seriously.

“Death row isn't quite the Ritz, but I suspect I'm treated as well as one can be in my circumstances. The guards actually give me paper and pen and let me write. They probably assume that I'll be more docile if I'm occupied.”

He smiled, but his face was tight. “You might be interested to know
that I'm working on a novel about an innocent man who is unjustly sentenced to prison. I sent some sample chapters to my former editor in New York. He's very interested but he doesn't want to ink a contract if I'm going to be executed. The publishers are afraid that I won't be alive long enough to finish the book. But enough about me. Why are you here?”

“I wanted to ask you some questions. If you answer truthfully I may be able to help you.”

“Help me what?”

“Get out of here.”

Maxfield cocked his head to one side and studied Ashley with renewed interest. “Why would you of all people want to help me?” he asked.

“I…I have some doubts about the verdict.”

“It's a little late for that, isn't it?” Maxfield laughed bitterly. “Thanks to you and Casey I'm a dead man.”

“You left out someone else who bears part of the blame.”

“Oh, and who is that?”

“You, Mr. Maxfield. You lied about key evidence. Your case might have turned out differently if you'd told the truth.”

“What are you talking about?” he asked warily.

“You lied about what happened in the boathouse. That's the first thing. I don't know why you did that but you did. And you lied about your novel.”

Maxfield colored and shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “My novel?” he repeated.

Ashley steeled herself and looked Maxfield in the eye. “You didn't write it. You plagiarized the serial killer novel.”

“Who told you that?” Maxfield asked angrily.

“No one. I figured it out. One thing always nagged at me. You're smart. Everyone says so. You had to be, to write so well. My mother went on and on about your books. That's why she took your course. And I couldn't figure out how someone so smart would do something as dumb as read the part of your book where the killer eats the pie to one of the few people in the world who would understand its significance. But once I considered the possibility that you didn't write the scene it all
made sense. You had no idea that the person who murdered my father ate that snack.”

Ashley paused for Maxfield's reaction, but he held himself rigid and gave her none.

“I read the two drafts, Mr. Maxfield, and I've read your books. You wrote the manuscript with your name on it. That manuscript has the same style as
A Tourist in Babylon
and
The Wishing Well.
The man who killed my father and Tanya Jones wrote the other manuscript. The first draft is so different that it had to be the work of someone else.”

Maxfield still said nothing, but he didn't stop her either.

“I was in court when Delilah Wallace played the tape of the interview Detective Birch conducted at the jail in Omaha. You sounded shocked when he told you that the scene you read to my mother was just like what happened in my house. You didn't know. You could have told Birch that the book wasn't yours then, but, as bizarre as it seems, I think you'd rather die than admit you can't write anymore.”

“That's ridiculous.”

“Is it? You failed at everything you tried until you wrote
Tourist.
Your whole identity was wrapped up in the success of that book. Instead of being a screwup, you were suddenly revered, respected, rich, and world-famous. Then
The Wishing Well
flopped, and you came up empty when you tried to write another novel. You had your moment of fame and you wanted it back. You saw the serial killer novel as your way to return to the top. Who wrote the first draft, Mr. Maxfield?”

“You think I can't write anymore? You're accusing me of…of stealing someone else's work?”

“I know you did, and I think your pride kept you quiet. We all thought that you were this superintelligent genius writer, but I think you're really a one-book wonder who would rather die than admit you stole someone else's idea for a book because you couldn't think up an idea of your own.”

Maxfield's eyes dropped. He looked utterly destroyed.

“The reviews, those first reviews. They said I was the new Hemingway, the new Salinger, the voice of my generation. Everyone said it. The money came so fast, everything came so fast.” Maxfield's face fell. “And it went so quickly. When
The Wishing Well
flopped, my editor told me
it was the sophomore jinx; that I'd tried too hard. He told me to take my time with the next book and that I'd be back on top in no time. Only there was no next book. I couldn't come up with a single idea. Every time I tried I came up dry. Then the money ran out and they sued me. After I was forced out of Eton College I couldn't get a respectable job. Everyone knew about my drinking and the falsified résumé and what happened with that student. I had to teach high school, for God's sake. My only way back was with a new book.”

“Who sent you the serial killer novel?”

“I don't know. I was critiquing manuscripts for money. Even with my salary from the Academy I was barely getting by. This one came anonymously through the mail, with a cash payment. There was a post office box for the return address. I saw the potential immediately. The writing was crude but there was such power in it. Now I know why. It was real: the horror, the reactions of the victims and the killer, the writer had experienced them.”

“The author was bound to read your novel. Didn't you think he would recognize it?”

“I didn't care. I was at rock bottom. And I figured I'd win any lawsuit. I was going to destroy his manuscript when I was done, and I was the famous writer. I thought I was dealing with a nobody.”

“Why didn't you tell anybody that you didn't write the book after you were arrested?”

“I tried once. Right before I testified, I told my lawyer that I'd stolen the idea for the book. He told me that no one would believe me. He was right. The manuscript was next to my computer. My handwritten notes were all over it. My name was on every page of my manuscript.”

“What happened in the boathouse?” Ashley asked quietly.

Maxfield kept staring at the floor. He said nothing.

“What does it matter now?” Ashley asked. “You're already sentenced to death. It can't get any worse.”

“You've got a point there. You certainly do.”

He ran a hand across his face. “I didn't kill your mother. Terri was dead when I walked into the boathouse.”

“Go on.”

“I was almost there when I heard the first scream. I froze. That scream was terrible. It paralyzed me.”

Ashley knew exactly what he meant.

“When she screamed again I went to the boathouse.”

“Did you see Randy Coleman running away?”

Maxfield shook his head. “I made that up.”

Ashley looked shocked. “If the police believed you, Coleman could have been tried for murder.”

Maxfield's features hardened. “He deserved to be. He tried to kill you in the parking lot at Sunny Rest. I didn't lie about that. And he murdered Terri when he was trying to kill his wife.”

“But you didn't see him at the boathouse?”

“No. He was probably hiding inside and got away when I chased you.”

“What really happened in there?”

“When I came in, Casey was kneeling over Terri. The knife was on the floor next to her. She grabbed it and jumped up. Then she screamed ‘Murderer,' and ran at me. She looked terrified. She thought that I had killed Terri. She tried to stab me. It happened so fast that I didn't think. I hit her on the jaw. She flew back and cracked her head on that oak column. The sound was sickening. I knew she was badly hurt as soon as I heard it. I was going to check on her when it dawned on me that Terri's killer might still be in the boathouse. There hadn't been that much time between hearing the second scream and my entering, and I hadn't seen anyone go out the front door. Casey dropped the knife when I hit her. I picked it up for protection. A second later, I saw you at the window. I wanted to tell you that I was innocent but you took off before I could get close enough to say anything.” He looked away. “When it dawned on me that you'd tell the police that I killed Terri and attacked Casey I panicked and ran.”