The Day of the Donald (23 page)

“Y
ou really sure you want to do this?” Darrell Riley asked. The six-foot-six man with the Texas drawl was the warden at the Pit, a for-profit, maximum-security prison on a sprawling patch of land in Dulles County, Virginia.

“I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have to be,” Jimmie Bernwood said.

“Shit, I wouldn’t be either,” Riley said, holding his palm up to a security sensor.

A door straight out of
Star Trek
opened for them, and they entered the Pit’s solitary confinement wing.

Jimmie’s visitor badge identified him as “Barry Oliver.” An FBI agent. He’d called in some old favors—the last favors he had in his debit account—and set up an appointment Sunday morning to see one of the prison’s highest-profile prisoners. Jimmie was already waist-deep in shit . . . why not dunk his head all the way under?

“You really think this guy has any information on your killer?” Riley asked as they walked down a long, barren corridor.

“Doubtful.”

Riley screeched to a halt. “Then why are we down here on a Sunday morning? I could be at church right now.”

“And I could be tailgating in the parking lot at the Washington Palefaces game,” Jimmie said. “It’s still the preseason,
but at least the beer’s real even if the football ain’t. Unfortunately, another body turned up last night along the turnpike. Same markings as before. Second one this month.”

“I haven’t heard about any of this on the news.”

That’s because none of it is true, you nincompoop
.

“We’ve managed to keep it out of the news,” Jimmie said. “People would freak out if they knew somebody was out there re-creating the Zodiac killings right down to the last detail.”

Two armed guards stood alert outside the cell door and backed away to give Riley room to use his palm to gain access. The security here was tighter than at the White House.

Jimmie flipped absentmindedly through his file folder, which was stuffed with printouts of the original Zodiac killing victims.

“He may not have information about this new killer, but we believe he’s the only one who can help us get in the mind of the killer,” Jimmie said.

The door slid open. A long walkway led directly to a glass cage measuring twenty feet on all sides. The shirtless prisoner was facing away in the other direction, but Jimmie could see that his upper body was bursting with tattooed muscle. There was a mattress on the floor of the cage and a bedpan, but nothing else. It reminded Jimmie of the time he’d caught a praying mantis as a kid. He’d placed the insect inside an old fishbowl with a few blades of grass. It had died after three days.

“There he is,” Riley said. “Rafael Edward Cruz. ‘Ted,’ to his friends—if you can find any.”

Jimmie laughed, because he thought that was what the warden expected of him.

“There’s nothing funny about a man who’s killed as many innocent people as Cruz has,” Riley snapped.

“Sorry, you work with sick sons of bitches day in, day out, you tend to get a twisted sense of humor, you know what I mean?”

Riley shook his head. “Just get on with it so we can both get home before the game starts.”

Jimmie started toward the cage. The pathway wasn’t simply a pathway—it was a bridge. On either side, it dropped off into an infinite darkness. So this was why they called it the Pit. Somewhere in the building, he guessed there was also a pendulum. Edgar Allan Poe had once lived in Virginia, so it made sense. In an insane way.

He stopped. Riley wasn’t following him. “You’re not coming?”

“This is as close as I get to that monster,” the warden shouted from the doorway. “I’ll be right on the other side of the door. If you need help . . . shout. Not that it will do you any good.”

“He can’t get out, can he?”

“Theoretically, no. But they also said he couldn’t be the Zodiac Killer because he was born two years after the killings began—and look how wrong they were.”

Jimmie nodded. Before he reached the glass cage, he heard the door close behind him. He was all alone with the man authorities believed to be one of the most prolific and vicious serial killers in history. The man whose presidential aspirations Jimmie had personally destroyed with a two-hour-plus sex tape. The man who had every reason in the world to want revenge on him. Would several inches of industrial-strength glass be enough to hold Ted Cruz back?

“Mr. Bernwood,” Cruz said without turning around. “What an unpleasant surprise.” And his thin, ghoulish giggling filled the room.

“Y
ou must have me confused with somebody else,” Jimmie said, standing close to the glass. The smell of sulfur drifted through the tiny holes drilled at intervals along the glass wall. “I’m Larry Oliver, with the Federal Bureau of Investigation—”

“Your badge says
Barry
Oliver,” Cruz said, still facing away from him.

“‘Larry’ is short for ‘Barry,’” Jimmie said.

“Drop the act. You may have fooled the warden, but you haven’t fooled everybody at this facility. You wouldn’t have made it this far unless I let you. I’ve had the cameras turned off for the occasion. Nobody’s watching . . .”

Which meant that nobody could save Jimmie should Cruz attack him. He took a step back from the glass.

“I never got a chance to thank you, Mr. Bernwood.”

“Thank me?”

“Oh, did I say thank you? I meant
kill
you. I never got a chance to
kill
you.”

“I’m not here to dredge up old grudges,” Jimmie said.

Cruz spun around and with lightning quickness was at the glass. “I get to say when the hatchet is buried,” he hissed. “Not you.”

Up close, Cruz was less Grandpa Munster and more Grandpa Monster. Prison had hardened him almost beyond recognition.
The prison tattoos covering his body told a tale—the tale of a man who’d gone off the deep end. LUCIFER was writ large in gangsta lettering across his chiseled abs; SAM I AM wrapped around his neck. Perhaps more worrying, however, was how prison had reshaped his face. The lines around his eyes were deep and pronounced. He looked like he hadn’t slept since they’d thrown him in this cage—either because they never turned the overhead lights off or because he was just that stone-cold of a badass now.

“I need your help,” Jimmie said.

“There is no copycat killer, is there?” Cruz said. “What’s the real reason you’re here?”

“It has to do with Trump.”

The color drained from Cruz’s face.

“That’s right,” Jimmie said. “The man who put you in this hellhole. You remember Trump?”

Cruz clawed at his ears. “Stop saying that name! Stop saying that name!”

“It was Trump who did this to you, not me. Trump.”

Cruz banged a fist on the glass.

Jimmie stood his ground.

“You might have been able to get back in the race if not for the sex-tape scandal,” Jimmie said. “People expected you to stick around until the bitter end. They liked you
because
you were spiteful and delusional. Who knows? If that tape hadn’t come out, you might even have beaten him on the second or third ballot at the convention. Not necessarily—anything can happen in American politics, or so I’ve been told—but you had a chance. Instead, someone in his camp leaked it, and . . . you know the rest.”

Cruz crumpled to the ground. He curled into a ball, shaking and making a sound like a whoopee cushion with asthma.

Jimmie pushed on. “I’m sorry about the role I played in it, but now I need your help. The country needs your help.”

“They framed me,” Cruz said between sobs.

“I know. There’s no way you could have committed the Zodiac killings.”

“
Trump
framed me.”

“That’s right,” Jimmie said. “
President Trump
framed you.”

Ted Cruz got to his feet. He wiped the tears from his cheeks. “What do you need from me? An interview for a story?”

Jimmie shook his head. “This is bigger than just a story,” he said, opening the file and removing the paper clip from the printouts. “This is as big as it gets.”

As Jimmie explained to Cruz what he would need him to do, the convicted murderer’s eyes grew wider, and giggles escaped his throat at odd intervals. The man was clearly delirious. At various points, Jimmie could almost see Ted Cruz as a serial-killing lunatic.

Good. For what Jimmie needed him for, he’d have to play the part. For what Jimmie needed him for, Ted Cruz was going to have to be the killer the world thought that he was.

July 2, 2018, 3:36
PM

Sunday, September 2, 2018