The Prisoner's Tale Conclusion

Episode 1 can be found here
Episode 2 can be found here
Episode 3 can be found here

This all started on a flight from Duluth MN to Cairo IL. Fitting it should end after a flight in the opposite direction. KCIR to KDLH at the start of the longest day of my life.

I had lost my way. I had certainly lost who I was.

I picked them up in Cairo for a flight up to Duluth where the captain would pick up an ore carrier for Cleveland delivery. I’d planned to pick up his wife later the same day. Our destination was to be somewhat different.

We’d been at it for a year by now. Getting together for...whatever. We’d started target shooting. She seemed interested in shooting and guns, so that’s what we did. If she had been interested in collecting stamps or coloring books, I’d have done that too. Somewhere along the way she had started wearing light cotton gloves when shooting. Said the blowback made her hands itchy and blotchy.

I was waiting for her to call my motel and let me know when the captain had left on his trip to Cleveland and late in the afternoon she called and said she had seen him off on his voyage but that the vessel wouldn’t sail until five a.m. or so but that he would be tied up aboard ship all night. Then she gave me directions to a location outside of Duluth. She said it was a remote wooded location and she wanted me in the woods--like an animal. She said to wait there for her.

I found the location with the help of a detailed road map (remember Rand-McNally?) and a stop or two at a local gas station/country store. Then I waited...and waited.

I’d brought along a bottle, we always had a few drinks along “just for relaxation”. I guess I relaxed too much, I guess. I fell asleep and didn’t wake up until nearly 2:00a.m. She hadn’t shown up, of course, and I couldn’t call her. Remember, this was in 1979, no GPS and cell phones then. Find a payphone somewhere or you were without communications until you found your way back to civilization. All those country stores had closed at like five p.m. of course. Anyway back to my motel I went, I had planned to call from there. I never got to make that call.

I’ll make the rest of this as brief as possible:

The police were waiting when I got there. I was arrested and charged with the murder of Captain C….. and the brutal beating of his wife. Evidently she had lured the Captain back to her room. Or had been surprised when he showed up unexpectedly. I suspect she had gotten some new dupe to do the beating and perhaps the shooting too, though I have no way of knowing.

Remember those gloves she always wore shooting? Turns out they kept her fingerprints from the gun. The somewhat smeared and blotted prints were mine of course. The prosecutor said the blotting was from my clumsy attempts to wipe the gun clean. No one was given a gunshot residue test other than me. I failed. I’d been target shooting that afternoon to kill time waiting for her.

My attorney managed to get me a deal, the best he could do I guess--30 to life with a chance for parole after 25 years. The D.A. had wanted life without the chance of parole, so that was the best I could hope for.

I was up for parole again last year. She came to the hearing to plead that I not be released from prison, citing the brutal beating she had received and a continuing fear for her life. She still had those guileless blue eyes...and that black, black soul.

I found this tune on my radio the other day. It says a lot to me. Maybe you might think about it if you ever meet a woman with guileless blue eyes: