Murder and Salutations - By Elizabeth Bright Page 0,45
morning had called the Southern Michigan Prison at Jackson, with 5,600 inmates, the world’s largest penal institution. The massive 1934-era prison complex, known as “Jacktown,” was one of the most notorious and feared of American prisons. Riots in the 1950s and 1970s had killed a guard and injured dozens of guards and inmates. Walter had recently started working there as a prison psychologist, counseling and evaluating the most depraved criminals in the state.
He had spoken on the telephone that morning with an inmate who had been a member of Nauss’s Pennsylvania motorcycle gang.
A heavy silence came over the table.
“Those guys never talk,” a deputy said.
Walter nodded. “Quite true. It is a fact that a gang member, a criminal biker, is a very rigid, power-based personality. As such he is extremely loyal and pathological in how he counts on the group. He has rigid standards and principles.” Walter paused and raised his eyebrow for dramatic effect. “But one can use that rigidity against him.” The marshals fell silent, waiting.
“I made the point that Nauss had shot somebody,” Walter said. “OK, fine, a real man can shoot someone. But he had shot and killed them in front of their child. It’s not macho to kill people in front of their children. It’s not a good thing; he’d broken a rule. And I used that to break apart the biker’s loyalties. Nauss was not living up to biker standards, Nauss was a bad guy, he’d done bad things, he’d not lived by the code a man must live by. I undermined Nauss’s masculinity to get the guy to talk.”
Walter smiled coldly. “I will sometimes sleep with the devil to get what I want. As it happens, Nauss is living somewhere in Michigan.”
Walter picked up several photographs of Nauss. He noted that the biker always wore a shirt that was patterned on one side and not the other. “It’s part of the personality type. He’s a black and white guy; there are no grays. I’ll tell you that when you find him in Michigan, Nauss will be driving a black Cadillac.”
Rappone’s brow crinkled in puzzlement. “How do you know that?”
“Ah,” Walter said. “Fair enough. We know he liked Cadillacs in the past. Cadillacs are prestige cars and he is a power guy who wants prestige and is cleaning up. Particularly rigid types like dark cars. Given his killer instincts it’d be either white or black, and he’d go for black. It’s declarative, pureness and evil at the same time.”
The faces around the table fell open with something like awe.
Bender’s grin grew wider. The marshals planned to present his finished bust of Nauss to America’s Most Wanted, the Fox TV show. Bender could see that a man like Walter could be of great use in the future.
“It’s not wizardry,” Walter said later as they left the federal building. “It’s all a matter of probabilities. I’ve been around the block a few times.”
“Rich,” Bender said, “you can read criminals’ minds the way I read women.”
Walter’s face darkened around a scowl as Bender’s laugh rang down the gray canyon of Market Street.
In February 1988, America’s Most Wanted broadcast Bender’s bust of Nauss. The sculpted face of the biker appeared dark-haired and clean-cut. Dozens of calls came in to the show’s tip line with sightings of Nauss from the East to the Midwest, but none amounted to anything.
Assuming he was still alive, the escaped prisoner and convicted killer remained at large.
• CHAPTER 15 •
THE RELUCTANT KNIGHT-ERRANT
Richard Walter was sitting in his small, classical white house in Lansing, Michigan, sipping wine and listening to opera in the civilizing presence of his antiques. The scowling, life-size samurai warrior, sword raised to attack, was a particular favorite. He was recalling his chat that day with a serial killer when the telephone rang, and he frowned.
Walter had been promoted to the largest walled prison in the world, the Southern Michigan Prison at Jackson, from the desolate castle prison on Lake Superior. The high-tech prison gave him remarkable power over the inmates. He could turn off their hot showers by a remote switch, or put them on a diet of “Prison Loaf ”—all their meals blended and baked into a hard, tasteless brick. “You will learn to control yourself or I will control you,” he told them. Control gave him satisfaction, victory over chaos, and thus he found the voice on the telephone disconcerting. It blasted through the line, as loud and excited as a television car pitchman.