In Plain Sight

Beyond the waiting room, through three-quarter-inch glass, was the big visiting room with tables and chairs in it. A guard, a woman, sat at a desk in the corner, doing paperwork. On the desk was the biggest box of sanitizing wipes he had ever seen. He grimaced, thinking about what it was she had to wipe up out there, what kinds of fluids oozed out of these people, this scum. There was a table with an urn of coffee and columns of white Styrofoam cups. Bright plastic toys were stacked in a corner. A television was on with a game show on it. Jesus, the place is almost cheery, he thought. It reminded him of a modern high school without windows.

A guard came into the room with a clipboard.

“You’re John Wayne Keeley?”

“Yessir.”

“You’re here to see Wacey Hedeman?”

“Yessir.”

“Follow me.”

SIX YEARS BEFORE, Wacey Hedeman had gone crazy. Until it happened, he had been a game warden working for the Wyoming Game and Fish Department in northern Wyoming, near the Bighorn Mountains. He had a good reputation and was well liked; a former champion rodeo bull rider in the PRCA, star of the university rodeo team, state champion wrestler before that. He was gregarious, ambitious, and cut a wide swath. He was, in practically everyone’s opinion, paid the highest compliment a Wyomingite paid another: He was thought “a good guy.”

But that was before he got the urge to run for Twelve Sleep County sheriff. He had needed money and influence to win, and he hooked up with former supervisor and mentor Vern Dunnegan, who had reappeared in the area as an advance landman for a natural-gas pipeline. Dunnegan could deliver the office to Wacey because he had the goods on the current sheriff, if Wacey would clear the way and anyone in it for the pipeline project. The situation spiraled downward into places no one anticipated and in the end, Wacey murdered four men and shot a pregnant woman before he was stopped.

Keeley had been told some of the story, and had looked up the rest. Wacey Hedeman had been sentenced to die by lethal injection, but he was still waiting for it to happen. His partner in crime, Vern Dunnegan, was serving out his sentence in the same prison, but in the general population, not maximum security.

KEELEY WAS TAKEN through a door labeled NONCONTACT VISITS and down a narrow hallway. The guard opened another door and Keeley went into a narrow cubicle with a desk, a stool bolted to the floor, a foot-wide counter, and a thick piece of glass that revealed a setup on the other side that was similar. A half-inch slot was cut in the glass near the counter, enough room to pass papers through. A black phone was mounted on the wall.

He sat down, straddling the stool, his palms flat on the counter, his nose just a few inches from the glass.

The door in the other room opened, and Wacey Hedeman stepped in and looked at him.

Hedeman was smaller than he thought he would be, Keeley thought. The old newspaper photos he had seen of Hedeman made him look taller, and more than a little dashing. His drooping gunfighter mustache was still there, though, but streaked with some gray. He had a bantam rooster kind of cockiness to his step, and the way he looked at Keeley from beneath his eyebrows . . . he looked like someone you wouldn’t want to mess with. One of Wacey’s sleeves flopped around as he moved. That’s right, Keeley thought, his arm got shot off. Idiot.

The guard behind Wacey Hedeman said, “I’ll be right outside”—Keeley could read his soundless words through the glass by watching his mouth—and Hedeman nodded but didn’t look back at him. The guard withdrew and the door closed. Wacey sat down. Their faces were no more than eighteen inches apart, through the glass. They reached for the handsets simultaneously.

“Thanks for agreeing to meet me,” Keeley said.

“Did you bring me what you said you would?”

Keeley raised his eyebrows. “They wouldn’t let me bring it through security. I tried, though. The first lady let me but the guy at the metal detector took it.”

Wacey’s face started to turn red. He glared at Keeley through the glass, and lowered the handset from his face. Keeley thought for a second that Wacey might just stand up, turn around, and demand to be let out.

“I’m sorry,” Keeley said.

Wacey just stared at him.

“Don’t fuck with me,” Wacey said, after bringing the phone back to his face. “Do you know how much I crave that stuff in here? Do you have any fucking idea?”

“No.”

“Some of these guys have it,” Wacey said, nodding toward the inmates with visiting families in the open room. “How is it they get it and I don’t? Why is it okay to smoke but not okay to chew? It pisses me off. This is Wyoming. A man ought to be allowed to chew here.”

Maybe because you’re on death row? Keeley thought but didn’t say. “I don’t know. It don’t seem too fair. I’m sorry.”

“Quit saying that,” Wacey said, his eyes on Keeley. “You sound like one sorry son-of-a-bitch.”