Day 88 - Darwin's Game - Chapter 37 (2917 words)

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DARWIN'S GAME

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 37

Van Nostrum sat at the table in the visitors from in his prison orange jumpsuit, a stark contrast to the suit in sober grey that his lawyer was wearing. His hands were cuffed to the table, and it was an indignity added to Van to make his experience even more uncomfortable and unpleasant until he caved and told them something they wanted to know. His lawyer, Robert Jackson was reviewing the file and rocking back on the legs of his chair shaking his head.

“There's not much I can do unless you tell me something, you're not even contesting the charges?”

“Well no, it's a bit late for that isn't it? That is my fucking dilemma now!” Van was angry and frustrated, but at no point did the Rob fear for his safety. They had some history and it went back for more than just two or three court appearances, they had worked together before Van's unfortunate side track into drugs and assault landed him in jail for a third strike. Prior to that he had been the 'investigator' for Rob's law firm, a company that specialised in funded defences for criminals and where legal aid money could provide the basics but never a good enough defence. Robert's company would sift through the cases and find abuses of the system and then take them on to pursue the prison system, the police and the prosecutors who were cutting corners.

Montana was not a hot bed of crime and abuse of course and it ranked low in the country for both crime and recidivism, but like all places it had it's moments. Robert Jackson was never going to be overwhelmed with abuses of power here, but there was enough to keep his firm in business, the go to law firm for the disenfranchised and disadvantaged on the wrong side of halls of power. He himself believed in crime and punishment and he never knowingly or wittingly kept a serious criminal from a sentence they truly deserved, as long as it was proportional to the crime. He wanted his home state to uphold that value and stay true to a moderate and fair justice system, not everyone on the other side of the line had the same values of course, so examples abounded of things going horribly wrong. Had he been in a more crime ridden state with more conservative politicians and overworked law enforcement, then he be turning cases away, but here in Helena he could concentrate on the ones that fit his ideals.

There was plenty of work these days as crime rates had been slowly rising the last few years due to a sense that punishment was not working, so some people were trying to right that with their own course corrections. Prosecutors, police and some lawyers found that to get 'natural justice' they had to help the system along a little, without covering their tracks that well and more often than not that meant an out of court settlement. They did not need to win them all, they could afford to accrue a few losses as long as they kept finding the bigger wins in the mix and get payouts that had the client money, the subsidies and the great PR rolling in.

Van Nostrum was ethically and morally bankrupt, with a previous assault charge in his record, and then tried and convicted of breaking and entering. The guilty plea meant he took his lumps and a reduced sentence, but then he had been beaten quite badly on the way from court to jail on sentencing. It transpired he was feeling a little cocky at the short stay he was being sent to, and he had said the wrong thing on the wrong day to the wrong guard, then it was all downhill from there. His lawyer knew Robert Jackson, they made a call and brought him in to co-chair a compensation case against the corrections staff that had facilitated and tried to cover up the imbroglio, which was unfortunately captured on the loading bay cameras. That case had put them working together once he was free and clear with a decent settlement cheque.

The settlement put him in the money and a new world of possibility opened for him, but he had a predilection for things he should not have. The money was partly invested in property at Robert's suggestion, with a slush fund for the 'finer things' according to Van Nostrum. That fund dried up fairly quickly and he had a natural nose for ferreting out who was lying and who was hiding something. So he came to work helping find dirt, illegally if necessary but with plausible deniability for the firm. The expensive drugs gave way to cheaper and more accessible ones that had much more anti social side effects on his behaviour, which inevitably lead to violent confrontations with others of his societal circles and the undercover police officer that he assaulted with little regard to consequence.

It was his third strike as the case that Robert Jackson got him a settlement from was never overturned, he was after all guilty of that crime, he just was undeserving of the beating. In the three strike regime that meant he was now in for the harshest of sentences and a long stay in the Montana

State Prison in Deer Lodge. It was close enough for Robert to visit even if he had no current cases pending in the state prison system and he would come and see Van on the occasion when he had to. They were friendly, Van knew that it was his own fault for being here and he held no ill will towards that man across the table, and posed no threat to him at all, they were as close to being friends as they could be considering the differences in their lifestyles and current situations.

Van had something the system, the people in power nationally, wanted to get and he had no idea on how to give it to them or if it even existed. So he was treated, to the letter of the law and the provisions of prisoner policy in the state until he bowed to the pressure. Robert complained and filed injunctions, but time and circumstance were not on his side.

Van Nostrum was being investigated as an accomplice of the Darwin character from the series of webisodes that everyone in the country and around the world were so fascinated with. It was ridiculous of course to think that Van knew anything at all about the hyper organised and mysterious figure behind prison abductions and cheating death, but here he was at the centre of all the controversy, and the worse for it.

He had initially thought to take advantage of the situation to ease his sentence and treatment in prison, but that plan had backfired majorly a few weeks ago, when he went from falsely accused of murder to a conspirator in the most embarrassing scandal for the prison system. He had been the inmate that had fatally stabbed Mark Rowlands in a Prison Bathroom, after an incident in the yard the day preceding. He had been seen by guards disposing of the shiv, and not particularly well so he was caught with evidence linking him to the assault, which is all he thought it was. Van and the guards were quite shocked to learn that Mark Rowlands had been pronounced dead a short time later.

Time was added to his sentence, serving concurrently as it was widely assumed that he was trying to injure not murder, and then his privileges were revoked and further restrictions were added after some time in solitary confinement. He took it well, the prison clamped down on inmate violence, did a sweep of the cells for weapons and contraband, but it was going through the motions. No one had liked Rowlands, he was a pain in the ass as an inmate and was constantly getting into scrapes with other inmates due to his impatience and inability to work well with groups. Every one was shocked that he had died from such a shallow wound in the side, but it was assumed that it was a nick of some vital organ that did him in.

By his request the body was cremated and interred at a cemetery in his home town and then a few months later Van came out of solitary, went back to life as normal in the prison and he was generally regarded as having done everyone a rather fortunate favour, by mistake.

Then the first episode of Darwin's Game came out and the inmates were initially not able to see any of the episodes, because the internet access was highly censored, filtered and restricted to vocational access only. It was only a few days after the second episode that the noise coming through the grapevine, from lawyers and family, friends and criminal contacts got so loud and persistent that the TV channels that were showing edited versions of the instalments were allowed to be seen in recreation rooms under close supervision.

Van Nostrum stared at the screen in amazement, there he was the man he had supposedly killed and he was alive and well. It meant little to his sentencing as he was serving it concurrently, but the extra restrictions were chaffing at times and he saw a way to alleviate these by bargaining on the fact that there was proof of the crime not occurring, it was now assault and not manslaughter. The Warden met with Jackson and took the details under advisement, he was under a lot of pressure to explain how this inmate that was pronounced dead on his watch, in his prison was now alive again. Prison records were being hauled away in boxes by the FBI and more and more scrutiny was on them every week.

The Doctor at the centre of the case no longer worked at the prison, he had left a few weeks before the Darwin's Game episode was released and was working in the Ivory Coast with Doctors Without Borders. He was resisting all calls to return and denied any involvement in the cover up, sending statements though his lawyer claiming his innocence and answering any questions they had via a long and laborious intermediary process. Guards, the Warden and a number of prison staff and even the crematory staff were all investigated and questioned over and over again, but they came up with nothing that showed anyone was aware that they were moving, replacing or covering up the escape of Mark Rowlands.

In the end there was other people involved, there had to be more people involved. The trail on connection to any outside influence was cold and ultimately no one was any in position to be leveraged to get more information other than the doctor, who was overseas and not coming home, and the prisoner who stabbed Rowlands in the first instance. So all the heat that went on the prison, was turned on the inmate who had stabbed him in the shower. The questions came thick and fast, why did he do it, why then and not before, where did he get the knife, who put him up to it, and what did he know about the escape plan?

The only real issue was that Van Nostrum had no idea about any of the elaborate plan to get Rowlands out of prison, he was just another inmate who knew that Rowlands was an asshole who deserved to get a little stabbed to put him in his place again, and he had done just that with no real plan or design in place. He had explained this over and over again, but as he was the lowest on the totem pole and in the weakest position out of all of them he was the obvious target for pressure by Corrections, the FBI and the prison staff who were fed up with the extra scrutiny on them from every corner who wanted to know how and why this man was so easily removed from a high security facility, even in sleepy Montana.

The was the case for a few weeks and then the pressure eased and the hard restrictions were let a little loser in practice rather than being officially softened, and life became a little easier for Van once more and he could see the light at the end of the tunnel. He was left out of hand cuffs for legal visits and the time restrictions on television and other activities were quietly dropped and he was weathering the storm like Rob had suggested was the way to handle this. He cooperated and confessed to every part of the assault, but as there was no legal evidence that Mark was alive, the manslaughter charge stayed in place for the foreseeable future, in a legal minefield that no one wanted to touch.

Van and Robert hoped that a real lead would emerge and take the course of the investigation along other lines, away from the prison and the disappearance of Mark Rowlands. When the next big lead did come along though, it made matters worse for Van Nostrum, not better at all. The problem was one of location, the alpha site for the Darwin Town was in Montana, and so was Mark Rowlands. All the focus of the agents in town pulling the maps apart looking for the huge building they knew was there was no concentrated on local clues and at the locus of those clues was the departed Mark Rowlands.

All the questions started again, this time with added depth of questions about the site up in the National Park. Van had no connection to the area, but then again no one else did either and he was the only one that the powers that be could squeeze. So squeeze him they did, the charge still stood as there was no proof that he had not killed Rowlands yet proof abounded that Mark had been killed by his hand. In order to get out of the punishment for his death they wanted him to prove that Mark was alive, how he was alive and how to connect this to Darwin. All of this was beyond Van Nostrum and try as he might he could not convince anyone except his lawyer of this.

The new handcuffs even when his legal meetings were on, the pressure put on the other prisoners all designed to make them put more pressure on Van Nostrum to cave in, was taking it's toll. Every week they would allow some broadcasts to be seen and they chose which shows about the Game were going to be seen, the ones that were heavily edited and with conservative opinions around the punishment angles seemed to be the usual choice.

“I don't know what else to tell you, I have argued with people black and blue but no one wants to hear your side of the story unless it does something about the Darwin problem.” Said his lawyer finally.

“I don't know anything though!” Van replied, not for the first nor the last time.

“You know that, and I know that, and I am pretty sure that by now everyone else thinks it too, but you are the only person they can take this shit out on, and there is nothing I can do about it. You are being punished for the crime of killing a fellow prisoner, a crime you freely admitted to carrying out. What they are doing is carrying out everything they have a right to do, and they are offering you a way out.”

Van hung his head in his hands, and Robert Jackson ran his hands through his hair, he wanted to help but every single person who he had spoken to all had the same question. What does your client know about Darwin? Judges, lawyers, reporters and every person he spoke to all focussing on the Darwin angle, like it was an accepted fact that Van knew something.

“Even now, that fucking asshole is still ...” Van smiled at his thought. “He was such an asshole, if you had asked me who was such an asshole, was such an effective asshole, that they could even continue to be one post.... post... what is that word, you know when you are after being dead?”

“Posthumously.”

“Posthumously, that’s it. Yeah, I would have said that the only asshole I ever met who could be one after dying? Mark Fucking Rowlands. Typical.”

They stared at each other a little while longer, and Robert decided to go an speak to the warden again, now that Mark was dead, again, maybe it would allow them to move on from the hardly innocent, but unfortunate man that was his friend and his client.

As he got up to leave, signalling to the guards tapping on the window, he nodded to his client who looked at him with desperation in his eyes.

“Hey is there any chance I could get in to the next round of Darwin's Game?”

Robert Jackson stopped in his tracks and stared at his friend.

“What?”

Van rattled the handcuffs and chain on his wrists and looked at him again, choking and welling up tears in his eyes.

“At least they get a one in twelve chance … “