POV: CASSIE
The voice comes first and it always does. "My name is Cassandra James." I have sat across from every person you have ever been scared of. I have looked them in the eye. I asked them the one question that no one else had the guts to ask. And they do answer sometimes.
The e intro music f fades away. A low, slow sound, like a heartbeat slowing down. "This is Final Words." The last podcast about confession. I am your host. And I've been waiting for you.
The recording is over.
Cassie takes out the earbuds, wraps the wire around two fingers, and puts them in her coat pocket. She doesn't enjoy listening to her own show. She listens like a surgeon checks their hands before an operation: quickly, clinically, and looking for anything that could go wrong.
Everything sounds good.
Everything always sounds good.
It is a grey, flat, and cold morning in Maryland, like October mornings are. She is standing at the entrance of Riverbend State Penitentiary. The sky seems to have given up trying to be anything. The building in front of her is the colour of old concrete and the choices that were made a long time ago. The first floor doesn't have any windows. There are no flowers close to the gate. There is a sign that says "VISITOR CHECK-IN" and an arrow pointing left, as if people who come here need help finding the most obvious door.
Cassie has gone to Riverbend four times.
She knows exactly where the door is.
She walks toward it.
Officer Briggs is the guard at the first checkpoint. She knows this because his name is on a badge the size of a playing card that is pinned to a chest that looks like it hasn't missed a meal since 1987. His face is round and pink, and he looks like a man who has already made up his mind that today will be boring.
When she gets closer to the desk, he looks up. Then he looks again, more slowly, like people do when they see someone on a screen. "Cassandra James," he says. Not a question. "It's true." It sounds more like reading a headline. She pushes her ID across the desk.
He picks it up. Looks into it. She looks at him. She looks at it again, as if to make sure the picture hasn't changed since the last time she was there. "You're the podcast lady," he says. "I am."
"My wife listens to you." She says you talk to murderers.
"I do."
He thinks about this for a moment while he turns her ID over in his thick fingers. Then he smiles, big and sudden, like a man who just remembered a joke he was going to tell.
He says, "I bet that makes for an interesting dinner conversation."
Cassie stares at him. Her face is calm, nice, and impossible to read. "I mostly eat alone," she says.
She grabs her ID from the desk, clips her visitor badge to her lapel, and walks through the first door before he has time to decide if that was funny.
It wasn't supposed to be funny.
The second checkpoint smells like disinfectant and something else that the disinfectant isn't quite covering. "Recording device?" the guard asks as she runs the scanner over Cassie's arms, sides, and legs. The guard is a younger woman in her twenties with eyes that have already learned to stay flat.
Cassie takes her recorder out of her coat pocket. Little. Silver. The size of a pack of cards. She has owned it for six years. She bought it the week Final Words came out and has never replaced it, even though she has been offered better gear seventeen times. She doesn't want better tools. She wants this one recorder because it has never let her down in front of a lot of people who were trying to. "It's been cleared," Cassie says. "Three days ago, Warden Okafor said it was okay."
The guard looks at her tablet. Nods. Gives the recorder back.
Cassie puts it in her pocket.
The door opens with a buzz.
People think death row is loud, but it's not.
She has said this three times, and it is always true when she comes in. There is noise—there is always noise in a prison, like the low hum of ventilation systems and the sound of metal and people living their lives in very small spaces—but it is underneath the quiet, not above it. The quiet here has a feel to it. It has some weight. People who have run out of things to fight about are quiet.
She walks down the hall with Officer Dade, who has done her paperwork on two other visits and has never once made small talk. She likes this about him. People who know that silence isn't a problem that needs to be solved are people she likes.
Their footsteps on the floor are steady. Hers is a little lighter than his. The fluorescent lights above them are the kind that make everyone look a little sick. They are a flat, harsh white that makes skin look grey and eyes look tired. Cassie has learned to not care about how she looks in fluorescent light. She has also learned that this is when people are most honest: when the flattering light is gone, the performance is over, and the room itself has stopped pretending.
She enjoys these rooms.
This is what people who listen to Cassandra James's true crime podcast don't know about her: it's the thing that lives beneath the polished intro, the measured voice, and the reputation she has built over six years and eleven seasons. She doesn't like being in regular rooms. She feels at home here, in rooms where the walls are the colour of nothingness, the doors lock from the outside, and the people inside have nothing left to protect.
She is better in these rooms than in any other place.
She has never thought about why.
The interview room is small and looks just like every other interview room she's ever been in. Table made of metal. Two chairs that are facing each other. A strip of window near the ceiling that shows a grey sky in a rectangle. A camera in the corner with a steady red light on it.
Cassie puts her recorder on the table.
She takes off her coat, folds it up, and sits down.
She doesn't look at her phone. She doesn't look over her notes. She has notes—three pages of them, all written in her neat, small handwriting—that cover everything she knows about Damian Cross. The costs. The trial. The appeal. The ten years. She learned them by heart on the way here.
She puts her hands together on the table.
She is patient.
The door swings open.
She thought Damian Cross would be shorter. She doesn't know why most of them are shorter than she thought they would be. It could be that pictures make people look bigger than they are, or it could be that being scared of someone makes them look bigger. But Damian Cross is at least 6'2" tall, and he walks with the careful, deliberate stillness of a man who knows how to take up only the space he needs.
He sits down in front of her.
He doesn't look at the recorder.
He doesn't look at the camera.
He stares at her.
His dark hazel eyes are the most awake thing in the room. She has sat across from people who made her feel scared. She has sat across from people who made her skin crawl and her breathing shallow in ways she didn't let on. She writes down this feeling quickly and honestly, just like she writes down everything else. She does not feel afraid when she looks at Damian Cross.
It is a sign of respect.
She doesn't know what to do with that, so she does what she always does when she comes across something she can't put into a box. She puts it away. She goes on. "Mr. Cross," she says. "I'm Cassandra James,"
He says, "I know who you are."
He doesn't speak very loudly. Not as high as she thought. Not in a hurry, like when you've been waiting a long time and know that rushing now won't change anything.
He doesn't say anything else.
She waits.
One minute goes by. She counts it in her head, not with worry but with care. Data is silence. She has learned to read it like other people do.
Two minutes.
He is still staring at her. Not staring, but looking. The way you look at something you have been trying to remember and have finally found.
Three minutes.
There is a hum coming from the fluorescent light above them.
There is four minutes of complete and utter silence. Then, very slightly, Damian Cross tilts his head and says, "You have exactly the voice I expected."
A break. "I've been listening to your show for three years."
Another break. Longer.
"I know who killed those women."
Cassie has her hands on the table. Her face is calm. She is breathing normally. The light on her recorder is on.
She doesn't reach for her notes. She doesn't look away from him. She doesn't let any of her feelings show on her face and come into this room.
"Tell me," she says.