A Prison Confessional

“Peter Tinsley?”

“Yeah.”

“Prisoner’s ready for you. You need anything, just yell for me.”

Tinsley looked up at the guard and nodded. “Got it.”

“Don’t think this guy will give you any trouble anyway.” He opened the door and held it open for Tinsley, who shuffled through. His rubber soles caught on the floor slightly, giving his gait an odd halting quality. The door closed behind him.

A slightly built latino with a buzz cut sat on the other side of the table, hands apart and palms down in front of him.

“How you doing, Juan?” He shrugged.

“I’m in prison, man.” Tinsley thought he saw the faintest hint of a smile at the corners of Juan’s mouth.

“Isn’t your parole hearing coming up?”

“Next week. Don’t think they’ll let me out though.”

“You never know.” Tinsley reached into his messenger bag, laid a legal pad and a pen on the table. He pulled a digital recorder out and placed it next to the pad. “Remember what we talked about?”

“Yeah. You need quotations for your article.”

“Are you ready?” Juan shrugged.

“Never matters much in here,” he said flatly.

Tinsley rolled the recorder back and forth across his palm, the stood it on end on the table. “I’m going to turn it on now.” Juan stared silently across the table, then nodded, almost imperceptibly.

“Would you state your name?”

“Juan Luis Pasqual.”

“How long have you been incarcerated?”

“Eight years. Convicted for fifteen.”

“And what were you convicted of?”

“Attempted murder. Second degree.”

“What did you do?”

Pasqual hesitated a moment, eyeing Tinsley. Then, finally: “There was a guy. He raped my sister. She didn’t get a rape kit—she was scared, embarrassed, didn’t know if she could trust anybody. She couldn’t even look me in the eye for a long time. But there was nothing else to pin it on him, so he walked. And I couldn’t let him do that to somebody else.”

Tinsley was nodding along. The pad and pen he’d laid on the table remained where he’d put them; everything Pasqual would say was something he’d already committed to memory. “What did you do?” Pasqual leaned forward.

“I figured out when he was going to be home alone. I brought a crowbar. That’s what he used to…” He swallowed. “I waited until he opened his front door, and I rushed him. Knocked him on the ground inside his house, and started beating on him. He tried to protect himself with his arms; but I broke those, and I was just hitting him again and again. I got his head a few times. I was only in there a minute—a couple of the neighbors saw me, and stopped me, held me to the ground.”

“You wanted to kill him.”

“It was an error of impunity,” Pasqual said, chewing on the phrase. “Him getting away with it. He deserved it.”

“But he survived.”

“I put him in a coma. He was plugged into one of those machines, couldn’t survive without it. Still is.”

“You were convicted fairly quickly by the jury. You must have thought it’d at least take a little longer.”

“Hey, I still did it. No getting away from that; facts are facts.”

“Fair enough.”

“They put me in here. 15 years, minimum sentence, eligible for parole at 51% of time served. Judge probably had a sister.”

“How did prison change you?”

“Place gives you a lot of time. You get to thinking about things. Enough of that and you start to ask questions…sometimes they make you uncomfortable but you have to answer them anyway.”

“What kind of questions?”

“They change the more you think. First it’s ‘Do I belong in here?’ Then you move on: ‘Did he deserve it?’ ‘Did I do the right thing?’”

Tinsley stared at him. “Did you?”

Pasquale sighed, a small gesture that nonetheless revealed all of the weariness and regret that he carried with him.

“What I did to him—that was wrong. Doesn’t matter what he did. It’s not about who deserves what, or whatever. His mom didn’t deserve to have a rapist for a kid, but she didn’t deserve to have her son taken from her either. Where’s it end, man?”

“Nobody would blame you if you never apologized.”

“I got a lot of letters at first. Telling me, “you did the right thing,” “I’m a brother and I’d have done it too,” you know. “God bless you.” That one got to me a little. I mean, is that what God’s about, you know? But they stopped sending them after a few months. I guess people just wanted to feel good about a bad thing happening to a bad person.”

“And now you want to try make amends.”

“No. Can’t set things right; what’s done is done. But that guy had a family, friends, and none of them knew him the way I knew him. We all learned a lot about somebody because of what I did. I didn’t know I could murder somebody. Honestly…” Pasqual dropped his eyes to the table, and then glanced at the wall. “I wish I didn’t know that. I could go on believing that we’re all good or bad, but that makes me an evil man. I don’t think I’m evil, but maybe that’s not for me to decide anyway.”

“What did you do about his family?”

“I didn’t know him the way they did either. Wasn’t two separate people, the rapist and the wholesome All-American boy. They were the same guy. I took his life away from him, the same as if I killed him, so I thought it was right to know what I took. I started writing to everyone who I remembered knew him, everybody I remembered from the trial. Some of them wrote back.”

“Were you surprised by the kinds of responses you got?”

“More surprised by who I got them from. His brother was the one I ended up talking to a lot. He had a lot of trouble with the idea that the guy could rape somebody. I had trouble with the idea that a rapist could be a guy a lot of people liked, so I guess we were sort of the same. Kindred spirits.” Tinsley shifted in his seat. “He and his brother were rich kids, trust fund kids, so he had a lot of money to spare.”

“You wanted to do something.”

“Yeah. We’re starting a charity. I’ve been trying to get more donors on board from in here…the kind of people who’d listen to a con. He’s looking at people his family would run with—not exactly my kind of people, you know.”

“Your charity would fund counseling programs for victims of sexual assault.”

“My sister could have used somebody better to talk to than me.”

“The charity would also provide counseling to other people.”

“People like his brother. For family members and friends of people who fell into comas, or persistent vegetative states. Me and him, we hurt a lot of people. They shouldn’t have to suffer for what we did.”

“They’re what you could call second-order victims, people who were hurt indirectly. Like you.”

“Difference is they don’t try to kill anybody.” Pasqual was silent for a moment, staring at Tinsley. His gaze was impenetrable.

“You’re up for parole next week.” Pasqual shrugged. “Not too high on your chances?”

“It’s hard for a felon to get a decent job. I’ve got people who’d look out for me, anyway.”

“Your sister?”

“My family.”

“I’m sure, considering the circumstances, you’d be first on the parole board’s list of good candidates.”

“I’ve already been in here 8 years. Few more months won’t matter.”

Tinsley looked at the tape recorder. “OK, I think we’re done.” He turned it off. Pasqual leaned back in his chair.

“You got what you need, man?” Tinsley put the recorder in his bag, followed by the pad and paper.

“Yeah. I’ll be in touch if I think of anything else, but that probably does it.” He stood up, securing the strap and sliding the bag onto his shoulder. Pasqual offered his hand across the table, still seated.

Tinsley shook it. “I’ll send you the article when it gets published. Good luck at the hearing.”

Pasqual nodded, releasing his hand.

“Guard?” Tinsley asked, rapping his knuckles on the door. “I’m finished.” He heard footsteps approaching the door from the other side; it swung open presently. Tinsley looked back at Pasqual for a split second, and passed through the door. The guard closed it behind them, and led Tinsley away from the room.

They approached a barred gate. “Hastings here will take you to the front gate,” the guard said, and gestured to another guard standing on the other side of the bars.

As he passed through the halls of the prison, he was preoccupied with rearranging the primary source information he’d collected into a coherent article, now that he’d accumulated it all. There was the broader criticism of retributive justice as opposed to rehabilitative justice that he intended to make, but that could be done simply enough by any policy wonk. The real emotional core of the story was the case of Juan Luis Pasqual, and his sister, and the family of her rapist.

Hastings nodded at him. They had reached the exterior gate, next to the parking lot. “Just show the gate guard your visitor badge, and he’ll let you through. He nodded at Tinsley as he stepped through.

Tinsley began walking toward his car. It was Pasqual that would make or break the story for the editors. People could support the idea of a rapist who escaped conviction being summarily punished by a vigilante, but what would they say if that vigilante deeply regretted his actions? Decided they were wrong, even?

He’d reached his car. He pulled his key ring out of his pocket and unlocked the door. His messenger bag fell on the passenger seat as he slid into his seat and closed the door. Tinsley sat there for a long moment. Ultimately, it didn’t matter whether people liked Pasqual or not, or believed that his change of heart was foolish or hopelessly naïve. What mattered was what Tinsley believed: regret was OK. Forgiveness was OK—even forgiveness for the most heinous of crimes. That message needed to be put out into the open; Pasqual’s was a story that needed to be told.

Tinsley leaned forward over the steering wheel and turned the ignition, smiling. After all—Juan’s good turn deserved an author.