They pulled up the same moment as recorded by another camera, which showed a wider view. The purple hand was attached to a man they didn’t recognize. He appeared to be a laborer, wearing a hard hat, a reflective vest, and purple nitrile gloves. Laborers weren’t allowed in the key-control room.
They rewound to 10:44 A.M., pressed Play, and watched as the laborer walked in. Short and of slight build, he carried a bucket. His face was obscured by glasses and a dust mask. This was strange: the pandemic was still months away, and most of the construction tasks requiring a mask—plastering, insulation—were finished. Conrad and Beazley watched as the man grabbed a key set and tried, unsuccessfully, to pry open the lock with a screwdriver. At 10:57 A.M., he pocketed another set, with a yellow lock on its horseshoe ring, and left the room. At 12:54 P.M., he returned and replaced it. The lock was still yellow, but now the ring was circular.
Tony Wilkes, the chief of corrections at the Davidson County Sheriff’s Office, was overseeing the jail’s construction. He got word of the incident to the sheriff himself, Daron Hall, who was in Florida for the holidays. Hall had worked in the sheriff’s office since the eighties. As a case manager at the old jail, he’d known of beatings, murders, suicides, sadistic officers. After he was elected sheriff, in 2002, he began envisioning a more humane jail. Hall believes that incarceration can provide inmates with “better opportunities.” He dislikes the word “rehabilitation.” He told me, “Rehabilitation assumes there was habilitation. A lot of these people had no chance to make it.” The new jail, a hundred-and-seventy-five-million-dollar project, was the culmination of Hall’s career. He was staking that career, along with any future he might have in state politics, on the jail’s success. Some Nashvillians had begun calling it Hall’s “baby.”
Beazley continued reviewing footage, and noticed that the infiltrator’s reflective vest bore the insignia of the security firm that had installed the cameras. Beazley showed a still image of the man to a firm supervisor. He didn’t recognize him. Nobody did. Wilkes briefed Hall, who said, “We have to find him.” Conrad and Dial showed still images to the others at the jail, and devised a plan of capture should the man return.
Hall waited for five days, thinking—at times hoping—that he might never hear of the infiltrator again. But, on January 4, 2020, someone appeared outside the jail’s lobby. The officer on duty, Cory Witkus, recognized him with a jolt. The man was wearing a dust mask and carrying an Igloo cooler. Witkus, having been warned that the infiltrator might be armed, kept in mind the Glock on his utility belt as he buzzed him in.
“Hey, what do you have going on today?” Witkus said, casually.
“I’m here to work,” the man in the mask said, in a soft, cordial voice.
Witkus offered to show him to where other laborers were working, and the man thanked him. Witkus led him to a passageway whose windowed doors, on either end, could be locked remotely. He instructed the man to proceed to the far door. Once the man was inside, Witkus slipped back out and radioed officers in the master control room, telling them to keep the doors locked, then radioed Dial and Conrad. The police were called as Conrad raced to the passageway, arriving as the man was trying to open the far door.
The man smacked the window. “Let me out!” he yelled. “I’m here to work!”
He rushed back to the first door and, finding it locked, began pacing. After ten minutes, he came to a sudden halt. He pulled a piece of paper from his pocket, lowered his dust mask, stuffed the paper in his mouth, and chewed. He pulled another piece of paper from his wallet and chewed that, spitting the wad into a trash bin.