And that’s goddamned catnip to me. Nobody ever forgets a Drake is in the room. Though they probably want to. Why do I keep comparing him to catnip? I don’t have a cat. Or nip.
“He lied, for one thing,” Jason continued. He’d sped up a bit so he was now walking beside them. “And not for the first time. He claimed we were his last allotted visit for the month. But I checked when I logged us in . . . he had plenty of hours left for the month. He got rid of us simply to get rid of us. In fact, he still couldn’t get rid of you fast enough.”
“You, too,” Archer said, but Jason shook his head.
“That’s typical. That’s normal. Nobody wants to talk to cops at the best of times, never mind when they’re in prison. It looks bad. I’d expect him to want to keep away from me. But again, he wanted the whole group gone, especially you.” He pointed to Angela. “And you.” To Archer. “And that’s very curious. Often longtimers will . . . Their lack of contact with the outside world is lessened by . . .”
When he paused again, Angela spoke up. “You’re not going to offend us by pointing out something we all know. Usually longtimers can’t get enough family visits. According to the ones I’ve spoken to, anyway.” At Leah’s sideways glance and Chambers’s sigh, she shrugged. “What? Sometimes Uncle Dennis would change his mind and not see me. I’m there, I already made the trip, but I should instantly turn around and go home?”
“Yes, Angela. Those would be the actions of someone who isn’t obsessed.”
“Cram it, Archer. Anyway, sometimes I talk to the other prisoners, or their families. I ended up with a really good recipe for risotto that way . . .”
“Which is why,” Chambers put in, “you’re no longer allowed to clear Intake Processing unless ICC personnel and your uncle and someone working the case concur.”
They’d reached the car by now, and Angela looked down at her feet and scuffed a toe along the white line on the pavement. You almost accidentally let one measly arsonist out and suddenly you’re slapped with a lifetime label: SECURITY RISK. The world was a cruel and unfair place. “It was one time,” she muttered. “But anyway. That whole ‘only the first year of your sentence is hard time, after that you adjust’ myth is bullshit. You spend your first year, and a couple after, in deep, deep denial.”
“It’s all a mistake,” Chambers said.
“My lawyer’s going to fix this,” Leah added.
“The judge will realize he was too hard on me and will reduce my sentence any day now,” Archer finished.
“Right, we all know the drill. But Uncle Dennis . . . he never had that. He couldn’t indulge in the luxury of denial because he went out of his way to make damned sure he was going to be locked up. And he went further out of his way to make sure he stayed locked up. So you’d think he’d grab for any chance to see any of us. But he never did. Does, I mean.” Of course, that could simply mean her uncle wanted less chaos in his life, which was understandable. Or that he wasn’t especially fond of any of them, which was cold, but also understandable. “But,” she finished, “that still leaves us nowhere.”
“Maybe,” Jason said, nibbling on his lower lip. But instead of sounding discouraged, it almost sounded like he was . . . hopeful? Like he’d thought of something?
No, she was reading him wrong. Actually, she shouldn’t be reading him at all. If her uncle could have taken the gold medal for stubborn, she could have for grasping at straws. Any straws. Even dirty ones. Why am I thinking about dirty straws now? She gave herself a mental shake and looked up to say good-bye to the detective, but he was already climbing into his own car, a practical and forgettable Ford Focus. Gray, of course. She didn’t even get a last glimpse of his Van Gogh socks.
Archer had it right. All we’ve got is a sizeable pile of nothing.
She slumped into Archer’s back seat and got ready to endure the two-hour drive back home. She was too downhearted to even give Archer shit for his habit of driving slowly through stop signs. Which was pretty downhearted.
TWELVE
FEBRUARY 19, 1858
LAKE STEILACOOM, WASHINGTON
When I finish my jerky and porridge and coffee, I will kill an innocent man.
For the first time in a long time, the hangman had no appetite. He had no fear of blood or shit or puke, of death or the things men did to deserve death. He’d been hunting since he could hold a knife; he had attended many funerals. He could not remember a time when he did not understand death was a natural end for all God’s creatures, even when it was engineered as a tool of the state.
He had hanged a rapist when he was nineteen, then went home and devoured the last of the corn bread (his sister had gifted him with a twenty-pound sack of meal when he moved west, knowing his penchant for baking and eating it by the pan). Now in his early thirties, he had executed men for everything from stealing telegrams to patricide. His appetite had never flagged because punishment was a consequence of crime. Think of the chaos if it wasn’t! Besides, someone had to do it.
So, no. He did not fear death. He feared hell.
Chief Leschi was a native, a war chief, a raider, and an instigator. A man who took a bad deal, then blamed everyone but himself for taking that deal.
But he wasn’t a murderer. And most people knew that.
The chief kicked up a ruckus—you bet! He would tell anyone who stood still how the government tricked him, stole from him. He squawked often enough that Acting Governor Mason sicced the militia on him. Didn’t shut him up, but did result in two militia fellas turning up dead. This horrified every white person in a hundred miles, and was enough for Mason.
First trial: hung jury. Second trial: conviction and death sentence. Because the second time, the judge did not explain that killing combatants in war did not meet the law’s definition of murder. (The state occasionally learned from its mistakes.)
So, guilty despite a total lack of evidence. Guilty despite his fine lawyers. Guilty despite appealing to the Territorial Supreme Court. Guilty despite sympathetic coverage from the press. Guilty despite appeals to the governor. Guilty despite the local lawman’s stunt: Sheriff Williams let himself be arrested so he wouldn’t have to supervise the execution.
But the government couldn’t back down. Not after taking the trouble to frame Chief Leschi for the murders. Not after terrified locals had shrieked for the chief’s head for eleven months. So they maneuvered around the sheriff, moved the execution date, and then moved the locale to Lake Steilacoom.
And an hour from now, the chief would swing from gallows so hastily thrown together, the platform was still bleeding sap.
“Don’t envy you this one,” the sheriff had said, and it was true, today his duty was his burden. But the sheriff knew, and the prosecutors. The press knew. The locals knew. It was that lone fact that afforded him one comfort: This would not be his sin alone. They would all be complicit, and, one day, they would all answer to God for it.
Forgive us, Lord God, for we know exactly what we do.
He went out to do his duty.
THIRTEEN
Angela trudged into the house by the back kitchen door, to be met by Jack, who had just slid something wonderful (as was his wont) into the oven. He turned to face her and even after her exhausting afternoon, she had to grin at the black with white lettering on his apron: YOUR OPINION WASN’T IN THE RECIPE*.
He greeted her with, “I don’t even have to ask. It’s all over you. In particular, your face.”
“In particular, you’re right. Though I think you’re guessing.”
“Uncle Dennis was a wall.”
“Yes.”
“A scowling, stubborn wall.”
“Times ten. Yes.”
“But on the plus side, the weather was beautiful.”