Would Jenni think so?
I stumble in the snow, falling headfirst to the ground, the rock sliding down the embankment and coming to rest on the edge of the lake. I don’t want to hear those words, so I fill my head with the task of adding weights. “Twenty pounds,” I say. I’m out of breath, and I start to cough as I roll onto my butt. “At least twenty pounds.” I speak out loud as I add the weights together, hoping to shush the echo of that last question. “That was eighteen and ten . . . twenty-eight . . . and . . .” It’s all a muddle. I can’t keep track of the numbers. I haven’t eaten since . . . when was it? Yesterday. And I need sleep. It’s been too long.
I see the rock below my feet, and I slide down and pick it up. “Twenty pounds. That’s right. Plus . . . um . . . what was it? Yeah, twenty-eight. That’s about fifty pounds so far. About a third of the way.”
I drop the rock with the others.
Would Jenni think you have the right to kill this man?
“Jenni’s not here,” I say.
I start a new path up the embankment and quickly find an outcropping of stones just the right size. “Ten pounds. Twelve pounds. Fifteen. That’s, what . . . thirty-seven . . . let’s call it thirty-five. Here’s another fifteen. Now that’s fifty, plus the fifty from before. One hundred.”
Max, you know that’s not an answer.
I don’t want to think about it, because I know the answer. Despite my effort to keep the memory quiet, it pries its way past the numbers. We were watching a documentary on politics that day—Jenni loved to follow politics. In this documentary they played the famous 1988 debate in which Michael Dukakis was asked if he would support or oppose the death penalty if his own wife had been raped and murdered. A longtime opponent of the death penalty, Dukakis said that it would make no difference in his position. I made an off-handed remark that Dukakis answered the question wrong.
“How’s that wrong if it’s the principle he lives by?” Jenni asked.
I hadn’t meant to stumble into a political debate, especially given her strong leanings on most issues, but I felt I was on good footing here. “I’m not saying he should give up his principles. But there are two parts to that answer, and he left out the most important part.”
“Two parts?”
Jenni turned on the couch to face me, as if readying herself for a contest.
I took a breath and continued. “He should have said that, as a governor or president, the death penalty is wrong, because jurors are human and humans make mistakes. But at the same time, as a man, as a husband, if someone killed my wife, I’d have no qualms about sending that bastard to hell.”
I expected Jenni to be impressed with my political savvy, coming up with an answer for Dukakis that would have both preserved his principles and give a voice to the primal need for revenge, a trait that, like it or not, lives in all of us. Instead of being impressed, she furrowed her eyebrows a little and asked, “Would you really?”
“Would I really what?”
“Would you really send the man to hell? Do you think you could end someone’s life like that?”
“If someone killed you, yeah, I’d have no problem pulling the switch or plunging the needle into him.”
I remember the sad look on her face when I said those words. I got the sense that I’d missed some important point, something so fundamental that it caused Jenni to rethink how she saw me. Then she shook her head and put a hand to my cheek and said, “Don’t you see? It’s not about the murderer. He’s defined himself by what he’s done. The question is: how do you define who you are? Vengeance is not justice. It’s that simple. I would never want you to kill someone for me. I’d never want you to become someone bad because of me. You’re a good man, Max Rupert. Don’t ever lose that.”
She looked so disappointed. I shrugged and nodded my agreement but made the mental note to myself to never bring up the subject again.
I lose count of my rocks, picking up two more, each a little over ten pounds, and I walk them to the pile. I add up a rough total in my head and figure I’m around one hundred and twenty pounds of weight now. How much weight do I need? One twenty seems like a lot, especially when I think about the burden of dragging those stones a quarter mile over the snow-covered ice. I decide I have enough rocks.
The snowmobile cover has a bowl where the canvass fits over the wind screen. It also has nylon straps to keep the cover secure when it’s on a trailer. I put the rocks into the bowl and tie it off with the straps, making a tight bundle.
The toes on my left foot have grown numb from the moisture and cold that has seeped through the broken stitching. I get down on one knee and heave my bundle of stones onto my back, lifting it up as close to my shoulder as I can. It’s heavy. When I stand up, my legs shake with exhaustion. But I know that it’s not just exhaustion that saps my strength—it’s the memory of Jenni.
I came to this frozen lake certain to the very core of my being that I would kill the man who killed my wife. Now, as I walk back to him, carrying these rocks, I also carry the weight of Jenni’s words to me: I’d never want you to become someone bad because of me.
That memory presses me down and threatens to buckle my knees more than any bundle of rocks ever could.
CHAPTER 26
Minneapolis—Yesterday
The look on Niki’s face, as I walked back to our cubicle, told me that she had heard the yelling coming from Briggs’s office but didn’t know who had won the argument. I smiled to let her know.
“What the hell happened in there?” she said.
I plopped into my chair and ran my hands through my hair, lacing my fingers behind my head. “Briggs resigned.”
“He . . . he what?”
“He’s out. You don’t have to worry about him ever again.”
“What did you do? How?”
I shook my head. “It’s best you not know. There could be repercussions coming down the pike, and you need to stand clear of it all.”
“Still keeping me out.”
“Protecting you. It’s not the same thing.”
“What did you do in there?”
“We had a little come-to-Jesus. Briggs saw the light and decided that his time with us has come to its natural end.”
“Why does this strike me as anything but natural? Did you make a deal with that devil?”
“Nothing I can’t live with.” I put my cursor back to the play button for the CD still waiting in my laptop tray, and steadied myself. “You ready to hear this?”
“Let’s do it.”
I clicked play and heard the judge speaking.
“Your name is Raymond Alan Kroll?”
“Yes.”
The voice sounded right, but one word wasn’t enough.