“What kind of personnel?”

“Doesn’t say.”

“But it’s inside Afghanistan?”

“Seems so.”

“CIA,” said Trout. “Has to be.”

“Yeah. That works. Eleven months later he’s working at a good hospital in Virginia. The notes mention that he has a wife and daughter, but Marcia says that she can’t find any records of them after he went into the army. Divorced, maybe?” Goat scrolled through the notes. “A lot of this is dry background stuff. He moved several times. Worked at several hospitals in Virginia, Maryland, and then Pennsylvania, and ten years ago he took a job as a doctor in the corrections system. Federal first, and then a few transfers. Another interesting thing … he got the job as senior medical officer at Rockview ahead of six other doctors with more seniority in the prison system.”

Trout nodded. “So he still has some federal juice. Someone’s making sure he gets what he wants. Wonder why.”

“That’s about it,” said Goat. “The rest is straight employment info, a few tax records Marcia could scrounge, and references to employee evaluations, all of which gave him top marks for everything.”

“More federal juice. If you’re sucking on the CIA’s tit, they watch out for you. I’d hate to be a traffic cop who tried to give him a speeding ticket.”

“Or a professional rival,” suggested Goat as he handed the phone back. Trout stuffed it in his pocket without turning the ringer back on or checking his voice mail. The Volker information was so compelling that he plain forgot.

They chewed on the information as they drove.

“If he has federal juice, then why is afraid of anything?” asked Goat. “I mean, someone fucks with him and he’s one phone call away from calling down the wrath of God.”

“Yep,” agreed Trout “which means that if he was being harassed about having performed the lethal injection, then he could call in ten kinds of support.”

“And here we are,” mused Goat, “driving right to his door to try and bully him into giving us a story. How smart are we?”

Trout didn’t answer. Overhead the storm was darkening the sky to the color of a fresh bruise.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

HART COTTAGE

STEBBINS COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA

Officer Ken Gunther stood on the porch and sipped coffee from a mug that had HARTNUP’S TRANSITION ESTATE in fancy script on one side and a quote on the other: “Death is Momentary—Life is Eternal.”

“Bullshit,” he said. He sipped the coffee. April, Doc’s sister, was not only smoking hot by Gunther’s finicky standards, she could brew a pot of damn good coffee. No lattes or macchiatos. No hazelnut or Irish-fucking-cream. Good old-fashioned American coffee from Colombia. Black and bitter. Hot, too, which was a blessing because he was freezing his nuts off. He still wore a lightweight summer uniform under a nylon Windbreaker, which was dumb because all he had to do was turn on the TV to see what the temperature was. Even the plastic cover for his hat was in the trunk of his cruiser, and the storm clouds were so thick and black they looked ready to explode.

He sipped and stared out at the trees.

The Hartnup place was called a cottage but it was really a big split-level. Roomy, tidy, and remote. He could see himself living in a place like this. Maybe even with April. She was divorcing that ass pirate Virgil, who, despite having fathered two kids, had finally realized that he was gay. Wow, Gunther thought. What a news flash. Everyone had known that since the fifth grade. He wondered how April didn’t know it. She seemed pretty smart, but then again a lot of people are dumb when it comes to love.

Gunther drank some more coffee and set the cup on the porch rail. He needed to pee but he did not want to go inside. If he did, then he’d get stuck in there while Dana Howard would escape out here. On the upside, he’d get to spend some time with April; but on the downside he’d have to spend time with the kids. Gunther was not a fan of children.

He looked at the front door, which was closed, then cautiously peered in through the window. Dana was standing with her back to him in the doorway between the living room and the playroom. April was changing a diaper.

Now was a good time.

Moving quietly so as not to squeak any of the porch floorboards, he crossed to the steps, went down, and then cut around to the side of the house where there was a row of thick holly bushes. He looked up and down the side yard, saw no one, unzipped, and began pissing on April Hartnup’s autumn sunflowers.

When he heard the crunch of a foot on dried leaves he jumped sideways, trying to stop his stream, cover his penis, and grab his zipper all at the same time.

“Dana, I—” he began.

But it wasn’t Dana Howard.

It was a white-faced thing that came out of the shadows between two massive willow trees. It had eyes as black and empty as bullet holes, fingers the color of old wax, and a mouth that was filled with bloody teeth.

Gunther got one word out before those teeth tore into him.

He said, “Doc—”

And then the world was red and black and, ultimately, empty of all color and sense.

CHAPTER FORTY

CONROY’S ACRES

Selma sat with Homer on the dining room floor. His head was buried in her lap, his arms around her waist, Mildred Potts’s blood soaking through the fabric of Selma’s bathrobe. She stroked his hair and hummed disjointed fragments of nursery rhymes to him as he wept.

“It’s okay,” she said every once in a while. “It’s okay.”

Except that it wasn’t. She knew it. The truth screamed in her mind. He knew it, too. How could he not?

It took a long time for his body to stop trembling. For a long time his sobs were so deep that they threatened to break apart the shadows of the room. They were terrible sobs, torn from some deep place that Selma was sure Homer had not accessed in years. They were the broken sobs of a tortured child, magnified by the mass and muscle of a grown man.

She used the flap of her robe to wipe the blood off his face. His lips were pale, his skin was like wax except for small bursts of red around his eyes.

“Selma,” he whispered, looking up at her the way a confused toddler might.

“Yes, honey, what is it?”

“Did I … die?”

She closed her eyes for a moment, trying not to wince at the question even though it dug under her skin like a fish hook.

“Please…” he begged.

She stroked his cheek. “What do you remember?”

He closed his eyes, too. “I remember the prison. I remember being there. I was there for a long time, wasn’t I?”

“Yes.”

“I remember them coming for me. They gave me some food and I ate everything on my plate.”

“Like a good boy,” she purred.

“I wasn’t even hungry. I was sick to my stomach … but I wanted to eat it all. To make it last.”

“I know.”

“But they still came for me. Four of them. In the movies there’s a preacher, but he didn’t come to my cell.” He sniffed. His nose sounded dry, almost dusty. “They took me to the place. Like a doctor’s office, but it wasn’t Dr. Volker’s office. It wasn’t the infirmary. It was the other place.”

“Yes.”

“They made me lie down. I … almost didn’t. I thought about it. I wanted to fight. I wanted to make them force me down, y’know … make a stand? Show them that I was tougher than them, that they hadn’t beaten me, not in the end. But … I was afraid they’d think I was a coward—yknow, trying to pussy out at the end. I think they must have put something in my food. I wanted to fight … but I couldn’t. I was so out of it. When they pushed me down on the gurney … I just let them. It was weird … I could feel myself wanting to fight. That Black Eye was opening inside my head like it always does. I could feel my hands ready to go. My whole body was ready to go. I was going to tear into them. Take at least one or two of them with me and ugly up some of the others. That’d be an exit, wouldn’t it? Rip off some faces and pop some eyes. The eye was open but the Red Mouth didn’t whisper to me. It didn’t … give me permission.”

Selma squeezed her eyes shut, not wanting to sob. Or scream. She knew all about the Black Eye and the Red Mouth. It was on page after page of the trial testimony. There were photos of a black eye from thirty crime scenes. Photos of red mouths cut into the chests of so many people. Men, women. Children.

In court, Homer had never spoken those words. He had never admitted that they were part of his … Selma fought for the word. Method? His style? And yet here he was telling her about them.

God, she thought, oh God, oh God, oh God …

Not that Selma ever doubted that Homer had done these things. But hearing him say it was somehow more real. She could turn off the TV, refuse to read the newspapers. But these were words spoken to her. She owned them now, and there was no way to turn away from them.

Dead by Christmas.

Maybe sooner, if there was a kind God somewhere up there.

Homer shifted his head so that it rested against her breasts. He pressed his ear to her sternum as if listening to her heart. The way he had done as a baby. The way he had done when Selma had held him while Clarice drove them to the shelter in Pittsburgh. Clarice never held him except to hand him to someone else. To Selma, to the intake nurse. Clarice winced every time she put her hands on the child.

Selma had wanted to lock her arms around him and never let him go.

Why had she? God … why had she done that?

Homer was speaking again, fishing for the thread of his fractured memory.

“They spoke to each other in a weird way. The guards. The doctors and all. Like a church thing. Like a litany. It was strange, everybody saying out loud what they were doing and the others in the room saying that they saw it. Or agreed. So weird.” He sniffed again. “They put two IVs in. I asked why they needed two, but I had to ask three times before Dr. Volker told me. He said that one was a backup in case the other line failed. I thought that was funny. Going to all that trouble just to kill a man. Killing is easy as snuffing a match. The state never understood how to do it right. They should let the other convicts do it. Even some of the new fish can do a man faster than a wink, and do it clean, without fuss. Even without much pain. Those prison fucks … they think it’s rocket science.”