M I C H A E L 8 страница

"Of course you did," I said. "You were little, that's why you've

forgotten. But you were absolutely insistent about who could and

couldn't be a member of the club. You had a stamp that said CANCELED

and an ink pad—you put it on the back of my hand, and if I

even wanted to tell you dinner was ready I had to give a password

first."

Across the room, my cell phone began to ring in my purse. I

made a beeline for it—mobile phones were strictly verboten in the

hospital, and if a nurse caught you with one, you would be given

the look of death. "Hello?"

"June. This is Maggie Bloom."

I stopped breathing. Last year, Claire had learned in school

that there were whole segments of the brain devoted to involuntary

acts like digesting and oxygen intake, which was so evolutionarily

clever; and yet, these systems could be felled by the

simplest of things: love at first sight; acts of violence; words you

did not want to hear.

"I don't have any formal news yet," Maggie said, "but I

thought you'd want to know: closing arguments start tomorrow

morning. And then, depending on how long the judge deliberates,

we'll know if and when Claire will have the heart." There was a

crackle of silence. "Either way, the execution will take place in fifteen

days."

"Thank you," I said, and closed the clamshell of the phone. In

twenty-four hours, I might know if Claire would live or die.

"Who called?" Claire asked.

I slipped the phone into the pocket of my jacket. "The dry

cleaner," I said. "Our winter coats are ready to be picked up."

Claire just stared at me; she knew I was lying. She gathered up

the cards, although we were not finished with our game. "I don't

want to play anymore," she said.

"Oh. Okay."

She rolled onto her side, turning her face away from me. "I

never had stamps and an ink pad," Claire murmured. "I never

had a secret club. You're thinking of Elizabeth."

"I'm not thinking of—" I said automatically, but then I broke

off. I could clearly picture Kurt and I standing at the bathroom

sink, grinning as we scrubbed off the temporary tattoos we'd been

given, wondering if our daughter would speak to us at breakfast

without that mark of faith. Claire could not have initiated her

father into her secret world; she had never even met him.

"I told you so," Claire said.

Lucius

Shay was not on I-tier often, but when he was, he was transported to conference

rooms and the infirmary. He'd tell me, when he came back, about

the psych tests they ran on him; about the way they tapped at the crooks

of his elbows, checking his veins. I supposed it was important for them to

dot their i's and cross their fs before the Big Event, so that they didn't look

stupid when the rest of the world was watching.

The real reason they kept shuttling Shay around for medical tests,

though, was to get him out of the pod so that they could have their practice

runs. They'd done a couple of these in August. I'd been in the exercise

cage when the warden led a small group of COs to the lethal injection

chamber that was being built. I watched them in their hard hats. "What we

need to figure out, people," Warden Coyne had said, "is how long it'll take

the victim's witnesses to get from my office to the chamber. We can't have

them crossing paths with the inmate's witnesses."

Now that the chamber was finished, they had even more to check and

double-check: if the phone lines to the governor's office worked; if the

straps on the gurney were secure. Twice now, while Shay was at Medical, a

group of officers—the special ops team, who had volunteered to be part of

the execution—arrived on I-tier. I'd never seen any of them before. I suppose

that there is humanity in not having the man who kills you be the

same guy who has brought you your breakfast for the past eleven years.

And likewise: it must be easier to push the plunger on that syringe if you

haven't had a conversation with the inmate about whether the Patriots

would win another Super Bowl.

This time, Shay had not wanted to go to Medical. He put up a fight,

saying that he was tired, that he didn't have any blood left for them to

draw. Not that he had a choice, of course—the officers would have dragged

him there kicking and screaming. Eventually, Shay agreed to be chained so

that he could make the trip off I-tier, and fifteen minutes after he was

gone, the special ops team showed up. They put an officer pretending to be

Shay into his cell, and then one of the other COs started a stopwatch.

"We're rolling," he said.

I don't know how the mistake happened, to be honest. I mean, I suppose

that was the whole point of a practice run—you were leaving room

for human error. But somehow, just as the special ops team was escorting

Fake-Shay off the pod as part of their training, the real Shay was entering

I-tier again. For a moment, they hesitated at the door, gazing at one another.

Shay stared at his faux counterpart, until Officer Whitaker had to drag

him through the door of I-tier, and even then, he craned his neck, trying to

see where his future was heading.

In the middle of the night, the officers came for Shay. He was banging his

head against the walls of his cell, speaking in a river of gibberish. Usually, I

would have heard all of this—I was often the first to know that Shay was

upset—but I had slept through it. I woke up when the officers arrived in

their goggles and shields, swarming over him like a clot of black cockroaches.

"Where are you taking him?" I yelled, but the words sliced my throat to

ribbons. I thought of the run-through and wondered if it was time for the

real thing.

One of the officers turned to me—a nice one, but in that instant I could

not grasp his name, although I had seen him every week for the past six

years. "It's okay, Lucius," he said. "We're just taking him to an observation

cell, so he doesn't hurt himself."

When they left, I lay down on my bunk and pressed my palm against

my forehead. Fever: it was a school of fish swimming through my veins.

Once before, Adam had cheated on me. I found a note in his pocket

when I went to take his shirts to the dry cleaner. Gary, and a phone number.

When I asked him about it, he said it had only been one night, after a show

at the gallery where he worked. Gary was one of the artists, a man who

created miniature cities out of plaster of Paris. New York was currently on

display. He told me about the art-deco detail on the top of the Chrysler

Building; the individual leaves that were hand-fastened to the trees on

Park Avenue. I imagined Adam standing with Gary, their feet planted in

Central Park, their arms around each other, monstrous as Godzilla.

It was a mistake, Adam had said. It was just so exciting, for a minute, to

know someone else was interested.

I could not imagine how people would not be interested in Adam, with

his pale green eyes, his mocha skin. I saw heads turn all the time, gay and

straight, when we walked down the street.

It felt all wrong, he said, because it wasn't you.

I had been naive enough to believe then that you could take something

toxic and poisonous, and contain it so that you'd never be burned by

it again. You'd think, after all that happened later with Adam, I had learned

my lesson. But things like jealousy, rage, and infidelity—they don't disappear.

They lie in wait, like a cobra, to strike you again when you least

expect it.

I looked down at my hands, at the dark blotches of Kaposi's sarcoma

that had already begun to blend into one another, turning my skin as dark

as Adam's, as if my punishment were to reinvent myself in his image.

"Please don't do this," I whispered. But I was begging to stop something

that had already started. I was praying, although I couldn't remember

to whom.

Maggie

After court had adjourned for the weekend, I took a trip to the ladies'

room. I was sitting in a stall when suddenly a microphone snaked underneath

the metal wall from the cubicle beside mine. "I'm Ella Wyndhammer

from FOX News," a woman said. "I wonder if you have a

comment about the fact that the White House has given a formal

statement about the Bourne trial and the separation of church and

state?"

I hadn't been aware that the White House had given a formal statement;

there was a part of me that shivered with a thrill to know that

we'd attracted that much attention. Then I considered what the statement

most likely had been, and how it probably wouldn't help my case

at all. And then I remembered that I was in the bathroom.

"Yeah, I've got a comment," I said, and flushed.

Because I didn't want to be ambushed by Ella Wyndhammer or any

of the other hundred reporters crawling over the steps of the courthouse

like lichen, I retreated into a foxhole—okay, an attorney-client conference

room—and locked the door. I took out a legal pad and began to

write my closing for Monday, hoping that by the time I finished, the reporters

would have moved onto a fresher kill.

It was dark when I slipped on my heels again and packed away my

notes. The lights had been turned off in the courthouse; distantly, I

could hear a custodian buffing the floors. I walked through the lobby,

past the dormant metal detectors, took a deep breath, and opened the

door.

The majority of the media had packed up for the night. In the dis

tance, though, I could see one tenacious reporter holding his microphone.

He called out my name.

I forged past him. "No comment," I muttered, and then I realized he

wasn't a reporter, and he wasn't holding a microphone.

"It's about time," Christian said, and he handed me the rose.

M I CHAEL

"You're his spiritual advisor," Warden Coyne said when he phoned me

at three in the morning. "Go give him some advice."

I had tried to explain to the warden that Shay and I weren't quite

on speaking terms, but he hung up before I got the chance. Instead,

with a sigh, I dragged myself out of bed and rode to the prison. Instead

of taking me to I-tier, however, the CO led me elsewhere. "He's been

moved," the officer explained.

"Why? Did someone hurt him again?"

"Nah, he was doing a good job of that on his own," he said, and as

we stopped in front of Shay's cell, I understood.

Bruises mottled most of his face. His knuckles were scraped raw. A

trickle of blood ran down his left temple. He was chained at the wrists

and ankles and belly, even though he was inside the cell. "Why haven't

you called a doctor?" I demanded.

"He's been here three times," the CO said. "Our boy, here, keeps

ripping off the bandages. That's why we had to cuff him."

"If I promise you that he'll stop doing whatever he's doing—"

"Slamming his head into the wall?"

"Right. If I give you my word, will you take off the handcuffs?" I

turned to Shay, who was studiously avoiding me. "Shay?" I said. "How

does that sound?"

He didn't react one way or another, and I had no idea how I was going

to convince Shay to stop harming himself, but the CO motioned him toward

the cell door and removed the cuffs from his wrists and ankles. The belly

chain, however, stayed on. Uust in case," he said, and left.

"Shay," I said. "Why are you doing this?"

"Get the fuck away from me."

"I know you're scared. And I know you're angry," I said. "I don't

blame you."

"Then I guess something's changed. Because you sure did, once.

You, and eleven other people." Shay took a step forward. "What was it

like, in that room? Did you sit around talking about what kind of monster

would do those horrible things? Did you ever think that you hadn't

gotten the whole story?"

"Then why didn't you tell it?" I burst out. "You gave us nothing,

Shay. We had the prosecution's explanation of what had happened; we

heard from June. But you didn't even stand up and ask us for a lenient

sentence."

"Who would believe what I had to say, over the word of a dead

cop?" he said. "My own lawyer didn't. He kept talking about how we

ought to use my troubled childhood to get me off—not my story of what

happened. He said I didn't look like someone the jury would trust. He

didn't care about me; he just wanted to get his five seconds on the

news at night. He had a strategy. Well, you know what his strategy

was? First he told the jury I didn't do it. Then it comes time for sentencing

and he says: 'Okay, he did it, but here's why you shouldn't kill him

for it.' You might as well admit that pleading not guilty in the first place

was a lie."

I stared at him; stunned. It had never occurred to me during the

capital murder trial that all this might be whirling around in Shay's

head; that the reason he did not get up and beg for clemency during

sentencing was because in order to do that, it felt like he'd also be admitting

to the crime. Now that I looked back on it, it had felt like the

defense had changed their tune between the penalty phase and the

sentencing phase of the trial. It had made it harder to believe anything

they said.

And Shay? Well, he'd been sitting right there, with his unwashed

hair and his vacant eyes. His silence—which I'd read as pride, or

shame—might only have been the understanding that for people like

him, the world did not work the way it should. And I, like the other

eleven jurors, had judged him before any verdict was given. After all,

what kind of man gets put on trial for a double murder? What prosecutor

seeks the death penalty without good reason?

Since I'd become his spiritual advisor, he'd told me that what had

happened in the past didn't matter now, and I'd taken that to mean

that he wouldn't accept responsibility for what he'd done. But it could

also have meant that in spite of his innocence, he knew he was still

going to die.

I'd been present at that trial; I'd heard all the testimony. To think

Shay might not have deserved a death sentence seemed ridiculous, impossible.

Then again, so were miracles.

"But Shay," I said quietly, "I heard that evidence. I saw what you

did."

"I didn't do anything." He ducked his head. "It was because of the

tools. I left them at the house. No one came when I knocked on the

door so I just went inside to get them... and then I saw her."

I felt my stomach turn over. "Elizabeth."

"She used to play with me. A staring game. Whoever smiled first,

that was the loser. I used to get her every time, and then one day

while we were staring she lifted up my screwdriver—I didn't even

know she'd taken it—and waved it around like a maniac with a knife.

I burst out laughing. I got you, she said. I got you. And she did—she

had me, one hundred percent." His face twisted. "I never would have

hurt her. When I came in that day, she was with him. He had his

pants down. And she was—she was crying... he was supposed to be

her father." He flung an arm up over his face, as if he could stop himself

from seeing the memory. "She looked up at me, like it was a staring

contest, but then she smiled. Except this time, it wasn't because

she lost. It was because she knew she was going to win. Because I

was there. Because I could rescue her. My whole life, people looked at

me like I was a fuckup, like I couldn't do anything right—but she, it

was like she believed in me," Shay said. "And I wanted— God, I

wanted to believe her."

He took a deep breath. "I grabbed her and ran upstairs, to the room

I was finishing. I locked the door. I told her we would be safe there. But

then there was a shot, and the whole door was gone, and he came in

and pointed his gun at me."

I tried to imagine what it would be like to be Shay—easily confused

and unable to communicate well—and to suddenly have a pistol thrust

in my face.

I would have panicked, too.

"There were sirens," Shay said. "He'd called them in. He said they

were coming for me and that no cop would believe any story from a

freak like me. She was screaming, 'Don't shoot, don't shoot.' He said,

'Get over here, Elizabeth,' and I grabbed the gun so he couldn't hurt

her and we were fighting and both our hands were on it and it went

off and went off again." He swallowed. "I caught her. The blood, it was

everywhere; it was on me, it was on her. He kept calling her name but

she wouldn't look at him. She stared at me, like we were playing our

game; she stared at me, except it wasn't a game... and then even

though her eyes were open, she stopped staring. And it was over even

though I didn't smile." He choked on a sob, pressed his hand against

his mouth. "I didn't smile."

"Shay," I said softly.

He glanced up at me. "She was better off dead."

My mouth went dry. I remembered Shay saying that same sentence

to June Nealon at the restorative justice meeting, her storming out of

the room in tears. But what if we'd taken Shay's words out of context?

What if he truly believed Elizabeth's death was a blessing, after what

she'd suffered at the hands of her stepfather?

Something snagged in the back of my mind, a splinter of memory.

"Her underpants," I said. "You had them in your pocket."

Shay stared at me as if I were an idiot. "Well, that's because she

didn't have a chance to put them back on yet, before everything else

happened."

The Shay I had grown to know was a man who could close an

open wound with a brush of his hand, yet who also might have a

breakdown if the mashed potatoes in his meal platter were more

yellow than the day before. That Shay would not see anything suspicious

about the police finding a little girl's underwear in his possession;

it would make perfect sense to him to grab them when he grabbed

Elizabeth, for the sake of her modesty.

"Are you telling me the shootings were accidental?"

"I never said I was guilty," he answered.

The pundits who downplayed Shay's miracles were always quick

to point out that if God were to return to earth. He wouldn't choose to

be a murderer. But what if He hadn't? What if the whole situation had

been misunderstood; what if Shay had not willfully, intentionally killed

Elizabeth Nealon and her stepfather—but in fact had been trying to

save her from him?

It would mean that Shay was about to die for someone else's sins.

Again.

"Not a good time," Maggie said when she came to the door.

"It's an emergency."

Then call the cops. Or pick up your red phone and dial God directly.

I'll give you a call tomorrow morning." She started to close the

door, but I stuck my foot inside.

"Is everything all right?" A man with a British accent was suddenly

standing beside Maggie, who had turned beet red.

"Father Michael," she said. "This is Christian Gallagher."

He held out his hand to me. "Father. I've heard all about you."

I hoped not. I mean, if Maggie was having a date, clearly there

were better topics of conversation.

"So," Christian asked amiably. "Where's the fire?"

I felt heat rising to the back of my neck. In the background, I could

hear soft music playing; there was half a glass of red wine in the man's

hand. There was no fire; it was already burning, and I had just thrown

a bucket of sand on it. I'm sorry. I didn't mean—" I stepped backward.

"Have a nice night."

I heard the door close behind me, but instead of walking to my

bike, I sat down on the front stoop. The first time I'd met Shay, I'd told

him that you can't be lonely if God is with you all the time, but that

wasn't entirely true. He's lousy at checkers, Shay had said. Well, you

couldn't take God out to a movie on a Friday night, either. I knew that I

could fill the space a companion normally would with God; and it was

more than enough. But that wasn't to say I didn't feel that phantom

limb sometimes.

The door opened, and into the slice of light stepped Maggie. She

was barefoot, and she had her power-suit coat draped over her shoulders.

I'm sorry," I said. "I didn't mean to ruin your night."

"That's okay. I should have known better than to assume all the

planets had aligned for me." She sank down beside me. "What's up?"

In the dark, with her face lit in profile by the moon, she was as

beautiful as any Renaissance Madonna. It struck me that God had

chosen someone just like Maggie when He picked Mary to bear His

Son: someone willing to take the weight of the world on her shoulders,

even when it wasn't her own burden. "It's Shay," I said. "I think he's

innocent."

Maggie

I was not particularly surprised to hear what Shay Bourne had told the

priest.

No, what surprised me was how fervently he'd fallen for it—hook,

line, and sinker.

"It's not about protecting Shay's rights anymore," Michael said. "Or

letting him die on his own terms. We're talking about an innocent man

being killed."

We had moved into the living room, and Christian—well, he was sitting

on the other end of the couch pretending to do a Sudoku puzzle in

the newspaper, but actually listening to every word we said. He'd been

the one to come outside and invite me back into my own home. I fully

intended to pop Father Michael's bubble of incensed righteousness and

get back to the spot I'd been in before he arrived.

Which was flat on my back, with Christian's hand moving over my

side, showing me where you made the incision to remove a

gallbladder—something that, in person, was far more exciting than it

sounds.

"He's a convicted murderer," I said. "They learn how to lie before

they learn how to walk."

"Maybe he never should have been convicted," Michael said.

"You were on the jury that found him guilty!"

Christian's head snapped up. "You were?"

"Welcome to my life," I sighed. "Father, you sat through days of testimony.

You saw the evidence firsthand."

"I know. But that was before he told me that he walked in on Kurt

Nealon molesting his own stepdaughter; and that the gun went off repeatedly

while he was struggling to get it out of Kurt's hand."

At that, Christian leaned forward. "Well. That makes him a bit of a

hero, doesn't it?"

"Not when he still kills the girl he's trying to rescue," I said. "And

why, pray tell, did he not gift his defense attorney with this information?"

"He said he tried, but the lawyer didn't think it would fly."

"Well, gee," I said. "Doesn't that speak volumes?"

"Maggie, you know Shay. He doesn't look like a clean-cut American

boy, and he didn't back then, either. Plus, he'd been found with a smoking

gun, and a dead cop and girl in front of him. Even if he told the truth,

who would have listened? Who's more likely to be cast as a pedophile—

the heroic cop and consummate family man... or the sketchy vagrant

who was doing work in the house? Shay was doomed before he ever

walked into a courtroom."

"Why would he take the blame for someone else's crime?" I argued.

"Why not tell someone—anyone—in eleven years?"

He shook his head. "I don't know the answer to that. But I'd like to

keep him alive long enough to find out." Father Michael glanced at me.

"You're the one who says the legal system doesn't always work for everyone.

It was an accident. Manslaughter, not murder."

"Correct me if I'm wrong," Christian interrupted. "But you can't be

sentenced to death for manslaughter, can you?"

I sighed. "Do we have any new evidence?"

Father Michael thought for a minute. "He told me so."

"Do we have any evidence" I repeated.

His face lit up. "We have the security camera outside the observation

cell," Michael said. "That's got to be recorded somewhere, right?"

"It's still just a tape of him telling you a story," I explained. "It's different

if you tell me, oh, that there's semen we can link to Kurt Nealon..."

"You're an ACLU lawyer. You must be able to do something..."

"Legally, there's nothing we can do. We can't reopen his case unless

there's some fantastic forensic proof."

"What about calling the governor?" Christian suggested.

Our heads both swiveled toward him.

"Well, isn't that what always happens on TV? And in John Grisham

novels?"

"Why do you know so much about the American legal system?" I

asked.

He shrugged. "I used to have a torrid crush on the Partridge girl from

LA. Law."

I sighed and walked to the dining room table. My purse was slogged

across it like an amoeba. I dug inside for my cell phone, punched a number.

"This better be good," my boss growled on the other end of the line.

"Sorry, Rufus. I know it's late—"

"Cut to the chase."

"I need to call Flynn, on behalf of Shay Bourne," I said.

"Flynn? As in Mark Flynn the governor? Why would you want to

waste your last appeal before you even get a verdict back from Haig?"

"Shay Bourne's spiritual advisor is under the impression that he was

falsely convicted." I looked up to find Christian and Michael both watching

me intently.

"Do we have any new evidence?"

I closed my eyes. "Well. No. But this is really important, Rufus."

A moment later, I hung up the phone and pressed the number I'd

scrawled on a paper napkin into Michael's hand. "It's the governor's cell

number. Go call him."

"Why me?"

"Because," I said. "He's Catholic."

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