Black River Part 15

"You weren't so h.e.l.l-bent on going to this hearing till you heard about Williams getting religion. You hadn't done that, I think I'd probably been able to talk you out of going."

"You saying I don't care that my G.o.dd.a.m.n hands look like this?" Wes held them up, palms toward his face, the fingers so far from parallel they'd have looked comical if not so grotesque.

"No," Farmer said. "I'm saying if the question of faith hadn't gotten all mixed up in this, you might've talked yourself into not giving a s.h.i.+t about Williams. I mean, where's he from, Wesley? Dawson County? The h.e.l.l kind of life you think an ex-con's gonna have out there? He ain't winning anything here, no matter what the parole board decides."

"He's got to be faking," Wes said. "The born-again thing. Guys like that are always faking."

Farmer raised an eyebrow.

"Don't give me that, Farmer!" Wes slammed his hand down on the arm of the chair. The cus.h.i.+on gave, and it wasn't the sharp blow he'd been hoping for. "I walked the tiers for twenty-one years. You think I don't know there are some halfway decent inmates? Sure, some of 'em move forward while they're inside. They study for their GED, they make toys for other inmates' kids at Christmas, they get sober and mean to stay that way, whatever. But I cringe every time I hear someone say one of 'em is a different person. They ain't different. They're still exactly the same person who did whatever the h.e.l.l landed them in a cell."

"You telling me you ain't ever seen a sincere conversion? I think I have, now and then."

Wes stood, paced across the room one way and then the other, ended up near the corner with the instruments. He nudged his fiddle case with the toe of his boot. "Do you remember how I played, Farmer? I mean, really remember?"

"Yes," he said softly. "I do."

Wes knelt, pushed up the snaps on the case, lifted the lid. "What I had with this fiddle," Wes said, "came from somewhere. My father taught me to play, okay, tunes and where to put my fingers and so on. But I had something else he couldn't teach me. The first day I touched my first fiddle, I had something, under all that beginner's awfulness, something my father never had and was never gonna have, no matter how many hours he put in."

"I know."

Wes took the fiddle in his hand and stood, and with the same gesture, the same rising, he brought it to his collarbone and lifted his chin and looked down along the varnished body to where Farmer sat. And with that single motion, he recalled the fine details of hundreds of days and evenings with this fiddle in this room, with this other man and a ghost. Days and evenings long past, still so close he could almost enter into them. "Whenever I picked up my fiddle, that something was there. All my life. I felt it, and anyone listening heard it. And whether you call it talent or a gift or magic or whatever else, that came from somewhere, right? Had to come from somewhere." Farmer was staring, and it wasn't until Wes brought the fiddle back down to his side and let it dangle alongside his leg that the other man nodded, once, slow. "What I felt when I played," Wes said, "was the only thing that ever made me believe there was something else. Something more than just folks going through the motions day after day until there weren't no more days to come."

"G.o.d," Farmer said.

"Guess so."

Farmer rose and crossed the room to Wes. He took the fiddle from Wes's hand, gently, and knelt to lay it back in its velvet. "You know what the biggest test of my faith has been? Biggest in my life?"

Wes waited, but Farmer kept a knee on the floor, hands working the ribbons over the fiddle's slender neck, and Wes realized he expected a response. "Madeline," he offered. "The accident."

Farmer closed the lid, snapped it shut. He rose, turned. "You," he said. Wes looked down at the fiddle case. Maybe he ought to leave it here, with Lane's Gibson. A shrine to what used to be. "I know it's been a long time since we were close, Wesley. And I know you think I'm a meddlesome old man-don't argue. Some truth to that, I know. But I'm also your brother-in-law, and I think I'm still your friend. So I hope you won't see it as overstepping if I say it's plain to me that all your life you been looking for something you ain't found." He looked Wes in the eye, and Wes saw a flicker of doubt that was stark as it was slight, there in the eyes of a man Wes had always a.s.sumed to be nothing less than a.s.sured in all things. "It's made me question, Wesley. I don't know why a good man like you can search and search and still not find what he's looking for. I don't know why the one thing that seemed to be leading you toward it got torn away from you like it did. I'm ashamed for all the times I told folks in the Bible study it was easy, that faith was just there for the taking, 'cause I see now it's not always like that." He stopped suddenly, ran a hand over his mustache once, twice.

Wes said, "Feels like you're still working up to the moral of the story."

Farmer stepped closer, dropped his voice. "Don't go to this hearing, Wesley."

Wes glanced at the floor, felt his jaw clench. "You ain't the first to tell me that."

"That's because it ain't gonna do you any good. Whether Williams walks or doesn't, whether he's really found G.o.d or hasn't, none of that has anything to do with you, Wesley. None of it's gonna get you any closer to what you're looking for. And just . . . don't quit looking for it, all right? Don't give up. I don't know why you ain't found what you need yet, but it's out there, and I do believe it's gonna come to you in time."

Wes's first impulse was to say time was starting to get short, but he looked again into Farmer's eyes and saw the confusion there, and he felt his own features gentle a little. "I appreciate what you're saying," he said. "I do. But one thing I can tell you for certain is that someone else's faith just ain't much comfort."

Tuesday morning he woke early, before Farmer. He'd set the alarm but didn't need it; he'd slept only fitfully, never certain whether the images loitering half hidden at the edges of his consciousness were dream or memory. He took his time dressing. No tie today-it mattered, for some reason, that he offer something casual in his appearance-but he wore his suit coat over a crisp white s.h.i.+rt. Liked the idea of two sets of sleeves. He'd taken to wearing his hair a little ruffled these past few years-Claire combed it loose with her fingers if he didn't-but today he put a hard part in it, the way he had when he was younger. He looked at himself for a long time in the mirror, meeting his own gaze until he was satisfied he still knew how to control every feature, even his eyes. He set them steady and cold. Might be better to let something show through, give the board easier access to a sympathetic victim, but if he yielded even the slightest bit, he wasn't sure he could keep the emotion burning in his heart from spilling onto his face. All or nothing. It'd gotten him through twenty-one years inside the gate. Surely it could get him through a couple hours more.

He hadn't heard Farmer rise, but he was in the kitchen when Wes went downstairs, listening to the final percolations of the coffeemaker. Farmer filled a mug almost to the brim and slid it across the counter toward Wes, who nodded his thanks and drank without waiting for it to cool. "I'll go with you if you want," Farmer said quietly.

"I ain't an old woman," Wes said. "You don't got to hold my hand." He closed his eyes, pa.s.sed a hand over his face. More on edge than he knew. "Sorry. I didn't aim to take your head off like that."

Farmer accepted the apology without acknowledging it, offered a slight, hesitant smile. "Didn't really expect you to take me up on it," he said. "Wouldn't feel right not putting it out there, though." They drank in silence for a few minutes. Wes could hear an early freight pa.s.sing through the canyon, its whistle sounding more clearly in the cool morning air than it did during the height of the day. "You remember Jamie Lowell?"

"Worked evening watch on Lane's tier, didn't he?"

Farmer nodded. "He's a sergeant now, in Max. Good officer. I gave him a call yesterday, and he's gonna meet you inside. I know you don't like me sticking my nose in, Wesley, but I figured you'd rather deal with someone you don't have to explain yourself to." He scratched his bald spot absently. "He'll let you stay after. Let you know what the board decides." Wes heard a hint of dubiousness in his last words.

"I know they might parole him, Farmer." Wes leaned back against the counter, tightened his hands against its edge. "I ain't gonna lose it, that's what you're thinking." He glanced at the clock. It was one of those cartoon-cat types, with the swinging tail and s.h.i.+fty eyes. Must've been Madeline's. "Well," he said, "guess I better get going."

He made himself meet Farmer's eyes, and waited for the plat.i.tudes and words of wisdom he figured Farmer had been saving up for this moment. But Farmer just gazed back, nodded once and said, "Guess so."

He stopped at the gas station on Main Street to use the head. Should've skipped the coffee; he was plenty alert, and it made him need to p.i.s.s. And nerves. Nerves did that, too.

There were things he'd never told Claire, never told the folks who came to interview him and write down every word he said. During the riot, Williams had p.i.s.sed in the corner of the control room-no toilet, of course, but he didn't even use the wastebasket. p.i.s.sed right down the side of the wall, a stream that soaked into the concrete where wall met floor, golden drops clinging to the thick industrial paint on the cinderblocks. The acid odor had made Wes suck his breath in through his teeth for a few minutes, but he'd already been smelling blood and his own burned flesh and the horrible sick scent that carried into the room on the smoke from the fires on the tiers. Wasn't like the prison smelled nice even on a good day. But hours into the riot, Wes had to go, too. Held it long as he could. He didn't want to ask Williams and risk setting him off, but finally the need was stronger than the fear, and he asked. Asked again. Begged, in the end. Still Williams denied him, and finally, without really making the decision, Wes p.i.s.sed himself. Fought all the shame and anger and despair deep down into the depths of his heart and tried not to notice his own urine flowing warm down his leg, pooling in the chair and wetting the inside of one boot, puddling between his bound feet. His trousers had still been damp when he was rescued.

Wes smoked a cigarette in the parking lot, ground it out beneath his boot and lit another. Got in the truck and pulled back onto the road.

Clouds were beginning to come in over the mountains from the southwest when Wes turned onto the prison grounds, and the walls of the three main buildings-Low Side, High Side and Max-were silhouetted against the empty expanse of land in which they sat. Nothing like the old prison in town, this facility was bland and utilitarian, the three nearly identical structures set way back against the hills, a collection of smaller buildings scattered around them like unwanted offspring. From the road, Wes could just make out a figure moving at the top of the nearest tower. The sun was high in the sky, but inside the fences the metal-halide lights were all ablaze. The place was huge and imposing, yet impossibly dwarfed by its surroundings. The canyon opened up here, meadow stretching back toward foothills that gave way to the mountains that rose above the walls and towers. Ludicrous, in a way, to set a piece of this land off with concertina wire and electrified fences, even for the purpose of locking away the Bobby Williamses of the world.

The visitors' lot was mostly empty, just a half-dozen other cars and trucks bunched up at the near end. It was oddly silent as Wes walked the long, fenced outdoor corridor leading to the visitors' entrance. At the old prison, the yard had bound itself so tight around the buildings that sound leaked from inside the cellblocks, through the broken panes of gla.s.s high up on the walls, through the very bricks, it seemed. Once inside the gate, it had been impossible to pretend there weren't hundreds of inmates in there with you. Here, though . . . if he could've ignored the razor wire and the watchtowers, the place might've been an especially ugly school campus or business park.

At the check-in counter, Wes set himself to the paperwork. His name. Inmate's name. Driver's license number. Reason for entry. By the time he signed his name for the final time, his right hand was throbbing. Good. Feel it.

"Sergeant Lowell should be just another minute, sir," the CO told him, pulling the clipboard and its chained pen back into his booth.

Wes nodded.

"Um . . . I'm sure they'll deny parole," the officer said. Wes glanced back at him. Kid hardly looked any older than Scott, but of course he had to be. Light brown hair, forehead pocked with acne scars. Strong set to his jaw, though. "We study the, the . . . what happened in 'ninety-two. At the academy."

Wes looked at him for a long moment. He wondered what the kid saw when he looked at him. Something like a ghost, he supposed. A story to tell the other young COs at the bar tonight. Carver. You know, from the riot . . . "Well," he said, "can't say I share your confidence, but I hope you're right." It was good to talk like this. Good to practice being calm and collected, to make the fine adjustments to his voice so it would carry him when it was his turn to speak his piece.

He turned at the sound of sharp and purposeful footsteps. Jamie Lowell was well into middle age now, but he still looked like the man Wes remembered, if more solid, more confident. "Wes Carver," he said. "Good to see you, even if under s.h.i.+tty circ.u.mstances."

Wes nodded, hoped he could forestall a handshake. "Sergeant."

Lowell winced a little, laughed. "h.e.l.l, don't call me that. I'd like to think we always got along all right."

Wes forced a smile to match Lowell's. "Jamie it is."

They walked together down corridors that were new to Wes, but familiar nonetheless. Lines on the floor, painted silhouettes of footprints next to doorways, signs warning inmates to stay quiet, stay in line, stay away from the CO desks. Something important seemed absent, and it took Wes a few minutes to realize it was because of the relative silence with which Lowell moved. No keys. In Wes's day, they'd all carried great rings of keys on their belts, and the jangling announced their approach to fellow officer and inmate alike. The inmates probably missed that. Used to be, the keys gave them a few seconds' warning to hide their contraband or gather spit in their mouths. For his part, Wes was acutely aware of the lightness at his waist, of the absence of the equipment he'd always carried inside the prison. He missed his uniform, the authority and purpose that came with it.

It was slow going through the prison, doors and gates every couple dozen yards, and Wes tried not to notice his heartbeat starting to become palpable inside his ribcage. All these locks didn't mean he was gonna get stuck in here. Just meant folks stayed where they were supposed to be. It was a good thing. "Farmer said you work Max these days," he said, as they navigated another beige corridor.

Lowell nodded once. "Going on ten years now."

"So you know Williams. Presently, I mean."

"I do."

Wes slowed. Wanted to get his answer before they hit the next gate. "This born-again business," he said. "It true?"

Lowell sighed. He stopped, looked first at the floor, then up at Wes. "I seen no proof to the contrary."

"So you think he's a new man." The words came out short, bitten off a little too soon.

"Wes, it don't matter what I think." Something pleading in Lowell's tone. "No one here's forgotten what he did, least of all me. That riot started an hour later, I'd have been right in the middle of it." He broke eye contact. "But I gotta tell you, Williams is one of the easiest inmates I've got over there."

They walked the rest of the way in silence. The hearing room was at the end of a long corridor of administrative offices. "You'll be the only one making a statement," Lowell said.

"Williams ain't got anyone speaking for him?"

"Williams ain't had one single visitor," Lowell told him. "Not ever." He unlocked the door, pushed it open. "You want me to stay?"

Wes shook his head.

"I'll meet you after, then. Good luck."

Wes was alone in the room. It smelled like new carpet, an unpleasant, industrial chemical odor. There was a long table at the front of the room, the kind found in schools, folding legs and a Formica top. A computer set up on one end. Four chairs pushed neatly beneath the table, a single chair a few yards away, facing the others. Another door behind it. And here, where Wes stood, twelve chairs perpendicular to the rest, two rows of six. Wes stood in the narrow center aisle for a moment. Made sense to sit on the same side of the room as the parole board, but in the end he took a seat in the front row nearest the single chair. Even that closest seat would put more s.p.a.ce between him and Williams than there'd been during the whole of the riot.

Wasn't too late to leave. Might lose a little face, yeah, but folks would only talk behind his back, and even then they'd probably claim to understand. Maybe he shouldn't be so d.a.m.n stubborn; maybe he ought to listen to the folks telling him this was a bad idea. But he sat. He waited.

Wes knew better than to expect the hearing to start on time, and he wasn't disappointed. There was a clock on the opposite wall, ensconced behind a metal cage; the red second hand moved in a single fluid motion, no ticking. Ten minutes past the scheduled start, the door he'd come through opened again and two men and a woman entered. They'd been speaking, but fell silent when they saw Wes. He watched them settle themselves behind the long table. He knew their names. He'd gone online at Dennis's house and looked up all seven parole board members. Wasn't hard to find out almost everything about them, photos included. He wondered if that ever worried them. The man nearest him, the balding one, was named Simon Frank and was a lawyer from Helena. The woman, who wore gla.s.ses on a beaded chain, was named Diane Copeland and was a businesswoman, also from Helena. The second man, who knelt in front of the table and fussed with the computer screen, was named Ernest Pike and was a retired police chief from Great Falls. There would be two other board members partic.i.p.ating in the hearing via the Internet.

The computer gave the police chief some trouble, but soon he had it running, and Wes heard tinny voices through the speakers, saw blurred images on the screen. Another lawyer, a retired game warden. Twenty-three minutes past the scheduled start. He needed to p.i.s.s again. The board members had thick binders in front of them. The woman leafed absently through hers; the two men sat and looked at the wall. Thirty minutes past, and the retired cop looked up and asked, "Wesley J. Carver?" and Wes said, "Yeah."

Thirty-eight minutes past the scheduled start, the door behind the single chair opened and Bobby Williams walked in. The two COs that followed him were strangers to Wes-he was grateful for it-and Williams waited with one officer's hand on his elbow while the other closed the door behind them. At the officer's prompting, he shuffled toward the single chair, each step slow and careful because he wore leg irons. His cuffed hands were fixed to the wide belt around his waist, and he held them in loose fists. One of the COs put his hand on Williams's shoulder and Williams sat, the chain between his legs sliding with a metallic jingle against the edge of the chair.

He looked first at the parole board, a scanning glance that didn't settle on any one face, and only then did he look at Wes. It wasn't a straight stare-more a sidelong look-but it lingered. Wes held Williams's gaze, steady, steady, steady, but even this felt like a risk, a real chance he'd bring his false confidence on too strong, reveal his fear in striving too stridently to hide it. The man Wes saw looked almost nothing like the one who haunted his memory. Williams wore the beige scrubs that served as the inmate uniform now, and they matched almost exactly the sallow shade of his skin. His hair was a bland brown shot through with gray; he wore it slightly longer than he had years ago. He seemed st.u.r.dier than Wes remembered, taller and wider both, and his face had become fles.h.i.+er, though the new weight hung oddly over his bones. His eyes were the palest blue, and this troubled Wes. He had been so certain they were dark.

"Parole hearing for inmate Robert F. Williams commences at . . . eleven-ten a.m.," the lawyer announced. Williams turned his attention to the board, and Wes felt himself exhale for the first time since the man had come into the room. Despite his years as a CO, he didn't know that much about parole hearings, but he wasn't surprised by the tedium. A recitation of Williams's crimes. The first litany, the one Wes had nothing to do with, the old farmer and his doomed wife. And then the second, his own. Partic.i.p.ation in a riot. Possession of a deadly weapon by a prisoner in a facility. Aggravated a.s.sault. a.s.sault against a peace officer. Unlawful restraint. Aggravated kidnapping. Wes listened to the convictions. Marveled that the state would even consider letting a man who'd done these things-and done most of them not once, but twice-back into the world. He thought, too, of the things Williams hadn't been charged with, because no such charges existed. Harboring vile thoughts toward my wife. Finding amus.e.m.e.nt in my suffering. Mocking my terror. Destroying my talent. Williams listened mutely, offering no indication that he felt any involvement in the proceedings. Looked like he was listening to the G.o.dd.a.m.ned weather report.

The board members mentioned the many statements and letters they apparently held tucked away in those binders, the testimonials and a.s.surances that Williams was a changed man, had turned over a new leaf, et cetera.

"You converted to Christianity in 2001?"

"Yes, sir."

"You partic.i.p.ate in the prison ministry?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"If released, do you intend to continue to partic.i.p.ate in church activities?"

"Yes, sir, I surely do."

"It says here you've had no citations for misconduct since your conversion."

"That's right, sir."

It went on this way. An unchallenging catechism to which Williams offered nothing more than the barest answers. Wes tried to read truth or falsehood in Williams's voice, but there was nothing there for him to hold to one way or another. He realized he'd never heard Williams speak in a normal tone; during the riot it had always been that insidious whisper, occasionally a half-crazed bark or yell.

Finally the businesswoman turned a couple of pages in her binder and said, "These are horrific crimes." Wes didn't take his eyes off Williams, but in his peripheral vision he saw the woman glance at him over her gla.s.ses. "How do you explain them?"

Yes, Wes thought, barely keeping the words behind his teeth, how do you f.u.c.king explain what you did to me? Williams dropped his head to stare at his shackled hands; after a long moment he raised his eyes to the board members. "I can't explain them," he said, in that same unfamiliar straightforward tone. "The things I did were inexcusable." The things. Didn't so much as glance at Wes. Didn't even acknowledge he was in the room. "I wish I could undo them. Every day I wish it. But I can't. All I can do is choose to be someone different. Someone who would never do those things." The board waited, silent, but Williams offered nothing more.

The woman took another stab. "And you say you have, in fact, become someone different."

"Yes, ma'am. Through the merciful grace of the Lord and with His help."

Wes couldn't make heads or tails of what Williams was saying. It was the same bland bulls.h.i.+t any inmate might spout. Nothing there to say he'd really changed. (Nothing to say he hadn't.) The board members weren't asking the right questions. Nothing that might prompt an illuminating answer, nothing that might let Wes know whether this professed faith was real or a hoax. G.o.d, he wished he could say for certain, even if that meant knowing Williams was still an evil, lying b.a.s.t.a.r.d, or even if it meant knowing that his only real enemy had found the grace he himself had never been granted. All Wes wanted was to know.

The former police chief ended it. "Is there anything else you'd like to say?"

Here, maybe. Here Williams might reveal more than he intended, might go off-script. Williams looked down again. He clasped his hands together, and the links of the short chain between the cuffs sounded against themselves, a brief series of fine notes. And then he looked at Wes again, sidelong, still not straight on. He looked at him for a long moment, and seemed ready to speak-Wes could almost see Williams tasting the words on his tongue-but then he straightened and turned back to the board. "No, sir."

Wes's turn. The board acknowledged him, and he stood, though he wasn't required to. Had to get out of that chair. Too much to sit in a chair inside a room inside a prison with Bobby Williams not ten feet away. He opened and closed his fists several times-he'd been clenching them tightly these last minutes, and every poorly healed joint was making itself known. He wished he could pace. Had to find the words, the right words, the exact words that would make these people understand. Williams had held his own words to a minimum, mitigated the horror of what he'd done with silence and omissions. Wes had to bring that horror out of the past and into this room. And he had no idea how to do that.

"I got so much running through my head right now I don't hardly know where to start," he said, looking at the board members. He forced himself to meet each of their eyes, though he'd rather have let his gaze linger in the s.p.a.ce between or above their heads. "I know you've all read reports about the riot. You have a pretty good idea of what happened in that control room, in a nuts-and-bolts kind of way. Ain't no need for me to go into all that. What I don't imagine those reports can tell you is how it feels to be that much at the mercy of someone who don't got a lot of mercy to offer." The words were coming hard. It was like they weren't quite familiar, like he'd learned them either too recently or too long ago. "Robert Williams and I didn't have no conflict before that riot. I hadn't hardly laid eyes on him before that day. Wasn't on my tier. I hadn't ever written him up, or canceled his yard time, or done anything else that might've begun to validate what he did, not even in his own head. I didn't even know his name till he carved it into my flesh." He was careful not to look at Williams. Let his vision go a little soft until that figure in the single chair blurred.

"I don't know if you know this," Wes said, then stopped. He looked at Williams-the other man met his eyes-and dropped his voice, real soft. "I don't even know if you know this." Wes forced himself to turn his attention back to the board. "I was a fiddler. I was good, real good. Better than you're probably thinking," he said, "and I don't say that out of arrogance; I say it so maybe you can better appreciate the fact that I ain't played my fiddle one single time since that riot. Can't. My hands don't work good enough anymore." He held them up, palms out. Beyond the crooked lines of his fingers, he saw the lawyer work his jaw, saw the businesswoman pa.s.s one of her own hands over the other.

"My wife," Wes said, and he hated to mention her here, to let even the barest idea of her enter Williams's mind, "pa.s.sed on recently. She was real sick at the end. Not entirely herself." The grief turned sharp, suddenly, and he stopped, let a silence unfurl while he collected himself. "The day she died, she wanted me to play my fiddle for her. Last thing she ever asked of me. She'd forgotten, see, what'd happened. Thought we were still living in Black River, that we were younger, I guess. Or somehow her mind just erased the riot." Wes heard his own voice turning husky, and the more he tried to drive the rasp out of it, the more p.r.o.nounced it became. His throat was tight, and he felt a flush forcing its way up his neck. He was angry-of all the moments for his voice to betray him!-but even as he cursed himself, even as he fought it, a smaller thought insistently pressed its way into his head. Hadn't he made the decision to lay it all bare? Didn't he believe it would take no less to keep Williams inside these walls?

"I can't stop thinking about the fact that I couldn't play for her. That my wife died waiting for me to play my music for her, and I didn't." He was shaking now, not hard, a tremor so slight he doubted anyone else could see it. Might even have been contained entirely within his body, starting right at the center with his grieving, trembling heart, carrying forth from his chest and mixing with rage and fear and hate and love and a lot of other things Wes neither could nor desired to name. "I suppose I ought to be grateful we had the last twenty years together, that Robert Williams stopped short of killing me and held himself to"-Wes steeled himself, said it-"to torture. But I couldn't save my wife. I couldn't make her treatments work, couldn't slow the disease, couldn't even do much to ease her pain." His voice was all but broken now, each word spa.r.s.e and stripped. "And she knew that. She didn't ask me to do none of those things. But the one thing I could've done for her, the one thing she did ask-Robert Williams took that away from us in that control room. Now he says he's chosen to become someone different. Someone new. I have a hard time believing it's as simple as that, just a choice. But whatever you make of that, what he did to me has consequences. I know it seems like a long way in the past, but twenty years on, it still has consequences. It ain't over. Ain't over," Wes repeated, and then he was out of words. He looked at each member of the board once more and sat down.

Williams was watching him. He kept his head bowed, just a little, and Wes wondered if that was meant to look nonthreatening. Looked furtive, instead. His expression was still carefully guarded, but there was a slight crease between his brows, a suggestion in those pale eyes that he was troubled by what he'd heard. Whether that troubledness was due to the stirrings of newfound conscience or for fear of the effect Wes's words might have on the parole board's decision, Wes couldn't have said.

"We'll take this under advis.e.m.e.nt," the lawyer said, and the COs by the door crossed the room to Williams, who stood obediently. He shuffled back to the door, his chains sounding with each step. He did not look at Wes again. Wes watched him go. Watched the door shut behind him. Watched the place where he had been. After a minute Wes realized the board members were staring, waiting for him to go out his own door.

"You all right, Mr. Carver?" the former police chief asked. Wes glanced distractedly back at the man, and instead of answering, he stood and left the room.

Lowell was right outside. The corridor was marginally warmer than the hearing room had been, the fluorescent lights a touch brighter. The air seemed somehow clearer, too, no longer mola.s.ses in his lungs, and Wes felt instantly more alert, more himself. His heart quieted in his chest. He wondered whether Lowell had been out here the whole time, whether he'd been able to hear. If so, he appeared willing to do Wes the service of pretending he hadn't. "Well?"

"Under advis.e.m.e.nt," Wes said.

Lowell nodded tersely, went past him into the hearing room. He kept one hand on the side of the door but let it almost shut, and Wes winced at the unbidden thought that a single firm pull on the doork.n.o.b could shatter half a dozen bones at once. Lowell came back into the hall. "They're going to make a decision in a few minutes," he said. "I think it's a good sign they didn't rule at the end of the hearing. Means your statement carried some weight."

Wes walked with Lowell to the control booth at the end of the hall. It was large enough for three or four officers-though only one sat inside now-and had electronic locks and wired gla.s.s windows. A h.e.l.l of a lot more secure than the chain link and iron of his control room back in the old prison. That had been little more than a s.p.a.ce to do paperwork and radio the administrative offices without having to watch his back every second; this, on the other hand, was a true control room, with electronic mastery of all the gates and doors in this wing of the building. Lights and color-coded labels marked a map of the nearby area, and a computer screen on one end of the desk stuttered real-time updates of which inmates and staff were where. Wes let Lowell and the CO in the booth show him how it all worked, and he and Lowell halfheartedly reminisced about the medieval technology at the old prison. He felt a little like the children he had sometimes seen at the hospital during Claire's illness, kids with grave expressions who seemed to pretend interest in toys and games for the sake of the adults trying desperately to distract them from their families' crises.

After a short while Lowell slipped out of the room with a baldly casual "I'll be just a minute." Wes nodded dutifully and listened to the young CO explain the gating system. He was more confident about the hearing now that he was feeling like himself again. Williams had hardly made a case for his parole at all. He had volunteered nothing, made no effort to show the board the changes he claimed had taken place within him, hadn't offered any formal apology for his actions or made any conciliatory gestures toward Wes. h.e.l.l, he'd behaved almost like a sullen teenager, answering reluctantly and in monotone. Wes knew he himself had fallen far short of the articulateness he'd aimed for, but at least there'd been some pa.s.sion behind his words. He'd laid it all out there, and it'd cost him, yeah-the shame of exposing his scars and sorrows still burned within him, a small but searing flame-but it was gonna be worth it. He had come. Faced the man. Said what needed to be said. He was suddenly sure of the board's decision, so sure he wondered whether he'd somehow heard it from this far down the hall, through these solid walls; he could almost taste the strong corners of the word, the way it closed with the same sharp certainty with which it opened: denied.

The door's magnetic lock sounded, and Lowell came back into the room. The young officer at the desk fell silent, and Wes looked up. Lowell knew how to guard his expressions as surely as Wes did, so there was no way to read the decision on his features, but Wes heard it again inside his own head: denied. Then Lowell's Adam's apple bobbed, and the word was coming up in his throat, but his lips were still pressed together and there was no glint of teeth, and the word vanished from Wes's mind and Lowell spoke.

"Paroled."

That night Wes tipped a handful of bullets from his box of ammunition and loaded the revolver. Went downstairs carrying his boots under one arm. Waited till he was on the porch before tugging them on and shrugging his ch.o.r.e coat over his shoulders, the revolver heavy in one pocket. He walked briskly through Farmer's yard, skirting the silent tractor and the empty arena. A horse whickered from the darkness as Wes pa.s.sed the shuttered barns. Autumn was still hanging on during the day, but night had given itself over to winter, and the air burned cold in Wes's nostrils and lungs. A waning moon idled high in the sky, veiled in cloud, and it cast just enough light for him to see the immediate exhalation of his breath before it dissipated into the dark. He heard the Wounded Elk before he saw it, a gentle sound for an ent.i.ty of such power. The moonlight dipped into the hollows between the rises and swells of the water, but save for those slight flashes of silver, it was the blackest of rivers.

The bank eased into the shallows here, and Wes stood at the edge of the rocks and let the water lick at the toes of his boots. He couldn't see across the river, but he knew this to be one of the narrow places, no more than twenty yards from one side to the other. There was no bank opposite, no beach. Just the straight jut of the mountain, the land rising right from the water.

Wes took the revolver from his pocket and shaped his left hand around it, maneuvering his index finger into place inside the trigger guard. He knew his own frailty well; even with this much pain, he'd be able to manage a single shot. He turned the revolver so the tip of its barrel rested against his breast; moonlight glinted once off the bluing. He stood unmoving, feeling the trigger beneath his finger, the gentle press of metal against his chest. He thought his heart ought to be racing, but he felt no rush in his veins, no rise of his pulse against the revolver's steel, as though he'd stilled his heart already. Made sense, maybe. Hard for a man to fight his own blood, he always said, and whatever else this was-cowardly, selfish, desperate-whatever else, this was in his blood.