The same darkness pressing down on Gibby’s house deepened the sky above Lanesworth State Prison Farm, forty-five miles east. If anything, the night sky there was blacker, unspoiled as it was by streetlights or traffic or civilization of any kind. First opened in 1871, the walls at Lanesworth were three feet thick, the windows little more than barred slits in the stone. Situated at the end of a four-mile private road, the prison filled an empty corner of a rural county; and though it had not worked as an actual prison farm in over forty years, the signs of its original intent could still be seen in the ditch lines and fallow fields and new-growth forest. Before nature had retaken so much of it, men had suffered in the cold, died in the heat. The chain gangs were long gone, but the prison still sprawled across eighteen thousand acres of lowland and scrub. Built to house a thousand men, it held twice that number now. A few inmates were classified as moderate offenders, potentially dangerous, but most were the worst the state could offer. Killers. Drug dealers. Serial rapists.
In a subbasement beneath death row was a string of cells that stayed warm when others were cold, and cool when others were hot. In one such cell, a killer stood beside a bed, but it was not his bed, and not his cell. He didn’t like the man whose cell it was, but nothing at Lanesworth was about like.
In a corner of the same cell stood a man known as Prisoner X—or just, X. That wasn’t his name, but people called him that. They thought it was short for Axel, his true name, or because he’d killed ten men, and eaten parts of them. Others said that he’d killed his wife for infidelity, but only after he’d emasculated her lover, then cut Xs into his eyes. X had been an inmate for so long that people didn’t really care anymore. He was part of the prison, like the steel and concrete and stone.
“Higher, please. Your left hand.” X gestured, and the man by the bed complied. Shirtless in prison jeans, he stood with both hands up and fisted. “Excellent. Perfect.”
The man by the bed was only two inches taller than X, but wide and rawboned and forty pounds heavier. Raised hard in the Georgia mountains, he’d run away young and grown up a thief and a killer, a bare-knuckle, fight-for-cash brawler on the streets of Atlanta. He’d been inside for less than five weeks, but every guard told the same story, that the kid could take a beating, spit blood, and come back for more, that he was a serious, determined, no-bullshit kind of fighter.
“Don’t move,” X said. “You’re moving.” X was not a great painter, but he wasn’t bad, either. He made a few more strokes with the brush, then said, “It’s strange. I know.”
“It’s a freak show, is what it is.”
The kid talked tough, but the doubt was in his eyes. He’d heard the stories. He was, in fact, having his portrait painted in a subbasement beneath death row. X enjoyed the young man’s doubt, but didn’t let the pleasure show. That would be weakness, and X despised weakness in all its forms. After a final stroke, he turned the painting so the young man could see it, a hyper-contextualized impression of violence and its aftermath: the broken stance, the bruising, and the blood. “You understand what comes next?”
“They told me, yeah.”
“Good.”
X put down the painting and stripped off his shirt, revealing a narrow torso corded with muscle. Even at forty-nine, there was nothing soft, not anywhere.
“I’m not afraid of you,” the young man said. “I think the stories are only stories.”
X smiled, but it was not a nice smile. Backing through the open door, he moved from the cell to a narrow corridor that ran the length of a halfdozen other cells, all devoid of prisoners. The corridor ceiling was twenty feet high, the light fixtures rusted where old water stains discolored the concrete and stone. A guard sat near a metal door, but knew better than to watch.
Trailing X from the cell, the young man said, “Why me?”
“Was it four men you killed, or five?”
“Six. Bare-handed.”
“Is that not reason enough?”
“I don’t fight for the fun of it.”
“For what, then?”
“Cash money. Or if someone needs killing.”
“And today?”
“They say the warden is in your pocket. That you own the guards, too.”
“You fear retaliation.”
“Yeah, well. Busting up random convicts is one thing…”
He left the thought unfinished, so X pulled a sheaf of cash from his pocket, counted out some bills, and dropped them on the floor. “A thousand dollars for the fight. That’s a hundred a minute for the next ten minutes of your life.”
The young man stared at the money like a dog would stare at meat. “I’ll take your money, old man, but you’re not going to last any ten minutes.”
He stooped for the bills, then came with his chin tucked and the big fists up. He thought the fight was a joke, that X was used up and stupid-crazy, an old man with half the reach. In a different life, he might have been right, but X, in motion, was a marriage of power and speed that few in the world could match. He worked the right eye first—four hard jabs—then bloodied the mouth, the nose; cracked a rib on the left side.
That was the first nine seconds.
X slipped out of reach, then came back for the face, two lefts and right, then a roundhouse kick that cut cables in the big man’s knees. X danced away a second time, not yet breathing hard. He saw the fear then, the understanding.
What if they were true?
The stories …
X smiled as that fear opened like a flower. The big man saw it, and hated it. “You paid me to fight, so fucking fight.”
He came harder that time, and X bled, too. It’s why he’d picked the big man in the first place.
All those kills.
That readiness.
X made it last the full ten minutes, but the fight was never close. X got hurt; the big man got ruined. By the ten-minute mark, he was bent at the waist and half-blind, too bloody and broken to lift his hands. He looked once at the guard, and X felt the first real distaste. “He can’t help you.”
“Do it if you’re going to do it.”
The man’s face was a mask of blood, one eye ruined for life, the right shoulder out of its socket. The rage was still there, though; he could go longer. But what was the point?
“Guard. We’re finished here.”
The guard kept his eyes down, but knew from long experience what to do. He got the big man up and out, and never looked at X.
When they were gone, X went into a second cell, washed blood from his hands and face, then taped up the cuts.
Bored again, he wandered the cells he kept like a suite of rooms: one for the wine, another for his art. Everyone knew he was rich, of course. Years ago, he’d been in the news all the time: the jets and mansions, the models and call girls and socialite girlfriends. Of course, the stories changed after his arrest: profiles on the family fortune, the long list of famous friends and political connections. An inmate had asked once how much money X really had, intending to leverage that information with violence of his own. He’d have considered it an easy thing: a rich man, new to prison. But X was unlike other rich men, so he’d given that inmate a long smile and a silent count, three full seconds before he’d torn the esophagus from his throat, and flushed it down a prison toilet. Since then, there’d been so few questions.
“Ah, well…”
He had his privacy and his comforts. For the privilege, he gave the warden an unholy amount of money each and every year, plus a solemn, cross-his-heart vow that the warden’s wife would not be gang-raped ever again.
Not on a Sunday morning.
Not with the kids watching.
It was late that same night that something broke the steady routine of X’s life. “Excuse me. Um … sir?” The guard was a large man, and apologetic.
“What is it?”
“Someone has been asking to see you. Francis Willamette. A prisoner. We didn’t want to bother you, but he’s been asking for a few days now, very insistent. We … um … we took a vote. The guards, I mean.”
X lit a cigarette, and leaned back. Six guards served on his regular detail, but he had other guards in other pockets. “What does Mr. Willamette want?”
“He says it’s about Jason French. It’s … um … it’s why we voted yes.”
“Then I suppose you should bring Mr. Willamette down.”
The guard backed from the cell, and hurried away. When footsteps sounded in the stairwell, the same guard said, “Third cell. You can go on down.”
“Are you certain? He’s not … you know?”
“He’s expecting you. You’ll be fine.”
When Willamette appeared, the same doubts seemed to fill every line in his face. X had met the old man once before. He’d claimed to be a chess player, but managed to embarrass himself in three moves. He’d lost weight in the years since they’d played that single game, and the skin was loose on his bones. One hand clutched at the cell door, and he held on to the bar as if he’d fall without it. X took in the sunken eyes, the brown teeth. “You claim to have seen Jason French?”
“Three days ago, yes, sir. On the road, um, I was on the prison bus.”
“Why should I believe you?”
“Because I can describe him in perfect detail, the car he was in, and the people with him, how he froze the moment he realized the bus was from Lanesworth. My memory’s photographic. Any detail you ask for.”
“Assuming all of that is true, why should I care?”
The old man was cunning enough to hide his satisfaction, but the glint in his eyes was pure greed. “We both know that you do.”
X stared for long seconds, his entire being dangerously still. He’d never cared about the stories that circulated in the general population, not who he’d killed or why he’d done it, or what really went down in the subbasement under death row. True or false, such stories were irrelevant. X stayed above them. But this, however, this presumption to know anything about X’s wants or needs or preferences …
The old man understood the shift in X’s eyes. “Hey, buddy, hey now. No judgment.” He spread his fingers, showing the seamed palms. “We all have our kinks. You. Me. It’s just that I’m too old to play games. Fifty-two years inside. I know you see the logic.”
X studied the old man’s face. The lips. The damp eyes. “So you can tell me about Jason French. What would you want from me in exchange?”
The old man took a breath, and named his price. Money. Pornography. Two days with a girlish inmate he’d seen once in the yard.
X shook his head dismissively. “Descriptions of an isolated encounter. A few flowery words.”
“I can tell you how to find him.”
X blinked, a hard thump in his chest. “Go on.”
“I know the car, the license plate. From there, it should be easy. Anyone on the outside could track him down.”
X tried to conceal his emotions, but the old prisoner knew better. A smile split his face as he said, “There’s one other thing,” then drew back a chair, and sat as if he owned the place. “There was a girl in the car, a brunette…”
When Willamette was finished and gone, X paced the empty hall, debating the pros and cons of the bargain he’d made. He didn’t care about the brunette in the car, or the girlish inmate on cellblock C—let Willamette have his fun. But some time ago X had given Jason certain assurances—promises, actually—and while most people mattered little to X, Jason was not most people. That made the debate more like a war of attrition.
A full hour, pacing.
One more staring at a stain on the ceiling.
In the end, though, X knew exactly what he’d known at the moment of Willamette’s proposal: there could be no real debate.
“Guard!” He raised his voice, suddenly impatient. “I want Reece, and I want him here now.”
Reece lived on the other side of Charlotte. His arrival took time. When it finally happened, the same guard led him down the corridor. “Your appellate lawyer is here.”
X had no appellate lawyer—he’d never leave prison alive—but he did enjoy the small fictions. “Wait upstairs.”
The guard turned and left. Behind him, Reece appeared as he always had: narrow-shouldered and thin, with a wisp of beard on a face that could be forty-five or sixty-five. Deep lines cut the corners of his mouth, and his skin had a chalky cast that X associated with a great-grandfather he’d known as a boy. That’s where any impression of agedness ended. Reece was as vicious and quick as any predator X could imagine. Over seventeen years, he’d earned enough money from X to buy mansions and fund a dozen retirements. There was no affection between them, but X knew what Reece could do, the things he liked to do. Of every fixer X had on the outside, Reece was the one he trusted most. Even so, X could not hide his frustration. “It’s not like you to be late.”
“I was out when the call came in. I left as soon as I got the message.”
“What time is it now?”
“Three a.m. I’m sorry. I truly would have been here sooner.”
“It’s fine. I’ve been impatient.” X accepted the excuse, nodding. “Any problems out there that I should know about?”
“Smooth as glass.” Reece slid his palm across an imaginary pane. He meant payoffs, threats, the parolee whose car they’d burned as a reminder to keep his mouth shut. “What do you need from me now?”
X told Reece what he’d learned from Willamette: the prison bus, the car, the people in the car.
“You’re sure it was Jason French?”
“Willamette was convincing.”
“You want me to find him?”
“Finding Jason is only the start.” X explained what else he wanted. He offered specifics, and Reece took a few moments to play it out in his mind. “Why does Willamette care about this girl?”
“Why does anyone care?”
“She’s brunette?”
“Young. Attractive.”
“I’m glad you called me for this.”
“I thought of no one but you.” That was true. Reece had certain desires that made him predictable. Supporting those desires made him dependable in a way that money alone never could.
“How soon?” Reece asked.
“As soon as possible.”
Reece removed a pen and pad, all business. “Can you confirm the plate number for me?”
X gave him the number again. “Sixty-six Mustang, maroon with whitewall tires and minor rust on two fenders.”
Reece jotted down the license number. “Give me her full description.”
X described the brunette as Willamette had. Facial features. Skin tone. Height and build. “He puts her age at twenty-seven.”
“What about the blonde?”
“Just the brunette.”
Reece looked at his watch, and frowned. “The sun will be up in a few hours. Give me a couple days.”
“Today,” X said. “Today would be better.”
Reece found the car easily enough—with X’s resources at his disposal, there was never a question—but it didn’t belong to the girl. The kid who owned it was a good-looking kid, but that was no surprise, either. He looked like Jason French. Following him from one place to another made Reece sick to his stomach: the hair and the suntan, the strong arm, hooked in the open window. Reece had no illusions about his hatred of people like Jason and his little brother. The world came to people like that, and Reece had to take what he wanted. In high school, he’d heard every insult.
Hey, little man …
Hey, pencil-dick …
The pencil-dick thing had been tough.
Gym class, communal showers …
One girl, in particular, had teased Reece mercilessly. Jessica Bruce. She’d been his first.
The memory was fond enough to stir a host of others.
Jessica …
Allison …
That Asian girl at McDonald’s …
The cashier who’d rolled her eyes when Reece asked for her number …
It helped time pass, but the boy didn’t make Reece’s job any easier. He went to school, hung out with some other kid. He bought candy, played pinball, did normal stuff that did not involve a five-foot-three, pale-breasted brunette, aged approximately twenty-seven. A moment’s interest rose around dusk when the kid drove into the city, and parked where expensive condos met an immaculate street. Reece watched him approach a door, hesitate, and then leave before ringing the bell. The moment felt significant, but Reece wasn’t convinced until he followed the kid home, then returned alone. Nothing about the condo said teenage kid. Too much money. Too much style. Curtains were drawn inside, but Reece waited as people came home from work, and streetlights snapped on. For three hours, he watched the cars, the foot traffic, the condominium.
He smoked a cigarette.
He was used to waiting.
At midnight, a van rolled up, and a tall, broad-shouldered hippie got out on the other side, flipping long hair as he walked to the passenger door. Reece wanted to hurt him on principle, but what mattered was the girl who spilled out when the hippie opened her door. She stumbled, laughing. The hippie caught her, and held her against the van, kissing her with one hand on a breast and the other up her skirt. She pushed him away, but didn’t mean it. He kissed her again, and groped her again, then half-carried her up the steps, where they fumbled with keys and each other, but managed the door, and went inside. Reece frowned, but was happy.
The girl was five-three, brunette, and every bit of twenty-seven years.
She was also very pretty.
That was a bonus.