The Twelfth Card (Lincoln Rhyme 6)

"You don't care?" Sachs asked.

"I know you people don't understand me. I don't blame you. But, see, I don't care about prison. I don't care about anything. Y'all can't really touch me. I'm dead already. Killing somebody doesn't matter to me, saving a life doesn't matter." He glanced at Amelia Sachs, who was staring at him. Boyd said, "I see that look. You're wond'ring what kinda monster is this fella? Well, fact is, y'all made me who I am."

"We did?" she asked.

"Oh, yes, ma'am . . . You know my profession."

"Executions control officer," Rhyme said.

"Yes, sir. Now something I'll tell you 'bout that line of work: You can find the names of every human legally executed in these United States. Which is a lot. And you can find the names of all the governors who waited up till midnight or whenever to commute them if the inclination was there. You can find the names of all the victims the condemned murdered, and much of the time the names of their next of kin. But do you know the one name you won't find?"

He looked at the officers around him. "Us people who push the button. The executioners. We're forgotten. Ever'body thinks 'bout how capital punishment affects the families of the condemned. Or society. Or the victims' families. Not to mention the man or woman gets put down like a dog in the process. But nobody ever spends a drop of sweat on us executioners. Nobody ever stops and thinks what happens to us.

"Day after day, living with our people--men, women too, course, who're gonna die, getting to know 'em. Talking to 'em. 'Bout everything under the sun. Hearing a black man ask how come is it the white guy who did the exact same crime gets off with life, or maybe even less, but he himself's gonna die? The Mexican swearing he didn't rape and kill that girl. He was just buying beer at 7-Eleven and the police come up and next he knows he's on Death Row. And a year after he's in the ground they do a DNA test and find out they did have the wrong man, and he was innocent all along.

"Course, even the guilty ones're human beings too. Living with all of them, day after day. Being decent to them because they're decent to you. Getting to know 'em. And then . . . then you kill 'em. You, all by yourself. With your own hands, pushing the button, throwing the switch . . . It changes you.

"You know what they say? You heard it. 'Dead man walking.' It's supposed to mean the prisoner. But it's really us. The executioners. We're the dead men."

Sachs muttered, "But your girlfriend? How could you shoot her?"

He fell silent. For the first time a darkness clouded his fac

e. "I pondered firing that shot. I'd hoped maybe I'd have this feeling that I shouldn't do it. That she meant too much to me. I'd let her be and run, just take my chances. But . . . " He shook his head. "Didn't happen. I looked at her and all I felt was numb. And I knew that it'd make sense to shoot her."

"And if the children had been home and not her?" Sachs gasped. "You'd've shot one of them to escape?"

He considered this for a moment. "Well, ma'am, I guess we know that would've worked, wouldn't it? You would've stopped to save one of the girls 'stead of coming after me. Like my daddy told me: It's only a question of where you put the decimal point."

The darkness seemed to lift from his face, as if he'd finally received some answer or come to some conclusion in a debate that had been troubling him for a long time.

The Hanged Man . . . The card often foretells a surrendering to experience, ending a struggle, accepting what is.

He glanced at Rhyme. "Now, you don't mind, I think it's time for me to get back home."

"Home?"

He looked at them curiously. "Jail."

As if, what else would he possibly mean?

*

Father and daughter got off the C train at 135th street and started east, toward Langston Hughes High.

She hadn't wanted him to come but he'd insisted on looking after her--which Mr. Rhyme and Detective Bell had insisted on too. Besides, she reflected, he'd be back in Buffalo by tomorrow and she supposed she could tolerate an hour or two with him.

He nodded back at the subway. "Used to love to write on C trains. Paint stuck real nice . . . I knew a lot of people'd see it. Did an end-to-end in 1976. It was the Bicentennial that year. Those tall ships were in town. My 'piece was of one of those boats, 'long with the Statue of Liberty." He laughed. "The MTA didn't scrub that car for at least a week, I heard. Maybe they were just busy but I like to think somebody liked what I painted and kept it up for longer than normal."

Geneva grunted. She was thinking that she had a story to tell him. A block away she could see the construction scaffolding in front of the same building she'd been working on when she'd been fired. How'd her father like to know that her job had been scrubbing graffiti off the redeveloped buildings? Maybe she'd even erased some of his. Tempted to tell him. But she didn't.

At the first working pay phone they found on Frederick Douglass Boulevard, Geneva stopped, fished for some change. Her father offered her his cell phone.

"That's okay."

"Take it."

She ignored him, dropped the coins in and called Lakeesha, while her father pocketed his cell and wandered to the curb, looking around the neighborhood like a boy in front of the candy section in a bodega.