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Martin did not bother to tell him that it was not really necessary to have thirteen steps leading up to the trapdoor, any more than it was necessary to have thirteen loops in the noose rope. That was all nonsense, myth. It was the drop that mattered — and only the drop.

“Exactly how high is the platform from the floor?” Martin asked.

Lawson took a small spiral notebook from his shirt pocket and flipped it open. “Eight foot two,” he said.

“Okay. What do you guess this guy Kalb weighs?”

“Oh, one-ninety, ninety-five.”

“Okay. You need to build me a gallows tree now.”

“What’s that?”

“An upright frame with a crosspiece,” Martin said, a little impatiently. Where the hell did they get this hick? he wondered. “You know, to connect the rope to.”

“Oh, sure,” Lawson said, slightly chagrined. “Of course. Wonder why that wasn’t in any of the archive photos?”

“Lots of old-time scaffolds were outside,” Martin explained. “They just used a tree limb or a telephone pole beam, anything handy.” He bobbed his chin at the trapdoor. “Center the frame just behind the trap. I’ll tell you where to nail the crossbeam after I measure Kalb. And round me up four fifty-pound bags of dirt, too.”

“Sure. To test your rope,” Lawson assumed.

“To test your gallows,” Martin corrected evenly. “My rope will be perfect.”

Back at the lodge, Martin and Barbara had sex, then dinner, then sex again. Barbara pouted a little about not having anything to do when Martin was not there, but she came out of her snit after Martin mentioned that biannual salary increases were imminent at Stockman Cordage and that she could expect a very nice raise. She was so pleased that she did not complain when he left her alone the following day.

Back at the prison, Martin told Warden Lawson that he needed a private room in which to prepare his hanging rope. Lawson found him an unused office just off the infirmary.

“Used to be the prison doctor’s office, but since the state cut the corrections budget we don’t have a doctor no more. Inmate gets sick now, we call old Doc Upton over in Barnaby and he comes out.”

“This will be fine,” Martin said. He was carrying a round, black, wooden chest shaped much like an old-fashioned ladies hatbox, with a single handle in the center of its top. As he placed it on a table, Lawson peered curiously at it.

“Is that what I think it is?” he asked.

“I imagine so,” Martin replied. From his wallet, he removed a single key, and unlocked it. As he raised the lid, Lawson leaned over to look closely at its contents.

Coiled like some exotic snake inside the case was a shiny, pale yellow, twenty-two-foot rope. Martin pulled the top end of it out for Lawson to examine.

“I made this rope myself,” Martin said proudly, almost as if showing off a newborn child. “It has three strands: one of abacá, which is usually called Manila hemp, from the Philippine Islands; one of henequen, from the Yucatán; and one of sisal, from Indonesia. There are no man-made fibers at alclass="underline" no nylon, Saran, polypropylene — none of that stuff you’ll find in a lot of ropes. Materials like that will last longer, of course; that’s why they’re used so universally. But their elasticity makes their product weaken over the long run. This rope here won’t stretch a quarter of an inch; it has no spring, no bounce, when dropping up to three hundred pounds. I’ve had it in storage for years. All I have to do now is lubricate it with mutton tallow. I have a gallon of it outside in the trunk of my car; I buy it from a Chicago slaughterhouse and keep it at work for special orders, like the mooring ropes on the governor’s yacht, jobs like that.”

“Well, I got to hand it to you, Sloan, you’re a real professional,” the warden said.

“I like to think so,” Martin replied smugly. “Now then, I’ll get the lubricating done today, and tomorrow I’ll want to see the condemned man, measure him, get his exact weight and all, and then we’ll test the gallows with those bags of dirt. When’s the execution set for?”

“Day after tomorrow. Right after breakfast. That’d be about seven.”

“Kalb ordered his last meal yet?”

“Oh, hell no,” Lawson scoffed. “We don’t go in for none of that fancy stuff like you see in the movies. This ain’t San Quentin or Sing Sing or any of them fancy penitentiaries. Kalb’ll get what ever’ other con in here gets: powdered eggs, couple strips of salt pork, a biscuit, and a tin cup of black coffee.”

On his way back to the lodge, Martin called Hazel. “How’s it going with the wedding plans?” he asked, trying very hard to sound interested.

“Not too well,” Hazel complained. “We had to get a seamstress to let the waist out an inch on Susan’s gown.”

Not surprising, Martin thought, the way she ate.

“When will you be home, hon?” Hazel asked.

“Sometime Friday afternoon.”

“Oh, good. I want you to get fitted for a tux at the rental place. You will look so snazzy at the wedding, hon.”

Just how I’ve always wanted to look, Martin thought. Snazzy.

Then he called Vivian.

“How’s it going up there, sweetie?” she asked solicitously.

“As well as can be expected, I guess. I’ll get through it.”

“Listen,” Vivian practically purred, “I went online and discovered that there’s a very romantic lodge up there near the prison. Why don’t I drive up and keep you company for the rest of the week? I’m sure it would be easier for you if you weren’t all by yourself. Where are you staying, anyway? I couldn’t find any l motels at all listed for Barnaby.”

Martin pulled a lie out of the air. “Actually I’m staying right at the prison. The warden has a very comfortable little guest house. I’ve been having dinner with him and his wife every night. They’re really nice people.”

“Oh. Well, I guess my idea’s no good then.”

“Listen, we’ll make up the time together when I get back. We’ve got some things we need to talk about, you know.”

“You mean about us, Marty?”

“Of course, what else?”

With Vivian placated, Martin drove on to the lodge just in time for dinner, at which Barbara was beyond pout, beyond snit, and had reached grumpiness.

“If I had known we weren’t going to spend any time together, I don’t think I would have come along,” she said.

“We’ve spent time together,” Martin replied lamely.

“Sure. Eating and... well, you know.”

“Look, I’m sorry, honey, honestly I am. I had no idea these botanist people were going to take up so much of my time. But we’re almost finished. Tomorrow we’ll have everything pretty well wrapped up. Then, day after tomorrow, I’ll be meeting them for breakfast and that’ll be the end of it.” He reached across the table for one of her hands.

“Listen, when we get back to the city, I’m going to hit old man Stockman up for some time off. A week maybe. Then we’ll go on a real vacation trip somewhere.”

“Reeeeally?” Barbara almost squealed. “Where would we go?”

“I don’t know,” Martin said. “You pick a place.” He was busy looking down the front of her scoop-necked dress. When Barbara became excited about something, she kind of... well, heaved.

For the rest of the evening, he had to listen to her go through an alphabet of places she had always wanted to go: Alaska, Barbados, Cancun, Dubai, Ensenada, French Polynesia, Grand Canyon, Honolulu, Ireland, Jamaica, Kenya, Las Vegas — she got all the way to the letter T, for Toronto, when Martin was finally able to drag her away from the dinner table and upstairs to bed.

The next day, at the prison, Warden Lawson had the condemned man, Roger Kalb, brought to an examination room in the infirmary, where the warden waited with Martin and old Doc Upton, who had been summoned from the town of Barnaby. Kalb was in handcuffs, waist chain, and ankle shackles, and had a three-man escort from the personally selected team of officers who were part of the anonymity scheme to protect Martin’s identity. The condemned man, who was in his early fifties, drew Martin’s memory back to many other men he had encountered under similar circumstances in the past, and it was startling to him how they never changed in appearance: pasty-white in complexion from deprivation of sunlight, thick around the middle from years of eating institutional food, flaccid from too little exercise. Martin was pleased to see that Kalb was nearly bald on top, which would make it easier to slip the death hood over his head.