“But perhaps not.”
“True,” he acknowledged. “But either way, it is too late to change what has been done. We can only change what is and what will be.”
A police officer approached the car. We either had to move or I needed to grab my suitcase and head to the ticket counter. I could have identified myself as a federal agent, but my wallet was in my computer bag in the trunk and I didn’t want to mess with all that. I just wanted to finish this conversation. “You’re no longer sure you did the right thing by telling the truth all these years.”
Calvin stared out the window at the rain. His silence was all the answer I needed.
I remembered his hypothetical question regarding the rapist: “If you shade the truth in your testimony toward his guilt, he will be convicted. What would you do?”
Truth and justice always wrestle against each other in our courts. For all these years I’d chosen the side of truth. So had Calvin. Maybe we’d chosen the wrong side.
“Promise me,” Mr. Sikora had said.
“I promise,” I’d told him.
I could feel something shifting inside of me. The confidence I’d always had in the justice system suddenly seemed overly naive and optimistic.
“Do you believe Basque will kill again if he is set free?” Calvin asked.
“Yes.”
“As do I.”
The officer rapped a knuckle against the glass. I held up a finger to tell him to give me a moment, then I asked Calvin, “You’re going to do something, aren’t you?”
Silence.
“What is it? What are you going to do?”
He folded his hands on the top of the steering wheel. “I’m going to watch carefully.” His words were decisive. Firm. “And see what happens next.”
I searched for what to say. The officer pounded on the door and began to demand I step outside, which I finally did. He pointed to Calvin. “He needs to move along.”
I exited the car, and Calvin rolled down his window. “I’ll call you,” I said.
“Yes, do. Ring me.”
Then I retrieved my bags and watched as Calvin drove away, the taillights of his car glimmering off the wet pavement. A blurry, distorted reflection.
The officer was still standing beside me, and when I didn’t move he said, “Is everything all right?”
No. It’s not. It might never be.
“Yes,” I said. “Everything’s fine.”
Then I entered the terminal, wondering if I should have just let Sikora kill Richard Basque, or if maybe I should have helped him aim the gun. Calvin’s words stalked me as I made my way through the concourse: “I’m going to watch carefully and see what happens next.”
Well, so would I.
17
Baptist Memorial HospitalDenver, Colorado7:51 p.m. Mountain Time
Disguised and dressed as a custodian, Giovanni passed through the lower level of Baptist Memorial Hospital toward the morgue. He carried a black waterproof duffel bag and was careful to avoid the hallways that had security cameras.
His flight had arrived nearly an hour ago, which had given him plenty of time to get ready.
Now, he picked the lock to the morgue, entered the room, and shut the door behind him. Set down his duffel bag. Unzipped it.
Then, he headed to the cold storage area where the recent arrivals were kept.
Giovanni had never served time for murder, which was a bit surprising, considering how many of them he’d committed.
And considering he’d even confessed to one.
But no crimes, not even that first one, appeared on his record because he was only eleven when he confessed to it and the court system decided that he was too young to understand his actions, that he was just a boy and so.
And so.
And so.
Instead of serving time in jail, he’d spent six months at a special hospital and then attended a boarding school and met with a counselor three times a week to talk about his feelings.
But neither his counselor nor any of his lawyers or the judges or court-appointed advocates had ever understood that he really had known what he was doing when he killed his grandmother two days before his twelfth birthday. He’d known very well. And even now, all these years later, everything was still fresh in his mind.
He unlatched the metal door that led to the cadavers and felt the sweep of cool air brush across his face, his arms, as he stepped inside. Just a few degrees colder than the mine-cool enough to store the bodies for a few days, not cold enough to freeze them solid.
He was responsible for eight deaths during the last week, or possibly seven, if the priest was still alive, so he recognized several of the bodies in the cold storage area, but he noted their presence without any emotion or even satisfaction. They’d only been characters in the epic story he was telling, nothing more.
Giovanni wheeled the gurney containing the corpse of Travis Nash into the examination and autopsy room and shut the freezer door.
A white sheet covered the corpse and he slid it aside, revealing the naked, clay-like body of the man he’d killed twelve hours ago by what had appeared to everyone to be a heart attack. No autopsy had been ordered.
Giovanni realized that if he were going to stick literally to the plot, he would have needed to find a way to have Travis’s wife dig up his body and slice off his head with a knife, but burial practices had changed quite a bit since the fourteenth century, and, considering Travis’s cremation was scheduled for the following morning, taking his body from the morgue was as close to disinterment as possible.
Since his death earlier in the day, Travis Nash’s blood would have pooled in his body cavity, so there wouldn’t be much of a mess, just a little seepage.
He unzipped his duffel bag, took out the crosscut saw that he’d used on Brigitte and the governor, placed the blade against the cold, bloated neck of Mr. Nash, and set to work.
Giovanni remembered the night his grandmother died.
He could still see her standing in the kitchen, bent over the sink, her frail fingers scrubbing the dishes, scrubbing, scrubbing, scrubbing, and her soft, papery voice asking him to please put the glasses in the cupboard next to the plates and if he enjoyed the summer with her and was he ready to go back to his father next Tuesday, and then reminding him not to forget his copy of The Canterbury Tales that he’d been reading all summer because she’d seen it on the porch earlier in the day.
She was wearing a white apron with a picture of a faded bouquet of lilies embroidered on the front, and there were yellow stains of chicken broth beside the flowers from the times she’d wiped her fingers across the apron while she was cooking.
Yes, he remembered it alclass="underline" the quiet Kansas breeze blowing through the open window above the sink, the sound of crickets chirping in the dewy shadows outside, the smell of his grandmother’s old-lady perfume mixing with the lemon-scented dishwashing liquid, and the fading smell of the chicken dumpling soup that she’d made from scratch for him because it was his favorite.
Yes, and he remembered the knife resting patiently on the counter beside her.
And his grandmother’s voice again, “Please make sure those glasses are dry before you put them away, dear. You know how they’ll just pick up germs if they’re still wet.”
“And did his grandmother yell at the boy? Verbally abuse him?”
“Not to my knowledge, Your Honor.”
“What about his home life with his father? Was he neglected in any way?”
“He appears to have had a normal, stable upbringing, Your Honor. His mother died while giving birth, but there is no sign of physical or mental abuse whatsoever from his other family members.”
The knife handle looked so shiny and smooth and inviting.
He remembered that. And he remembered wrapping his fingers around it and picking it up and feeling its steady, balanced weight.
He rotated it so that the kitchen light could slant and dance along the blade, where it glistened, glistened, glistened, and then lingered for a moment before sliding off the edge and disappearing into the air around him.