system to always get it right. Some rule, Ortiz had said, telling Blues he should apply it to himself, and Blues answering that he trusted himself just fine.
The system got it right this time, Harry thought, the big Chevy swinging wide on a curve, Mason over- correcting, making the chassis shimmy. Ryan Kowalczyk was a stone cold killer, beating that couple to death like he was taking batting practice. It was a goddamn miracle he didn't know their baby was in the backseat of the car or there would have been three bodies. Nobody ever deserved the death penalty more than that kid.
Trouble was, Harry conceded, the system got it wrong about Whitney King, Kowalczyk's buddy and codefendant. Harry rubbed his temples with his fingertips and ran his knuckles across his eyes, trying to clear his memory and his vision.
Graham Byrnes had been twenty-seven years old, his wife, Elizabeth, only twenty-five. Harry silently recited their names as he'd written them in his report of their murders fifteen years ago. Their baby, Nick, had been three and couldn't fall asleep. They had taken him for a drive because that always helped quiet him down. Worked too. The kid was sleeping in the backseat under a quilt. Slept through the whole thing. Imagine that. Harry couldn't.
It was near midnight. They were in a new subdivision. Roads were in but no houses or streetlights. The Byrneses had just bought a lot to build their first home. Nick had given them an excuse to go take a look. Kowalcyzk and King were out in Kowalcyzk's car, saw the couple, tried to rob them. Graham Byrnes fought back. Kowalcyzk and King killed them.
Harry tried focusing on the snaking road, headlights reflecting off the highway sign, cursing under his breath when he couldn't read the sign. June bugs splattered against the windshield.
'How far?' Harry asked Mason.
'Sign said ten miles to Potosi. The prison is just outside town.'
Harry grunted, holding his watch to within an inch of his eye to check the time again, remembering how he and Blues had caught the killers. Usual brilliant police work, Harry had explained to his lieutenant. The killers were stupid and they caught a break with a witness who saw the suspects sideswipe a street lamp about a mile away, the lamp shining right on the license tag, the witness writing it down. They traced the car and found bloody clothes belonging to both boys in Kowalcyzk's basement. The only thing missing was the murder weapon. Harry assumed it was the tire iron from the couple's car. The coroner said the injury patterns were consistent with such a weapon. They had searched the murder scene, the surrounding area, the route to Ryan's house and both boys' houses, never finding it.
The boys told the same story, down to the punctuation. They played basketball on the same team and had won a big game that night. Partied afterward and were out driving around. Said they took a wrong turn, ended up lost in the subdivision. Saw the Byrneses and stopped to ask them for directions. Said the Byrneses were having car trouble, each kid saying he went looking for an all-night service station, couldn't find one, came back and found the people murdered. Claimed the kid that did the killing made the other one help hide the bodies. That's how they both ended up with blood on their clothes. All smears. No splatters. Harry could still see Blues shaking his head when they walked out of the courtroom, King acquitted, Kowalcyzk convicted.
Harry cracked his window, the hot night air too humid to cool even at highway speed. Mason slowed down, turned onto a county road, following the signs to the state penitentiary, finally easing the big Chevy into a visitor parking spot. A handful of cars were in the lot, only a couple of them from the press. Executions had become too common to make it off the back page.
Mason cut the ignition, pocketing the keys. 'Any chance the jury got it wrong? That Ryan Kowalczyk was innocent?'
'Not a chance,' Harry said.
Chapter 2
Mary Kowalczyk worried about what to wear to her son's execution and worried more that vanity at such a cruel time was especially sinful. Father Steve had heard her confession the day before, telling her that it was natural to think about such things, that it was her mind's way of holding on.
It was more important than that to Mary. She would be the last person her son would see in this life and she wanted him to remember her in an ordinary way, a smile on her face, wearing a nice dress, as if he'd just come home for a visit. She couldn't bear the thought of him remembering her in her grief, not after she fought so hard these last fifteen years to save his life, pushing the lawyers to file every appeal and re-file them when they were lost.
Vowing to mourn him after his death, not before, she chose a dark green dress she'd first worn on Ryan's sixteenth birthday. She and her husband, Vince, took Ryan out to dinner. Ryan admired the dress, telling her it made her look like an actress, what with her long black hair and slender frame, Mary smiling at her son's compliment, giving the fantasy a whirl.
The dress, like all her clothes, was old and fared better from a distance. She rarely bought anything new even before Ryan was taken from her. Vince was a carpenter who worked when the weather and his mood suited him, leaving little for frills. After the trouble, he began taking jobs out of town, staying away for longer and longer periods until one day he didn't come back. A dress had to last a long time.
Mary had been at the prison for hours, arriving with Father Steve for her last visit with Ryan. She was glad that the priest was with him in his final hour, tending to his soul. Father Steve had told her how important it was that Ryan confess his sins. She knew that he wanted Ryan to confess to the murders, charges he had denied from the start, never wavering, Mary never doubting his innocence. She knew he wouldn't admit to these unspeakable crimes even now as she prayed for his salvation in the next life.
She had asked the warden if she could spend some time alone in the witness room before the other witnesses arrived. The warden had told her that the witnesses usually did not go in until the prisoner was ready. She said she understood, but explained that it would be easier for her if she was familiar with the setting. The warden had showed her in, closing the door behind her. He was a considerate man in a hard place.
Two rows of six chairs occupied the rectangular room. A window filled the upper half of the wall looking into the execution chamber, a square space painted white with a concrete floor and a drain in the center. On the opposite wall there were two round openings through which she knew the lethal injection would be administered. Anonymous executioners would pump drugs into her son until he was dead. She would watch him die while his killers hid from her. Such men were cowards.
She stepped to the glass, pressing her balled hands against the unyielding surface, wishing she could break it, grab her son, and race away. Leaning her forehead on the middle of the window, her fingernails pinching her palms, she pounded on it. Softly, at first, then harder and harder until the glass shook, her blows rattling the frame, exhausting her so that she collapsed into one of the straight-backed wooden chairs, sobbing without tears, moaning. Her womb and her heart ached, one pain a memory of her son's birth, the other a harbinger of his death.
Of all the agonies she felt none was greater than the certainty of her son's innocence and the raw injustice of the jury's verdict, condemning her son while freeing Whitney King. Mary wasn't political, had never even voted. She accepted that some were rich and some were poor. God made Kings and He made Kowalczyks. She didn't complain. Envy was not among her sins. Yet she harbored such black bitterness knowing that Whitney King was living a grand life untouched by his guilt that it frightened her.
Her hatred was so deep that she kept it even from Father Steve, omitting it from her confessions, lest the priest think she might do the thing she talked of to herself and no one else. Mary admitted in her private moments of piercing despair that she could do it, gradually convincing herself that she must, recoiling at her sinfulness, praying for forgiveness and the wisdom to find another way.
She had always been puzzled, a bit unsure, about the boys' friendship. One thing Mary understood well was class differences and the gulf between her son and his friend was more than money. Hers was a family of laborers. The Kings were not monarchs, but they were Kansas City bluebloods. Only their common Catholic faith brought the boys together at St. Marks, the parochial school they attended. Ryan's family depended on the scholarships Whitney's family contributed. She had held her tongue instead of warning Ryan he shouldn't trust people like that,
