turning rapid. Mason, worried that the boy might hyperventilate, stayed close to him.
Mary ran her beads through her fingers, praying in a soft, staccato whisper, the priest's hand on the small of her back. The door to the execution chamber opened, and Mary ended her prayers, forcing a smile as she let her beads slither to the floor.
Harry migrated to the window, filling the space between Nick and Mary, his jaw set, his eyes dark, his catcher-mitt hands gripping the ledge beneath the glass. His chest swelled as he took a deep breath, holding it as if it had to last forever. Four minutes left.
Ryan was on his back, head flat, no pillow, short brown hair matted, sweat reflecting the floodlights beaming from the ceiling. His wrists and ankles were strapped to the gurney, his thin white legs and bare feet sticking out from beneath his hospital gown. His palms were turned up, the blue veins in the center of his arms throbbed, impaled with IV needles, white tape holding the needles in place, a trickle of dried blood running toward one elbow, long clear plastic tubes dangling from each arm over the sides of the gurney. He raised his head, holding the angle as he found his mother, moistening his lips as he smiled. Mary smiled back. Ryan mouthed 'nice dress,' his mother nodding, her eyes glistening.
A guard pushed the gurney into position next to the far wall. Another guard threaded the IV tubes through the small openings until they were pulled taut from the other side by unseen hands. The two guards looked at the warden for a moment, then left, the door sealing behind them. The warden picked up the phone, flipped a switch on the wall, the speaker crackling. Two minutes left.
'Do you wish to make a last statement?' he asked, broadcasting the question into the execution chamber, a hiss of feedback spitting into the witness room.
Ryan craned his neck, whipsawing between the wall hiding his executioners and the window keeping his mother from him, watching for the first trace of death as it slid down the IV tubes toward him. His arms and legs trembled despite the straps, his chest heaved, his neck bulged with corded blood, his eyes widening as if someone had stretched his lids to their limit. He licked his lips again, swallowing to find his voice. One minute left.
Mary spread her hands wide on the glass, tilting her head a bit, her pained smile encouraging Ryan to be brave for both of them. Nick stopped twirling his pen, lacing it between his fingers and clamping down hard. Harry squinted, taking a short breath, his face turning red. The priest wiped his brow with a handkerchief, Mary touching her fingers to her lips, a last kiss.
Ryan let out a small cry, yanking his arms as he felt the burning sensation of the first drug. His head dropped to the gurney, lolling side-to-side, the drug working quickly. Mary turned to Father Steve, clinging to him, her eyes still locked on her son as Ryan lifted his head a final time, the words tumbling over his thickening tongue.
'I love you, Ma …So sorry… innocent.'
And he was gone.
Chapter 4
Mason stood at the foot of his parents' grave two days after Ryan Kowalczyk's execution. His parents were buried in Sheffield Cemetery, a pious slab of land running down a long slope in an industrial district on the northeast side of Kansas City. Owned by an Orthodox congregation, it held the remains of hundreds of Kansas City Jews dating back to the early 1900s, taking its name from the steel company that once dominated the surrounding landscape. Mason's parents were buried high enough that he could see I-435 to the east and the railroad tracks that ran north and south not far from the bottom of the long slope. A train whistle split the morning, shaking the living even if it didn't stir the dead.
His parents' names were carved in a single block of black granite, John and Linda Mason. Their Hebrew names were entered beneath the English. Mason struggled with the letters, familiar only in their form, their sound and meaning unknown to him. Claire had not pushed him to obtain a religious education, telling him that all the rules paled after the Golden Rule. Learn that one, she said, and you've learned enough.
Growing up, his Aunt Claire brought him to the cemetery on Memorial Day, though neither of his parents had served in the military. It was a good holiday for remembering people, Claire had explained. John was her older brother, Linda as close to her as any sister. Good people sorely missed was how she ended each of their visits.
Mason fell out of the routine of the annual visits when he left for college, returning to the cemetery only occasionally, the last time several years ago, the reason escaping him now. He didn't talk to his parents, as some people did when they visited the graves of loved ones. Mostly, he studied the headstone, hoping for an epiphany about what his life would have been like had they lived. He regretted nothing that had happened in his upbringing by Claire, though he missed every second of what his life might have been, the uncertainty never far from his mind.
Kowalczyk's execution prompted this visit. Nick Byrnes's odd question implying that someone had protected Mason from the truth about his parents' deaths hung over his image of Nick, Harry, and Mary as they had watched Kowalczyk die. Mason had never doubted the story Claire told him. That his father lost control on a rainy summer night, his car slicing through a guard rail, down an embankment, both his parents dead when rescuers reached them. Now Nick's question rose like a tide through Mason's memory, leaving him unsettled.
There was a rock on the center of the arched headstone, a smooth, flat oval that would have skipped forever across flat water. Leaving a small rock on a headstone was a Jewish tradition, a reminder to the deceased that they have not been forgotten, one of the few traditions Mason had picked up in his nontraditional upbringing.
Mason picked up the rock, rubbing his fingers across a surface too polished for the rock to have been plucked from the ground. Whoever left the rock had brought it with them. Claire had never left a rock on the headstone to the Masons' memory, rejecting the practice as she did virtually every other religious ritual.
Claire was as strong an advocate of Jewish traditions of social justice as anyone could be, though she had no interest in the theology. God, she said, knew where to find her if He was looking for her. Mason doubted that Claire had mellowed in her antagonism toward spiritual faith, though he never quite understood its origins. He sometimes imagined Claire having a fight with God, calling it quits because God was a sore loser.
Who had left the rock, Mason wondered? He had no other family besides Claire and could think of no one who might have visited his parents' grave, leaving the rock behind as a calling card. He examined it again, turning it over in his hand as he turned over Nick's question in his mind, finding answers to neither, leaving the rock where he found it.
Several sections over from where he stood near the top of the slope a blue awning had been erected at the site of a fresh grave. The excavation complete, two gravediggers were setting up chairs for the mourners. They'd stuck two shovels firmly into the mound of dirt next to the grave so that mourners could sprinkle soil onto the casket after it was lowered into the ground, a final good-bye. It was not yet eight o'clock and the gravediggers were glad to be finished, the sun already bearing down at the start of another blistering summer day.
The city was roasting in a heat wave that had boosted temperatures into triple digits seven out of the last ten days. Humidity to match the temperature multiplied into a misery index that was off the charts. The sky was painfully blue. People were dying and the forecast was for more of the same. Mason had a feeling the gravediggers would be busy.
Curious whether the men might have seen someone deposit the rock on his parents' headstone, Mason ambled their way. The gravediggers, one black and one white, were sitting in the shade of the awning on the chairs they had just arranged, taking long pulls on water jugs.
'Bet you're glad this one's done,' Mason said.
'You got that right,' the white man said. 'Funeral's not till eleven. You're early.'
'It's not my funeral,' Mason said. 'I was just visiting my folks' grave. Back over there,' he said, pointing. 'John and Linda Mason,' he added.
'Double plot,' the black man said. 'Don't dig too many of them. Most people, they go one at a time.'
'How long you guys worked out here?' Mason asked.
'Me and Marty,' the black man answered, 'we been here ten years. Ain't that right, Marty?'
'You got that right, Albert,' Marty said, wiping his wrist across his mouth.
'Don't suppose you might have noticed anyone else visiting my parents' graves. Someone left a nice rock on the headstone.'
