“Not quite as stimulating?”

“No, but the happy thing is, we never run out of cockroaches. Not by a long shot. And Scrabble would never catch on here, because most of my fellow inmates can’t spell. Three-fourths of the guys in here are high-school dropouts. A lot of them never finished the fourth grade.”

Ben nodded silently. He knew it was true.

“Stimulating conversations? Forget it. Not going to happen. Most of the conversation revolves around women-although that isn’t the word they typically use-and how they got screwed by the courts.”

“Everyone is innocent, huh?”

“Actually, no. Most of the guys admit they did the crime. They just shift the blame to someone else, their girlfriend or mother or homeboys. Or lawyers. Almost everyone hates their lawyers.”

“It’s gratifying work. What about the guards?”

Ray raised a finger. “Be careful. They don’t like to be called guards. They are corrections officers. And damned particular about it.”

“Well, they do a lot more than just guard,” Ben offered. “It’s a fairly miserable, high-stress job, but the benefits are decent and there is the possibility of promotion. Better than some state jobs, anyway. Assuming you get out of here without being shanked.” Ben paused. “How do the cons treat you? You’re not exactly the typical inmate.”

“I’ve learned to survive. You have to. You learn to look out for number one, ’cause it’s sure as hell no one else will. Fortunately, the good time regs keep down a lot of the worst behavior. The cons know good time can cut their sentence by as much as half. So no one wants to get stuck with disciplinary action. The main problem is boredom. There’s nothing to do. We go through the same tedious routine day after day after day.” Ben watched as the light slowly faded from his eyes. “I had so many plans, Ben. So much I wanted to do. I was going to be a big name in industrial chemistry. I was going to get married, have a couple of kids. I was going to climb Kilimanjaro. And what did I get? Nothing. For seven years. Down the drain. Totally wasted. And I’ll never get them back.”

When his head rose again, Ben saw that his eyes were puddling. “I guess you know that Carrie left me.”

He did, but the news still cut like a knife.

“She was faithful to me. For so long. She waited and waited, through the entire initial appeal. Two years almost. But eventually…” He pushed his chair back and looked away. “I kept trying to tell myself she’d come back. I even deluded myself into thinking she’d show for my execution. But it’s all a fantasy. I haven’t seen her for years.”

“I’m sorry,” Ben said quietly.

“I just-I don’t know how this happened to me.” Ray ran his fingers through twisted gray curls. “Do you know the story of the Wandering Jew?”

“Rings a vague bell.”

“Old Hebrew myth. It was actually originally cooked up to reconcile some New Testament prophecies that didn’t happen, or so the scholars say. The part where Jesus tells a group of people that some of them will still be alive when He returns, which He obviously hasn’t done yet. The story is that this one guy was punished for committing some horrendous sin-punished with immortality. Doomed to walk the earth forever and ever, never resting, never dying. Just going on, day after day, a wandering life with no meaning. That’s how I feel. My life continues, but it has no meaning. It’s just another twenty-four hours wasted.” He threw back his head and stared at the ceiling. “And I can’t figure out what the sin is I committed that I’m being punished for. What did I do?” he shouted. “What could I possibly have done to deserve this?”

“I’m so sorry,” Ben said again.

“Don’t be sorry. Just get me the hell out of here.”

“That won’t be easy. Even now. We’ve already exhausted our state remedies, and given all the new rules restricting death-row appeals, we won’t get another shot. We do still have a habeas proceeding in federal court. But very few habeas corpus petitions are granted.”

“But we’ve got a witness changing her story.”

“Which is good. But it’s no automatic pass. The court might well assume that she was telling the truth then and that for whatever reason she’s lying now. I think your best shot would be to augment the actual-innocence arguments with incompetence-of-counsel arguments. But that would mean I’d have to drop out.”

“No way. I want you in charge.”

“I can’t possibly argue that trial counsel was incompetent when I was the trial counsel. No judge is going to buy it.”

“No judge is going to buy it no matter who makes the argument. You didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Whether I did or I didn’t, the argument could be made.”

“Forget it, Ben. I want you on the case.”

“Ray, stop and think for a moment. This is important.”

“I don’t have to stop and think for a moment. Answer me one question, Ben. Do you think I’m innocent?”

Ben looked at him levelly. “I know you are.”

“That’s what I want. And I’m not going to get it anywhere else. No one else would’ve stuck with me so long, Ben. No one else would’ve fought so hard. You’ve already saved me from the executioner once. And I know it’s been a good long time since you got paid. You’re not doing this for money or glory. You’re doing it because you believe in me.” He pressed his palm against the Plexiglas screen between them. “I want you running the appeal.”

Ben didn’t know what to say. “You’re the client.”

“Good. Subject closed. Now go get that young lady’s story down on paper and take it to the judge. Erin Faulkner may have done me a great disservice before, but she’s going to compensate for it now. I’m sure of it. As long as we have her testimony on our side, we can’t lose.”

Mike stared at the television screen, a tense expression on his face. The brunette telejournalist was reporting live from downtown.

“I’m LeAnne Taylor, and here at the scene of the tragedy, many questions are being asked about what happened-and why. I spoke earlier to Peter Rothko, the owner of the Tulsa-based Burger Bliss restaurant chain, about the tragedy.”

The picture switched to a tall, handsome man with a thick shock of red hair. Surprisingly young, Mike thought, for a corporate CEO.

“It’s a tragedy,” he said, shaking his head. “A tragedy.”

Mike grimaced. Someone needed to buy these people a thesaurus.

Taylor pressed a microphone close to Rothko’s face. “Will the restaurant reopen?”

“I don’t know about that. I think some sort of… memorial might be appropriate.”

“What do you think of the Tulsa PD’s handling of the situation?”

Rothko paused before speaking. “Well, it’s not my job to assign blame. But I understand there will be a full investigation, and I support that decision. If there were any inappropriate actions taken, those responsible should be called to account. We need to make sure tragedies like this do not happen again.”

Mike switched off the set, muttering beneath his breath. The quest for scapegoats had already begun.

His secretary, Penelope, entered his cubicle. Mike had worked with her long enough to know that when she came in with that expression on her face, she was not bearing good news.

“Chief Blackwell?”

“I’m afraid so.”

Mike wasn’t surprised. In fact, as he made his way down to the chief of police’s second-floor office, he wondered why it had taken this long. In the hours following the Burger Bliss fiasco, the media coverage had been omnipresent. The papers and airwaves had been filled with reportage of the “bungled siege” and “the Tulsa PD’s tragic comedy of errors.” They were already comparing it with Waco and Ruby Ridge.

Which explained all too clearly why he had been summoned to Blackwell’s office.

“What the hell did you think you were doing?” Blackwell bellowed, not ten seconds after Mike entered his office. He was not one for small talk. In the past six months he had given up cigars and, to make matters worse, had recently abandoned coffee. To say he was cranky was like saying Madonna was uninhibited.