Payment rendered for twenty murders. Although it could have been worse.
Even now, she had trouble believing it had all happened, all of it had really happened, it had been like a roaring conflagration, devouring lives and smashing families and leaving only useless stinking ash behind.
Useless stinking ash was her heritage, and never was one more deserved. And it could have been worse. That was what she told herself through every day and night of the horror: Twenty murders, yes, but seventy-two were tried, so it could have been worse. Twenty murders, but nearly a hundred accused, so it could have been worse.
Rebecca Nurse was bad enough. And Bridget Bishop. And Susannah Morse. And John Proctor. They were dead and everyone was safe. They were dead and everyone was safe and if other people now had Bridget’s taverns, and Rebecca’s vast acres, and Susannah’s inheritance, and John’s many properties, that was mere coincidence and certainly nothing that should haunt her, haunt her, haunt her.
It wasn’t as though powerful men, intelligent men, men who knew a great deal more about the world than she ever would, encouraged her. Oh no-no-no. The dead were witches, and a danger to all of them and thank God and His Beloved Son they were now and forever casting their spells in hell. But she had heard her father’s complaints about Bridget’s brazen ways
(“A woman should own nothing, and certainly not taverns or public places of any sort.”)
and John’s stinginess
(“He could so easily be of assistance. And he won’t; I truly believe the devil pushes out all his good impulses.”)
and the Nurse family’s land disputes
(“We had an agreement. That particular plot of land is mine by rights. And they know it, but their greed smothers the voice of God.”)
and they were witches, they were the servants of Satan, they had devils’ marks on their bodies and spells in their lying, crying mouths and everyone was safe now, it was over and they were safe and she was to be married and it wasn’t her fault and it was all her fault.
She would marry Benjamin Baron and bear him children and teach them the Lord’s Prayer, and warn them that devils were real and often looked like ordinary people and sounded like her father. She would live to be an old woman, too old to be afraid of ghosts and it would be all right.
Everything would be all right.
TEN
“No,” Dennis Drake said for the fourth time.
Angela swallowed a groan and dropped her head; her forehead hit her outstretched arms with a dull thud. Which was exactly how she felt: dull, wrapped in cotton—and every time her uncle shook his head, the cotton pulled tighter. Pretty soon it’d be hard to breathe.
“Dad.” From Archer, who, from the state of his eyebrows (who knew he could arch them so high? they were like fleeing caterpillars!), wasn’t far from losing his temper. “C’mon.”
Another head shake. Another “No.”
This was nothing new, but she’d expected more. Like she’d expected Leah to instantly solve everything. Or at least come up with a new clue. Or a name. Or a plan. Or an insight, no pun intended.
Instead: The brick wall of Uncle Dennis’s will was as flexible as a concrete bench. She’d been slumping lower and lower as her uncle dug his feet in further and further, but now she forced herself to sit up straight. “Ridiculous. This is ridiculous. You’ve been stuck in here how long?”
“Feels like years.”
She made a great effort to not grab her own hair and yank. Or his. “It has been years!”
“Oh. Thought you meant stuck in this room.”
Leah made a sudden noise that sounded awfully like she was choking down a giggle. In response, Dennis cocked an eyebrow at her and said wryly, “Glad one of us is entertained.”
Detective Chambers cleared his throat. “Mr. Drake, in my professional opinion there are some real problems with what you said happened and what did happen, and likely to your benefit, not the opposite.”
“Don’t care. Go direct traffic.”
“Maaaaaybe don’t alienate the cop trying to help you?” Archer suggested.
“Ha! Tell that to her.” He jerked a thumb in Angela’s direction. “Before that other cop retired, your cousin called him a waste of space. To his face.”
“I did not!” Angela replied hotly. “I called him a complete waste of skin cells.” She paused, considered, and continued, “In hindsight, that wasn’t smart.”
Archer leaned over and whispered to Leah, “That’s pretty much our family motto.”
“It was accurate,” Angela admitted, “but not helpful.”
“And that’s on the family crest. I’ll show it to you later. You’ll be horrified.”
“It’s nice to have new experiences to look forward to,” Leah murmured back.
“Again: Don’t care. Didn’t care about the last one, don’t care about this one.” Dennis fixed his pale gaze on
(gulp)
Angela. “You hear but you don’t listen. Are you having déjà vu* right now? Because I am. And the reason is because we have this exact conversation pretty much every year. Nothing’s changed.”
“Except some things ha—” she began, but he cut her off with a curt gesture.
“This was always my mess. I bought it; it’s mine. I didn’t take a plea for a lesser charge. I didn’t take a plea to leave wiggle room if I got buyer’s remorse.” Her uncle’s voice was calm, but his eyes had narrowed and he’d lost what little color he had. Some people flushed red when they got mad; Drakes went pale. “And I wanted to do it. But this is what that costs: seeing me here a couple times a year.”
“For years, not even that! By your rule!” she cried. “This is the first time you’ve seen your son in years, you haven’t seen me for two, but you must know we’d come more often if you’d let—”
“But I won’t let,” Dennis continued with deadly calm. “You’re doing it again: You’re hearing, not listening. I made it clear after my plea, I made it clear each time you came, I made it clear two years ago, I made it clear last month. Nothing. Has. Changed. I’m in, for the duration. Move the fuck on.”
The appalled silence was broken by Detective Chambers’s flat, “I don’t know what they’ve got on you, but it must be considerable.”
“Visit’s over.” Dennis popped up from the table so quickly Angela would have missed it if she’d blinked. “Now then,” he continued with cool calm, “you guys probably know that IDOC gen pop gets six visits a month, four hours each. You guys are gonna push me over my limit, and for what? So you can keep not paying attention? So we’re done. Archer. Leah. Detective Chambers. Angela.”
He said my name last. Is that bad? I think that might be bad.
With that, he walked away and—as happened every time—he never slowed, or even glanced back. It always looked, to her, like he was marching back to war.
She put her face in her hands, then groaned into her fingers. “Waste of time. All of it. Son of a bitch. Sorry, Archer. Sorry, Leah.”
“You’ve got nothing to apologize for,” her cousin said. “You’re a goddamned hero as far as I’m concerned, putting yourself through this for all of us.”
Not really. I’m putting myself through this for all of me. But she could never say that. Would never.
And then, featherlight, she felt a touch between her shoulder blades, too brief to be a pat. She took the small comfort that had been offered, and cursed herself again for being such a shit to Archer when they were kids. This had to be as awful for him as it was for her, but he still took time to let her know with a nonverbal signal that he was there except he wasn’t, he was sitting too far away, beside Leah, it was impossible for him to have reached across so who the hell . . .
Oh.
Detective Chambers.
Oh.
Meaningless, she reminded herself. But she could still feel that tou
ch.
ELEVEN
“So that was a sizeable pile of nothing.”
“Like the family Easter basket of 2013,” Angela agreed. All jelly beans but no Peeps or Cadbury eggs. It had been a living nightmare.
They were trudging out to ICC’s parking lot, and a glum group they were. Angela could just make out Archer’s car; her spirits were so low, it looked miles away.
“I can’t believe that was the first time I’ve seen my dad in years and . . . and it was just a whole lot of blah.”
Angela winced. “At least now you see you haven’t missed anything. I know you were down about it for a long time.”
“Oh, the ‘I forbid you to visit me, cherished eldest child’ edict? Yeah, gotta admit, it was hard not to take that personally.”
Angela had to muffle a giggle. Trust Archer to find a way to make the horrible seem almost hilarious. “Thanks for coming with me, anyway.”
“Of course,” Leah replied. “We were glad you called.”
Archer coughed. “Um.”
“And we were glad to come.”
“Um— Ow!”
“Weren’t we?”
“Oh, yeah.” Archer rubbed the fleshy part of his arm where Leah had gently pinched the bejeezus out of him. “Super-duper glad. No question. Tons of gladness.”
“And while the visit didn’t have the desired effect,” Leah continued, “we did learn a few things.”
“Yeah: Pathological stubbornness is a Drake genetic defect.”
Angela snorted. “No, cuz, we already knew that.”
“This is just from my experience talking to people who are hiding horrible secrets,” Leah admitted, “but I think Dennis Drake is hiding a horrible secret.”
Archer nodded. “Oh, yeah. Did you see how fast he got out of there when Detective Chambers implied he was protecting somebody? That was it, that was the end of the interview, right then, just . . . whoosh! ‘G’bye, don’t call, don’t write.’”
From behind them, quietly: “He’s got guilty knowledge of someone.”
“Ack!” From Archer, who had stopped short and then turned. “Sorry, Detective. You were so quiet. I might’ve forgotten you were still there.”
“He gets that a lot,” Angela piped up. She’d seen it before. Jason Chambers was so unassuming, people engaged in conversation with him forgot he was there. Cops—trained observers—forgot he was there.
And that’s goddamned catnip to me. Nobody ever forgets a Drake is in the room. Though they probably want to. Why do I keep comparing him to catnip? I don’t have a cat. Or nip.
“He lied, for one thing,” Jason continued. He’d sped up a bit so he was now walking beside them. “And not for the first time. He claimed we were his last allotted visit for the month. But I checked when I logged us in . . . he had plenty of hours left for the month. He got rid of us simply to get rid of us. In fact, he still couldn’t get rid of you fast enough.”
“You, too,” Archer said, but Jason shook his head.
“That’s typical. That’s normal. Nobody wants to talk to cops at the best of times, never mind when they’re in prison. It looks bad. I’d expect him to want to keep away from me. But again, he wanted the whole group gone, especially you.” He pointed to Angela. “And you.” To Archer. “And that’s very curious. Often longtimers will . . . Their lack of contact with the outside world is lessened by . . .”
When he paused again, Angela spoke up. “You’re not going to offend us by pointing out something we all know. Usually longtimers can’t get enough family visits. According to the ones I’ve spoken to, anyway.” At Leah’s sideways glance and Chambers’s sigh, she shrugged. “What? Sometimes Uncle Dennis would change his mind and not see me. I’m there, I already made the trip, but I should instantly turn around and go home?”
“Yes, Angela. Those would be the actions of someone who isn’t obsessed.”
“Cram it, Archer. Anyway, sometimes I talk to the other prisoners, or their families. I ended up with a really good recipe for risotto that way . . .”
“Which is why,” Chambers put in, “you’re no longer allowed to clear Intake Processing unless ICC personnel and your uncle and someone working the case concur.”
They’d reached the car by now, and Angela looked down at her feet and scuffed a toe along the white line on the pavement. You almost accidentally let one measly arsonist out and suddenly you’re slapped with a lifetime label: SECURITY RISK. The world was a cruel and unfair place. “It was one time,” she muttered. “But anyway. That whole ‘only the first year of your sentence is hard time, after that you adjust’ myth is bullshit. You spend your first year, and a couple after, in deep, deep denial.”
“It’s all a mistake,” Chambers said.
“My lawyer’s going to fix this,” Leah added.
“The judge will realize he was too hard on me and will reduce my sentence any day now,” Archer finished.
“Right, we all know the drill. But Uncle Dennis . . . he never had that. He couldn’t indulge in the luxury of denial because he went out of his way to make damned sure he was going to be locked up. And he went further out of his way to make sure he stayed locked up. So you’d think he’d grab for any chance to see any of us. But he never did. Does, I mean.” Of course, that could simply mean her uncle wanted less chaos in his life, which was understandable. Or that he wasn’t especially fond of any of them, which was cold, but also understandable. “But,” she finished, “that still leaves us nowhere.”
“Maybe,” Jason said, nibbling on his lower lip. But instead of sounding discouraged, it almost sounded like he was . . . hopeful? Like he’d thought of something?
No, she was reading him wrong. Actually, she shouldn’t be reading him at all. If her uncle could have taken the gold medal for stubborn, she could have for grasping at straws. Any straws. Even dirty ones. Why am I thinking about dirty straws now? She gave herself a mental shake and looked up to say good-bye to the detective, but he was already climbing into his own car, a practical and forgettable Ford Focus. Gray, of course. She didn’t even get a last glimpse of his Van Gogh socks.
Archer had it right. All we’ve got is a sizeable pile of nothing.
She slumped into Archer’s back seat and got ready to endure the two-hour drive back home. She was too downhearted to even give Archer shit for his habit of driving slowly through stop signs. Which was pretty downhearted.
TWELVE
FEBRUARY 19, 1858
LAKE STEILACOOM, WASHINGTON
When I finish my jerky and porridge and coffee, I will kill an innocent man.
For the first time in a long time, the hangman had no appetite. He had no fear of blood or shit or puke, of death or the things men did to deserve death. He’d been hunting since he could hold a knife; he had attended many funerals. He could not remember a time when he did not understand death was a natural end for all God’s creatures, even when it was engineered as a tool of the state.
He had hanged a rapist when he was nineteen, then went home and devoured the last of the corn bread (his sister had gifted him with a twenty-pound sack of meal when he moved west, knowing his penchant for baking and eating it by the pan). Now in his early thirties, he had executed men for everything from stealing telegrams to patricide. His appetite had never flagged because punishment was a consequence of crime. Think of the chaos if it wasn’t! Besides, someone had to do it.
So, no. He did not fear death. He feared hell.
Chief Leschi was a native, a war chief, a raider, and an instigator. A man who took a bad deal, then blamed everyone but himself for taking that deal.
But he wasn’t a murderer. And most people knew that.
The chief kicked up a ruckus—you bet! He would tell anyone who stood still how the government tricked him, stole from him. He squawked often enough that Acting Governor Mason sicced the militia on him. Didn’t shut h
im up, but did result in two militia fellas turning up dead. This horrified every white person in a hundred miles, and was enough for Mason.
First trial: hung jury. Second trial: conviction and death sentence. Because the second time, the judge did not explain that killing combatants in war did not meet the law’s definition of murder. (The state occasionally learned from its mistakes.)
So, guilty despite a total lack of evidence. Guilty despite his fine lawyers. Guilty despite appealing to the Territorial Supreme Court. Guilty despite sympathetic coverage from the press. Guilty despite appeals to the governor. Guilty despite the local lawman’s stunt: Sheriff Williams let himself be arrested so he wouldn’t have to supervise the execution.
But the government couldn’t back down. Not after taking the trouble to frame Chief Leschi for the murders. Not after terrified locals had shrieked for the chief’s head for eleven months. So they maneuvered around the sheriff, moved the execution date, and then moved the locale to Lake Steilacoom.
And an hour from now, the chief would swing from gallows so hastily thrown together, the platform was still bleeding sap.
“Don’t envy you this one,” the sheriff had said, and it was true, today his duty was his burden. But the sheriff knew, and the prosecutors. The press knew. The locals knew. It was that lone fact that afforded him one comfort: This would not be his sin alone. They would all be complicit, and, one day, they would all answer to God for it.
Forgive us, Lord God, for we know exactly what we do.
He went out to do his duty.
THIRTEEN
Angela trudged into the house by the back kitchen door, to be met by Jack, who had just slid something wonderful (as was his wont) into the oven. He turned to face her and even after her exhausting afternoon, she had to grin at the black with white lettering on his apron: YOUR OPINION WASN’T IN THE RECIPE*.