Under the Knife(81)

Finney gripped the railing with both hands. “It’s very detailed, you know. There’s even a section covering what was to happen if someone caused the death of a pregnant woman. Do you know what was to happen then? In that particular case?”

“Something that involved death, I would imagine.”

“Yes. Death.” Finney twisted his hands back and forth on the railing, like he was gunning the accelerator of a motorcycle.

“Boss. We don’t live by Hammurabi’s Code.”

“Don’t we, though? Don’t we exist in a criminal-justice system whereby we exact punishments in proportion to the crime? What about the death penalty? Isn’t that a form of lex talionis? Eye for an eye? She killed my wife and unborn child, Sebastian.”

“Not intentionally.”

“No. Not intentionally. But through her negligence. Criminal negligence, since she’d been drinking that night. The system allowed her to walk away from it. But Jenny did not walk away from it.” He felt the veins along the back of his hands pop into sharp relief as he clutched the railing. “I’m a man of my conviction, Sebastian. And I abide by the spirit of Hammurabi’s Code.”

Finney now made a decision. He let go of the railing and pulled his leather notebook from his pocket.

Sebastian looked at it curiously. “What’s that?”

Finney had never before shown his notebook to anyone. Not even Jenny. Had never told her of its existence; had sealed it in his safe-deposit box, shortly after their engagement.

For good, he’d thought at the time. He’d almost destroyed it, in fact: went so far as to turn on the propane-fueled fireplace in his living room one morning for that very purpose. Twice that morning he’d thrust the book over the flames, his hand trembling; and twice he’d changed his mind. In the end, he’d decided to keep it as a reminder of his past life. Of his past self. Of what he had been before Jenny.

Now it was a reminder of what he’d become since her death.

He opened it to the first page, yellowed with time, which was filled with legible, but immature, handwriting. Not the script of an adult but of an older child. At the top of the page was written a date from thirty years ago. Underneath it was a large, hand-sketched box with a big black X drawn through its center, beside which was written a single name: Tucker Steele. Below the box and name were smaller, denser sentences that resembled a cooking recipe or assembly instructions for a home appliance.

“What’s this?” Sebastian asked, staring at the name, and the crossed box sitting next to it.

“Tucker Steele was a boy in my eighth-grade class. Immensely popular. Good-looking. Athletic. You’re familiar with the type, I’m sure. I was, needless to say, none of those things.”

Finney touched Tucker’s name with his finger. “Tucker enjoyed tormenting boys like me. He and his popular friends. Adolescents can be unimaginably cruel, and the school administrators could not have cared less. This was a long time ago, Sebastian, when prevention of bullying among schoolchildren was not all the rage, as it is now.”

He ran his finger along the lettering of Tucker’s name, beginning with the e at the end of Steele, from right to left, toward the X.

“We had cheap, plastic-backed desk chairs in our classrooms. Uncomfortable. The plastic backs were thin, and it was easy to stick sharp objects, like tacks, all the way through them. The sharpened point would stick up from the back of the chair, waiting for an unwary occupant to lean back into it.”

Finney’s finger reached the X. “I sat in front of Tucker in English. Assigned seating. I was in the front row. The entire class could see me. I was late to class that day. Rushed. Distracted. Tucker must have primed the rest of the class, let them in on the joke, before I got there.”

Finney’s finger lingered over the X. “When I sat down, I didn’t simply lean back in the chair and onto the tack. No. I was in a hurry, and I was distracted, so I slid into the chair, with my back flush against the plastic.”

He tapped his finger on the X, as if keeping time with a beat. “The tack caught on the bottom of my shirt and the skin of my back, ripping both open. It gouged a big gash all the way up, in both my shirt and my skin, from the small of my back to just below my shoulder. Tucker and his friends—the whole class—thought it was hilarious. Erupted into laughter. The teacher yelled at me for the disruption and, when it became apparent I was bleeding all over myself and the chair, scolded me for my carelessness and ordered me to the nurse’s office.”

He glanced at Sebastian. “It was, for me, a crowning indignation in a series of them at the hands of Tucker and his friends. We’d just read about Hammurabi’s Code in history. The principle seemed apropos. I considered its practical applications, and I formulated an appropriate response to Tucker based on lex talionis. It wasn’t challenging.” He shrugged. “There was a dog. I poisoned it.”

It took a moment for this to sink in with Sebastian. “You poisoned his dog? When you were in eighth grade?”

“No. Not Tucker’s dog. His friend’s dog. One of his friends who’d laughed at me in English. Another popular boy named Ryan. The specifics aren’t important. It was rat poison, and I made it look like Tucker had poisoned Ryan’s dog as some kind of practical joke in response to a slight from Ryan. And quietly—very quietly—I made sure the entire school knew it. No one suspected my involvement, or doubted Tucker was responsible. That’s how well I set things in motion, Sebastian.”