Vox(67)

“I said he went to stay with a friend for a couple of days,” he tells me, then glances over at the kids and their forest of plastic pieces. “Sam, Leo, watch your sister. Your mom and I are going outside for a few minutes.”

“We are?” I say.

“We are. Here, Jean.” He hands me the bottle of beer he’s just popped the cap off of. “You might need this.”

Jean. Not “babe” or “hon,” but “Jean.” Patrick’s in business mode. Or he’s pissed off, which makes sense. In the past twenty-four hours, I’ve committed two crimes. Maybe more, if I throw in tampering with the mail.

“Come on.” He opens the back door and leads me as far from the house as possible. “Got anything you want to tell me?”

I swallow, not sure which is worse—stealing the project envelope and reading it, or spending half of the afternoon with Lorenzo. Or, I think, being two and a half months pregnant. Don’t forget that one, Jean.

He brushes a stray lock of hair from his forehead. “Look. I know you were in my office.”

“I wanted to FaceTime my father,” I lie.

“Nice try, babe, but no. I checked the call log on the kitchen phone.”

Well. If nothing else, we’re back to “babe.”

He sits down on one side of the bench, pulling me to join him. I back away. “I’m not going to bite, you know,” he says.

Automatically, my right hand moves up to my collar, and I tug the material closer around my neck. Just in case I’ve brought home any souvenirs from the crab shack. “Okay,” I say, and sit next to him.

“I saw a man executed once,” he says, staring straight ahead into the thicket of azaleas now past their late-spring flush of color. “It was last September. September first, actually. At two twenty-three in the afternoon.”

I don’t know what to say, so I ask the first question that pops into mind. “You remember the time? The exact time?”

“Yeah. I never saw a man—or woman—die before that. Hell, I never saw an animal die. Kinda sticks in your brain, you know? Anyway, he was from my office. One of the junior scientists, worked on liaisons between the administration and the other organizations, National Science Foundation, Centers for Disease Control, NIMH, stuff like that. He was always throwing out those acronyms, Jimbo was. His name was Jim Borden, but we all called him Jimbo. Good guy. Had a young wife and a girl about Sonia’s age, maybe a year younger. He liked to tell jokes. That’s what I remember about him. Isn’t that funny, Jean?”

It isn’t, but I say it is.

Patrick takes a swallow of beer and smacks his lips. “The other funny thing, Jimbo was always blinking. I mean, like the way you blink when you’ve got a stray eyelash or a fleck of dust. He would do it in threes. Blink, blink, blink. Not to everyone, but I’d catch him at it every so often. Ever see anyone do that?”

I nod.

“Yeah. So, Jimbo kept his head down most of the time, shuffling around papers and making copies. Every afternoon, around three, he’d leave the office saying he had a meeting with some guy across town. He’d pack up his briefcase and walk right out the door. I don’t know if anyone noticed, not at first, but when he came back, that briefcase seemed lighter. You could tell by watching the way he swung it. I never said anything about that. Not to anyone.”

My beer is warm now, and I don’t want it. I set the bottle down on the flagstone and turn back to Patrick. “But someone caught him.”

“Someone always catches them, babe. Always. Sooner or later, you fuck up.” There’s a pause, and then: “I don’t mean you. I mean ‘you,’ like, in the general sense.” He pats my hand, and all I notice is how clean his hands are. “He must have seen it coming. Jimbo, that is. Because the week before they shot him, he came to me. Asked if I was as pure as the rest of them.” Patrick laughs lightly, but there’s no humor in it. “Guess I don’t look like a bad guy, eh?”

“No. You don’t.” I’ve never thought of Patrick as a bad guy, only a keep-your-head-down-and-shut-up kind of guy. But I don’t say this. I know where the conversation is going.

“Jimbo left something for me, before they took him out of the office in handcuffs. Just a name and a number. Said it was my decision whether to make contact or not, and that he hoped I would but wouldn’t hold it against me if I stepped aside. That’s how I got in touch with Del. You saw what happened to Del this morning.”

“Yeah.”

“They’ll shoot him, you know. Like they shot Jim Borden. They put us in a bus, Jean. Well, two buses. Drove us up to Fort Meade, not saying a word about where we were headed. Some team-building exercise was the rumor. I can still see him. I see him every single day at two twenty-three in the afternoon. Jimbo there, cuffed to a post, staring out at all of us as Reverend Carl read the scripture. Glory, glory fucking hallelujah, we’ve got a fox in the henhouse, men, and there’s only one way to deal with a prying fox. Thomas—you remember Thomas—well, it was that son of a bitch who did the shooting. No trial, no jury of peers, no last request. They just fucking shot him, there in the rifle range of Fort Meade. I watched Jimbo go down, slump down the pole he was cuffed to, watched him bleed out life onto a patch of sand that was already stained red.”