The Passage

“He drowns her?”

“Bingo. Right there, right in front of the little girl. A neighbor heard it all and called the cops, so when they get there, he’s still sitting on the edge of the pool, the lady floating in it.” He shook his head. “Not a pretty picture.”

Sometimes it was troubling to Wolgast, how much energy Doyle put into these stories. “Any chance it was an accident?”

“As it happens, the victim was on the varsity swim team at SMU. Still did fifty laps every morning. The prosecution made a lot of hay with that little detail. That and the fact that Carter pretty much admitted to killing her.”

“What did he say when they arrested him?”

Doyle shrugged. “He only wanted her to stop screaming. Then he asked for a glass of iced tea.”

Wolgast shook his head. The stories were always bad, but it was the little details that got to him. A glass of iced tea. Sweet Jesus. “How old did you say he was?”

Doyle flipped back a couple of pages. “I didn’t. Thirty-two. Twenty-eight at the time he went into custody. And here’s the thing. No relatives at all. Last time anybody came to see him in Polunsky was the victim’s husband, a little over two years ago. His lawyer left the state, too, after the appeal was turned down. Carter’s been reassigned to somebody else in the Harris County PD office, but they haven’t even opened the paperwork. Ipso facto, nobody’s watching the store. Anthony Carter goes to the needle on June second for murder one with depraved indifference, and not one soul on earth is paying attention. The guy’s a ghost already.”

The drive to Livingston took ninety minutes, the last fifteen minutes on a farm-to-market road that carried them through the intermittent shade of piney woods and open fields of prairie grass spangled with blue-bo

Of course, it had turned out to be more than paperwork and babysitting, a lot more, and he wondered if Doyle had somehow known this.

At Polunsky they were ID’d and asked to check their weapons, then went to the warden’s office. Polunsky was a grim place, but they all were. While they waited, Wolgast used his handheld to check for evening flights out of Houston-there was one at 8:30, so if they hustled they could make it. Doyle said nothing, just flipped through a copy of Sports Illustrated, like he was waiting at the dentist. It was just after one when the secretary led them in.

The warden was a black man, about fifty, with salt-and-pepper hair and the chest of a weight lifter compressed under his suit vest. He neither rose nor offered to shake their hands as they entered. Wolgast gave him the documents to look over.

He finished reading and looked up. “Agent, this is the goddamnedest thing I’ve ever seen. What in the hell would you want Anthony Carter for?”

“I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. We’re just here to make the transfer.”

The warden put the papers aside and folded his hands on his desk. “I see. And what if I said no?”

“Then I would give you a number to call, and the person on the other end of the line would do his best to explain that this is a matter of national security.”

“A number.”

“That’s correct.”

The warden sighed irritably, spun in his chair, and gestured out the wide windows behind him. “Gentlemen, do you know what that is out there?”

“I’m not following you.”

He turned to face them again. He didn’t seem angry, Wolgast thought. Just a man accustomed to having his way. “It’s Texas. Two hundred sixty seven thousand square miles of Texas, to be precise. And the last time I checked, Agent, that’s who I work for. Not for anybody in Washington, or Langley, or whoever the hell is on the other end of that number. Anthony Carter is an inmate in my care, and I’m charged by the citizens of this state to carry out his sentence. Short of a phone call from the governor, I’m going to do exactly that.”

Goddamn Texas, Wolgast thought. This was going to take all day. “That can be arranged, Warden.”

He held up the papers for Wolgast to take. “Well then, Agent. You better arrange it.”

At the visitors’ entrance they collected their weapons and returned to the car. Wolgast got on the phone to Denver, which patched him through to Colonel Sykes on an encrypted line. Wolgast told him what had happened; Sykes was irritated but said he’d make the arrangements. A day at the most, he said. Just hang around and wait for the call, then get Anthony Carter to sign the papers.

“Just so you know, there may be a change in protocol coming your way,” Sykes told him.

“What sort of change?”

Sykes hesitated. “I’ll let you know. Just get Carter to sign.”

They drove to Huntsville and checked into a motel. The warden’s stonewalling was nothing new-it had happened before. The delay was aggravating, but that was all it was. A few days from now, a week at most, Carter would be in the system, and all evidence that he’d ever existed would be wiped from the face of the earth. Even the warden would swear he’d never heard of the guy. Somebody would have to talk to the deceased’s husband, of course, the River Oaks lawyer with the two little girls he now had to raise himself, but that wasn’t Wolgast’s job. There would be a death certificate involved, and probably a story about a heart attack and a quick cremation, and how justice had, in the end, been served. It didn’t matter; the job would get done.