33.
“You don’t remember the man at all?” Ruby asked Mitchell, behind the smeared glass with its small round hole. She had shown
up at dawn, and he had looked relieved to see her—relieved and almost shocked, as if he had wished her here.
The glass had fingerprints on it, as if men were pleading, and behind Mitchell, the chipped visiting room walls were carved
with names of men who had been here before. She was pretty sure she saw blood, too.
He shook his head. Even if he somehow got out, she knew that the path from here to a future was more than rocky. It was like
walking a tightrope across black space. That’s how one man she had exonerated explained it to her. One minute you are facing
death in a way few people do: You know the very minute you will die. The next you are out, breathing fresh air. Only you don’t
know if someone will come back and steal that air from you again. Every police car in your rearview window. Every knock on
the door. Every voice behind you in the street . . .
Three days now, she thought.
She studied the man in front of her. Mitchell had passed through the death contemplation and was now in the death panic. It
was a deep, existential panic. He looked unreal because he was facing the unreal.
“I don’t remember anything from that night,” Mitchell said, trying to collect himself and answer the question. “I never have.
I remember going inside the bar, and drinking. Talking to people.”
“Who?”
“I don’t know. It’s never made sense. It’s like I got amnesia.”
Ruby considered. Usually if someone had a blackout, their memory loss started with the drunkenness. But Mitchell seemed to be unable to remember what had happened before he got intoxicated.
Unless he was drunk by the time the man sat next to him. Which was certainly a possibility. It was also possible that the
trauma of being beaten had wiped his memory clean.
“What can you tell me about the bar?” she asked. Sometimes this helped.
“Let’s see. It was close to the factory.” He looked pained, like he had spent many a long night on his bunk considering this.
“Pinball machine or two. A jukebox, I think. Nice bartender, but I can’t tell you what he looked like. You know what I do
remember? A song that was playing. It was that song by Steve Winwood. ‘Higher Love.’”
She heard it, then, in her head. They both heard it.
“Who else was drinking?”
He frowned. “There might have been some old lady. Sorry. That’s all I got. It’s like the whole night was a blur. You ever
have an operation?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Well, when I was little, I had a belly button hernia. They had to put me under because I was little, right? I remember being
wheeled into the operating room and then, bam—nothing. That’s how that night was for me.”
She treaded very carefully. “I heard something about you. From a childhood friend of yours named Emma.”
Fear swept across his face, and he looked around as if someone might be listening.
“I won’t tell,” she said, reassuring him.
“I never did, not even while they were beating me. I figured it wouldn’t make a difference—besides to make my life a lot harder in a place like this.”
She nodded. “It’s one of the few virtues of death row. You aren’t in general population. But then, it depends on the prison.”
She waited for a moment. “It probably doesn’t matter, like you said. They never claimed it was a sex crime—though it was implied.
And you saying it now would just seem like last-minute bullshit.”
He exhaled, relieved. At least he had something private, a secret about him no one else knew, to take to his grave. He only
wished he’d had time to act on it. He never would get to experience adult love, he thought.
Ruby looked at her watch. It was barely past sunrise, but she had a lot to do today.
“Will you be here, for the execution?” he asked suddenly.
“Yes.”
“Terrence—that attorney—he said he’d come, too. Do you think her family will be here?”
“I don’t know.”
“I don’t like it that they still blame me. Like I will be gone, and years from now, they will think of my name and think I
killed her.” Tears had welled up in his eyes, and in a way she was happy to see them, because it meant he was still alive,
but she was pained, too, because it meant he was not ready to die. He would face a hard death.
“Sometimes people are exonerated after the fact,” she said, her heart aching.
“Like Emmett Till,” he said.
“And others.”
“They keep a running list in here,” he said. “But mostly of men who got out.” He halted. “There aren’t many.”
“No.” She never lied. She never held out false hope. “There aren’t.”
“You always hope something like that will happen,” he said. “But when you’re in a place like this, what really happens is
nothing. That’s how they kill you. By doing nothing.”
“I wish I could stay,” she said, softly. “But I still have some things to check out. I will work to the end.”
“Yeah. Well—if I don’t see you before, I’ll see you then,” he said.
She rose. Then she turned.
“There’s one more thing,” she said. “I keep thinking of cracked windows. You know, like when you roll down your car window
for air. Why would that be?”
He looked genuinely confused.
“I have no idea.”
“That’s the license plate number we need,” Ruby told Terrence, pointing at the picture of the brown Datsun.
They were at his desk, which was in the middle of a swarm of activity. The walls were pocked with law degrees, the desks were
communal, the industrial carpet was stained with spilled coffee. But his legal team was filled with energy. They were jumping
through all the hoops that came before every execution: the last-minute motions, the hopeless petitions, the never-successful
pleas.
One assistant was busy going through the piles of dog-eared discovery, which had been gone through a hundred times before.
Ruby saw the missing person report and what she had found, including her hastily written report on Alonzo Pettibone.
None of it mattered. She had worked cases where she had found outright exculpatory evidence—including DNA results that proved innocence—and still the man died.
By law, it wasn’t enough to find new evidence.
The defense had to prove that the prosecutors had known about the evidence, known it was exculpatory, and then withheld it deliberately.
This was called a Brady violation, and it was an almost impossible legal standard to meet.
But in truth, she thought, not even the law mattered. At least not as much as some people thought. When Ruby successfully
exonerated someone, it was usually because she found a motivation that overrode the risk—a greater reward to do good rather
than maintain the status quo. It was risky to grant clemency, or order a new trial, or give a pardon. In many parts of the
country, like this one, overturning a death penalty conviction could destroy a career. People needed to have a reason for
taking that kind of risk. Only in rare cases was it their conscience. More often it was because their back was to the wall,
or they had an ulterior motive. Ruby had developed her reputation in part because she knew the game, and understood how to
play it. She didn’t judge. She knew humanity well enough to know that even the powerful were scared. You had to make it worth
their while. You had to protect their interests.
Though it was early in the morning, Terrence was already in his court suit, his tie unknotted, his shirt carefully pressed.
He was readying for a last-minute trip to the state supreme court, to plead for a hearing on Mitchell’s behalf. He and Ruby
both knew how that would end. His throat was sore from arguing in court, and he sucked a lozenge as they tried to enlarge
the photograph of the brown Datsun on his screen.
Another assistant leaned over them, trying to help.
“This isn’t a cop show,” the assistant joked.
Ruby smiled. In the cop shows, the police hit a magic button and a fuzzy video from down the street could be read. But the
truth was, you can’t create what wasn’t there in the first place. If the original video didn’t capture the details, there
was no way to get them.
Which seemed to be the case here. They could make out the fir tree in the middle, but the letters would never be clear.
“The police were able to read it—if they found him,” she said.
“Are you sure about that?” Terrence asked.
Ruby sat back in her pulled-up chair, thinking. Around them, other assistants shuffled papers, and one held out case law to
Terrence, who accepted it. He shoved it in his battered briefcase.
“No. You’re right. Wes Rogers was the kind of man who had a record—and a parole officer,” she said. “They could have found
him that way. The bartender could have put them in touch with the cook. Mary Baldwin could have been located from her declined
credit card.”
“And the driver of the brown Datsun?”
He glanced at his watch and rose, knotting his tie, looking down at her with sympathy. He felt bad for pulling her in so last-minute,
but he admired her for trying so hard.
Ruby was staring at the grainy picture. She had thought before that the car was nondescript. But it wasn’t. There was a good-sized
dent on one bumper and what looked like bumper stickers, scraped off.
“Someone recognized this car,” she said.
“Who?”
“I’ve got an idea. Tell me more about your governor. What’s he like?”
Terrence gave one last look at his watch.
“What do you need to know, besides the fact that he’s never granted clemency? The courts are our only hope.”
It’s too late for that, Ruby thought, and he knows it.
“What does he care about?” she pressed.
He began to walk away, not out of rudeness, but necessity.
“His career, like all of them. Like all of us, I guess.”
Then he was gone, and the assistant turned to her, smiling in apology.
“Is the governor up for reelection?” Ruby asked the assistant.
“Next year,” the young man said.
“He secure?”
“Not really. Lots going on in the state—more crime, homelessness—and people are pointing fingers.”