seconds after his execution.
A handful of photographs featured Luther doing grisly things to people. In one photo, he stared truculently into the camera with dead, soulless eyes, fingernail marks running down each cheek.
In the third folder, “The Minutes,” Orson had chronicled six summers of killing on unlined loose-leaf paper. Flipping to the end, I skimmed the synopsis of our time together, until I reached the final paragraph:
Wyoming: June 2, 1996
He hasn’t been as easy or productive as Luther, but I see in him potential that transcends my other pupil. So I’m letting him go. Another week here and he’d lose his mind, when what I want is for his rage to ferment so he becomes drunk on the hate. He is my brother. He is me in so many ways. I love him, and the least I can do is introduce him to himself. Though I anticipate bringing him out here again, let me make a prediction: I won’t have to. He’ll come for me, and there won’t be anything I can do to prevent it. Andy’s smart and remarkably cruel when he needs to be. If he does come for me, I’ll give him the gift, because he’ll be ready. It’s funny—the selflessness he inspires in me.
35
THE moon came up over the Winds, lighting the snowpack like a field of blue diamonds. I simmered a can of pork and beans on top of the kerosene heater, and as they filled the cabin with their sweet, smoky aroma, I surveyed the desert for Orson.
We’d left the car at noon, and it was nearly 8:30. He couldn’t have stayed alive on the desert this long. The temperature hadn’t surpassed ten degrees all day, and tramping through the snow in deficient clothing would’ve resulted in his freezing to death by now. So he was either dead out there or he’d found refuge, the only viable shelters being the Lexus, the shed, or this cabin. I knew he wasn’t in the cabin. I’d checked the four closets, under the two beds, and I knew with certainty that I was the sole occupant. The shed glowed in the moonlight. I could see it through the window beside the front door. If I’d mustered the nerve, I might’ve walked outside and searched for tracks leading to the shed. But I didn’t have the temerity to go back out into the cold to look for him, especially since my legs were beginning to blister. Where are you? I thought. And what are you going to do?
When I finished my supper, I sat on the floor beside the heater and pulled a shoe box down from the couch. I’d found it under the defunct kitchen sink, and it contained all sorts of goodies, including Indiana, Oregon, California, and Louisiana state driver’s licenses. In addition to Orson Thomas and David Parker, he was also Roger Garrison, Brad Harping, Patrick Mulligan, and Vincent Carmichael. He had passports for every name except Roger Garrison, and flipping through them, I saw that he’d traveled extensively in Europe and South America.
The find that pleased me most, however, was the rubber-banded stack of hundred-dollar bills. I counted $52,800—plenty to disappear.
Closing the shoe box, I tossed it into the drawer of videotapes and folders that I’d carried into the living room. Having scoured the cabin, every incriminating piece of evidence was contained in that single drawer, and it gave me great comfort to have it in my possession now. I stood up and walked to the window beside the door. The bluffs soared above the desert a mile behind the shed, like colossal dunes of white sand. Orson, I thought. Just you now. The only thing left to destroy.
If he came for me, it would be at night, but exhaustion wasted my mind and body. I’ll sleep until midnight, I thought. I’m worthless now anyway. For all I knew, he might never come. He could be lying out there right now, statuesque under the snow.
I extinguished the heater and went into his bedroom. Wrapped in the fleece blanket, I curled up with the gun beside my pillow, and the handcuffs in my pocket. In the absence of wind and the humming generator, my breathing and my heartbeat produced the only perceptible sound.
I dreamed a memory: Orson and I are ten years old. The church service has just concluded at Third Creek Baptist Church, a chapel in the countryside north of Winston-Salem where Grandmom attends. Because it’s the last Sunday of the month, the congregation