like Charlie Silver, and maybe you were right. Now you are wondering what would have happened if you had. If I had chosen Charlie Baker instead of Charlie Silver? Would you have saved me, or would you be laying in three graves in a mountain churchyard, wishing you had never seen my face?
Chapter Two
I GUESS HE’S ALL RIGHT.” Martha Ayers was on duty break, eating a quick supper at the diner with Deputy Joe LeDonne, who was scheduled to work until eleven. “He’s not as bony-looking as he was, and his color’s good. He’s going to start raring to come back to work any day now.”
“Let him,” said LeDonne. “It would probably help him take his mind off himself. Besides, we could use the help.”
“His mind isn’t on himself, Joe. Spencer is brooding about this upcoming execution. They’ve asked him to be one of the witnesses—sheriff of the prisoner’s home county—and he says he has to go, but you can tell that he’s just making himself sick about it.” She looked with disfavor at the lump of mashed potatoes and the congealing brown gravy that seeped down toward the green beans and meat loaf. She pushed the plate away with a sigh. I feel as tired as Joe looks,she thought.
“Fate Harkryder,” LeDonne was saying. “I read about the scheduled execution in the Chronicle. Paper said he was local. I didn’t realize that Spencer knew him, though. He’s been on the row a long time.”
“Spencer was Nelse Miller’s deputy, remember? He’s the one who arrested this guy. I think he had all but forgotten about him—and now this. It couldn’t come at a worse time. Spencer’s just out of the hospital, trying to recover from a wound that almost killed him, and now the state comes up with this business. He’ll worry himself sick over it. You know how he is.” She reached for her coffee cup, saw that it was empty, and set it down again. Without a word, LeDonne handed her his. Martha smiled her thanks. “It’s just bad luck, is all,” she said, sighing. “Out of all the men Tennessee has got on death row, they have to pick this guy to go first.”
“It didn’t surprise me much that it’d be him, though,” said LeDonne.
“Why not? There are about a hundred men on death row. It could have been any of them.”
“ Anyof them?” There was no amusement in Joe LeDonne’s smile. “Hardly that. This will be Tennessee’s first execution in more than thirty years. They’re going to choose that first prisoner very carefully—very politically. It’s not going to be a woman, even if there’s one eligible to be executed. Ladies firstdoes not apply to the electric chair. It can’t be any of the new guys, because the public will say it’s unfair to execute one of them ahead of fellows who have been there for decades. And it’s not going to be a black man, because the death penalty is a sticky enough issue as it is, without leaving yourself open for a charge of racism. You don’t want to enrage any special-interest groups if you can help it. So you check the list of condemned prisoners and you find a poor white mountain boy with no money and no political influence, and there’s your pigeon. Nobody’s going to kick up a fuss when he’s put to death. Nobody cares what happens to poor Southern whites. Nobody gets fired or takes a beating in the press for using words like redneckand hillbilly. When you think about it, Fate Harkryder was the perfect choice for the electric chair. A nobody without a cause.”
“You won’t make me feel sorry for him,” said Martha. “No matter why they picked him to go first, he killed somebody, and the jury said to execute him. Some people might say that Fate Harkryder got twenty more years of life than he was entitled to.”
LeDonne nodded. “You’ll get no argument from me. I was just pointing out the logic of it to you.”
“All right then.” The silence stretched on longer than Martha could stand it, so she said, “Spencer asked me to bring him some books on Frankie Silver.”
“Who?”
Martha shrugged. “It’s an old murder case. North Carolina. It must be unsolved. Anyhow, he’s looking into it.”
“Oh. He must be bored if he’s looking for crimes to investigate.” He paused for a moment before he said, “Did you tell him about the current investigation?”
“No,” said Martha. “He’s fine where he is. And I’ve been keeping