A Blood Thing

by James Hankins

  He felt like the proverbial devil sitting on his brother’s shoulder, whispering dark things into his ear, urging him yet again to do bad things. But even though they may have been bad, under the circumstances, Henry knew they were the right things to do.

  Andrew looked thoughtful a moment; then, to Henry’s relief, he nodded. “You think we’ll ever see that evidence even if I do what he wants?” he asked.

  “We’ll get that evidence. I’ll find him. We just need to keep playing his game and minimizing the damage he does until I do.”

  “Are you remotely close to finding him?”

  “Not yet,” Henry admitted. “But I’ll find him. I swear I will.”

  “And you won’t let Lewis hurt anyone? Dave Junior’s guys are good?”

  “The best. All ex-cops, like I said.”

  Andrew took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled. “Okay. I’ll start the pardon process.”

  To Henry, in that brief moment, his brother’s voice suddenly sounded like that of an older man. He was surprised to realize that it sounded more than a little like their father’s voice. He saw tiny wrinkles creasing the corners of Andrew’s eyes. Had those been there a month ago?

  “It sucks that you have to do this,” Henry said, and he meant it. Andrew merely nodded in response, and Henry handed him a copy of the file he’d put together. “Everything I have on Lewis is in there.”

  Andrew nodded. “Henry . . .”

  “Yeah?”

  “I’m serious. We can’t let Lewis hurt anyone. I think I could probably live with almost anything else, but not that. If it comes to that, he needs to be stopped before he gets the chance.”

  “Even if it means that Tyler . . .” He trailed off.

  Andrew hesitated a moment. “Yeah, even if it means that.”

  Henry didn’t say anything. He wasn’t certain he agreed. He’d have to think about it. So he merely nodded.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  Immediately after the meeting with his legislative staff, Andrew returned to his office and asked Peter to reschedule his lunch with the insurance commissioner, pushing it to later in the week, and to set up a meeting this afternoon with Jim Garbose, his press secretary. Garbose could use a heads-up about his pardoning another prisoner, especially given Kyle Lewis’s record. There were going to be questions from the press and the public, lots of them. They’d need to be ready with their answers. The problem was, Andrew didn’t have good answers, either for them or for Garbose.

  “Would you also bring me the pardon request file again, please?” Andrew asked his assistant before heading into his office and closing the door behind him. As soon as he was alone, he dropped heavily into his chair, put his elbows on the desk, and rested his head in his hands. He was still in that position when, minutes later, a soft knock sounded on his door. He raised his head.

  “Come in.”

  Peter entered with the pardon file. Andrew thanked him and, as soon as the door was closed again, took the black cell phone from his pocket and dialed the now-familiar number.

  “Hi, Andy,” the blackmailer said in his monotone robot voice.

  “I’m going to pardon Lewis,” Andrew said. “It will take a few days.”

  “Terrific. You’re making the right decision for your family.”

  “First, I want everything you have—the video clearing Tyler, the recordings of Molly and Henry, and anything else.”

  “Don’t be silly. If I give all that to you now, I’ll have no leverage. No, you leave Lewis alone for two weeks, and then you’ll have it all. Pinky swear.”

  Andrew said nothing. He certainly hadn’t expected his demand to be met.

  “Governor,” the caller said, and Andrew could hear a suddenly more serious tone in that one word, even with the voice changer, “I honestly don’t give a damn about your family. I don’t care if Tyler rots in prison or goes back to whatever the hell he did before all of this. I don’t care if Henry stays a cop or if Molly becomes one. And I don’t care if you continue doing whatever the hell you’re doing in office. This isn’t about all of you. It’s about Kyle Lewis and me. So in two weeks, when everything is over and done with, I’ll give you everything I promised.”

  “When what is over and done with?”

  “Whatever it is that I want Lewis for.”

  Andrew drew in a long breath. “Is he going to hurt anyone?”

  “Lewis? What makes you think he’ll hurt anyone?”

  “History. His history.”

  “I promise you, Andy, if he hurts someone, it won’t be because I told him to. That’s not part of the plan. My hand to God.”

  Andrew had no idea if the man was lying, but because he had no other choice, he said, “And I get what you promised exactly two weeks after Lewis gets out?”

  “Two weeks.”

  Andrew closed the phone, making a mental note to discuss the two-week deadline with Henry. There was no way for him to know whether that time frame truly had meaning or whether it was intended to send them down a false avenue of investigation, but they would have to consider the possibility that something important would happen within two weeks, something for which the blackmailer needed Kyle Lewis.

  Andrew opened the pardon file but didn’t bother looking through it. Instead, as he had done not long ago for Torrance, he powered up his laptop and forged a letter to himself from Southern State Correctional Facility inmate Kyle Lewis, requesting a pardon. Referring now and then to the file Henry had given him on Lewis, he trumped up reasons for the request, trying to make the prisoner sound as remorseful as possible. He dated the letter eight months ago, then printed it. He studied Lewis’s signature from documents in the file Henry had given him, then forged it on the letter. Not terrible. It would survive most scrutiny.

  It was even easier the second time. It shouldn’t have been, but it was. And that was damn depressing.

  After deleting any trace of the document on his laptop, he took a breath, then called Peter into his office. This part wasn’t going to be any easier this time, though.

  “I have a favor to ask,” he said to his assistant.

  “Of course, sir. Anything.”

  Andrew paused a moment. “Remember when I asked you to backdate that letter recently? The one from the pardon file?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I need you to do it again.”

  Andrew held out the forged Lewis letter. A tiny part of him hoped Peter would resist. That he would question his boss. Maybe even boldly ask what the hell he thought he was doing. Instead, after a brief hesitation, Peter took the letter without a word.

  “You understand what I’m asking, Peter?”

  “I think so.”

  “I can count on you?”

  After the briefest of moments, Peter said, “Of course, sir. Always.”

  When he left, Andrew sat with his eyes closed until Peter returned with the letter, neatly backdated eight months. Andrew met his eyes squarely—which wasn’t easy—thanked him, then said, “Would you please get the warden of Southern State Correctional on the phone, if you can?”

  “Right away.”

  A moment later, Andrew was on the phone with Warden Robert Mannheim.

  “Hello, Governor Kane,” Mannheim said. “This is an honor. What can I do for you?”

  “You have a prisoner there named Kyle Lewis.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me.”

  “I’m told he hasn’t exactly been a model prisoner.”

  “That wouldn’t surprise me, either. Give me a second to look him up.”

  Andrew heard typing.

  “Got him. You heard right, Governor. He’s given us some trouble over the years. Every time he’s been a guest here, in fact.”

  “I see.”

  Andrew said nothing for a moment. This was the hard part, made even harder because he wasn’t used to doing anything remotely like this.

  “Warden, I’m thinking of pardoning Kyle Lewis.”

  Andrew was certa
in Mannheim suddenly had a dozen questions he wanted to ask, chief among them no doubt was, Why the hell would you do that? But he said only, “Okay.”

  “And, well, his record in prison would make that . . . more difficult for me than I’d like.”

  “I could certainly see that being the case.”

  “And I’m wondering . . .”

  He trailed off. A moment later, the warden picked up the thread. “You know, it’s possible that some of the things Lewis has been accused of while he’s been here have been a little blown out of proportion, Governor.”

  “It is?”

  “Sure. Inmates get into it, tattle on each other like schoolkids. And the guards? Sometimes they could stand to be a little more patient.”

  “Is that so?”

  “Absolutely, Governor. Someone like Lewis, who already had a bit of a reputation from earlier stays with us, probably never got the benefit of the doubt in any of these . . . incidents. It could be that we were a bit hard on him. Sadly, those things made it into his file.” The warden paused a moment. “But, see, the file could be corrected. I could handle it myself, actually. I couldn’t excuse away every single mishap in it, but I have no doubt that it could be revised to look . . . as it should.”

  “You could do that, Warden?”

  “I could. Wouldn’t take more than half an hour.”

  “Well, I’d appreciate that,” Andrew said. “When you’re finished with that, would you mind emailing me his records? I could use those.”

  “Of course.”

  Andrew recited his email address, then took a deep breath and added, “And you know, while I have you on the phone, I should mention that I’ve been thinking about increasing your facility’s operating budget. I bet you’ve got a few things that could stand to be upgraded. You’ll see it reflected in the next state budget.”

  For a terrible moment, he had a vision of Jackpot Barker sitting in this very office making countless calls just like this one.

  “That would be terrific, Governor. We could definitely use it.”

  “Okay then. Consider it done.”

  After an awkward pause, Mannheim said, “Well, I’ll get right on that thing. You’ll have it shortly. It’s been an honor speaking with you, Governor.”

  Andrew ended the call, wishing Mannheim hadn’t used the word honor, then spent the next few moments hoping he wouldn’t vomit into the trash can behind his desk. After that, as he’d done for Gabriel Torrance, he completed the paperwork and made the phone calls necessary to put Kyle Lewis’s pardon into motion. He faced resistance from a few officials—even more than when he had pardoned Torrance—who balked at the compressed time frame. The commissioner of the Department of Corrections was opposed to such extreme expedition of the process in general, and especially opposed to it in Kyle Lewis’s case. But Andrew leaned on each of them with the full weight of his authority—loathing himself for it—and, one by one, they collapsed beneath it and agreed to cooperate. The rest of the process was in their hands now, but he felt confident that he had successfully, and despicably, bullied them into meeting his deadline.

  With a little while before he had to meet with his press secretary, he sat back with Lewis’s mug shot in his hands and stared at the hard face. Cold, dark eyes stared back at him. The tattoo across his throat—No Regrets—told Andrew and the rest of the world all it needed to know about the man’s feelings on his life of crime.

  Andrew was certain he’d never get a No Regrets tattoo of his own.

  “Whatever you’re planning to do,” Andrew said softly, “please don’t hurt anyone.”

  He looked at the Waterford clock on his desk. Garbose would be arriving soon. Good thing, too, because they needed to get a handle quickly on what they planned to say about the pardon. Releasing Gabriel Torrance, a relatively low-level felon, without much in the way of justification was one thing, but pardoning Lewis, with his sordid personal history, would be another thing entirely. Andrew and Garbose had to get on the same page fast.

  Because word would get out soon.

  And so would Kyle Lewis.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Over the next several days, Henry pored over the same facts again and again, hoping to see something he’d overlooked the first few dozen times, hoping to discover what, if anything, Lewis and the blackmailer could be planning to do in the next two weeks. Andrew and he had put their heads together and come up with nothing—no important figures due to visit Vermont who could be the targets of kidnapping or assassination; no high-profile, expensive items passing through worth going to such lengths to steal; no reason Henry could see why there would be a two-week deadline. He’d even contacted a few confidential informants he’d used many years ago to see if they’d heard anything on the street, but that got him nowhere, too.

  At one point, he received a call from Detective Egan, who told him that the first round of DNA results were back—thanks to a rush job urged by the prosecution—and that, as expected, the blood on Tyler’s e-bike was indeed Sally Graham’s, as was the blood on Tyler’s sneakers, which the police had found behind some garden tools in the garage. It was too early still for results relating to the bloody blue jeans the Rutland police had found behind the nail salon in Rutland, but the prosecution had little doubt that the pants were Tyler’s and the blood was Sally Graham’s.

  From time to time, Henry checked in with his siblings. Andy was spending the five days before the blackmailer’s deadline doing his job—taking meetings, reviewing draft legislation, making public appearances—and dodging Angela Baskin’s questions about his pardoning of Gabriel Torrance, questions which, after several days, seemed to be petering out just in time for a new storm of controversy to blow into town, which Andy knew would happen as soon as news of his impending pardon of Kyle Lewis came to light. If Henry knew his brother, and he did, Andy was knee-deep in guilt and self-loathing. Henry understood what he was going through better than Andy realized, but it wouldn’t do either of them much good to talk about it, so by unspoken agreement, they didn’t.

  For her part, Molly said she was passing the time going to class, studying, and exercising. Though she and Tyler had always been close, she was also spending a little more time with him lately than she’d done in the months before his arrest. She admitted that she couldn’t keep from wondering how much time they would have left to just sit and talk or watch television together or eat sandwiches at the same table. It was entirely possible, she said, that in the near future, their only contact would be during prison visiting hours. Henry did his best to reassure her with words that he only half believed.

  Tyler hadn’t felt like talking on the phone when Henry called, but according to Molly, he was spending his time as expected—watching TV and playing video games—though at her urging he’d spent a little while with a middle-grade novel about wizards and dragons. She’d suspected the book was slightly beyond his reading level and he was turning the pages without actually reading them, but he would never have admitted that, and she hadn’t asked him.

  Henry knew that, with the exception of Tyler, they were all anxiously awaiting Kyle Lewis’s release.

  It occurred a little before 5:00 p.m. on the fifth day. Lewis walked out of Southern State Correctional Facility a free man. Because he had been given a full pardon, he had no need to report to a halfway house or check in with a parole officer going forward. He was unconditionally free, a point Angela Baskin drove home during her story on the news that evening.

  A brief lead-in was followed by footage of Lewis exiting the prison with a plastic bag under one arm. Rather than a state-issued suit, he wore torn jeans and a T-shirt from which the sleeves had been cut—probably the same clothes he’d been wearing upon his arrest more than seven years before. The camera moved toward him quickly, and he gave it a malignant glare as he kept walking.

  “Mr. Lewis,” came Baskin’s voice from off-camera, “how does it feel to be a free man?”

  “Kind of a dumb question,” Lewi
s responded.

  Undeterred, Baskin asked, “Were you surprised that Governor Kane granted your pardon request?”

  Lewis’s black eyes developed a slight twinkle, and he smirked as he said, “Can’t tell you how surprised I was.”

  Baskin and her camera crew moved smoothly along with him. “Do you have any idea why he granted it?” she asked.

  He slowed his steps for a moment, apparently thinking. “Didn’t want to see someone in prison who doesn’t deserve to be there, I guess.”

  “What do you mean by that?” she called as Lewis resumed walking across the parking lot, his eyes appearing to be searching for something or someone. “Are you saying you didn’t deserve to be in prison?”

  “That’s all I got to say,” Lewis said. “Now stay the hell away from me.”

  With that, he approached a dark-blue sedan. Not a silver Camry, like the car that had picked up Gabriel Torrance. The passenger window rolled down, and Lewis appeared to say something to the driver, who handed him a small black duffel bag through the open window. As Angela Baskin stepped into the foreground of the frame again, microphone in hand, in the background, Lewis slipped into the rear seat and pulled the door shut behind him. As the car pulled away, he smiled and raised a middle finger to the camera.

  “And there goes the second former prisoner pardoned by Governor Kane this month,” Baskin said, “after he had granted no pardons during his first three years in office. Here’s what the governor had to say about that when I caught up with him earlier today.”

  The scene cut to footage of Andrew Kane as he walked out of the Pavilion surrounded by aides and security personnel. Baskin’s voice called from outside the frame. “Governor Kane, can you tell us why you’re pardoning Kyle Lewis, despite his long record of violent criminal behavior?”

  Andrew kept walking, and the camera followed. To Henry, watching the story on television, his brother looked a little too much like the guilty subject of an exposé who had just been ambushed by the investigative reporter who broke the story: the upstanding landlord who turned out to be little more than a slumlord, or the respected investment advisor who had swindled dozens of retirees out of their life savings.