Part 6
Mara did not touch the disk.
“Tell me what happened after my grandmother took your wrist.”
Garrison stared at the object between them. Without the black glove, his right hand looked less like part of a living man than wood pulled from a burned house. The pale broken-wheel mark remained visible beneath the discoloration.
“She asked me to stop them,” he said.
“Did you?”
“No.”
The answer was so direct that Mara almost mistrusted it.
Garrison rubbed his thumb against the copper disk, though the damaged finger barely moved. “Raymond Voss said the trailers were empty. He said the families had left after the deputies served the order. We were supposed to destroy abandoned structures so they couldn’t be reoccupied.”
“You saw us.”
“Yes.”
“And you still lit the flare.”
His jaw tightened. “I had already taken his money.”
“How much was my grandmother’s life worth?”
“Three thousand dollars.”
The number settled between them.
Mara had imagined many answers over the years: a promotion, a threat, a command from someone powerful. Three thousand dollars was worse because it was ordinary. A used truck. A few months’ rent. An amount a man could spend and forget if his own body had not refused to let him.
“Rose grabbed me after the first trailer caught,” Garrison said. “She pressed that disk into my palm. I thought it was hot from the fire. By midnight, my hand had blistered around it. The doctors cut the glove off, but there was no burn pattern they understood.”
“You told them an accident happened.”
“I told everyone an accident happened.”
“And you built a career on that report.”
He looked toward the window. “I transferred to corrections two years later. I believed distance would help.”
“Did it?”
“You’ve seen my hand.”
Mara picked up her sealed property pouch. The plastic crackled beneath her fingers.
“Open it,” Garrison said.
“You do it.”
He tried with his right hand. The fingers would not close around the edge. After several attempts, he used his left and tore the seal.
Mara removed the cloth pouch and tied it around her neck. Warmth spread slowly across her chest, not magical comfort so much as the return of something taken without permission.
She opened it and tipped its contents onto the desk: three copper disks, a piece of smoky glass, dried rosemary, and a length of red thread. When she placed Garrison’s blackened disk beside the others, the broken patterns formed a single wheel.
The room smelled briefly of wet earth.
Garrison inhaled. “Can you stop the pain?”
“Yes.”
His eyes closed.
“But I won’t do it for promises made behind a locked door.”
He opened them again. “What do you want?”
“The truth entered into the record.”
“You don’t understand what that would do.”
“It would describe what you did.”
“It would end my career.”
“My grandmother’s life ended.”
He stood and moved toward the window, keeping his damaged hand close to his body. “The criminal statute may have expired. The county investigation is closed. Raymond Voss is dead.”
“So you think truth matters only when somebody can still be punished?”
“I’m saying a confession won’t bring her back.”
“No. It will stop making her carry your innocence.”
He turned.
Mara gathered the four disks but did not return the blackened one to him.
“You will give a sworn statement to an independent investigator. You will preserve the footage of Kline planting contraband. You will authorize confidential calls with my attorney and the Kentucky Innocence Project. You will request my transfer closer to home while my petition is reviewed.”
“I can arrange that.”
“You will also end cross-gender strip searches except in emergencies, restore water and medical access, and stop using housing assignments to have prisoners punish one another.”
“You’re asking me to rewrite institutional policy.”
“I’m asking you to follow the policy already printed in your manuals.”
His mouth tightened.
“And my conviction?” he asked. “You expect me to overturn a Kentucky judgment from West Virginia?”
“No. I expect you to stop blocking the people who can.”
“I never blocked your appeal.”
“Your legal-mail log shows two letters from my attorney entered Red Creek. I received neither.”
Garrison looked toward the closed office door.
“Kline?” he asked.
“You are the warden. His conduct lives under your name.”
He sat again. The pain in his hand had returned; Mara could see it in the tremor along his forearm.
“What does the ritual require?”
“Accountability.”
“I mean objects. Words. Whatever your grandmother taught you.”
Mara studied him. “Water from Millstone Hollow. The four pieces of the wheel. Your confession. A witness who has nothing to gain by lying for you.”
“And then?”
“I take your hand.”
“That’s all?”
“No. That’s merely the part you’re capable of imagining.”
Garrison’s desk phone rang. He stared at it without answering.
It rang again.
He lifted the receiver with his left hand. “Garrison.”
Mara watched his face change.
“Yes,” he said. “She’s here.”
A pause.
“No. The unit is under control.”
Another pause. His gaze settled on Mara.
“I understand.”
He ended the call.
“Who was that?”
“Nolan Voss.”
The name tightened something beneath Mara’s ribs.
“Why is he calling a prison warden in another state?”
Garrison did not answer.
Mara gathered the disks and rose. “This meeting is over.”
“Sit down.”
“No.”
“He contacted me before your transfer.”
She stopped.
Garrison opened a drawer and removed a small digital recorder. “After I saw your name on the interstate-placement notice, I called him. I wanted to know whether you were related to Rose.”
“You knew I was coming.”
“Forty-eight hours before you arrived.”
“And Kline?”
“I told him to keep you separated until I could speak with you.”
“You told him I was dangerous.”
“I told him you might manipulate the unit.”
“You gave him permission to frighten me.”
Garrison looked away.
Mara’s voice hardened. “Play the recording.”
He hesitated, then pressed a button.
Static filled the office. Nolan Voss’s voice emerged, smooth and faintly amused.
“You remember what the Reeds are like. They turn everything into a grievance. Keep Mara away from phones and lawyers, and make sure she doesn’t leave that place with a voice.”
The recording ended.
Garrison placed the device on the desk.
Mara looked at the man who had held the flare eighteen years earlier and the evidence now lying beneath his left hand. The fire that killed Rose had never gone out. It had only learned to wear a suit…
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