Death Row novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: Two Taps

Leah and Dorrie compare their husbands and find the same habits, the same lost photographs and the same fire. Evan sets Dorrie's wedding photo next to the visitor's ID and finds the license is eight months younger than the funeral.

"Say everything about him," Dorrie whispered. "Don't think about it first."

I pressed my mouth close to the vent grate.

"Tall. Right-handed. A contractor. He kept a tin of cinnamon mints in his left coat pocket and he never smoked."

"Go on."

"He didn't like being photographed. At our wedding he stood behind the photographer and fixed the lights."

On the other side of the wall, Dorrie made a small sound.

"Neil carried mints," she said. "Cinnamon. A red tin, with a gold lid."

My hands went cold on the grate.

"Dorrie, mine was red with a gold lid."

"He told me the family photos were lost when a basement flooded."

"A flood," I said. "He said a flood took mine."

Neither of us spoke.

Down the tier, an officer's keys rang against a gate and then went quiet.

"My husband died in a truck fire four years ago," Dorrie said. "They found him with his ring on. The state says I set it."

"Mine died in a lake house fire. They found him with his ring on too."

"Leah."

"I know."

"Say it was somebody you saw once, and it only looked like him."

"I lived with him for three years," I said. "I know his face."

She breathed in and out through the vent for a while.

Then she said, "I need to see the man."

"I can't get you to the lobby."

"Then somebody has to bring his face to me."

I lay on the bunk and watched the light under the door.

I was not scared of the date anymore.

I was scared of being right.

My lawyer came at nine the next morning.

Evan Teller is thirty-six and has the tired, honest look of a man who has lost this kind of client before.

His glasses are held together at one hinge.

He took the chair across the glass and opened his folder, and I put my palm flat on the counter between us.

"Evan, don't tell me about the board. Please listen."

He put his pen down.

I told him everything, in order, in a low voice.

The man at the counter, the taps, the mints, the sister at his side.

I told him about Dorrie, and the red tin with the gold lid.

When I finished he stayed quiet long enough that I thought he had stopped believing me.

"Leah, I've been your lawyer for five months," he said. "You've never raised your voice once. Yesterday you went at a pane of glass with both hands."

"Yes."

"Why now?"

"Because for six years calm didn't save me."

He rubbed his eyes under the glasses.

"I can't walk into the governor's office and say your dead husband is a witness."

"I'm not asking you to. I'm asking you to look at one photograph."

"Whose?"

"Dorrie Holst's. She has a wedding picture of her husband. I want you to put it next to the identification the lobby has for Dean Fell."

"Dean Fell's identification is on the witness list," he said slowly. "I have a copy in the car."

"Then get it."

He looked at me for a moment.

Then he pushed his chair back and went to find an officer.

It took him until after lunch.

They let him see Dorrie in the booth next to mine, with a wall between us that has never once been a wall to either of us.

I couldn't see her.

I could hear every word through the vent.

"Mr. Teller, I only have this one," Dorrie said. "They let me keep it because it's in a cardboard frame."

A little rattle of paper came through the slot.

"That's us at the county clerk," she said. "That's him in the blue shirt. That was a Friday."

Evan didn't answer.

I heard a folder snap open on the counter.

I heard a long breath, and a chair scrape, and him sitting back down.

I put my forehead against the cold steel of the door.

"Say it, Evan."

"The beard is different," he said. His voice sounded dry. "Glasses. Heavier. And the hair."

"Is it the same man?"

"Leah, I'm a lawyer. I'm supposed to say it's a resemblance."

"You've held two pictures in your hands."

"Same jaw," he said. "Same ears, same scar through the left eyebrow. It's the same man."

Dorrie was crying very quietly on the other side of the wall.

"There's something else," Evan said.

Paper moved again.

"Dean Fell's license was renewed three weeks ago. The renewal prints the date it was first issued."

"And?"

"Eight months after the funeral."

I held the door frame with both hands.

"So Dean Fell didn't exist when they buried my husband," I said. "Somebody made him afterward."

Evan closed the folder.

His voice was no longer tired.

"Leah, I'm going to try something I should have tried five months ago."

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