Once Craved. Blake Pierce

face.

      Suddenly, the curtains closed over the viewing room windows. Riley understood that this was to conceal the phase of the execution where something was most likely to go wrong – say, the team might have trouble finding a suitable vein. Still, she found it peculiar. The people in both viewing rooms were about to watch Caldwell die, but they were not allowed to witness the mundane insertion of the needles. The curtains swayed a little, apparently brushed by one of the team members moving around on the other side.

      When the curtains opened again, the IV lines were in place, running from the prisoner’s arms through holes in the blue plastic curtains. Some members of the execution team had retreated behind those curtains, where they would administer the lethal drugs.

      One man held the red telephone receiver, ready to receive a call that would surely never come. Another spoke to Caldwell, his words a barely audible crackle over the poor sound system. He was asking Caldwell whether he had any last words.

      By contrast, Caldwell’s response came through with startling clarity.

      “Is Agent Paige here?” he asked.

      His words gave Riley a jolt.

      The official didn’t reply. It wasn’t a question that Caldwell had any right to have answered.

      After a tense silence, Caldwell spoke again.

      “Tell Agent Paige that I wish my art could have done justice to her.”

      Although Riley couldn’t see his face clearly, she thought she heard him chuckle.

      “That’s all,” he said. “I’m ready.”

      Riley was flooded by rage, horror, and confusion. This was the last thing she had expected. Derrick Caldwell had chosen to make his last living moments all about her. And sitting here behind this unbreakable shield of glass, she was helpless to do anything about it.

      She had brought him to justice, but in the end, he had achieved a weird, sick kind of revenge.

      She felt Gail’s small hand gripping her own.

      Good God, Riley thought. She’s comforting me.

      Riley fought down a wave of nausea.

      Caldwell said one more thing.

      “Will I feel it when it begins?”

      Again, he received no reply. Riley could see fluid moving through the transparent IV tubes. Caldwell took several deep breaths and appeared to fall asleep. His left foot twitched a couple of times, then fell still.

      After a moment, one of the guards pinched both feet and got no reaction. It seemed a peculiar sort of gesture. But Riley realized that the guard was checking to make sure the sedative was working and that Caldwell was fully unconscious.

      The guard called out something inaudible to the people behind the curtain. Riley saw a renewed flow of fluid through the IV tubes. She knew that a second drug was in the process of stopping his lungs. In a little while, a third drug would stop his heart.

      As Caldwell’s breathing slowed, Riley found herself thinking about what she was watching. How was this different from the times she had used lethal force herself? In the line of duty, she had killed several killers.

      But this was not like any of those other deaths. By comparison, it was bizarrely controlled, clean, clinical, immaculate. It seemed inexplicably wrong. Irrationally, Riley found herself thinking …

      I shouldn’t have let it come to this.

      She knew she was wrong, that she had carried out Caldwell’s apprehension professionally and by the book. But even so she thought …

      I should have killed him myself.

      Gail held Riley’s hand steadily for ten long minutes. Finally, the official beside Caldwell said something that Riley couldn’t hear.

      The warden stepped out from behind the curtain and spoke in a clear enough voice to be understood by all the witnesses.

      “The sentence was successfully carried out at 9:07 a.m.”

      Then the curtains closed across the window again. The witnesses had seen all that they were meant to see. Guards came into the room and urged everybody to leave as quickly as possible.

      As the group spilled out into the hallway, Gail took hold of Riley’s hand again.

      “I’m sorry he said what he said,” Gail told her.

      Riley was startled. How could Gail be worried about Riley’s feelings at a time like this, when justice had finally been done to her own daughter’s killer?

      “How are you, Gail?” she asked as they walked briskly toward the exit.

      Gail walked along in silence for a moment. Her expression seemed completely blank.

      “It’s done,” she finally said, her voice numb and cold. “It’s done.”

      In an instant they stepped out into the morning daylight. Riley could see two crowds of people across the street, each roped away from the other and tightly controlled by police. On one side were people who had gathered to cheer on the execution, wielding hateful signs, some of them profane and obscene. They were understandably jubilant. On the other side were anti–death penalty protesters with their own signs. They’d been out here all night holding a candlelight vigil. They were much more subdued.

      Riley found that she couldn’t muster sympathy for either group. These people were here for themselves, to make a public show of their outrage and righteousness, acting out of sheer self-indulgence. As far as she was concerned, they had no business being here – not among people whose pain and grief were all too real.

      Between the entrance and the crowds was a swarm of reporters, with media trucks nearby. As Riley waded among them, one woman rushed up to her with a microphone and a cameraman behind her.

      “Agent Paige? Are you Agent Paige?” she said.

      Riley didn’t reply. She tried to go past the reporter.

      The reporter stayed with her doggedly. “We’ve heard that Caldwell mentioned you in his last words. Do you care to comment?”

      Other reporters closed in on her, asking the same question. Riley gritted her teeth and pushed on through the throng. At last she broke free from them.

      As she hurried toward her car, she found herself thinking about Meredith and Bill. Both of them had implored her to take on a new case. And she was avoiding giving either of them any kind of an answer.

      Why? she wondered.

      She had just run away from reporters. Was she running away from Bill and Meredith as well? Was she running away from who she really was? From all that she had to do?

*

      Riley was grateful to be home. The death she had witnessed that morning still left her with an empty feeling, and the drive back to Fredericksburg had been tiring. But when she opened the door of her townhouse, something didn’t seem right.

      It was unnaturally silent. April should be home from school by now. Where was Gabriela? Riley went into the kitchen and found it empty. A note was on the kitchen table.

      Me voy a la tienda, it read. Gabriela had gone to the store.

      Riley gripped the back of a chair as a wave of panic swept over her. Another time that Gabriela had gone to the store, April had been kidnapped from her father’s house.

      Darkness, a glimpse of flame.

      Riley turned and ran to the foot of the stairs.

      “April,” she screamed.

      There was no answer.

      Riley raced up the staircase. Nobody was in either of the bedrooms. Nobody was in her small office.

      Riley’s heart was pounding, even though her mind was telling her that she was being foolish. Her body wasn’t listening to her mind.

      She raced back downstairs and out onto the back deck.

      “April,” she