The Washington Decree

by Jussi Adler-Olsen

  And now Darleen was putting on the pressure. He had to get a cell phone to Bud Curtis, whatever the risk, because now she wanted to be rich fast. She wanted to move back to the river she came from, but this time to the wealthier side. For what could be better for a factory worker’s girl from Claremont than to live in a colonial house in Williamsburg, with tourists filing by in admiration? She’d give birth to girls who would wear petticoats and boys who wore three-cornered hats. She would play the Countess of Gloucester and immerse herself in America’s most glamorous and patriotic play—a permanent extra among the hundreds of average Americans who each year dressed up in costumes from colonial times and reenacted the War of Independence. So what if the country was in the process of falling apart and no tourists made it all the way down to Virginia? Everything would be back to normal one day. Just as long as they got all that money, everything would be good.

  Deep in his soul Pete knew he’d have to find a cell phone if things were going to get better—at home, at least. With that gadget in his hand, he had the chance of not only becoming every bit as rich as Darleen dreamed of but, more important, so rich that he wouldn’t have to share Darleen’s future with her. He’d already made up his mind. Darleen and the child in her belly would be well provided for, that was certain, but so would he.

  * * *

  —

  He had promised Bud Curtis to get hold of a cell phone within three days, but only if Curtis paid up front. Pete didn’t want to be cheated. He’d be powerless if Bud got the phone first. There was just the very banal but obvious problem that Curtis couldn’t raise the money without it. So Pete had to give him the phone and take the risk. He threatened revenge if Curtis tried to cheat him. Curtis was made to understand all the things that could go wrong for him. During the execution, for example. Painful things.

  So Pete had to get that cell phone. The more he thought about it, the more reasonable it sounded. If their routines at the prison hadn’t slackened and the personnel cut back so much, the cell phone would never have had a chance of making it as far as death row. He decided to smuggle it inside his thermos and give it to Bud just before he went off duty. However, thanks to the chaotic state the country was in and all the radical changes that had been implemented, it was practically impossible to get hold of a cell phone that couldn’t be traced to its owner. It used to be easy to buy a stolen phone in any drinking joint in the county, but now they all had to be registered at the local police station, and those that weren’t were made inactive. So it was no longer an easy task, but Pete managed to pull it off. Bud Curtis’s execution was coming up. There were only seventy-two hours left.

  * * *

  —

  Death row had been moved from Mecklenburg Correctional Center to Sussex State Prison just before Pete turned eighteen, and it was here he decided he would work when he finished his military service. He’d be dealing with prisoners who were serving life sentences or were condemned to death, just as his father had. It was a good job that commanded respect, he told himself. It’s true that after his father’s death, people warned him that life on death row had mortally wounded his father’s soul, but Pete knew better. His father had taken his life, not because he had to deal with the condemned men but because he had to take their lives as well, and Pete was having none of it. His dad had worked in Greensville, but Pete would be working at Sussex, where they didn’t kill prisoners. They merely stored them until someone else killed them down in Greensville.

  And Pete carried out his plan. After six years in the military he applied for the job at Sussex, and with his spotless record, he was hired immediately. It took no time to drive to work, and his job was easy. He took part in the routines, and no one worked too hard. He could have gone on like this for decades if the warden, Bill Pagelow Falso, hadn’t succeeded in fulfilling his wish to add a small building to the end of death row. Citizens’ rights groups were up in arms when people realized that Sussex suddenly had gotten its own execution chamber, but their protests didn’t help.

  This didn’t sit well with Pete, either, but what was done was done. Unemployment was sky-high in his area, and the house mortgage had to be paid. It was only a little three-room cottage, but it was his and it was going to stay that way. He’d just have to take things as they came. So far, luckily, more experienced guards were being assigned to execution chamber duty.

  But then came President Jansen’s proclamation of his Safe Future program, and all prisons were gradually emptied, including Sussex. Even prisoners with long sentences were eased back into society with an electronic detector strapped to their legs and the clearly defined task of working with young people in criminal environments. Warden Falso held a meeting with the entire prison staff where he dealt out their new duties. Whatever else one might say about him, Falso was no softie. Without warning, all employees over the age of thirty-five were moved to new jobs outside the prison. Some were to work on the ballistic registration of firearms; others were to act as contact persons for the newly released prisoners. Then there were those who would go from house to house, registering the inhabitants’ fingerprints, while others would sit all day in the local schools’ gymnasiums and encode all the information that had been gathered. It was a huge amount of work, but few protested. After years of living within Sussex’s concrete walls, most of them were ready to say yes to anything.

  The younger prison officers weren’t as lucky. When they’d finished letting out the last prisoner and had executed the last of the condemned, there would be use for only very few of them to keep the prison running. No new jobs had been provided for the rest. Not yet, at least. Warden Falso made himself clear: Nowhere in his job description did it say he had to provide manpower for that communist pig Jansen and his perverse ideas.

  * * *

  —

  Pete was chosen to work not only on death row, but also in the execution chamber. He didn’t protest. He could handle the job of strapping down the condemned men, even if his old man couldn’t.

  He’d said that two weeks ago, and already his soul was being torn apart.

  The first execution wasn’t the worst. He performed his duties like a zombie and remembered nothing afterwards. The second, on the other hand, was bad. The prisoner had frightened brown eyes and the wrecked veins and needle scars of a hard-core junkie. Pete could still feel his lungs almost bursting from that terrifying minute when he reflexively held his breath.

  He’d participated in five executions since the implementation of President Jansen’s reforms, and that was already five times too many.

  He tucked the thermos under his arm. He had to get away from there.

  CHAPTER 20

  If anyone was justified to collapse under a crushing workload, it was Sheriff T. Perkins. And if there was anyone who hated men in uniforms that stank of day-old sweat, it was his newest police constable, Dody Hall, who turned on the air-conditioning, sat as close as possible to the window in the patrol car, and attempted to screen herself from their body odor with her impressive, fragrant hairdo. T. Perkins rubbed the gray stubble on his chin, looking out the window as the windshield wipers flapped in high gear. He knew what she was thinking, but by now he’d been on duty twice as long as she had, so what did she expect?

  “What the hell do we do now?” she asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders. It was a good question. On the opposite side of the road a column of trucks was lined up, headlights on, waiting to get through a roadblock the National Guard had set up the week before. Inside the trucks were practically all the goods needed to stock the supermarkets in Mustoe, Vanderpool, and Monterey, but what good did it do, when the soldiers wouldn’t let them pass? His phone had been ringing nonstop with anxious calls from supermarket managers, wholesalers serving the region’s agricultural sector, and the mayor of Monterey. T wasn’t having any particular problems with people getting out of hand, but when it began taking weeks before they could expect the
supermarket shelves to be filled—then what?

  Any kind of overview of the situation was impossible, and everything was slowly grinding to a halt. Before one knew it, society would be back to bartering. People could no longer be sure they’d get their wages and, after the shootings of workers in Chicago and Miami, they dared not strike.

  “Did you hear what I said, T?” came the muted voice at his side.

  “Yes, I heard it.” He nodded, put the patrol car into reverse, and made a U-turn that almost threw Officer Hall out the passenger door.

  “What are you doing?” she barked, shoving him.

  “Let’s go home and get some sleep. We’re not doing any good here.”

  * * *

  —

  He turned off his cell phone and slept two hours before his subconscious gnawed its way through the dream barrier. Suddenly he was staring at the wall, wide-awake. Looking out the window, he could see it was still dark. His alarm clock read Friday, March 27, 2009, 4:35 A.M. Too fucking much. How the hell was he supposed to sleep when his whole brain was seething? He knew too many people with too many problems these days. Worst of all was the case of Jim Wahlers, the local undertaker and one of his old friends, who they’d jailed for stockpiling weapons and ammunition for the militias. The FBI had taken him away after being tipped off. They’d moved quickly and with determination, and no matter what names Jim’s wife called T, he couldn’t tell her where Jim was because he simply didn’t know. The sheriff’s office had received a fax that he was in solitary confinement and the charges against him were being processed, but how much help was that? T. Perkins doubted very much that she’d be seeing him again.

  And there was also the case with Bud Curtis that Doggie Rogers had asked him to help her with. He’d actually already spent almost two weeks on the case—more time than he should have. How was he supposed to spare more time when he didn’t have any, and had no new leads or ideas, anyway? He shook his head and clenched his teeth, angry as hell with himself. Why had he said he’d help the girl if he wasn’t going to? God, it was hopeless being him.

  He pulled a cigarette out of his pack and sat up on the edge of the bed. A couple of quick drags and then back under the covers. That usually helped make things better.

  In the meantime he could think about what to say to Doggie when he called her back. She’d contacted him the day before yesterday, and Bud Curtis was to be executed on Monday, in just four days. In other words, he’d already stolen a third of the time she could have been using elsewhere in trying to help her father.

  T. Perkins turned on his radio and found WVLS on his FM dial. Never before had he heard so much classical music, now that all local radio stations had been forbidden to broadcast anything that could be taken as being critical of the US government. WVLS took good care of its staff, but the large majority of local radio stations couldn’t afford to keep its people these days, which was understandable enough. What sponsors could afford advertising? None that he knew of.

  And there, in his sweaty-smelling bedroom with its unusual background music, he stared into the cloud of cigarette smoke and began thinking. Two separate feelings had emerged deep inside him, neither of which had a name or a face. Brooding, instinctive traces of something that had occurred to him before, or would have, had he had the time. And the louder the music grew and the closer the glowing cigarette came to his fingertips, the more he realized that he knew things he couldn’t articulate.

  This sensation of holding the key to understanding, and then misplacing it, was nothing new. There had been small cases and big ones that had been shelved and sometimes forgotten, but also those where this nagging feeling of knowing something had suddenly blossomed into certainty. Several times he’d been able to supply information on crimes many years after they’d happened, and he’d been able to provide clues in cases as far away as New Orleans, just by digging around in his memory and subconscious until it gave way. That’s what was happening now. Two things were sending signals inside him, but his memory was being uncooperative. All he could sense was that Doggie was responsible for one of them, and the other had been there much longer.

  He suddenly came to his senses when the cigarette ember reached his fingernail, setting off an evil smell. “What the hell . . . ?!” he yelled, and knew there was no going back to bed now.

  After a shower so bracing that it almost lifted him off the bathroom floor, he chucked a couple of bull’s-eyes into the kitchen dartboard and called his deputy sheriff, Stanley Kennedy. His boss had been on duty for almost three solid days without a break and was taking the rest of the day off. He’d be back early tomorrow—Saturday—and not a second before. No problem, said the deputy. He’d take over.

  T banged down the receiver and stretched as far as the worn-out joint in his shoulder would allow. A plan was slowly taking form inside his brain.

  He cast a glance at the living room’s far wall where two precise rows of paintings decorated the frayed wallpaper. Most of them were from when his wife was alive—strange pieces of “original” art of the kind that to T’s eye resembled the reproductions one could buy via mail order but were reputed to be good investments. The rest he’d inherited from his parents. He was on more solid ground here, with the Virginia landscapes and their immense tobacco fields, and among them a small canvas depicting a young naval cadet in dress uniform beneath a deep blue sky. For T it was the living room’s focal point and direction finder. Not that he liked the painting—he didn’t—but it helped him collect his thoughts. When he looked at it, he was “home,” and he stopped caring about the check forgers in Bethel and the car thieves in Mill Gap. He studied the picture for a moment, feeling a bit sad. Then he rubbed his neck, went over, and took it off its hook. He had use for it.

  By now, there was quite a bit of daylight outside. He looked down on the bare trees that separated the road from his land and spotted a vehicle he didn’t recognize approaching at high speed.

  He placed the painting on the floor and pulled a shirt over his head.

  A couple of minutes later, there was a knock on the door. It was two men in prison officer uniforms from Augusta State Prison, down in Craigsville. He knew one of them, or rather he knew the bloodhound that was glowering at the man’s feet. They’d used the dog many times to hunt down people on the run.

  “All citizens must be registered according to Executive Order 11002, but you haven’t responded to our letter, Sheriff Perkins. So you make it necessary for us to come to you, and that’ll cost you a fine of three hundred dollars. You ought to know that better than anyone.”

  Three hundred dollars?! They must be crazy. T. Perkins looked at their badges. The single word INSPECTOR was engraved on them. “Goddammit, man,” he protested. “I’m the sheriff in this county! You know damned well I’ve got plenty to do. I was going to come as soon as I could.”

  They gave him a cold stare. “It looks like you could now,” one said.

  “It’s five in the morning. What were you expecting?”

  “Do you have anyone living here?” asked the other one. “Anyone who isn’t registered at this address?”

  He shook his head.

  “May we come in and check? Not that I need to ask.” The officer with the bloodhound released the dog before T. Perkins could answer. While it was sniffing around, the other officer asked him for a blood sample and then sat him down at the kitchen table to fingerprint him.

  “There’s women’s clothes in the closet,” shouted the dog handler from the bedroom. “Would you please come in here?”

  T. Perkins found him and the dog halfway into the closet. The man backed out, triumphantly clutching a coat hanger with a dress. “Would you please inform us who you have living here?” Now T. Perkins definitely recognized the jerk. He’d always been an asshole.

  “No one! That was my wife’s dress.”

  “She’s not registered at this address.”
>
  “That’s probably because she died in 1988.”

  The man shoved the evidence in T’s face. “This dress isn’t any goddamn twenty-one years old. I saw one just like it in Walmart last week.”

  T. Perkins shook his head. “Could be. I don’t follow fashion.”

  * * *

  —

  When they left, T washed his hands, packed a small bag, placed the little painting behind the driver’s seat on the floor of his patrol car, put the siren on the car’s roof, and drove all the way to Richmond without being stopped more than a couple of times.

  The city was quiet. The commonwealth flag was flying above the administration buildings, and young lovers were cuddling in the cafés just like old times.

  He parked the car and walked towards the Supreme Court Building up by the Capitol. Boring his way into Virginia Capitol Police headquarters always felt kind of like running a verbal gauntlet. Smiling faces in blue uniforms greeted him up and down the hallways; he’d probably known almost all of them by name once. But since he wasn’t good at pairing faces with names, he nodded politely to all of them with a chummy smile. Here were the hopeful probationers with whom he’d once scraped run-over raccoons off the highways. Here were his old colleagues with whom he’d broken up car-theft rings and busted rapists. Here, too, was his line of access to all the information the country’s criminal past had to offer.

  And he had a shitload of data to sift through.

  As he passed one of his old dart contest archrivals, he fished his ever-present favorite dart out of his coat pocket, aimed at a mini-target on the bulletin board, tossed a bull’s-eye, pulled the dart out, and tipped his hat to the man. Then he turned a corner in the direction of Beth Hartley, whose ample body dominated a worn desk littered with stacks of journals. She lifted her eyes and gave him a questioning smile, the same one that had once nearly cost him his marriage in the old days when she worked in his office. She was warm-blooded, always ready for anything, anywhere—the first time being in T’s own living room the time she popped by with some information he’d requested. In the end, T. Perkins had had to ask her to transfer to Richmond.