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"We'll talk tomorrow morning. It looks like your trial is going to be on Thursday."
Two days.
"Thank you, Captain. You should eat-you don't look so good."
She pulled out a cigarette. "I'm paving my own trip to the Garage with these. See you in sixteen hours."
* * * *
Valentine spent the next day in a kind of weary anxiety. They would try Roderick in the morning-he was not going to contest the proceedings, so it would go quickly-and then Valentine's trial would begin in the afternoon. He tried to write letters and found himself unable to find words, went through the motions of his job rebinding books at the prison library in a funk, unable to finish anything. He and Luecke met again, but found they had little to say to each other. She simply asked if he'd take Sime's deal. He shrugged and said that he hadn't made up his mind yet, and she said she had the statement for the tribunal ready if he did decide to plead guilty.
Valentine believed any speech she might make would be scrimshaw on a casket. What would happen to him would happen regardless. The only words that would count would be those that would place him in prison, or send him to the Garage.
The hours slipped away until sundown, and the prison slowly bled off the heat it had soaked in during the day. Valentine lay in his cot, arms and legs thrown wide to allow the perspiration to disperse.
There was a knock at the door and Valentine heard keys rattle.
"Room search," Young said.
Valentine knew the routine. They took him to a holding cell- this one had real bars-while two guards searched his room. The process usually took a half hour or so.
This time it took an hour. Were they worried he'd constructed some kind of weapon to use in court?
When they returned him to his cell Valentine noticed the usual cart outside, piled with his linens. Young looked at the other guard. "I'll take it from here, Steve-o."
"You sure?" the guard asked.
"I'm sure. Enjoy your dinner."
Steve-o, the other guard, extended his hand. "Good luck, Major Valentine."
"You mean good luck tomorrow, don't you?" Young said.
"Yeah. That's what I meant."
Valentine shook the hand.
"Just wanted to say I done it," Steve-o said. He wandered down the hall, whistling "There's No Business Like Show Business." Maybe he'd picked the tune up from Roderick.
"You've got a letter," Young said. He looked again at the envelope. "It says that it's not to be delivered to you until after your trial. But we had to check it anyway. No reason we couldn't check it before."
"Of course," Valentine said, wondering.
"Here you go. I get the feeling it's not from a friend."
Valentine saw the same plain envelope and paper. He opened the tri-folded message.
ENJOY THE HANGING. WISH I COULD BE THERE.
Young cleared his throat. "Kind of funny, this person being so sure of your verdict."
"Funny is right," Valentine agreed.
Young extracted a multitool pocketknife, unfolded a screwdriver, and cleaned a black mark from beneath his thumb. A red-painted key jangled from the ring on the knife; Valentine saw it glitter in the dim light coming in from his window. "I've never had a problem with my job before, Major. Most people wind up here, well, they deserve it. The ones that don't get spat back out, usually along with some who do. Better that way than the other. But in sixteen years I've never seen anything like this."
Young pointed to a laundry bag on his bed. "Fresh linens for your bed and a new smock," he said. "Girl in the laundry is new. I think she doesn't read so good. If they screwed up, I'll be back in an hour and fifteen minutes and I'll get you a new set of clothes." He placed the knife in his pocket. "Well, I got to get down to the yard. We got sick dogs tonight and until the vet is done looking at them, it's the two-legged animals that got to walk between the wire. I know the night before a trial is always slow. Hope you get some sleep, eventually."
As he turned, Valentine heard the pocketknife bounce off his boot and hit the floor. It slid under his cot.
