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Then they left, and Carter waited for the door on the other side to open and show him who it was had coast hated Texas He hated everything about it

He hated the weather, which was hot as an oven onethe next, the air so damp it felt like a wet towel over your head He hated the look of the place, beginning with the trees, which were scrawny and pathetic, their li out of Dr Seuss, and the flat, windblown nothingness of it He hated the billboards and the freeways and faceless subdivisions and the Texas flag, which flew over everything, always big as a circus tent; he hated the giant pickup trucks everybody drove, no allon and the world was slowly steae of peas in a microwave He hated the boots and the belt buckles and the way people talked, y’all this and y’all that, as if they spent the day ropin’ and ridin’, not cleaning teeth and selling insurance and doing the books, like people did everywhere

Most of all, he hated it because his parents had ast was forty-four, still in decent shape but with the rade was long ago, nothing to regret, but still, driving with Doyle up Highway 59 north frotime Texas spread all around, the wound felt fresh to him Texas, state-sized porkchop of on, fishing off the pier at thewith his friends in the woods behind their house for endless, idle hours; the next he was stuck in the urban swa in a crappy ranch house without a scrap of shade, walking to school in one-hundred-degree heat that felt like a big shoe coht That’s where he was The end of the world was Houston, Texas On his first day of sixth grade, the teacher had iance, as if he’d signed up to live in a whole different country Three lad to leave a place, even the way it happened His father was a ineer; his parents had e as a math teacher on the reservation in Grande Ronde, where his mother, as half Chinook-heras a nurse’s aide They’d gone to Texas for the money, but then his father was laid off when the oil bust hit in ’86; they tried to sell the house but couldn’t, and in the end, his father had sian, then Ohio, then upstate New York, chasing little bits of work, but his father had never righted himself after that When he’d died of pancreatic cancer two h school-his third in as many years-it was easy to think that Texas had soon, but now she was gone too

Everyone was gone

He’d gotten the first man, Babcock, from Nevada Others ca and Florida and Indiana and Delaware Wolgast didn’t carewas better than Texas

Wolgast and Doyle had flown into Houston froht at a Radisson near the airport (he’d considered a brief side trip into the city,down his old house, but then wondered what in hell he’d want to do a thing like that for), picked up the rental car in the , a Chrysler Victory so new it smelled like the ink on a dollar bill, and headed north The day was clear with a high, blue sky the color of cornflowers; Wolgast drove while Doyle sipped his latte and read the file, aon his lap

"Meet Anthony Carter," Doyle said, and held up the photo "Subject Nuast didn’t want to look He knew just what he’d see: one more slack face, one more pair of eyes that had barely ever learned to read, oneThese , but the eyes were always the same: empty, like drains that could suck the whole world down into them It was easy to sympathize with them in the abstract, but only in the abstract

"Don’t you want to knohat he did?"

Wolgast shrugged He was in no hurry, but noas as good a time as any

Doyle slurped his latte and read: "Anthony Lloyd Carter African American, five foot four, a hundred and twenty pounds" Doyle looked up "That explains the nicknaot e, boss It’s T-Tone T for ’Tiny,’ I’h you never know Mother deceased, no dad in the picture from day one, a series of foster hos all around A list of priors but , public nuisance, that kind of thing So, the story Our man Anthony cuts this lady’s lawn every week Her nairls, husband’s so lawyer All the charity balls, the benefits, the country clubs Anthony Carter is her project Starts cutting her lawn one day when she sees hin that says, HUNGRY, PLEASE HELP Words along those lines Anyway, she takes him home, makes him a sandwich, puts in soroup home she raises money for Then she calls all her friends in River Oaks and says, Let’s help this guy, what do you need done around the place? All of a sudden she’s a regular Girl Scout, rallying the troops So the guy starts cutting all their lawns, pruning the hedges, you know, all the things they need around the big houses This goes on about two years Everything’s hunky-dory until one day, our man Anthony coirls is home sick fro sooes out into the yard, sees Anthony She knoho he is, she’s seen hihtens her There’s some stuff here about maybe he touched her, but the court psychiatrist is iffy on that Anyway, the girl starts screa, everybody’s screaodda Olympics One minute he’s the niceyou know, he’s just a black guy with your kid, and all the Mother Teresa shit goes out theIt gets physical There’s a struggle Mooes in after her, hts hi around" Doyle looked at hio Right there, right in front of the little girl A neighbor heard it all and called the cops, so when they get there, he’s still sitting on the edge of the pool, the lady floating in it" He shook his head "Not a pretty picture"

Soy Doyle put into these stories "Any chance it was an accident?"

"As it happens, the victim was on the varsity swi The prosecution made a lot of hay with that little detail That and the fact that Carter prettyher"

"What did he say when they arrested hi Then he asked for a glass of iced tea"

Wolgast shook his head The stories were always bad, but it was the little details that got to hilass of iced tea Sweet Jesus "How old did you say he was?"

Doyle flipped back a couple of pages "I didn’t Thirty-tenty-eight at the ti No relatives at all Last time anybody came to see him in Polunsky was the victio His lawyer left the state, too, after the appeal was turned down Carter’s been reassigned to somebody else in the Harris County PD office, but they haven’t even opened the paperwork Ipso facto, nobody’s watching the store Anthony Carter goes to the needle on June second for murder one with depraved indifference, and not one soul on earth is paying attention The guy’s a ghost already"