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Your eyes in the dark. Fingertips brushing against my hand. The hushed sound of your breathing. I chase you down the hall. I beg you to come back. I choke on the sourness of my pathetic passion for the person I already failed. Are you with Mama now? Does she hold you close, braid your hair? Do you know peace?
I get up each morning, tend to chores, pay the bills. Then, come Friday night, hey there, good-looking, of course you can buy me a drink. Wanna come home with me? I don’t mind driving.
Saturday morning, I rinse my knives and hose down the stainless steel tables and burn the clothes of men who never should have pretended to care. Another week done, another week begins.
I still see you everywhere.
When they finally come for me, I don’t protest. I watch the long line of police cruisers churn up the dusty road as they snake their way to our farm. I walk out onto the front porch and silently hold out my wrists. Daddy always said I was good for nothing. Turns out, I’m a bit more dangerous than that.
Later, I hear that people all over the county vomited upon hearing what was in their locally sourced pork. The media published photos of rows of baby food jars, each filled with a complete set of teeth. Made identifying the victims easier, not that it mattered to me. I confessed from the very beginning. Waived all appeals. I am death. You won’t get any apologies from me.
When all is said and done, they credit me with eighteen kills. They’re off by one, but that’s between me and my daddy. I offer no protest when the great state of Texas sentences me to join the other six women on death row. I get to live in the Mountain View Unit with my own special number. It all sounds rather grand if you think about it.
Of course, I don’t.
I loved you from the very first.
I will grieve for you to the very last.
They will come for me in a matter of weeks. Transfer me to the Walls, where strangers I’ve never met will protest my execution. Some because of my gender. Some because of my race. Some because of principle. Doesn’t matter.
I know what’s going to happen next. My brief stay in the death-watch cell before I journey to the execution chamber, already strapped to the gurney as a willing sacrifice.
I’m not afraid. I’m in that dingy bathroom, filling up the first bucket of water to clean the mess I made. I’m running through the yard, your giggle echoing behind me. I’m grabbing Daddy’s hand before he slaps you. I’m seething with rage as Mama once more turns away.
I’m tucked in the bedroom, feeling your fingertips resting atop mine.
They can tie me down and fill my veins with poison. The witnesses can watch my twitching limbs and gasp in horror or cheer in celebration.
I will keep my eyes open. I will stare straight ahead.
And I will see you everywhere.
CHAPTER 1
IN MY LINE OF WORK, I have seen people die, but I’ve never seen one put to death. My first thought as I stare at the redbrick entrance of the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville, Texas, is that I don’t want to start now.
The Mountain View Unit is infamous for housing female death row inmates. No one is executed here, however. For that, the prisoner will be transferred the afternoon of their date with death to the Huntsville Unit, which is even more infamous for being the most active execution chamber in the United States.
These are disquieting facts for a woman who’s been up all night on a Greyhound bus. I look terrible and I smell like it, too, which I’m trying very hard to ignore as I’m anxious and unsettled enough already.
In my line of work—which isn’t exactly a real job if you consider I have no training and receive no pay—I normally choose my cases. I can’t always explain why this missing person cold case versus that one. Given there are hundreds of thousands of missing people at any given time, and even more grieving loved ones desperate for answers, I’m always contemplating a tragically long list. I gravitate mostly to underserved minorities, the kind of people who were overlooked in life and garner little to no consideration after they vanish.
None of that completely explains why I’m here now, with bruised eyes and lanky hair, answering an urgent summons by some lawyer who clearly has excellent investigative skills, because I’m not the kind of woman who’s easy to track down. I have no mailing address, no property or utilities in my name, and don’t even own a real phone. I do, from time to time, use an internet café to post on a message board that focuses on missing persons. That’s where I got the note. Short. Desperate. Mysterious.
I’ve never been good at ignoring mysteries.
I’d left my entire life’s possessions—a single roll-aboard suitcase—in a locker at the bus station in Waco. Given that visiting hours in any kind of penitentiary are subject to change, I called the lawyer upon arrival to confirm my appointment. Victoria Twanow sounded almost as tight and anxious as I felt, which didn’t help my nerves. She notified me that I was allowed to bring in a single clear bag with up to twenty dollars in change for the vending machines. Why twenty dollars? Can you even spend twenty dollars in a vending machine? Given how much my stomach was growling, I figured I might come close, but then I wondered if the vending machine money was meant for me or for my death row hostess.
It was all too much for my sleep-deprived brain, so I gave up on clear plastic bags filled with loose change and settled for buying a Snickers and a bottle of water while waiting for yet another bus, this one to take me from Waco to Gatesville.
And now, here I am. A fortyish woman in worn jeans, dusty sneakers, and a frayed olive-green army jacket.
My name is Frankie Elkin, and finding missing people is what I do. When the police have given up, when the public no longer remembers, when the media has never bothered to care, I start looking. For no money, no recognition, and, most of the time, with no help.
But I still have no idea what a condemned murderer would want with me.
THE LAWYER, VICTORIA Twanow, meets me at the front entrance. She guides me through the various security gates till I arrive on the other side, blinking under the yellowish glare of fluorescent lights.
