the haze of fluorescent lights, I navigated the padded cubicles to my office unmolested. The many faces of my coworkers looked up as I passed, then quickly looked down again without acknowledgment. Hal insisted that they were still getting used to me, that eventually I’d fit in. A year, though, seemed like a long time looking for a fit, and I was fairly convinced that whatever opinion they were going to have of me had long ago been formed and set.
During my year at Corrections, I had instituted my routine of delegation, a style of management that had served me well throughout my administrative career. I rarely attached my name to anything directly. I signed few documents. I wrote vague and brief letters. I avoided email and conveniently forgot my government-issued electronic address. As a result, my career had thus far been a rousing success. Only in my early thirties and already I was holding my second executive administrative position, a swift climb of the state government ladder and on pace to surpass all my relatives. And my accomplishments, while admittedly slight and largely cosmetic, were testament to the fact that the true currency of management wasn’t success, but change. Or, in my case, taking credit for the changes happening around you and the labors of others.
Hal suddenly popped his head through my doorway.
“Christy wants us.”
“What about?
“You know how he likes surprises.”
The director of the Department of Corrections, Christy Donaldson, was, like me, a political appointee, having been in and out of government for the better part of thirty years. His faded blue sports coats, his thinning gray comb-over—he was a holdover from another era, the heyday of the Old South political machine, his only qualification for the job being his fierce partisanship. He was standing in front of his desk and smiling as we entered, and before we had even settled into our seats, announced that the governor was going to sign a warrant of execution.
“No shit?” Hal laughed, then caught himself as if embarrassed.
“There’s a presser set for this afternoon. Going to be a big deal. Fits nicely with the overall campaign themes: Justice for victims. Crap like that.”
I was as surprised as Hal. Due to a variety of reasons, the state hadn’t managed to execute anyone in more than a decade. A moratorium following the last, admittedly disastrous, series of executions was no longer in effect, but the long appeals process had kept some of the more promising prospects from coming due. Two strong candidates for the chair had both recently had their convictions thrown back to the lower courts. Another had been the subject of a recent Dateline special, casting overwhelming doubt on his likely guilt. Executing him now would have been a public relations nightmare.
“We sure this one’s not going to fall through?” I asked.
Christy just smiled, handing me a case file.
Andrew Carl Adler was just the killer everyone had been waiting for: a middle- aged white man whose brutal and premeditated rape and murder of a local college student had only been eclipsed by his grotesquely comical attempts to cover up the crime. The fire he’d hoped to use to obliterate the evidence had scorched several apartments in the historical district where she lived and severely injured two firefighters, yet hadn’t harmed the girl’s body, left partially insulated in the tub where he’d strangled her. Though he denied it, genetic evidence had tied him to the murder, the arson, and also the theft of the victim’s car, which he tried to sell through an ad in the local paper. The trial had been a media sensation, the verdict quick, and his lack of public remorse for the death of an innocent young woman had only further inflamed public passions. If ever there was a slam dunk case for capital punishment, everyone agreed, this was it.
“Now, I’m going to be on the road for the next several weeks almost nonstop,” Christy explained. “The governor has called in just about everyone to help with the campaign. So I need you to put this thing together.”
“What do we have to do?”
“There’re a lot of little details to arrange—hiring someone to pull the switch, settling things with the warden. Not to mention the press. Our first execution in ten years. Matthew, I want you to personally arrange all the details.”
“What makes me so lucky?”
“We don’t want any accidents, like what happened last time. This is going to be a three-ring circus, and you’re the perfect public face for this.”
“I’ve never done anything like this.”
“Consider it a personal challenge.”
“I would have thought Hal seemed like a more natural choice. His experience.”
Christy shook his head. “Hal’s been tasked with a top-to-bottom department review, so he’s not going to be available. Besides, you shouldn’t need any help. You’re a former director, so you’re the natural choice. Just do a job like you did with the Work for Justice program and everything will be golden.”
I didn’t say anything but managed a tight smile. Hal was stoic, his fingers tracing the embroidered lines on his holster.
The Work for Justice program was part of an intense effort to bring the state correctional system into the 21st century. Having evolved well past the age of stocks and racks, thumb screws and iron maidens and pickup basketball, our modern prisons were productive and cost-efficient and privately run. For years inmates had been working the phones, processing complaints, taking orders, if only for later billing. But the slew of high-tech convictions had enabled us to up the ante: we now incorporated web design, system troubleshooting and computer assembly. A complete line of office and antivirus software was scheduled to hit the market in six months. There was an entire industry here, a conversion of labor, an enabling of the idle. The response from business leaders who were looking for an inexpensive labor solution or deals of cheap software had been overwhelmingly positive, and except for a few human rights activists and the nervous competitors who accused us of slave labor, Work for Justice had turned out to be a rousing success.
But it had nothing to do with me. It had been my good fortune to be there to take credit for a decade of others’ planning and work. Plans had long ago been put into motion by previous directors to better utilize the changing face of the incarcerated population. My entire contribution had been to go out on prearranged local media junkets—TV and radio and cable access. A business magazine profiled me, also the local television news. For a brief few weeks, I was a mini-celebrity. Everyone else at Corrections, except Christy, it seemed, understood that Hal was the engine of our department. He’d been at Corrections for ages, while my qualifications were limited to that three-year stint at Environmental and my knack for having the right political connections. Learning to stay out of the way was perhaps my greatest contribution to my department.
“Seems I have no choice,” I said.
Christy clasped his hands together with a slap. “All right, then. That’s settled!” He started shuffling through the papers on his desk, which was our sign to leave. “How’s the baby?” he asked absently, without looking up. “I hear you have a new daughter?”
“She’s twelve,” I said.
“Amazing, isn’t it, how fast they grow.”
We wound our way back through the beehive of cubicles. When Hal walked, though, everyone slipped aside, his barrel girth parting the streams. Rather than heading into his own office, Hal followed me into mine, easing himself with surprising lightness onto the corner of my desk while I took my seat.
We
