The Corporal's Letter BENEATH SILKY SATINY THINGS in a bureau drawer in her bedroom she'd placed it. The letter her fiance had given her when he'd departed for Iraq-"Only open this if you will never see me again."

She'd known what he meant, at once.

She'd taken the envelope from him quickly, so that no one might see.

She'd kissed him good-bye. Hugged him, kissed him, pressed her tear-streaked face against his.

"Of course I will see you again, Brett! Don't say such a thing."

NOW IN THE EVENING of October 13, 2005, when it was becoming known through Carthage that the young corporal so long suspected of having murdered Cressida Mayfield had confessed to police, now when it was known to the Mayfields that Cressida was gone utterly, and would not ever return to them, and that Brett Kincaid too was dead to them, and would not ever return to them, quietly Juliet entered her bedroom, went to the bureau and slid open the drawer and removed from it the envelope she'd hidden away nearly two years ago in the hope that she would not ever be drawn to seeking it let alone opening and reading it.

Downstairs, a murmur of voices. Relatives and friends were gathering, to console.

How to mourn, a death so bodiless? Forever missing.

Yet there would be a church service of some kind for Cressida-a funeral rite for the missing. Arlette in despair could not be consoled, otherwise.

On the envelope was written, in Brett's careful, slightly back-tilting handwriting: JULIET MAYFIELD MY FIANCeE.

Blindly now she opened the envelope. She was sitting on the edge of her bed, fumbling to open the envelope.

Dear Juliet, If you are reading this then something has happened to me.

I will not see you again I guess. I love you so much!

Sometimes I believe in the "after life"-where we will meet again. It is not always possible to believe but I am trying.

Some thing will happen to us all in time. There is no great sorrow really in losing me at this time and not another. If you read this Juliet, do not look back. If you can help it.

It is strange how knowing a thing should give you the strength to do it but sometimes you are not strong enough. God does not always make us strong enough.

Do unto others. Love thy neighbor.

Thou shalt not kill.

If you are a soldier you must do certain things, you would not do if you had a choice.

You must acknowledge, you may not return safely to your home & loved ones.

Dear Juliet I am hoping that when we are married one day I will discover this letter hidden away where you forgotten it. And I will put it back in its hiding place & not say a word.

For I love you so, Juliet. That is the one true thing that I know. I don't feel young now. I think I am old in my heart.

It will do no good to grieve with Ethel. She will grieve in her own way angry & alone. You & your mother should not try to help her, she will resent it.

Look to the future now Juliet. Marry somebody who deserves your love & have the kids we would have had (I know that is crazy to think, I am not serious really)-& God bless you most of all be happy my darling Juliet. Know that I will be thinking of you always.

I wonder where I will be right now-when you read this.

I love you. Always you will remain-my darling Juliet.

Love, kisses & hugs.

Brett.

PART II.

Exile.

NINE.

Execution Chamber.

Orion, Florida, March 2012.

WHO CAN OPEN THIS DOOR? Any volunteer?"

The door looked heavy. Set in the stone wall. A look as of the grave, ancient and weathered. The visitors were hesitant. A thin damp wind rippled in their hair like ghost-fingers.

In his loud bullying voice the Lieutenant repeated: "No volunteer? There must be a volunteer."

The Intern dared not glance in the direction of the Investigator, who was her employer. The Intern dared not call attention to herself, whose hope was to remain diminished and invisible as a plain brown-speckled hen is invisible in a dense underbrush.

It was the Intern's first journey as the Investigator's assistant. The Intern desperately hoped, it would not be her last.

"Anyone? I'm waiting."

The Lieutenant was an affable-seeming man with smudged-Caucasian skin and a quick sly smile like a razor flash. He might have been any age between forty-nine and sixty-nine and he was of moderate height, about five feet nine. He had the look, at about 180 pounds, of a stolid-bodied man who has lost weight recently.

He wore the dun-colored guards' uniform of the Orion Maximum Security Correctional Facility for Men at Orion, Florida. He carried no firearm, but attached to his leather holster was what appeared to be a mean-looking billy club or baton. His face was weather-creased and totemic. His pebbly eyes scraped over the faces of his listeners.

The tour had begun nearly ninety minutes ago. The execution chamber was the last stop on the tour, at the farther end of the dour cinder block building designated Death Row. The Lieutenant had just led the tour group through Cell Block C which had been a harrowing experience but they had not visited the Death Row cell block, off-limits to civilians. Of the fifteen visitors most had begun to stagger with exhaustion and apprehension.

In the dining hall which had been the stop before Cell Block C there'd been two volunteers to sample the prisoners' food and these young people stood now abashed and silent.

"We will not enter if the door is not opened, my friends. There must be a volunteer."

The restless eyes passed over them, rapidly. Since the start of the tour, even before the Lieutenant had led the fifteen civilians through the first of the prison gates and inside the high wire-mesh walls, it seemed that he'd been counting them compulsively. With his eyes, counting. One, two, three . . . six, seven . . . twelve, thirteen, fourteen . . . fifteen.

You could figure that inside the prison facility guards were trained to count. They were trained to account for.

All individuals in the corrections officers' vicinity inside the prison walls were their responsibility. Fifteen civilians had been processed through security checkpoints to be guided through the prison by the Lieutenant and so fifteen civilians had to be released at the end of the tour.

Otherwise, as the Lieutenant had genially informed them, the entire prison would go into lockdown.

At such a time no one would exit or enter the prison until all individuals known to be inside the facility were accounted for.

The Intern swallowed hard. The Intern stepped forward out of invisibility to volunteer.

"Sir, I will."

Was this a surprise? The Lieutenant might have preferred another civilian.

Of the fourteen other civilians all were taller, stronger-looking, more mature in appearance and bearing than the Intern who could not have been taller than five feet one and who didn't look the age she must have been-(that is, twenty-one)-to have been allowed into the prison.

The Lieutenant knew, or should have known, that the Intern was a twenty-five-year-old female, since he'd seen her ID at the start of the tour; but the Lieutenant had forgotten this detail, for he'd paid very little attention to the Intern during the tour, addressing most of his provocative remarks to the half-dozen young women sociology graduate students from Eustis and their female professor as well as to the most distinguished of the civilian visitors, a tall straight-backed white-haired gentleman in a proper suit, white dress shirt and tie, of an age beyond seventy, who resembled a retired professional man, or a judge, and who'd been taking notes in a little notebook through the tour.

There were several men who might have volunteered. But they'd avoided the Lieutenant's questing eye.

Since the dining hall visit, and particularly since the visit to Cell Block C, even the sturdy-bodied male civilians were looking as if they'd strongly preferred to be elsewhere.

Several times on the tour the Lieutenant had winked at his charges saying, "Damn hard to breathe in here, eh? And you folks have just arrived at Orion. Think if you'd never again depart for the rest of your life!"

The Lieutenant was just slightly vexed that the volunteer who'd stepped forward wasn't at all a volunteer he'd have chosen. You could see that the prison tour was the Lieutenant's public life and that each stop was like a station of the cross culminating with, at this farther end of the ugly cinder block Death Row, the execution chamber.

"Well! You don't hardly look like you weigh one hundred pounds, fella, but-step right up."

In fact, the Intern had weighed ninety-seven pounds the last time she'd been weighed on any proper scale which had not been recently in her haphazard and pieced-together life. The Intern ignored the condescending fella.

The Intern did not mind that the issue of her sexual identity would seem to be, for the Lieutenant, and for others very likely, at this moment, gazing not at her but at the effort she represented as she tugged at the door in their place, not an issue at all.

Damn heavy door.

"Try again."

The Intern tried, harder. Clearly the Intern wished to refute any notion that she/he was a runty little fella.

Yet still, the damned door did not budge.

One of those miserable public situations in which you pose as a good sport. You persevere.

In others' eyes, strangers' eyes, you are judged kindly-capable of taking a joke.

Was this a joke? The Intern tugged so hard at the door her arms felt as if someone were trying to yank them out of their sockets.

"Is it locked, sir?"

"No. It is not locked."

The Lieutenant laughed, irritably. As if he were playing some sort of cruel crude trick on the civilian!

Though the Lieutenant quite liked the acquiescent sir. For a tour-group is a heterogeneous and unpredictable gathering of individuals of whom a certain number are sure to be not on the tour guide's side.

Another time the Intern tried to open the door. She was panting now, embarrassed and self-conscious. Perhaps the Lieutenant wasn't punishing the Intern so much as those others, seemingly more capable, who'd held back in dread, and allowed the runty little fellow to step forward in their place.

The Intern perceived that power over generations of confined men had corrupted and deformed the Lieutenant as the hardiest of trees is deformed by a pitiless wind.

Why had the Intern volunteered to try to open the damned door, when no one else had stepped forward?

No one could know: the Intern had been prodded into action because the Investigator, who was the tall white-haired gentleman with the little notebook, had cast her a significant glance a moment before.

Well, the Investigator hadn't cast her a look she'd actually seen. She had sensed it.

Go ahead, McSwain! Step forward.

In such circumstances, in public places, it was to be their protocol: without a word the Investigator might signal an order to the Intern, who was not to question his motives.

This signal had come swiftly and deftly as a neutrino passing between them. For the two were not strangers as they appeared to be-(they'd taken care to keep a little distance from one another on the tour but they'd come to Orion in the same vehicle, driven by the Intern). But no one, even the sharp-eyed Lieutenant trained to intercept covert glances among his charges, seemed to have noticed.

"Sir, I think the door must be locked, or stuck . . ."

"One more try, fella! Then you can give up if you wish."

In dark corduroy trousers, long-sleeved shirt and corduroy jacket, and hiking boots the size of a child's boots, the Intern resembled a precocious sub-species of schoolboy virtually non-existent in central rural Florida. She wore glasses with round dark plastic rims. Her long-sleeved shirt was white cotton, and not entirely clean. Her face was small-boned, plain and fiercely intent. Her dark hair was razor-cut at the nape of her neck, short as a boy's. A premature furrow wavered across her forehead and a bluish vein throbbed at her right temple.

A final try, and still the door would not budge.

"All right, then! I will open it. Excuse me."

The Lieutenant positioned himself in front of the ancient-looking door, grasped the knob and tugged and lifted-(the Intern saw: this was the trick)-until the door swung open like a gaping mouth.

The point of the Lieutenant's demonstration would seem to be: Death is not easily approached.

In a matter-of-fact voice, as if to suggest how effortless the task had been for him, the Lieutenant explained that, in fact, the door to the execution chamber was always kept locked-of course. "It's opened only for occasions like this and when an execution is being prepared."

But now, were they expected to shuffle inside? Inside and down? No one edged forward. Already the visitors could smell an overripe earthy-chemical odor wafting from the opened doorway.

"Step inside, friends! I advise you to take a deep breath beforehand." Like a cruel impresario the Lieutenant stood beside the doorway, beckoning.

Of course, no one wanted to step forward. Especially the young female graduate students hung back, flurried and frightened as birds.

"Oh!-if people have died inside here . . ."

"Can some of us w-wait outside . . ."