Ollie and I stood in the kitchen, out of sight of the camera. Ollie had connected her pen to a receiver Rovil wore in his right ear, and she’d synched the display with the wall screen so that we could see what he was seeing. Right now, that was a commercial for the Delwood Detention Facility, a private prison in Ohio that offered excellent outsourcing options for overcrowded state and federal prisons. The minute-long commercial had already looped a dozen times.
“Just hang in there, Rovil,” I whispered into the pen. He nodded, very slightly.
We’d applied for the visit three days ago, and it had taken that long to get approval from the Delwood. Ollie told us that the odds of being granted a visitation were not good; Rovil was not a relative, and his status as a witness in the murder trial had probably flagged him as an Inappropriate Contact. But the paintings told us that Edo, another witness, had been allowed to have contact with Gil. Of course, that could have been because he was a billionaire who’d donated millions to Delwood.
The final step of the approval was Gil Kapernicke himself. If the prisoner didn’t want the visit, he couldn’t be forced. So when the approval came through, we knew that Gil was interested in talking to his old intern from Little Sprout.
“Are you okay?” Ollie whispered.
“I’m not going to fall apart when Gil pops on screen,” I said.
“You shouldn’t even be in the room,” she said. “Let Rovil handle this.”
“I’m fine.”
This was a lie. Ever since the day Ollie showed me the pictures, I woke up every morning asking myself the question, Are you going to drink today? My alcohol-starved brain was still cramping from my cruel trick. Over the four-day bender I’d given it a good long gulp of what it most craved—and then I’d yanked away the cup.
Ollie had asked the question too, but not aloud. I felt her tense every time I went out alone, then assessing me when I returned, that analyst’s brain checking for signs and symptoms. Each morning I had no idea if I was going to make it through the day without a drink. And so far, for three days at least, I’d arrived back at home each night, achingly sober.
And I’d done this every day without Dr. Gloria. The angel was still angry with me.
The wall screen flipped on to show a man’s face. It wasn’t pale, fat Gil, but a Hispanic-looking guard. He adjusted something at the top of the screen, then stepped out of the way. The camera was sitting on a table, pointed at an empty chair.
“Hello?” Rovil said.
No one answered. A minute later there was movement at the edge of the frame, and a prisoner in an orange jumpsuit appeared. He was fifty-five or sixty years old, white hair shaved down to bristles. He was very thin, with ropy arms.
He sat down in the chair and rested his arms on the table. “Rovil,” he said, his voice radiating pleasure. “I know that Gil is so pleased to see you.”
Rovil glanced over at me, his eyes wide. He turned back to the camera and said, “I think there’s been a mistake. I’m to speak with Gilbert Kapernicke.”
The man laughed, and it wasn’t until then that I could see that he was Gil. He’d lost at least 150 pounds. He looked simultaneously more healthy than the Gil I’d known and much older than he should have been.
“Gil is here,” Gil said. “Anything you say, he’ll hear.”
Rovil blinked at the screen.
I took the pen from Ollie. “Ask him if he’s Gil’s god.”
“Are you Gil’s god?”
“Not just Gil’s,” he answered. “But yes, I speak, and Gil repeats what I say. Years ago he decided not to fight me, but to get out of the way. He has surrendered his life to me. I decide everything—what he eats, when he should exercise, what he should do for recreation, and…” He nodded at the screen. “Who he should talk to.”
“That’s awful,” I said.
“That’s … fascinating,” Rovil said.
Gil shrugged. “It’s Gil’s choice. He chooses, every day and each moment, to let me guide his life. He could stop listening to me at any moment.”
“But he doesn’t?” Rovil asked. “Not ever?”
“Gil would be the first to say that he was not doing a very good job of managing himself. Surely you could understand that better than anyone, Rovil. Don’t you think your life would be better if you gave it all to me?”
“To you?” Rovil asked.
Gil tilted his head. “There’s only one god. Even if I take a different form for each person.”
I said into the pen, “Ask him to tell you something that only you would know.”
Rovil glanced at me, frowning.
“Jesus Christ,” I said into the pen. “Why’d we give you the earpiece if you’re going to keep looking at me?”
“Breathe,” Dr. Gloria said.
Gil said, “Rovil, put Lyda on the line.”
“I’m sorry,” Rovil said, “I don’t know what—”
“It’s all right,” Gil said. “The guards don’t pay any attention to these calls. We have been such a good prisoner, for so long, that they let us talk to whomever we want.”
I covered the pen and looked at Ollie questioningly.
She shrugged. “Your choice.”
I handed Ollie the pen and walked into the living room. I didn’t sit down. My heart was racing, and I felt a rush of heat across my chest. The wall screen was gigantic, and Gil’s face was as big as the Great and Terrible Oz. In the corner was a small mirror window that contained a miniature version of me and Rovil.
I sucked in a breath. “How you doing, Gilbert?”
The giant face smiled slightly. “I’ve been expecting you to call. Gil had hoped you’d visit in person before his parole, but this will have to do.”
“You think you’re going to get out on parole?”
That head tilt again. I could remember the old Gil doing that. “We’ll be out in a year.”
It was a shock, but I absorbed it. “That’s … good,” I said.
“Gil is in no hurry to leave,” he said. “We teach art here. We counsel troubled inmates. It’s been a rewarding period. But he accepts that it’s time for us to move on.”
I said, “And what did Gil want to talk about before you moved on?”
“He wanted to ask your forgiveness.”
I wasn’t ready for that. The emotion hit in a rush, the gates of the limbic system thrown wide open. I didn’t know what I was feeling—rage? confusion? sorrow? The flood washed everything downstream and knocked me to hell.
At the trial Gil had said that he had only fragmentary memories of killing Mikala. He testified that his first fully conscious thought came as he stood over her body with the knife in his hand and he realized what he’d done. He confessed immediately. He told the police he’d become obsessed with Mikala. It was absurd, an obese white man falling in love with a beautiful black lesbian, but that was why, he said, he’d never admitted it before, not even to himself. In the frenzy of the overdose, his jealousy had taken over. He cried several times during the trial.
It was a performance. Gil didn’t kill Mikala. And we both knew it.
“Yeah, well…” My voice was shaky. I cleared my throat. “You can shove your apology up your ass.”
“Lyda, please…”
“Tell me about the paintings, Gil. The ones you gave to Edo.”
Gil sat back. His hands dropped to his side.
I said, “I know he’s been talking to you. Did he ask you to build a machine, Gil?”
“We only paint,” Gil said. “We don’t build machines anymore.”
“Fine. Did he ask you to paint a fucking machine?”
He tilted his head. “Have you seen our paintings? I know that you have. If you’ve seen them, then you know.”
“Are there more, Gil? Are you still painting them?”
He smiled, but didn’t answer.
I leaned against the wall with both hands leaned close to that smug face. “Give Edo a message, Gil. Can you at least do that?”