The Anniversary

Prologue

Nashville, Tennessee
Eleven years ago

As soon as the jury came back, she knew.

Faces somber, eyes trained on the floor, they filed back to their seats, these twelve men and women who held his life in their hands. None of them glanced toward the spectators. None of them met his eyes. In her third-row gallery seat, Laura Seton leaned slightly forward. Placing a hand on her throat, she felt a birdlike pulsing flutter. As her fingers traced the delicate bones of her neck, she thought how easy it would be to break them.

Judge Gwen Kirkpatrick looked down on the room from her position high on the bench. She had thick, dark hair streaked with gray and a bright red gash of a mouth. A bronze disk hung on the wall above her, the Great Seal of the State of Tennessee. It floated there like a halo, invoking some higher good. Not that Laura believed in that. She believed in very little these days.

“All right, if the record would reflect that the jury is back in the courtroom after their deliberations.” Judge Kirkpatrick took a sip of water, then turned to the jury box. “Mr. Archer, you are still the foreperson of this jury, is that correct?”

“Yes, ma’am.” Archer was a stocky man with blue suspenders and a white moustache, recently retired from thirty years in the insurance industry.

“I understand that you’ve reached a verdict.”

“Yes, we have.”

Laura glanced at her watch: 10:55 a.m.

For the first time since she’d arrived, she allowed herself to look at him.

A dark-haired man in a navy blazer seated beside his lawyer. His face was beautiful in profile. A high, rounded forehead, straight nose, chiseled chin. He gave the impression of being at once both sensitive and strong. While she couldn’t clearly see his expression, she easily pictured it. The vaguely ironic smile. Eyebrows slightly raised. As if he were a little bored but trying to be polite. His deep brown eyes would be shining, like stones from a riverbed.

He leaned toward his lawyer to say something. She willed him to turn around.

Please, Steven, look at me. There’s something you need to know.

His back stiffened almost imperceptibly, as if he’d read her thoughts, until a moment later he lapsed into stillness again.

She hadn’t planned to be here today, had planned to sleep through it all. She’d gotten as drunk as she could last night before passing out on the floor. But at 4 a.m. she’d snapped awake and stumbled into the bathroom. In the glare of the fluorescent light, she’d looked like she was dying. Haggard face, pallid skin, huge burning eyes. “I’m only twenty-four,” she’d whispered. “I’m only twenty-four.” For reasons that now eluded her, this had seemed significant.

From the front of the room, the voices pressed on, but Laura barely listened. She forced herself to breathe. She noticed her skirt was too tight. During the past few months she’d gained at least ten pounds, but the effect was oddly soothing. Buried in flesh she felt safer. As if she couldn’t be seen.

Memories were flashing through her mind, like a video on fastforward. Lobsters at Jimmy’s Harborside. Camping in the Smoky Mountains. Dancing at 12th & Porter to driving country rock. I’m in the mood, I’m in the mood, I’m in the . . .

And then there were the other things. The things she didn’t want to remember.

A blood-soaked shirt behind the bed.

Bone fragments in the fireplace.

Knives. A mask. Rubber gloves.

But always an explanation.

Always an explanation. Until one day, there just wasn’t.

“Mr. Gage, would you please stand and face the jury?” That was the judge again.

Steven Gage got to his feet. He seemed calm and somewhat bemused. Simply going through the motions, as if he were humoring them.

“Mr. Archer, would you read me the verdict as to count one of this indictment.”

Archer rubbed a hand over his mouth, then, eyes down, started speaking. “We, the jury, unanimously find that the State has proven the following listed statutory aggravating circumstance or circumstances beyond a reasonable doubt . . .”

The words rolled on, endless and without meaning. A barrage of neat official language to disguise what was happening.

Now, Steven. Look. Now.

But his eyes remained on the jury. He didn’t turn around. The sense of déjà vu grew stronger by the moment. It seemed to Laura that they’d done this all just ten days ago. But after the determination of guilt had come a whole new round of proceedings. They called it the penalty phase. Mitigating factors. Aggravating factors. All of them brought to light. The testimony had lasted for more than two days, but the jury was back in an hour.

Laura’s eyes roamed the gallery, the sea of crowded benches. The elderly man beside her smelled like wintergreen. The families were sitting in the front rows, as they had throughout the trial. Dahlia’s family to the right of the aisle, Steven’s on the left. Dahlia’s parents sat ramrod straight, their teenage son between them. The boy, sullen and slightly sprawled, looked utterly out of place. Across the aisle, Steven’s mother was flanked by two grown sons. A small, plump woman with bottle-blue hair, she’d shrunk down in her seat. Laura had a sense that if her sons weren’t there, she’d slide right onto the floor.

A jagged line of pain shot through Laura’s brain. Her mouth was dry as sand. She breathed in hot recycled air, blown from vents in the wall. Dun-colored curtains covered the windows, shutting out the sun. The world had collapsed into this single place. There was nothing outside this room.

Laura felt the words before she heard them, as her heart tore into her chest.

“We, the jury, unanimously find that the punishment for the defendant, Steven Lee Gage, shall be death.”

An instant of absolute silence, and then the whispers began.

Laura’s stomach heaved, and she pressed her hands together. It had happened, it had actually happened, and she couldn’t take it in. She’d tried to imagine how it might feel, but she’d never imagined this. An utter absence of feeling, a blankness akin to sleep. Sentenced to death. Sentenced to death. She tried to absorb the meaning. But before the words could fully sink in, something was happening. Up front, a flurry of action. Steven had lunged toward the judge.

“I do not accept this verdict! I do not accept it, do you hear me?” He stood slightly crouched and quivering, glaring at Judge Kirkpatrick. “I am innocent, and you are the guilty ones, all of you here today. Those responsible for this will pay. Do you hear me? All of you will pay!”

A muffled roar in the gallery, as Kirkpatrick pounded her gavel. “Mr. Phillips, control your client!”

“Steven. Please. Calm down.” George Phillips raised a slender hand, but his client didn’t respond. Instead, Gage took another step forward, his eyes burning into the judge.

Two court officers were rushing forward, converging around Gage. The first one, well over six foot five, tackled Gage from behind. He seemed to have gained a hold until Gage bit down on his hand. The injured man stumbled backward, let out an agonized shriek, as his partner, hurling himself toward Gage, wrestled him to the ground. “No! Steven. No! Oh God!” Steven’s mother clutched her other sons’ arms as her screams gave way to sobs.

Gage fought back from the floor, spitting, writhing, kicking. Everywhere, spectators were jumping up, gawking at the scene. Laura was almost surprised to find she was standing too, craning her neck to watch, to get a better view. Gage’s face was a deep bright red. Veins pulsed in his forehead. She didn’t want to look, but she couldn’t turn away.

This is what they saw, she thought. This is what they saw.

He’d managed to get to his feet again when one of the bailiffs grabbed him, jammed a knee in his lower back and hurled him against a table.

“Jesus Christ, get him! Get him!” That was Tucker Schuyler, Dahlia’s younger brother. He pounded a fist into his palm, his face as red as his hair.

Another vicious flailing struggle, and Gage broke free again. He flung himself toward the gallery, his eyes bulging grotesquely. A swirl of movement now, as spectators streamed for the door. The jurors, who’d climbed to their feet, seemed astonished, disbelieving. Pretty, blonde juror number four wore an expression of abject terror, one hand clapped over her mouth, her eyes enormous and bright. Jurors number six and seven were edging toward the exit. They’d been told that the system worked. They hadn’t expected this.

“You motherfuckin’ fascists,” Gage shrieked. “You don’t know what you’re doing. Get your fuckin’ hands off me!”

He was still cursing and kicking when the handcuffs snapped on his wrists. His body strained frantically, shivered, then went slack. His mouth fell open, and he gazed at the room, drained of energy. For some time the room was quiet, and Steven Gage didn’t move. Then, without warning, his body jerked, and his eyes grew wide again. Throwing back his head, he let out an agonized howl.

The cry went on and on, a piercing ululation. The sound of a keening animal caught in the grip of a trap. Laura’s skin prickled down the back of her neck, a chill blooming in her heart. This was pure, distilled rage, like nothing she’d ever heard.

Then, suddenly, it was over.

Gage was silent again. His eyes drifted to the gallery. He looked at them. At her.

For a moment their gazes locked. Laura could hardly breathe. It was like a curtain had been ripped away, and she finally saw the truth. The truth that she’d swept aside for so long because she couldn’t bear it. What she saw was an ineffable emptiness, a bleakness beyond despair. There was something broken and evil in him that could never be repaired. As his eyes bore into hers, a smile flickered on his lips, and in a moment of terrible insight she knew what he was thinking. He wasn’t really there, he was floating in fantasy. Imagining how he’d kill her if he only had the chance.

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