Orator Tate Collier had done everything right in the closing statement. It was short, colloquial, filled with concrete imagery. He’d referred to Peter Matthews as “the defendant” and to the girl as “Joan”-depersonalizing the criminal, humanizing the victim. The reference to the “needle”-getting the jury used to the thought of the needle used in lethal injections-was a particularly good touch, he’d thought.

He’d even added the request for the death penalty because that was something they could bargain with in their minds-trading the boy’s life for a finding of sanity and a long prison sentence.

And that was exactly what happened.

He won, the boy was found sane and guilty. And was sentenced to life without parole. Which had been Tate’s goal all along.

And a week later the young man who’d beaten capital punishment was executed by a far more informal means than lethal injection-a dozen prison inmates, identities unknown, had used broomsticks and sharpened spoons to carry out the sentence. And it took them three hours to do so.

Justice?

After he’d heard of Peter’s death, Tate had sat at his desk for a long moment, wondering why he felt so troubled at the news. Then he walked into the commonwealth’s attorney’s file room and read through evidence in the case once again.

They were the same files and documents he’d read before the trial, of course. But he examined them now untainted by the passionate drive to convict the young man. He looked more carefully at the picture they painted of the boy-not “the defendant.” But Peter Thomas Matthews, a seventeen-year-old boy, a resident of Fairfax, Virginia.

Yes, Peter had a collection of eerie comics and Japanimation tapes. But many of them, Tate had learned in preparing for trial, were bestsellers in Japan -where they’d taken on an artsy cult status and were reviewed seriously and collected by young people and adults alike. What was more, the boy also had a collection of serious science fiction and fantasy writers like Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, William Gibson, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jules Verne, Edgar Rice Burroughs. Peter had spent hours copying long, poetic passages from these books and had tried his hand at illustrating scenes from them. He’d also written sci-fi and fantasy short stories of his own, which weren’t bad for someone his age.

Yes, some psychiatric evaluations called the boy dangerous. But others said he merely had a paranoid personality and was given to panic in stressful situations. He had no history of violence.

In getting ready for the case, Tate had also learned about Joan Keller-the victim. The girl had been sexually active since age twelve. She’d experimented with “weird things,” possibly erotic asphyxia. She’d seduced older men on several other occasions and would have been the complaining witness in at least one statutory rape case, except that she’d refused to cooperate. She’d been treated for being a borderline personality and had been suspended twice for assaults-against both girls and boys at her school, including one involving a knife.

Peter had abrasions on his face and neck when he was brought to the lockup. He claimed that Joan had struck him with a rock when she got tired of his awkward groping-after she’d taken his hand and slipped it into her panties.

And the statement the boy had made-about how Joan “had to die”-was disputed by a local fisherman near the scene of the arrest. He claimed the boy might have said, “She never had to die… She shouldn’t have hit me.”

But silver-tongued Tate Collier had managed to keep all of this damning evidence out of the trial or had shattered the credibility of the witnesses presenting it.

Your Honor we will not try the victim in this case Your Honor a well written short story has no probative value in this case whatsoever Your Honor that fact is immaterial and has to be stricken please instruct the witness…

The defense lawyers had come to him with a plea bargain request: criminally negligent homicide, suspended sentence, three years’ probation and two years’ mandatory counseling.

But, no. Peter Matthews had laid his hands upon the neck of a sixteen-year-old girl and had pressed, pressed, pressed until she was lifeless. And so a plea bargain wouldn’t do.

The Court: The defendant will rise. You have heard the verdict of the jury and have been adjudged guilty of murder in the first degree. The jury has not recommended the death penalty and accordingly I hereby sentence you to life in prison.

He went to prison and the last thing anyone remembered about Peter was his telling a guard he was going to play with his new friends. “Won’t that be way cool?” Peter asked. “We’re going to play ball, a bunch of us. They want me to play ball. Awesome.” Then he disappeared into the laundry room and was found, in several pieces, five hours later.

Why, Tate had wondered back then as he sat alone in the musty file room, had he been so vehement about prosecuting the boy? Why?

The question he’d asked himself often in the past few years.

The question he asked himself now. What would have been so bad if the defendant… if Peter had been put on probation and gone into a hospital for treatment?

Wasn’t that reasonable? Of course it was. But it hadn’t been then, not to the Tate Collier of five years ago. Not to Tate Collier the whiz-kid commonwealth’s attorney, the man who spoke in tongues, the Judge’s grandson.

Why?

Because the thought of a killer depriving parents of their child was unbearable to him. That was the answer. That was all he thought. Someone stole away a girl just like Megan. And he had to die. To hell with justice.

Tate had never seen Peter’s father, Aaron Matthews, at the trial or hadn’t paid any attention to him if he’d been there. The man was a therapist, Tate remembered from reading the boy’s history and evaluations. Lived alone. His wife-a therapist as well, and reportedly more successful than her husband-had committed suicide some years before.

Aaron Matthews…

Well, he could give the police a name and address now. They’d find him. He only prayed Megan was still alive.

Now, in Konnie’s office, he dialed Bett’s home phone. Her voice mail gave her cell phone number and he dialed that. She didn’t answer. He left a message about what he’d learned and told her that he was at the county police station.

He started down the hall, striding the way he’d walked when he’d been a commonwealth’s attorney and cut up these offices as if he owned them, playing inquisitor to the young officers as he grilled them about their cases and the evidence they’d collected.

He pushed through the door to the Homicide Division and was surprised to see three startled detectives stop in the tracks of their conversations. He smiled ruefully, remembering only then that he was a trespasser.

One detective looked at another, an astonished gaze on his face.

“I’m sorry to barge in,” Tate began. “I’m Tate Collier. It’s about my daughter. I don’t know if you heard but she’s disappeared and-”

In less than twenty seconds he was facedown on a convenient desk, the handcuffs ratcheting onto his wrists with metallic efficiency, his Miranda rights floating down upon him from a gruff voice several feet above his head.

“What the hell’s going on?” he barked.

“You’re under arrest, Mr. Collier. Do you understand these rights as I’ve read them to you?”

“For what? What’re you arresting me for?”

“Do you understand your rights?”

“Yes, I understand my fucking rights. What for?”

“For murder, Mr. Collier, The murder of Amy Walker. If you’ll come this way, please.”