Pincher. Wolgast made a mental note of this. “You hungry? They give you breakfast in there?”

“Pancakes.” Carter shrugged. “That was five hours ago, though.”

Wolgast swiveled to look at Doyle, raising his eyebrows. Doyle nodded and left the room. For a few minutes, Wolgast just waited. Despite the large No Smoking sign, the edge of the counter was rutted with brown burn marks.

“You said you from the FBI?”

“That’s right, Anthony.”

A trace of a smile flicked across Carter’s face. “Like on that show?”

Wolgast didn’t know what Carter was talking about, but that was fine; it would give Carter something to explain.

“What show’s that, Anthony?”

“The one with the woman. The one with the aliens.”

Wolgast thought a moment, then remembered. Of course: The X-Files. It had been off the air for what, twenty years? Carter had probably seen it as a kid, in reruns. Wolgast couldn’t remember very much about it, just the idea of it-alien abductions, some kind of conspiracy to hush the thing up. That was Carter’s impression of the FBI.

“I liked that show too. You getting on in here all right?”

Carter squared his shoulders. “You came here to ask me that?”

“You’re a smart guy, Anthony. No, that’s not the reason.”

“What the reason then?”

Wolgast leaned closer to the glass; he found Carter’s eyes and held them with his own.

“I know about this place, Anthony. Terrell Unit. I know what goes on in here. I’m just making sure you’re being treated properly.”

Carter eyed him skeptically. “Does tolerable, I guess.”

“The guards okay with you?”

“Pincher’s tight with the cuffs, but he’s all right most of the time.” Carter lifted his bony shoulders in a shrug. “Dennis ain’t no friend of mine. Some of the others, too.”

The door opened behind Carter and Doyle entered, bearing a yellow tray from the commissary. He placed the tray on the counter in front of Carter: a cheeseburger and fries, gleaming with grease, resting on waxed paper in a little plastic basket. Beside it sat a carton of chocolate milk.

“Go on, Anthony,” Wolgast said, and gestured toward the tray. “We can talk when you’re done.”

Carter placed the receiver on the counter and lifted the cheeseburger to his mouth. Three bites and the thing was half gone. Carter wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and got to work on the fries while Wolgast watched. Carter’s concentration was total. It was like watching a dog eat, Wolgast thought.

Doyle had returned to Wolgast’s side of the glass. “Damn,” he said quietly, “that guy sure was hungry.”

“They got anything for dessert down there?”

“Bunch of dried-up looking pies. Some éclairs looked like dog turds.”

Wolgast thought a moment. “On second thought, skip dessert. Get him a glass of iced tea. Make it nice, too, if you can. Dress it up a little.”

Doyle frowned. “He’s got the milk. I don’t know if they even have iced tea down there. It’s like a barnyard.”

“This is Texas, Phil.” Wolgast suppressed the impatience in his voice. “Trust me, they have tea. Just go find it.”

Doyle shrugged and left again. When Carter had finished his meal, he licked the salt off his fingers, one by one, and sighed deeply. When he picked up the receiver, Wolgast did the same.

“How’s that, Anthony? Feeling better?”

Through the receiver, Wolgast could hear the watery heaviness of Carter’s breathing; his eyes were slack and glazed with pleasure. All those calories, all those protein molecules, all those complex carbohydrates hitting his system like a hammer. Wolgast might just as well have given him a fifth of whiskey.

“Yessir. Thank you.”

“A man’s got to eat. A man can’t live on pancakes.”

A silent moment passed. Carter licked his lips with a slow tongue. His voice, when he spoke, was almost a whisper. “What you want from me?”

“You’ve got it backward, Anthony,” Wolgast said, nodding. “It’s me who’s here to find out what I can do for you.”

Carter dropped his eyes to the counter, the grease-stained wreckage of his meal. “He sent you, didn’t he.”

“Who’s that, Anthony?”

“Woman’s husband.” Carter frowned at the memory. “Mr. Wood. He come here once. Told me he found Jesus.”

Wolgast remembered what Doyle had told him in the car. Two years ago, and it was still on Carter’s mind.

“No, he didn’t send me, Anthony. You have my word.”

“Told him I was sorry,” Carter insisted, his voice cracking. “Told everybody. Ain’t gonna say it no more.”

“No one’s saying you have to, Anthony. I know you’re sorry. That’s why I came all this way to see you.”

“All what way?”

“A long way, Anthony.” Wolgast nodded slowly. “A very, very long way.”

Wolgast paused, searching Carter’s face. There was something about him, different from the others. He felt the moment opening, like a door.

“Anthony, what would you say if I told you I could get you out of this place?”

Behind the glass, Carter eyed him cautiously. “How you mean?”

“Just like I said. Right now. Today. You could leave Terrell and never come back.”

Carter’s eyes floated with incomprehension; the idea was too much to process. “I’d say now I know you’s fooling with me.”

“No lie, Anthony. That’s why we came all this way. You may not know it, but you’re a special man. You could say you’re one of a kind.”

“You talk about me leaving here?” Carter frowned bitterly. “Ain’t make no sense. Not after all this time. Ain’t got no appeal. Lawyer said so in a letter.”

“Not an appeal, Anthony. Better than that. Just you, getting out of here. How does that sound to you?”

“It sound great.” Carter sat back and crossed his arms over his chest with a defiant laugh. “It sound too good to be true. This Terrell.”

It always amazed Wolgast how much accepting the idea of commutation resembled the five stages of grief. Right now, Carter was in denial. The idea was just too much to take in.

“I know where you are. I know this place. It’s the death house, Anthony. It’s not the place where you belong. That’s why I’m here. And not for just anyone. Not these other men. For you, Anthony.”

Carter’s posture relaxed. “I ain’t nobody special. I knows that.”

“But you are. You may not know it, but you are. You see, I need a favor from you, Anthony. This deal’s a two-way street. I can get you out of here, but there’s something I need for you to do for me in return.”

“A favor?”

“The people I work for, Anthony, they saw what was going to happen to you in here. They know what’s going to happen in June, and they don’t think it’s right. They don’t think it’s right the way you’ve been treated, that your lawyer has up and left you here like this. And they realized they could do something about it, and that they had a job they needed you to do instead.”

Carter frowned in confusion. “Cuttin’, you mean? Like that lady’s lawn?”

Jesus, Wolgast thought. He actually thought he wanted him to cut the grass. “No, Anthony. Nothing like that. Something much more important.” Wolgast lowered his voice again. “You see, that’s the thing. What I need you to do is so important, I can’t tell you what it is. Because I don’t even know myself.”

“How you know it’s so important you don’t know what it is?”

“You’re a smart man, Anthony, and you’re right to ask that. But you’re going to have to trust me. I can get you out of here, right now. All you have to do is say you want to.”

That was when Wolgast pulled the warden’s envelope from his pocket and opened it. He always felt like a magician at this moment, lifting his hat to show a rabbit. With his free hand, he flattened the document against the glass for Carter to see.

“Do you know what this is? This is a writ of commutation, Anthony, signed by Governor Jenna Bush. It’s dated today, right there at the bottom. You know what that means, a commutation?”