Liquid Smoke Read Online Free PDF Page B

main gate. A knot like a rock formed in my stomach as I got in line.
    The guard greeted me with a big smile. She looked at my paperwork, nodded, asked me a few routine questions. She handed back my license, but kept the paperwork. “You’ll have exactly fifty minutes, sir. We’ll notify you when there are ten minutes left.” She upped the wattage in the smile. “Welcome to San Quentin.”
    I walked through a metal detector and into an expansive courtyard. People talked casually, the prisoners identified by their bright yellow coveralls. Babies cried, toddlers ran in circles, and men and women held hands, trying to act like normal families. But the forced smiles and reserved actions told the real story.
    I felt like I was entering some sort of deranged amusement park.
    A guard explained to me that death row inmates were not allowed into the public areas, and I was directed through another gate and to a bank of windows down a narrow hall.
    I didn’t argue.
    I slid into a seat in front of the last window and my assisting guard told me that Mr. Simington would be along shortly. In the center of the window was a small circle with slats running through it, like in the box office of a movie theater.
    Only this movie was real.
    Sitting there by myself, the urge to run was greater than anything I’d ever felt. I had no place being there. I could live without meeting this man. My life would be no different. I owed nothing to him or to Darcy Gill. Nothing. Going through with this suddenly seemed like a ridiculous exercise in masochism, and I stood to get the hell out of there.
    There was movement behind the window and a guard pulled back the chair on the other side of the clear panel.
    I froze.
    Run or sit?
    I sat.
    The guard moved away, and Russell Simington moved into view.
    He was a little over six feet tall and well built, the yellow coveralls fitting him like a tailored business suit. I put him somewhere in his late fifties. Thick brown hair streaked with gray. The reading glasses he wore over his dark green eyes gave him an educated look. A nondescript nose. His skin was darker than I expected for someone in his position, a golden brown that only the sun can give. A tiny white scar stood out next to his right eye. A well-manicured beard, brown with gray like his hair, covered a distinguished jaw line. I saw a small tattoo near his right wrist, but I couldn’t make it out.
    I felt my breath getting away from me.
    If Russell Simington wasn’t my father, someone had done a damn good job of drawing us with the same pencil.
    He slid into the chair and gave a slight nod in my direction. “Hello,” he said. His voice was deep but smooth. “Hi,” I managed.
    He leaned forward, his face closer to the panel, and adjusted his glasses. “I’m Russell.” I said nothing.
    “And unless I’m looking in some sort of trick mirror that takes me back a ways, you must be Noah.” A small, tired smile emerged on his mouth.
    I shifted in the chair. “Yeah. I’m Noah.”
    He folded his hands on the small ledge below the panel. “It’s nice for me to meet you, but I expect it’s not the same for you.” “Not exactly.”
    He nodded as if that was the response he expected. “I assume you’re here because that Darcy woman found you.”
    My heart was thumping, almost as if it was beating against my ribcage. “Yeah.”
    He shook his head, chuckling to himself. “She is a pistol, that one. Surprised she’s not here with you, actually.”
    Even if I could have, I didn’t feel the need to explain her absence to him. So I said nothing.
    He cleared his throat. “I’m not sure what else we’re supposed to do.”
    “Me either.”
    “She told you about me?” “I got all the highlights.”
    He studied me for a moment, then laughed. “Highlights.” We sat there in silence. It felt like everything I’d expected and nothing I’d expected, all at the same time. “How is Carolina?” he asked. “Fine.”
    “You and she