The Obsidian Chamber

38

For many years, Diogenes Pendergast had scrupulously maintained four different and fully realized false identities. In certain ways, for him, they had actually become real, allowing him to become another person, but one that could act out various expressions or aspects of his complicated personality. Being able to slip into another identity was a kind of relief valve, a vacation from his own tortured and complicated self.

These personalities had been diverting to set up, develop, and curate. Creating a new identity in this digital age had at times proven a challenge, but once completed, maintaining the digital trail was easy. It required more than computer work, however: it required his physical presence. Keeping his doppelgängers up to date and busy, with visible and productive lives — and no suspicious gaps — took up a great deal of his time. That, along with establishing Halcyon, had provided the lion’s share of his life’s interest and amusement. Two of his identities had been “parked,” for want of a better word, in the United States; the other was in Eastern Europe, where anonymity was easier to buy and maintain. This last identity he had recently allowed to go dormant, as it would no longer be necessary.

He had lost his favorite identity — that of Hugo Menzies, curator at the New York Museum of Natural History — during the events that culminated in the disaster atop the Stromboli volcano. He deeply regretted the loss: Menzies had been the first of his false identities and one that he had devoted enormous effort to maintaining, a distinguished staff member of a great museum. After Stromboli, of course, he had been forced to focus his attention for several months on merely clinging to life. But now, restored to health, he had been able to revisit the two remaining false identities and ensure they were intact, updated, and uncompromised — with suitable explanations for their absences during his recovery.

Petru Lupei was the remaining identity of longest standing. But the other identity would now prove of particular use to him. For the last eleven years, he had been (among other things) Dr. Walter Leyland, physician, living in Clewiston, Florida, on the southern shore of Lake Okeechobee. Clewiston was far enough away from such major population centers as Palm Beach and Miami to make his fiction easier to maintain. He had a deep knowledge of medicine as a result of his studies; Dr. Leyland was single, and he had a private practice catering to a limited number of wealthy clients; he spent most of his time abroad, donating his services to Médecins Sans Frontières — and as a result he was an infrequently seen, but respected, member of the Clewiston community. It had been remarkable, actually, how naively the professional community had accepted his bona fides at face value. More to the point, he had arranged a history of accreditation — medical school, a pathology residency, a forensic pathology fellowship — that allowed him to, under certain circumstances, act as a substitute consulting medical examiner for Hendry County.

His aim in doing so had been to get unfettered access to certain facilities, equipment, and drugs useful to his particular pursuits — disposing, for example, of dead bodies whose existence might otherwise prove troublesome. While he was no longer engaging in that hobby, the Dr. Walter Leyland avatar would nevertheless prove useful again now.

Florida state law allowed condemned inmates to choose the method of their death: electrocution or lethal injection. Lucius Garey had chosen the latter. This made things much easier for Diogenes.

It was quarter to eight in the evening when he approached the main gate of the Florida State Prison in Pahokee — flanked by rows of cheap cabbage palms — wearing a somber suit and the other elements of disguise — the salt-and-pepper hair, brown contact lenses, and cotton wadding in his cheeks — that went into bringing Walter Leyland, MD, to life. A physician’s bag sat on the passenger seat beside him, and the scar on his cheek had been carefully erased by stage makeup. His beard was gone, of course, as both Petru Lupei and Dr. Leyland were clean-shaven. He showed his credentials to the guard, who checked them against a manifest on the computer terminal in his guardhouse.

“Welcome back, Dr. Leyland,” the guard said. “Haven’t seen you for some time.”

“I’ve been abroad. Ebola epidemic.”

The guard nodded, an uneasy look passing across his face. “Guess you know where to go, don’t need me to show you — right, Doc?”

Diogenes did indeed know where to go.

One job of the Hendry County medical examiners was to examine the bodies of executed criminals and sign their death certificates. Another, rarer job for the M.E.’s was to administer lethal injections themselves, if the state executioner was unable to be on hand. Once, several years ago, when a prisoner on death row had exhausted his appeals and been scheduled to die, the county M.E., a Dr. Caulfeather, had asked Diogenes — at the time in residence at Clewiston in his Walter Leyland persona — to assist him in the death house as consulting medical examiner.

This was a development that Diogenes, in setting up the Leyland identity, had not considered. He had been only too happy to oblige, thanking the caprices of fortune for having dropped this attractive opportunity in his lap — one he could never have engineered for himself.

The experience had proven most interesting. It was the first time that Diogenes had legally participated in the death of another human being, with the encouragement and support of the state. Afterward, Diogenes had expressed his willingness to assist Dr. Caulfeather in the future, should his expertise be needed. In years that followed he had been involved in three additional executions, two of them directly.

Tonight, however, both the state executioner and Dr. Caulfeather had been unable to assist in the death of Lucius Garey. The executioner had been called away on a family emergency, and Dr. Caulfeather was experiencing the symptoms of appendicitis — both incidents engineered by Diogenes, of course. And so the Florida authorities, as always eager to proceed with an execution on schedule, had called upon the services of Dr. Walter Leyland.

Now he nosed the rented car into staff parking, then made his way through security into the prison proper. The death watch area was a separate structure off the death row block. It included within its walls the execution chamber, and security here was somewhat more relaxed than in the rest of the prison, given the fact that so many civilians — members of the press, families of the victim and condemned alike — had to pass through its gates. Diogenes had his credentials checked again at an internal barrier, then he was buzzed through first one, and then another, steel door. The lethal injection suite was to the right; the electric chair to the left. Diogenes chose the right-hand corridor.

Florida executions proceeded like clockwork. He checked his watch. By now, the condemned would have had his last meal; he would have been visited by the warden and, if he wished, a chaplain; and had his clothing removed and been dressed in a hospital gown. Chances were that, at this very moment, the prison doctor, LeBronk, was attaching EKG leads to Lucius Garey’s chest.

He walked past the two open doors of the witness observation area — the relatives representing the victims had a separate viewing room from the relatives of the condemned — and he noticed that, while the victims’ room already held half a dozen people, the condemned man’s viewing room was empty.

He stepped past a partition into a small room, the space from which the lethal injections were prepared. At the far end was a door leading into the execution chamber itself. The warden, two guards, some prison flunkies assigned to executions, and the prison doctor, LeBronk, were in the close, ill-smelling room.

The warden nodded at Diogenes. “Thank you for coming on short notice, Dr. Leyland.”

Diogenes shook his hand. “Just doing my duty.”

Dr. LeBronk mopped his perspiring brow with a handkerchief, then shook Diogenes’s hand in turn. Like most in the Florida penal system, LeBronk believed in the death penalty with every fiber of his being. When it came to actually helping carry out the act, however, the man was wilting like a hothouse lily exposed to the sun.

“Most irregular,” LeBronk said. “Our having no execution team available, I mean.”

“Is the subject prepped?” Diogenes asked as he took a white lab coat from a row of pegs and slipped into it. From the moment the condemned prisoner left his cell for the last time, he or she became known as “the subject” for the rest of the proceedings.

LeBronk nodded.

“We don’t normally allow executions to proceed with only a single team member,” the warden said. “That’s for the peace of mind of the execution team, you understand — not out of any consideration for the subject. But Dr. LeBronk, here, doesn’t feel up to the task. I hope you won’t find this to be too… inconvenient,” he continued, with a withering glance at the prison doctor.

Diogenes understood the subtext of this. It was protocol for two executioners to be on hand, each of whom would inject a deadly mixture of drugs into an IV tube. Only one of those tubes went into the veins of the condemned, however; the other went into a disposable bag. This way, those tasked with the execution could console themselves that they may not have actually killed another human being. It was the psychology of the firing squad: one shooter would be given a blank, the rest live ammunition.

“It won’t be a problem,” Diogenes said, careful to sound the correct note of grim resolution, to keep any hint of eagerness from his voice. He placed his medical bag on a nearby table. “Justice must be served. And we all know how much the governor likes his executions to proceed on time. It would be inhumane — for everybody concerned — to reschedule.”

“My thoughts exactly.” The warden nodded. “If you’re ready, then, we can proceed.”

Diogenes glanced at his watch: eight thirty precisely. “I’m ready.”

The warden turned and signaled to the guards, who exited the room. They were going, Diogenes knew, to collect Lucius Garey and bring him into the execution chamber.