Noah held his gaze but didn't answer.
Carter studied him for another moment, his eyes moving across Noah's face. "You look just like him. Same face. Same way of sitting. Except he had this thing he did with his hands, kept folding them on the table like he was in church." Carter glanced down at Noah's hands, which were flat on the surface, fingers spread. "You don't do that."
"I'm not Luke," Noah said.
"No. He's dead." Carter delivered it the way someone states the weather. "So why is a State investigator sitting across from me? State wasn't involved in my case."
"I'm looking into some things."
"Looking into things." Carter almost smiled. It wasn't warmth. It was the ghost of something that used to be humor before four years in a cell burned it down to ash. "That's what your brother said too. Right before he helped put me in here."
Noah let the silence hold for a moment. Through the wall behind him he could hear the muffled sound of a heavy lock engaging somewhere deeper in the facility, an institutional noise that carried through concrete and reminded you where you were even when you were trying to forget.
"You've been writing letters to Ray," Noah said. "What did you hope to achieve?"
"Disturb his sleep." Carter leaned back as far as the chains allowed, which wasn't far. "Remind him that he put an innocent man behind bars. Every few months I write one. Keep it simple. Just his name and the date of my execution. No words. Just the date." He tilted his head slightly. "I want him to see it coming."
"The jury and court didn't see it your way."
"No, they wouldn't. Not when two of High Peaks' finest lied on the stand and manufactured the evidence that convicted me." His voice stayed level. No heat. They were words said so many times it had worn smooth like a stone in a river. "I expect Raywill be at my execution in two weeks. Watching in glee as they put the needle in."
"Don't bank on it," Noah said. "My brother has other things on his plate."
"I expect he does. More people to imprison falsely."
The correctional officer by the entrance shifted his weight but said nothing. Noah let the silence sit for a few seconds, watching Carter's hands. They were still. His nails were bitten short and his knuckles were dry and cracked. Prison hands. Hands that hadn't touched grass or held a steering wheel or done anything that mattered in four years.
"What were you doing in Vermont?" Noah asked.
"What?"
"Vermont. You crossed the state line the night Kara disappeared. You were meant to work that evening. You never showed up."
Carter's expression didn't change. "I took a drive."
"Long drive. Why?"
"Relationship problems." Carter paused, watching Noah with something that might have been amusement or might have been contempt. The fluorescent light caught the gray in his stubble. "You know about those, don't you? A murdered wife. A murdered lover. A murdered brother. At least that's what the former Sheriff Daniel Roberts had to say. Since he's an inmate here." He let that land. He let it settle between them. "Roberts went down for corruption after your lying brother was killed. Strangely enough, out on Route 73. Same stretch of road Kara went missing." He paused again. "You ever wondered, Mr. Sutherland, why there? Out of all the places?"
"Remote. Desolate. Lack of cell coverage," Noah replied.
"Or maybe it was because someone wanted to send a message. A message about his ties to the Kara Ellison case."
Noah felt the conversation shifting underneath him like a current changing direction. He'd come here to ask questions and Carter was the one steering. The man had been in a cell for four years but he talked like someone who had spent every one of those days paying attention, filing things away, connecting dots that nobody on the outside was bothering to look at.
"Luke's death was related to narcotics and corruption," Noah said. "That's established."
"Oh, I don't doubt it was. The question is whether Roberts was the only one that was corrupt."
"If you're suggesting my brother..."
"Brothers." Carter didn't take his eyes off him.
Noah felt something tighten in his chest. Not anger, not exactly, but the precursor to it. The feeling of standing on ground that might not be as solid as he'd thought.
"If you think Ray was corrupt, you are mistaken."
"Roberts would beg to differ. Me too." Carter sat perfectly still, his hands resting on the table, the restraints slack between them. "But you didn't come here to defend your family, did you? You came here because something is bothering you. Something in that file doesn't sit right and you can't figure out what it is. That's why you're here on a Friday afternoon instead of wherever you're supposed to be."
