Chapter 2 - The Woman Who Wanted Him Dead
Three weeks earlier, Ruth Delgado had been sitting in her office staring at a gray prison file.
SALVATORE BIANKE.
Just reading the name had made her stomach tighten.
When Sister Agnes entered carrying tea, Ruth pushed the file away.
“I can't do it.”
Agnes placed one cup beside her.
“You haven't even opened it.”
“I know what's inside.”
“You know what happened at trial.”
“I know what happened to my family.”
That ended the argument for several seconds.
Sister Agnes was sixty-seven and had spent almost four decades serving inside prisons, hospitals, homeless shelters, and places most people preferred never to see.
She understood when silence mattered.
Ruth finally opened the file.
Charges.
Racketeering.
Conspiracy.
Multiple criminal enterprises.
Murder.
Miguel Delgado.
Sophia Delgado.
Her fingers stopped.
Three years vanished.
She could smell tomato sauce.
Hear Miguel singing the same love song badly.
Hear Sophia laughing.
Then gunshots.
Then nothing.
When Ruth woke days later in the hospital, her husband and daughter were gone. Police told her they had been innocent victims of an attack attributed to Salvatore's organization.
Ruth closed the file.
“They want me to sit beside him for three weeks.”
“Yes.”
“They want me to pray with him.”
“Yes.”
“They want me to stand beside him when he dies.”
“Yes.”
Ruth looked at Agnes.
“I want him to be afraid.”
Agnes did not react.
“I want him to understand what fear feels like.”
Still nothing.
“I want him to know what it was like when Sophia—”
Her voice broke.
Agnes reached across the desk.
Ruth pulled her hand away.
“I became a chaplain because I thought helping people might stop me from becoming angry.”
“Did it?”
“No.”
“Then perhaps anger was never something you could outrun.”
Ruth looked away.
Agnes spoke gently.
“Maybe it is something you must finally walk through.”
Ruth hated that answer.
She hated even more that part of her understood it.
The following morning she entered the visitation room.
Salvatore sat behind reinforced glass.
He looked thinner than he had during the trial.
A battered leather Bible rested beneath his cuffed hands.
Ruth sat across from him.
“I am Ruth Delgado.”
“I know.”
“I am assigned to you until your execution.”
Salvatore nodded.
“I know.”
“I will arrange religious services. If you want confession, I can contact a priest. If you want scripture, I will read it.”
“Thank you.”
“But I will not pretend that I forgive you.”
Salvatore's eyes lowered.
“I would never ask you to.”
His calmness infuriated her.
“You destroyed my family.”
He said nothing.
“You don't get to behave like some peaceful old man waiting for heaven.”
“I don't expect heaven.”
That answer caught her off guard.
Salvatore touched the Bible.
“My mother used to tell me that mercy and consequence were not opposites.”
Ruth stared at him.
“Your mother?”
“This was hers.”
He turned the Bible slightly.
“She wrote in the margins.”
Ruth did not care.
Or told herself she did not.
Salvatore continued.
“She believed even a bad man could still choose one good thing before the end.”
“And what good thing are you choosing?”
His gaze lifted to hers.
“You.”
Ruth went still.
“What?”
He didn't explain.
She stood.
The visit was over.
At the doorway, Warden Doyle approached.
“This arrangement is unusual.”
Ruth frowned.
“What arrangement?”
“Bianke requested you personally.”
She turned.
Behind the glass, Salvatore remained seated.
“He requested me?”
“Yes.”
“Why would you approve that?”
“He filed the request legally. He was very specific.”
Ruth returned to the glass.
“Why?”
Salvatore looked at her for a long moment.
“Someday you'll understand.”
“When?”
“When you can hear it without wanting revenge more than truth.”
Ruth stared at him.
“You don't know anything about me.”
“I know enough.”
That night Ruth could not sleep.
At 2:14 a.m., she opened Salvatore's trial transcript.
For the first time in three years, she read it not as a widow.
She read it as a chaplain accustomed to listening for what people avoided saying.
Something bothered her.
The prosecution had never produced the shooters.
No eyewitness had identified Salvatore.
The strongest evidence connected the weapons to a dock warehouse controlled by his organization.
There had also been testimony from one of his lieutenants.
Vincent Caruso.
Ruth searched the transcript.
Caruso claimed Salvatore had said:
“Send a message. No witnesses.”
Ruth had remembered those words for years.
Now she noticed something else.
Caruso had received immunity.
Her stomach tightened.
At 3:01 a.m., she turned another page.
A detective testified that a camera near the grocery store had malfunctioned.
Another camera, two blocks away, had recorded nothing useful.
Then Ruth found a photograph.
A dark sedan.
Partially visible.
License plate unreadable.
She stared at it.
Something appeared on the rear windshield.
A white shape.
Maybe a sticker.
Maybe nothing.
Ruth enlarged the scanned document.
Her pulse quickened.
It was a small white bird.
She remembered something from trial.
Vincent Caruso's crew had used a white falcon as an unofficial symbol.
Ruth sat back.
“No.”
The coincidence meant nothing.
It had to.
Yet the next morning, when she entered Salvatore's visitation room, she placed the photograph against the glass.
He looked at it.
For the first time, his expression changed.
“Where did you get that?”
“Your trial record.”
He stared at the white bird.
“You weren't supposed to see this.”
Ruth's heartbeat accelerated.
“Why?”
Salvatore looked toward the guard.
Then back at Ruth.
“That car belonged to Vincent Caruso.”
Her mouth went dry.
“The man who testified against you?”
“Yes.”
“Then why didn't your attorneys use this?”
“They tried.”
“And?”
“The original disappeared.”
Ruth stared at him.
“This is a copy.”
“Yes.”
“Who made it?”
Salvatore leaned closer.
“The detective who died six days before my trial.”
Ruth's skin turned cold.
She whispered, “You expect me to believe that?”
“No.”
“Then what do you expect?”
“For you to ask why a man who had everything to gain from my conviction was also the only man who claimed he heard me order your family's deaths.”
Ruth glanced at the photograph.
Vincent Caruso.
The prosecution's star witness.
A man she had barely thought about in three years.
Salvatore sat back.
“You wanted to look evil in the face, Miss Delgado.”
She looked at him.
His voice became quiet.
“Make sure you're looking at the right face.”
And for the first time since Miguel and Sophia died, Ruth felt something more dangerous than hatred.
May you like
Doubt.
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