conviction would never materialize. There was absolutely nothing
mysterious about the ramifications of another bust: he would be looking
at the full twenty years. And at his age, twenty years was a death
penalty. They might as well fry him, which was the way the Commonwealth
of Virginia used to handle its particularly bad people. The citizens of
this vastly historic state were by and large a God-fearing people, and
religion premised upon the notion of equal retribution consistently
demanded the ultimate payback. The commonwealth succeeded in disposing
of more death row criminals than all but two states, and the leaders,
Texas and Florida, shared the moral sentiments of their Southern sister.
But not for simple burglary; even the good Virginians had their limits.
Yet with all that at risk he couldn’t take his eyes off the
home-mansion, of course, one would be compelled to call it. It had
engrossed him for several months now. Tonight that fascination would
end.
Middleton, Virginia. A forty-five-minute drive west on a slingshot path
from Washington, D.C. Home to vast estates, obligatory Jaguars, and
horses whose price tags could feed the residents of an entire inner-city
apartment building for a year.
Homes in this area sprawled across enough earth with enough splendor to
qualify for their own appellation. The irony of his target’s name, the
Coppers, was not lost upon him.
The adrenaline rush that accompanied each job was absolutely unique. He
imagined it was somewhat like how the batter felt as he nonchalantly
trotted the bases, taking all the time in the world, after newly bruised
leather had landed somewhere in the street. The crowd on its feet, fifty
thousand pairs of eyes on one human being, all the air in the world
seemingly sucked into one space, and then suddenly displaced by the arc
of one man’s glorious swing of the wood.
Luther took a long sweep of the area with his still sharp eyes.
An occasional firefly winked back at him. Otherwise he was alone. He
listened for a moment to the rise and fall of the cicadas and then that
chorus faded into the background, so omnipresent was it to every person
who had lived long in the area.
He pulled the car further down the blacktop road and backed onto a short
dirt road that ended in a mass of thick trees. His iron-gray hair was
covered with a black ski hat.
His leathery face was smeared black with camouflage cream; calm, green
eyes hovered above a cinder block jaw. The flesh carried on his spare
frame was as tight as ever. He looked like the Army Ranger he had once
been. Luther got out of the car.
Crouching behind a tree, Luther surveyed his target. The Coppers, like
many country estates that were not true working farms or stables, had a
huge and ornate wrought iron gate set on twin brick columns but had no
fencing. The grounds were accessible directly from the road or the
nearby woods.
Luther entered from the woods.
It took Luther two minutes to reach the edge of the cornfield adjacent
to the house. The owner obviously had no need for home-grown vegetables
but had apparently taken the country squire role to heart. Luther wasn’t
complaining, since it afforded him a hidden path almost to the front
door.
He waited a few moments and then disappeared into the embracing
thickness of the corn stalks.
The ground was mostly clear of debris and his tennis shoes made no
sound, which was important, for any noise carried easily here. He kept
his eyes straight ahead; his feet, after much practice, carefully picked
their way through the slender rows, compensating for the slight
unevenness of the ground. The night air was cool after the debilitating
heat of another stagnant summer, but not nearly cool enough for breath
to be transformed into the tiny clouds that could be seen from a
distance by restless or insomniac eyes.
Luther had timed this operation several times over the past month,
always stopping at the edge of the field before stepping into the front
grounds and past no-man’s-land. In his head, every detail had been
worked and reworked hundreds of times until a precise script of