Morse shook his head. “No, I don’t. You haven’t exactly been the chattiest new resident we’ve had here since your arrival.”

Tim was looking down at the newly-repaired radio, waiting for its protective casing. “Mostly I think about what a…a puddle of dog puke I was. I think back on that night with Carol and…and I keep hoping that the years will have muddled some of the details, but they never do. I remember everything that happened as clearly as if it’d happened yesterday.” He wiped something from one of his eyes. “Christ, Steve, I can’t even use being stoned as an excuse. I killed my daughter. It’s that simple. I kicked her until I ruptured her pancreas and then shut her in her room and went back to partying and screwing while she was laying up there in…in pain I can’t even begin to imagine. I mean, when the Joy-Boy Brigade gang-banged my ass in prison—to this day, I’m not sure why they didn’t just kill me—anyway, I thought that was the worst pain anyone could ever endure…but from everything I’ve read about what happens to a person with a ruptured pancreas, what I felt when they were butt-buddying me a wider asshole was nothing compared to what Carol went through.

“Ah, hell, Steve, I think about the look on her face when she came in asking me to help—’I sick, Daddy, I made a mess, I sorry’—and the way I was too...” He shook his head. “I look back on the miserable piece of shit I was back then and I want to kill him! She had the greatest little laugh, you should’ve heard her. And I killed her—call it involuntary or not, I did it, and I’m more sorry than I can ever make anyone understand and I miss her and it hurts and makes me sick and every day I have to go out there and see the disgust and hatred on peoples’ faces when they realize who I am and…and the thing I look most forward to is sitting out here for two or three hours every evening and fixing broken things. Can you understand that, Steve? At least here, with these tools in my hands, I can fix, I can repair, make right again. It helps me to face the next day, y’know? I can’t tell you if I’m a good person or one of the bad guys, but, man, I need this, okay?”

Morse stared at him for a moment, silent and unmoving until a deafening crack of thunder and jagged flash of lightning broke the spell.

“Ten minutes?”

Tim nodded his head. “I promise I won’t rat you out to the rest of the staff.”

“Or construct a nuclear device?”

“The plutonium I ordered hasn’t arrived yet.”

Morse rose from his metal stool and grinned. “Okay, ten minutes—but I’ll be clocking your ass, so no more, understand?”

“I really appreciate it.”

“I know.” He stared at Tim a moment, then: “Would it kill you to say any of that stuff at one of the nightly meetings?”