[...] Roland Auburn was now sitting back in Jimmy Caughey's chair with his knees akimbo and his forearms on the armrests, cracking his knuckles, looking straight at Kramer. His face was a mask. He didn't even blink. Kramer thought of the phrase that kept turning up in the probation reports on these young black male defendants: "lacking in affect." Apparently that meant they were deficient in ordinary feelings. They didn't feel guilt, shame, remorse, fear, or sympathy for others. But whenever it fell to Kramer's lot to talk to these people, he had the feeling it was something else. They pulled down a curtain. They shut him off from what was behind the unblinking surface of their eyes. They didn't let him see so much as an eighth of an inch of what they thought of him and the Power and their own lives. He had wondered before and he wondered now: Who are these people? (These people, whose fates I determine every day . . .)