CELL 8 (15 page)

One morning at Sofio’s they had sat, each at their own table, eating blueberry pancakes and reading the
Portsmouth Daily Times
before looking up at each other after a while, a faint smile, then Ruben Frey had put his hand on the empty chair next to him,
come over, come over so we can talk again
.

Vernon kept his focus on the road, the headlights like two big eyes in the dense dark. The heat gradually filled the damp air around them and he felt himself relaxing, his hands a touch looser on the wheel. Somewhere around Piketon he accelerated, sixty-five more miles to Columbus, they should be there in an hour or so.

“I’m never going to take part in an execution again. Have I told you that?”

Ruben Frey turned toward Vernon, shook his head.

“No, not in so many words. But I knew.”

“I was young and on a training course in Florida the first time. There were twelve officers and the thirty-year-old man was also called John. He’d been found guilty of murder too. My job was to strap him to the chair with one of the other guards. Then I was just to watch and learn.”

Vernon Eriksen swallowed as he changed gear on a sharp bend; he was back there again, in the room where he’d seen retribution for the first time.

“But the first shock, two thousand volts, burnt out the electrode on his leg. It just fell off. The officer who was supposed to shave his right leg had obviously done a bad job. So
I
had to shave it again. And I did it properly, held the mauled leg while someone else found a new electrode.”

Vernon glanced over at his passenger. Ruben said nothing, just looked straight ahead, into the dark.

“The next shock lasted for three minutes. I’ll never forget that image. The sinews in his neck were standing right out. His hands turned red before turning white. Fingers, toes, legs, everything was twisted, and the noise, the fucking noise, as if someone was frying meat. You get it? His eyes, he had a hood on but that didn’t help, his eyes burst out and hung down his cheeks. He shat himself. He slobbered. He puked blood.”

The bend that had become another bend now became a straight stretch and he changed gear and accelerated again.

“The third shock, Ruben, he was on fire. We put out the flames that leapt from his body. But most of all, it’s so hard to explain, most of all it was the smell. Sweet. Burning flesh. Like a barbecue on a summer’s night, you know. The smell that hangs like a cloud over every garden in Marcusville in the evening.”

Ruben Frey listened as dawn tentatively allowed the light to slip in outside the car, the day taking its place. He saw his son in front of him. The long dark corridor with rows of cells. John sat there waiting every day, every week, every month, to stop living, for his death that was rapidly approaching.

“I decided already back then. The first time. That that was enough, not to be able to decide over life and death yourself, I couldn’t do it anymore. So I was sick on the day of the next execution, and I’ve done the same ever since whenever I can.”

They drove the last miles through the dawning day, caught the contours of Columbus early. Somewhere between half a million and a million inhabitants, Ohio’s largest city, a state center that offered work; a good many folk commuted the hundred miles or so to and from Marcusville every day.

The parking lot outside Doctors Hospital was already full. Vernon circled around a couple of times before he saw a woman walking slowly toward a car and driving off shortly after. He moved as fast as he could and got to the empty space at the same time as a huge jeep. They stood hood to hood and Vernon stared furiously until the other driver backed down, gave him the finger and drove off.

“All these years, Ruben, all the murderers, I’ve met all sorts.”

They were still sitting in the car. Vernon wanted to tell him, and he was sure that Ruben would listen.

“I know what they look like. I know how they behave, how they think. How the ones who are guilty
look
at you.”

“I know that John is innocent.”

“Ruben, I’m absolutely certain of it. Otherwise I wouldn’t be here today.”

Vernon had been there several times before. Without hesitation, he walked through the door that was the main entrance to the hospital and past the information desk, toward the elevators that connected the ninth floor with the rest of the building. They stood side by side in front of the large mirrors that you couldn’t avoid. Vernon, who was tall with his thin hair in a comb-over, Ruben, who was short and about seventy pounds overweight.

“The truth is, Ruben, that several studies from all over the world have shown that somewhere around two, maybe even three percent of all people in prison have been wrongly convicted. Either they’ve been sentenced for the wrong crime or they’re innocent. Some criminologists claim that it’s even more. And John, your John, I’m as convinced as you are, he’s one of them.”

The short, fat man in the mirror put a hand to his face. If anyone had looked closely they would have seen that he was crying.

“That two percent, Ruben, some of that is here with me. On Death Row. Waiting to die. And it’s us, the state, that kills them.”

Vernon looked in the mirror at the image of the man who stood hunched forward, put his arm around the real thing.

“That’s what makes it so impossible. At least in my world.”

The prayer room was some way down the corridor on the ninth floor.

Two white candles stood lit on what Vernon had always assumed was the altar.

Some chairs farther back, a table had been carried in and put down in front of them.

The priest was there, Father Jennings, and both the doctors; the younger one was named Lawrence Greenwood and the older was named Bridget Burk. Vernon greeted them, then introduced Ruben, and they shook his hand, said that he was welcome, that together they would make sure that his son did not die.

february

IT WAS ALREADY THE THIRD WEEK IN FEBRUARY WHEN THE FIRST
execution for several years took place at Southern Ohio Correctional Facility, in Marcusville, on behalf of the state of Ohio. Edward Finnigan watched from the green plastic flooring that was called the witness area. He had for a few minutes stood transfixed, and together with around twenty other people stared at a circular iron cage, painted the same green color as the floor, with large windows on all sides that looked out in every direction like a compound eye. He was lying in there. A man in his forties who had been waiting to die on Death Row for exactly ten years. A man by the name of Berry, who had been found guilty of armed robbery and the murder of a fifty-three-year-old man: thirty-three dollars and a bullet through the head by the cash register at a bakery counter.

It was as if Berry was sleeping now. His head to one side, eyes shut, two heavy-duty belts the length of his body and six across, he had been firmly strapped in for his death, on the white bench that had thick padding and looked quite soft.

An officer in prison uniform opened the door to the chamber and walked over to the man who had just died. He was careful, the guard, when he lifted the dead man’s arms and pulled out the first cannula of three.

Edward Finnigan couldn’t move.

He was looking at someone who was no longer breathing. He glanced over at the victim’s sister and brother-in-law, who were standing in front of someone they hated, who were crying with grief and relief. The member of their family had not been returned but the person who had thought it his right to take him away forever was dead now too—had also been taken away; he had gotten his punishment and the family their retribution.

Now they could move on.

When this was over.

Move on.
Move on.

Finnigan shook himself and felt his body start to move again without him being able to control it. He had been waiting as long. Ten years. For ten years his daughter’s murderer had been sitting not far away, in another part of the large building, and had just gone on and on living. Twice, the damned campaigners and lawyers had managed to stay all executions here. Not any longer. Not anymore. From this day on, executions were once more a fact in the state of Ohio. Soon it would be their turn. His and Alice’s turn. To find that peace. To have their retribution. To be able to move on,
move on.

The boy—and he had been a boy then—who had taken their daughter from them was now going to pay.

Soon he would be lying there, in the chamber, three needles in his body while his heart stopped.

Finnigan waited as he always did. When the others had seen enough, cried and cursed, then they would leave, while he remained, slow steps past the three windows. He wanted to see the ones who had to die,
life for life
, and he spat on the glass, the ones who would never be able to take anything away again.

He had settled with the warden and warned the main security desk in East Block that he would go through Death Row afterward. It was a long time since he’d been there. He just wanted to see what he looked like, if he had changed, if death had started to eat away at him.

The air was damp. It always was. He had time to forget between visits, how stuffy it was in the corridor lined with cells.

He stopped a couple of feet away. The bastard didn’t know. A few long strides, then he stood in front of the metal bars that were Cell 8.

“It’ll be you next. After the summer.”

John Meyer Frey was lying with his face to the far wall. He wasn’t asleep, not really, more dozing.

“Go away.”

He heard the voice again, the one he’d learned to try and block out.

“It’s been a long time, Frey.”

“Just go away.”

“I just saw one of your friends. He doesn’t exist anymore. And in the autumn, you won’t exist anymore either, Frey. No number of appeals will help this time.”

“I haven’t got any friends.”

John Meyer Frey had just turned twenty-eight. He had been seventeen the day he came here. Didn’t understand much. Everything had just happened, suddenly he was sitting here, waiting.

“Your sperm. Inside.”

“I loved her.”

“You killed her.”

“You know that it wasn’t me.”

John looked at the man with the mustache and greased-back hair, at his eyes—he had never seen eyes like them before, not even here, with the madmen.

“It’s a few years now since I last read for you.”

The book in Finnigan’s hands, the red cover, the gold on the edge of the pages.

“The Book of Numbers today, chapter thirty-five, verses sixteen to nineteen. I just don’t want you to forget, Frey.”

John didn’t say anything. He couldn’t face it.

“But if he strikes him with an iron implement, so that he dies, he is a murderer; the murderer shall surely be put to death . . .”

Finnigan’s voice, strained; he forced out what he carried with him.

“The avenger of blood himself shall put the murderer to death; when he meets him, he shall put him to death.”

He snapped the book shut, an echo that grew in the desolate corridor.

“After the summer, Frey. These are new times in Ohio. After the summer, the campaigners can ask for all the damn respites they like. I work where I work. I know what I know. After the summer I’ll read to you for the third time, the last thing you’ll ever hear.”

“My death won’t bring Elizabeth back.”

Finnigan took a final step forward, he could touch the metal bars. He spat into the cell.

“But
I
can move on.
Alice
can move on! And all the others—they’ll read, they’ll listen, learn that he who takes must also give.”

John didn’t move.

“Look around you, Finnigan. Why do you think it’s so full in here? Because they’ve
learned
?”

“You’re going to die! She was our only child.”

“It wasn’t me.”

It was windy outside. There was no weather on Death Row, nothing that anyone could see. But you could hear it. After a while, anyone sitting waiting realized that you could hear the wind and occasionally the pattering rain. John even thought he could hear the snow sometimes, falling on the roof. That’s what it sounded like now. When Finnigan began taunting him. Like it was snow.

“I know all the sentences that have been given to people like you, Frey!”

Finnigan ran down the middle of the corridor, punching the air at each cell as he passed, at each person who was locked up inside and who now turned toward the man who could no longer contain himself.

“Here, Frey, here! Savage, the guy in there,
sentenced for the murder of a minor!
And he maintained his innocence throughout the entire trial, the entire damn trial.”

Edward Finnigan darted back and forth, pointing at the men behind bars and he didn’t hear the sound in the distance, the sound that was made by the security door opening and three uniforms hurrying down the concrete corridor.

“And here, Frey! Here. That tall black bastard standing there, he’s called Jackson.
Done for aggravated rape and murder!
According to forensics, he’d sodomized the corpse. And you know what! You know what, Frey? He
also
maintained his innocence throughout the whole damn trial.”

The three officers moved swiftly and surrounded the haranguing Finnigan, their white gloves on his body, the long key chains swinging against their thighs as they held him tight and marched him toward the exit. None of them said anything about the hands that shot out from each cell as they passed, the middle finger upright and indignant.

John was tired.

Elizabeth’s father’s hate always took more out of him than he liked to admit, even to himself. And the last few visits, Finnigan’s threats that it was time, that the likelihood of another postponement was as good as nothing, were probably more than arbitrary rants intended to hurt. Of course John knew that time was running out. That he was about to lose.

He lay down on the bunk again.

He listened. He could hear it.

Even though there had already been a lot in February, it continued, and it was normally around this time in the evening that he heard it: the sound that was probably snow.