Death Row (2 page)

With as much speed and strength as she could muster, she brought the brick down against her left wrist. The pain was incredible. Her body began to shake. She cried out, her scream echoing around her. But she knew it had not been enough. The bone was hurt, not broken. Her hand could not slip through. And she did not have much time before the swelling began.

Once again, she brought the brick down hard. Then again and again and again, each blow harder than the one before. Her cries and screams and tears all swam together. And after the fifth blow, she felt the bone break.

She flipped onto her back, her whole body convulsing. She clenched her teeth together, trying to shut out the pain. She was going into shock and she had to fight it. Fight the pain, stave away unconsciousness. She had to-

It was a long time, or so it seemed, before she realized what she had done. In the midst of her writhing and shaking, her hand had slipped through the cuff.

It had worked. It hurt worse than anything she had ever imagined, even worse than her leg, but-she had done it.

She lay on her back, watery eyes closed, her hand lying beside her like a dead animal. She would have to sleep now. But despite the hunger, despite the cold, despite the unbearable agony, she faded from the conscious world with one certainty imprinted on her brain.

She had done it. She had made herself the woman she wanted to be. She had told herself she could do it, and she had done it.

She was free.

When she awoke, much of the aching had subsided. She could still feel it, to be certain, but it wasn't the raging torrent it had been before. More of a dull throbbing, steady and rhythmic, but not incapacitating. In biology, she had learned about the body's natural anesthetics. Must be kicking in, she thought. Or perhaps she was just so broken she couldn't feel anything anymore.

She began to slowly crawl away from the spot where she had been chained for so long. She had no idea where she was going. She just had to get away.

She hit some kind of wall. She pulled herself alongside it, feeling for an opening. Eventually, she found a raised ridge. And beyond the ridge, a smooth flat panel.

A door.

Her left hand wasn't good for anything, and her left leg could support no weight, so her right side had to carry the load. Slowly, an inch at a time, she pulled herself upright. Not quite standing-more of a crouch, leaning against the wall for support. But it was enough.

Not much light came in through the open door, but by comparison to the unrelenting darkness Erin had experienced for so long, it seemed blinding. She shielded her eyes, trying to block it out. In time, her eyes adjusted. She opened them, a fraction at a time.

She had been in the basement of their home. All along. With a fragile but steady pace, she clawed her way up the stairs. Moving past each step was like climbing Everest, but she forced herself to do it. No one had come to rescue her, and there was no reason to believe anyone ever would. She would have to help herself. And that meant she had to get out of the basement.

The journey up the stairs took half an hour, although it seemed much longer. She started across the endless corridor that connected the basement to the laundry room. Then she crawled through the laundry room to the living room, the place where she had last seen the rest of her family.

And then she screamed. Screamed louder and harder than she had during the entire ordeal. Screamed longer than she had when her leg was broken, when she mutilated her own hand. Screamed for them. For what was left of them.

"And what did you discover after you forced your way into the Faulkner home, Officer Marder?"

Marder spoke in calm, measured tones, trying to make his testimony flat and unemotional, when in reality it was anything but. "The first thing I noticed was the blood. Blood was everywhere. It looked more like a slaughterhouse than a suburban family residence."

"And after that?"

Marder allowed himself only the slightest hesitation before answering. "Then I spotted the bodies."

"They were all dead?"

"All eight of them. The parents, and the six children."

"Even the baby?"

"Yes," Marder whispered almost inaudibly. "Even the baby."

Sitting at the defense table, Ben Kincaid carefully eyed his client, Ray Goldman. He made no visible reaction to the testimony, just as Ben had instructed him. Whether it was an expression of guilt or of outraged innocence, reactions from the defense table always troubled the jury. Ben hadn't been sure whether Ray could keep himself calm through this brutal testimony, but so far, he had. Which was good. Because it was only going to get worse.

Assistant District Attorney Bullock paused, letting the horrific declarations from the witness stand seep into the consciousness of all those who could hear, including the jury, before he proceeded. "Was anyone left alive?"

"Only the fifteen-year-old girl, Erin Faulkner. The one who called us. She was in the passageway from the laundry room. She had crawled up from the basement. She was severely injured, but she was still alive. Barely."

"What did you do next?"

"I called for medical attention for the girl." Sergeant Marder was a trim man in his early thirties, one of the few men on earth, Ben thought, who actually looked good in a police uniform. Like all PD witnesses, he had been taught to keep his testimony brief and to the point, but Ben had a sense of hidden depths, a fire perhaps, that burned just below the surface. "She'd called the police, but hadn't the strength, or the clarity of mind, to call for help for herself."

Bullock was a tall, slightly balding man in his late forties. Ben had known him for years, since they had both worked at the state attorney general's office. "Would you please describe her injuries?"

"She'd been beaten, stripped naked. Her left kneecap was dislocated and broken. And as you've already heard, she broke her own hand to escape from the handcuffs. She was in severe shock. So I called for an EMSA team and they took her down to St. Francis's."

"And then what did you do?"

"I conducted a closer inspection of the... remains. The corpses. It's standard procedure in a homicide."

"Of course. You did the right thing. Under extremely difficult circumstances."

An improper comment, to be sure. But what was Ben going to do, object? The jury would crucify him. Years ago, when Bullock had been his mentor, he had told Ben: "When they put a hero on the stand, make sure you treat him with respect. Then rip him apart. But respectfully."

"Could you tell the jury more about the condition of the bodies when you found them?" Bullock asked.

"Of course." The casualness of Marder's response didn't fool anyone. This was a question he was dreading. "All eight of them were dead. With the two deceased females, there was evidence of sexual assault of... one kind or another. They were all in the living room, except that the baby was found in his crib in the nursery. And of course, Erin had been chained up in the basement."

"Perhaps you should describe the victims for us one at a time, sir."

Marder shifted his weight around in the chair. "The first corpse I inspected was the father, Frank Faulkner. His body was facedown, spread-eagled on a white plush rug in the center of the living room. His throat had been cut. But that was not the only injury he had suffered. He appeared to have been beaten. Quite severely. One of his legs had been broken. One of his arms had been dislocated and twisted around in an unnatural position. His shirt was off, and I could see bruises and lacerations on his chest. One of his nipples had been cut off. And his eyes-" For the first time, Officer Marder choked.

"You were saying?" Bullock prodded. "About his eyes?"

Marder swallowed, then licked his lips. "His eyes had been... removed."

"Removed?"

"Cut out," he said, inhaling deeply. "Right out of the sockets."

"I... see." Ben knew this gruesome detail was not news to Bullock-probably not to anyone in the packed courtroom. The details of this crime had held the Tulsa media in thrall-which was why the courtroom was SRO. Nonetheless, the testimony had a chilling effect on everyone within earshot. Even Judge Kearns looked shaken. And Kearns, an African-American who had been on the bench for almost forty years, was a hard man to shake. "Did you ever... locate the missing eyes?"

"No. None of them."

"None of them?" Bullock tilted his head sideways. "Were there... others?"

"All of the victims had suffered the same end, more or less. All of them had their eyes removed. And none of the eyes were ever found."

"Even-?"

"Yes," Marder said, and for the first time a note of anger, anger and perhaps something else, tinged his voice. "Even the baby."

Ben and his client huddled in a corner of the corridor outside the courtroom, cradling paper cups in both hands, trying to use the heat of the coffee to warm themselves against the bitter cold that seemed to have enveloped the courthouse.

"So..." Ray said, as casually as possible, "you didn't want to cross that guy?"

Ben shook his head. "You have a problem with that?"

Goldman was a handsome man in his early thirties, with a tanned face and strong features. Strands of gray already flecked his hair, but they only made his appearance more striking, giving him a sense of maturity that exceeded his chronological age. "I haven't been to law school or anything, but I thought his detailed description of the crime scene was... damaging."

"You were right."

"Then why-"

"What would be the point? The man saw what he saw. It's not as if he were lying."

"But the jury will think-"

"The jury will think a lot worse if I spin around some poor schlep whose only crime was having the misfortune to be on duty the day the worst home invasion slash murder case in the history of Tulsa occurred. It's not as if his testimony pointed to you, anyway. Everything he said was uncontested."

"Then why did they spend so long on it?"

"Because Bullock knows that the more gruesome the crime-scene details, the more inclined the jury will be to convict."

"Then why-"

Ben placed his hand on his client's shoulder. "Ray, I promise you we will put on a defense. When the proper time comes. This just wasn't it."

Goldman nodded, but he didn't seem much comforted by the counsel. His reserved, almost intellectual demeanor reminded Ben that this alleged multiple murderer was, after all, a scientist. "Ben... I know this is amateurish, and defense lawyers don't like it, but-I didn't do this. I'm not guilty."

"Ray-"

"I know. It's just-this crime is so... ghastly. I'm trying not to let it show, but it makes me sick to my stomach just to hear about it. I want you to know-I need to know that this isn't just another job for you. I want you to know that I'm innocent."

"It doesn't matter," Ben said, not quite truthfully.

"I know. But I want you to know. I want you to want-"

"If you're thinking I didn't cross because I suspect you're guilty and I want to send you up the river, forget it. I will fight for you. I will do anything the law allows to help you."

"I know. But still, I-I-" He wiped his hand across his brow. "Oh, hell. I don't know what I'm saying."

Ben smiled reassuringly, then crumpled his coffee cup and tossed it into the trash can. "Come on, Ray. We've got work to do."

Ben suspected that the testimony from Detective Sergeant Murphy, the man who headed the investigation into the Faulkner family slayings, would be more damning. And he was right.

"Did you have any leads?" Bullock asked him, after several preliminary questions establishing his credentials and describing his examination of the crime scene.

"We were working on the presumption that the motive was money, and that the killer was either a psychopath or someone who knew Frank Faulkner personally. Or both. As you know, Faulkner was relatively wealthy, and there were signs that a robbery had taken place either before or after the murders. A safe in Faulkner's bedroom had been jimmied open and everything inside had been removed."

"So how did you proceed?"

"Given the familiarity the killer seemed to have with Faulkner's home and schedule, I started by trying to learn who might've been at the victims' home recently."

"Were you able to do so?"

"Yes. I found a Filofax-that's a pocket calendar-organizer-on Faulkner's dresser. Inside, I found the names of three men who had been to his home during the previous week. One was a banker with whom he was negotiating a loan to buy a piece of real estate in south Tulsa. One was an insurance salesman who came out to investigate some hail damage to their chimney. And one was a fellow chemist he knew from his place of work." He paused and glanced in the direction of the defense table. "That was Ray Goldman."

"And did you then investigate the defendant?"

"I investigated all three of them. Goldman was the one that paid off."

"How so?"

"I found the defendant walking home from work. Apparently he lived about a mile from the plant, and it was his habit to walk to and from. I stopped him, searched him. That was when I found-"

"Objection, your honor. I renew my pretrial motion to suppress." If Ben could prevent the jury from learning the officer found a handgun when he searched Ray, it would be a big break for the defense. Of course his motion was denied, but when his turn came, Ben made that the main focus of his cross.

"Did you have a warrant to conduct a personal search?" Ben asked.

"You know I didn't." In the short time it took Ben to approach the stand, Murphy's demeanor had been transformed. Where once had sat the compliant, terse, unemotional witness, now was the antagonistic, argumentative paladin for truth, justice, and the American way. "Probable cause for the search was based on his violation of Oklahoma 's laws on open containers. Misdemeanor in my presence. Clear basis for arrest, then search."