The Executioner's Song (75 page)

                Tamera said she'd pick her up at the prison.

Out in the parking lot, Tamera was stomping around in the early November snow and shivering, when Nicole came down the walk from Maximum, saw her, gave a nice smile and came over. On the drive, however, Nicole started looking sad again. Soon she mentioned that her grandfather had died, and his funeral was going to be in two days, and then there was this ex-boy friend Kip who had also died just a day or two ago. Now Gary was excited because just this morning he had won in front of the Utah Supreme Court and was probably going to face a firing squad on Monday. It surprised Tamera that Nicole didn't appear upset. She just sat, still and calm, smoking away quietly, one of those people who looked like they really enjoyed a cigarette.

Tamera stopped in Provo to buy Nicole lunch, and they must have talked for a good two hours there at J.B.'s on Center Street, eating Big Boys, and milkshakes. J.B.'s was usually jammed with college kids, but this was the middle of the afternoon, and it was pretty empty. Tamera could feel Nicole getting off on talking to her.

Back in August, they had met at Gary's second Preliminary Hearing.

                Tamera was working then as a Provo stringer for the Deseret News, a job she got on the basis of her work at BYU on the Daily Universe.

                Having done college journalism, she was used to a police beat, but in Court, Nicole sure captured her attention.

When they brought Gilmore into the room, shuffling along in leg shackles, there was this girl sitting in the front row and he stopped in front of her, and kissed, and Tamera knew it had to be his girl friend.

                She even heard him say, "I love you." Tamera found herself having this immediate empathy with the girl. Gilmore didn't look anything really overpowering right then, just a regular criminal, hard looking, almost sleazy, with a marked-up face. Tamera felt humiliated for him in leg manacles, walking in short jerky steps like he was a spavined monster or something, but it was the girl who drew her, in fact, absolutely fascinated her by those looks. She had a kind of mystique about her, a sky glow, Tamera thought, like an old movie star. The drama of it came right over Tamera. There's another woman in the story besides the widows, she said to herself.

After Court, Tamera hung in the background and watched Gary kiss Nicole good-bye. Then, on the street, she watched Nicole wave until he was completely out of sight. You could tell she'd gotten herself all fixed up for him because she was wearing a long dress that was kind of old-fashioned and demure. Tamera, watching, felt so tall and gawky and dirty blond that she kept going "Oh, oh," to herself, you know, at how beautiful Nicole was. She even waited until Nicole was clear into her car. Then Tamera couldn't stand it anymore. Just had a compelling need to talk, and ran across the street to do it.

At the time, it had nothing to do with a story. Gilmore was a routine case. Tamera just wanted Nicole to know somebody cared. In a town like Provo, everybody took the side of the victims.

                At the car, she said, "My name is Tamera Smith and I work for the Deseret News and I'd like to talk. Not for a story, but as friends. I wonder if you'd like to get some coffee. You must have a lot on your mind right now." Nicole hesitated, then said, yeah, she'd like that, so they got in her car, which drove in the most awful way, never knew which gear it would go into, and Nicole mentioned it had been in an accident two days ago, and they went down to Sambo's and talked.

                The girls told each other about themselves, in fact, Tamera found herself rattling away at a great rate. She was amazed how soon she told Nicole that her father had died years ago and it had left this hunger inside herself ever since, this terrible empty space that kept her restless all the time. Then she told how she used to write to a guy in prison, and her brothers and sisters, who were all as active Mormons as you could find, had been terribly upset. But the fellow had been wonderful, and she'd even gone to visit him in a Kentucky prison. That certainly opened Nicole up.

                All the while Tamera was enraptured. It wasn't that Nicole was a striking beauty, yet she was. She had such an air of calm. It was like sitting on the back porch for all of a hot July afternoon, just that long calm feeling. From the stories Nicole was telling, Tamera figured she had to have a big temper, but she was so serene that day.

When they said good-bye, Tamera passed over her telephone number, and said, "If you ever need help, I'd be glad to see you."

                That was it. The newspaper didn't assign her to the trial in October and she had no more to do with the case. Went her separate way. Almost forgot.

Now, at J.B.'s, hey, wow, maybe there was nobody near to her that Nicole could trust, but she sure let the floodgate go. Right over those milkshakes, she told Tamera she was planning suicide. Told it straight up with all those deaths hanging on her, Kip, her grandfather, Gary soon. Tamara could see she was afraid.

                What made Tamera want to cry was that Nicole was waiting out her death date just like Gilmore. When she was around him it was all right, she said, and she wasn't afraid because Gary had a vision of what life would be like after death, but when she got away, it was frightening again. The on-again off-again must be hideous, Tamera thought. Every time Gary got a Stay, Nicole did, too.

It was mind-blowing for Tamera. Her friends were always kidding her for being such an emotional person, and Tamera always thought she had to be one of the most divided people in existence. So active and true-believing a Mormon on the one hand, such crazy impulses on the other. Why, to anyone but herself, she would have been a mess. To grow up with the Doctrine of Covenants, and believe all of it to this day, yet go hog wild over the Rolling Stones. Her roommates at BYU used to say that if she didn't gush, she'd overflow—such lava inside. Now, to get handed this story. It was the biggest story she'd ever come near, yet at the same time she was worried stiff over Nicole.

                Tamera hadn't planned on prying. But now she had to ask questions.

                "What about the kids?" she wanted to know.

                Nicole looked like she would cry. She didn't, she confessed, treat them nearly as good as she wanted to. Tamera asked if she and Gary talked a lot about this suicide, and Nicole said, "That's all we ever talk about."

                Tamera was burning to do the story.

On the street, outside Nicole's little apartment building, they could see a van from a Salt Lake TV station. Sure enough, no sooner did they get on the stairs that led to the second floor, when a reporter rushed out of a waiting car. "You Nicole Barrett?" he asked. "I'm her sister," Nicole said. "No, you're Nicole," the reporter insisted. She looked back calmly. "I'm her sister. She's up at the prison." "I recognize you," the reporter said. "No, I'm the sister." She and Tamera walked away, strolled down the balcony and into her apartment. The moment the door was shut, they began to laugh. It emboldened Tamera to ask a little later if she could write the story after all.

The way it happened was that Nicole had gotten out some of Gary's drawings, and Tamera thought they were awfully talented.

                She said people ought to know more about Gary's life. It was a good argument to use, and Tamera believed it. In fact, looking at the pictures, she felt he must have an intense inner life. Those drawings were so sorrowful and so controlled.

                Sitting there, she told Nicole about the convict who had been her boy friend. Tamera had interviewed him at Provo City Jail while she was still at BYU. Had walked in and here was this guy in a cell, nice, warm and good looking. All he'd done was steal a bunch of credit cards and cameras and stuff. She had fallen in love right off the bat, and when they sent him to Kentucky, she got truly nailed. He wrote magnificent love letters. She corresponded with him for a year and a half. Sometimes she got as many as seven letters a day. It was the nearest thing to filling the space her father's death had left. Those letters kept saying, Wow, you're so beautiful, and I've never met anyone like you, your understanding and your patience has overcome me. Wow, wow, wow, went his letters.

                She told Nicole how she'd even taken a bus to Kentucky after he sent her money, and for a week spent six hours a day visiting him.

                Her family thought she was off her rocker, but that had been precious time.

It was a Minimum Security prison, and they sat on the lawn and read together out of books, and she had never felt as close to anybody in her life. Her roommates were agog when she got back. They fixed her up with a nice guy for her birthday, but after she returned to the apartment and said good night to the date, all seven of her roommates jumped out of the bedroom. They were all wearing T-shirts with her boy friend's prison number across them. They flashed water pistols, kidnapped her, and took her out to this restaurant. She guessed she was kind of a legend at BYU. Her roommates even took pride in the way they had learned how to handle it. "Never know what's going to happen next to Tammy's life," they learned to say smugly.

When her boy friend got out of prison, he came back to Provo and got a job as a carpenter. About three weeks later, he took Tamera's car, loaded it up with everything he could take out of her house and the house of the fellow he was living with, and drove off.

                Tamera hadn't seen him since.

Having it end in such a way, she wondered how close she had ever been to the boy. His whole life had to be a con. He had told so many lies she wondered how she could have felt so close. They hadn't been sharing the same truth, she said to Nicole. Yet, all the same, there had been some kind of truth, she said.

                Now in the silence that followed, Tamera couldn't hold back any longer. She was so excited. "Please," she said, "let me just—" She gulped. She said, "Look, I'm going to find a typewriter, write a story, and bring it back and let you read it. If you don't like what I do, we'll just forget about it, you know. Because, after all—I said it'll be off the record," Tamera went on, "so if you still want it that way, it will be. But I got to try."

She went over to an old roommate's apartment and told her what was going on and sat down and started. It felt weird. There were so many constraints it took a couple of hours to write a couple of pages and when she brought them back, Nicole read, and took it all into herself, looked up and said, "No, I don't feel good about it." Tamera said, "Okay, that's it, then."

                She felt disappointed, but, big deal—she'd just have to wait.

                She wasn't going to violate the agreement.

The disappointment must have been marked right into her face, because now Nicole felt bad too. Tamera said, "Don't worry. That was our agreement." But Nicole got up and went over to a cabinet, and said, "I'm gonna show you something I never showed before. Would you like to read Gary's letters?"

That was one more heavy thing in what had sure been a heavy day. Tamera said, "Sure." Nicole took this full drawer, and dumped it on the table. There were so many envelopes Tamera just started reading at random. Couldn't believe it. Right off, first one she picked had some really good quotes. "Nicole," she said, "would you mind if I wrote down a couple of these sentences?"

They came to a kind of agreement: Tamera wouldn't do a story now, but after Nicole was gone, Tamera could write anything she wanted. So they both sat there at the kitchen table and read letters, and Tamera copied quotes as fast as she could. Finally left about eight that night. They'd been together since noon.

On the drive from Provo to Salt Lake, Tamera usually took it fast, went along with her radio full blast, and got a lot of tickets. On this night she poked along at 50, and tried to think. She didn't know what to do, couldn't sleep, and by morning, decided to tell her editor. It all seemed too big. In his sanctum, strictly off the record, she told how Nicole was planning to commit suicide when Gilmore went, and her editor remarked he had heard as much from other reporters. There were a lot of rumors going around. This new information, however, had convinced him to alert the authorities. That made Tamera fee! better.

                She got to thinking that what Nicole needed most right now was a friend. Tamera was going to be that. Get her out doing things, and out from under the huge burden of living with Gilmore in her mind all the time.

Today you kissed my eyes, you have blessed them forever. I can see only beauty now. Oh, fair Nicole Kathryne Gilmore. You're a little elf sweet and neat and fun to eat. I'm not a great poet But if I had you naked on a bed or on the grass beneath the stars I'd write such a love song all over your fair freckled body with my tongue and my hands and my cock and my lips and whisper softly of your beauty, make you feel and soar and sail and sing to dance around the sun and moon and become as one and come as one and come and come and make you moan soft sighs wild eyes rolled back abandoned lusty sweaty wet and warm wrapped tire around mouths locked in sweet wet kisses kisses kisses look at you naked love to look at you naked or just in knee socks pull your panties up in the sweet crack of your little bouncy elf bootie loved to watch you walk around the house without your clothes on . . . sexy elf girl, I love you.