True Crime (36 page)

Flowers had taken the Bible from his jacket pocket and sat by Beachum’s cot now reading to him.

“The Lord is my shepherd,” he said in his deep, rolling baritone. “I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul …”

It was—as it frequently was—amazing to him how great a comfort this psalm was to him. He sometimes thought it was the mere rhythm of it, or the sound of its words, as much as their meaning. When he read it, his mind bathed in it like warm water and the churning in his belly lessened. He read it with real emotion.
“Yea
—though I walk through the valley of the shadow of
death
, I will
fear
no evil: for thou art
with
me …” He tried to will his voice to deliver the solace of it across the space between his lips and the ear of the condemned man. That little endless space.

Beachum was glad of the words, of the sound of a human voice, but all the concentration of his soul was on his cigarette. His long, drawn face leaned into it, the limp forelock slashing his brow untouched. He sucked at the cigarette with a hiss, drawing in the smoke like honeyed wine. When the reed burned down, he lit another off the end of it and smoked that one the same way, with the same intensity. He didn’t want any of these last moments to go by without that pleasure.

And all the while he glanced up at the clock, lifting his head at shorter and shorter intervals, not wanting the change to be too great since he last looked, afraid to be taken by
surprise, but nauseated by the sight of the second hand moving.

Then, when he looked away, he lost himself for moments in a daydream of the past: the smell of mown grass, the heat of the sun on his skin, the happy baby in the sandbox, his wife at the screen door with the empty bottle of A-1 Sauce. But not for too long. He did not want to get lost for too long. The clock moved faster when he took his attention from it. So he glanced up again, and sucked on his cigarette, and thought that he hadn’t
done
anything, that he had to think of a way to make them
see
that, and then was lost in his daydream again with the psalm lulling him.

The smoke, the prayer, the dream, the clock.

At eleven-thirty, they rolled the gurney in.

Luther, of course, understood the importance of the gurney. It was the single most important thing. At the protocol meetings, it was he who had first suggested that prisoners be strapped down in the cage and rolled to the death chamber, rather than walking to the chamber to be strapped down there. When the prisoners first saw the long table with its thick leather straps: that was the most difficult moment for them. That was when they were most likely to shy and panic. Up to that point, a man did not consider himself completely helpless. It was just something he couldn’t imagine. He would have fantasies that he might break away, or resist and “take someone with him.” The sight of the gurney with its straps and its metal frame, its thick wheels, brought the full reality of the situation home. After he lay down there, a condemned man knew there would be no further choices. No one would ask him to please get dressed or please go here or there. He would just be wheeled from place to place—pushed down the hall, into the final chamber—all as easily as moving a shopping cart. He would not even be able to move his arm away from the needle when they pushed it in.

Luther knew you had to get the man through that first moment of realization as quickly as possible. It had to happen in a contained space, with a strong presence of guards.

Then, once you had them strapped down, the worst of the process was over.

So this happened very fast, and silently.

The moment the gurney entered the cell, the bars of the cage slid back. Beachum hardly had time to jump to his feet, to glance in panic at the clock—and then the thing was in the cage beside him, pushing between him and Flowers, crowding him back. And the guards were surrounding him, edging him forward onto the table.

And still, in the condensed time of dreams, there was that interminable instant, before the closing circle of guards touched him, before the first heavy hand lightly brushed his arm, in which Frank still imagined that all manner of outcomes were possible: the dash for freedom, the murder of the guard, the long-planned escape delayed till this unexpected moment or simply waking in his own bed with the smell of the last cool dew wafting in through his window from the summer leaves.

And, again, even before he decided which choice to make, even before he determined that he would go along, he went along, turning his body to make it easier to lift himself onto the table, lifting himself with only the gentlest support from one guard’s hand, lying back upon the coarse blanket, staring up into the fluorescents, and even thinking: It’s just this, it’s just the gurney, it’s not the thing, it’s not the thing itself—while the leather belts were pulled across him swiftly, expertly, and then buckled tight, strapping him down.

C
’mon, ya motherfucking hunk of tin!”
I was screaming, meanwhile.
“Ya shuddering pile of roasted shit, come on!”

But it was not the poor Tempo’s fault. With its carburetor gagging on years of filth and its sluggish oil as black as remorse and its spark plugs kicking with all the timing of a fourth-rate cabaret chorus line, the car still managed to rocket through the still heart of the night, its tires squealing. But the goddamned road. The goddamned road kept wavering in front of me, melting, spreading, blurring behind undulating wisps of whisky fog. Sometimes, it vanished altogether as my head fell forward, as my eyelids slowly closed. And when I jacked my eyes open, when I jerked back against the seat, the Tempo would be angling off toward the curb, squeaking against it as the tires were squeezed or even hopping the hump to skim the grass along the pathways until I wrestled the machine back onto the asphalt, screaming as I say, cursing sloppily, righting the speeding hunk for long moments before I started to sink under again.

So drunk. I was so drunk. It was nearly eleven now and I was so bloody drunk I could hardly stay awake. A sodden anvil in my skull seemed to bear me mercilessly toward the earth. Nearly eleven: the helpless panic seemed to be tearing its way out of me. And I was so goddamned drunk.

I was cutting across Forest Park. Thundering through pools of streetlamp light with the rolling hills of darkness
spreading out all around me. Feeling the time pass, feeling the hopelessness of it. At moments, in the depths and edges of the whisky haze, there were groups of black kids and I saw their faces, saw their eyes going wide as the Tempo swerved toward them, heard their hoots of laughter as it arced away again and swerved along the road. And the laughter seemed to follow me, envelop me as my head sank forward. Why did it have to be so late? Why did I have to get so goddamned drunk. Hopeless, hopeless.

Now came the bridge over the park’s winding lake. Nearly the finish for me, nearly a bad end. Confused by the sparkle-capped ripples in the water beneath the lamps, I turned the car too sharply and almost rammed the bridge’s railing. I straightened in the grim nick of time, guided the creature between the bridge walls—and at that speed, in that state, it felt like threading a needle with a jet plane.

But then I was nosing down the hill on the other side, the water sweeping back from me like wings and the night road whipcording in front of me again as I pitched forward sickly against the wheel. Screaming drunkenly:
“Come on, come on, come on, you piece of crap!”
and the drool running over my lips and down my jaw.

While, from a spotlit pool of grass atop a hill, the noble Roman columns of the art museum haughtily watched me zipping past.

Then—or sometime—I saw the expressway traffic—up ahead—red taillights going in and out of focus, going past. It hurt my eyes and made the cut on my forehead—where the tavern door had struck me—throb and ache. Squinting, my teeth gritted, I edged through the stoplight at the overpass, turning my neck this way and that, my heavy head swinging after it moments later. Horns honked somewhere, someone screamed, but then I was through, shrieking across the intersection and bounding again into the deeper darkness of Dogtown.

“God, drunk, late, Fairmount,” I mumbled.

Fairmount. Because the woman at Pocum’s had told me that. That afternoon when I had gone there and seen the potato chips. The family used to live on Fairmount, she said; they still do. And I had to see them. The Robertsons. I had to see Amy Wilson’s father. I did not know if I could get the locket; I did not know if I could bring it to Lowenstein in time. But if I did, I knew I had to prove it was Amy’s. Only then would it be enough. Maybe. Maybe just enough.

I had to slow the Tempo now. Just a little. The parked cars on the narrower Dogtown streets seemed to be closing in on either side of me. Even so, as I took the corner, I felt the old car lifting on its right side. I was tilted over with that anvil in my skull listing too, making my cut forehead swell. Man, the pain. The dizziness. I couldn’t do it. I knew I wouldn’t be able to do it and I wanted to weep and cry aloud in frustration and rage.

And I thought: Fairmount. Oh God, drunk, sick, drunk. No time. Eleven. Past eleven now. Minutes past …

I saw the house. A neat, white two-story clapboard. A little hill of lawn. A Chevy in the drive. And a large policeman standing at the door.

And others too, out there, in the night: cameramen, reporters, photographers; a small clutch of them on the sidewalk just beyond the grass. The squeal of my tires as I came into view made them all turn toward me. The two reporters gossiping in the street leapt back onto the grass border. The rest huddled together, watching me warily, as I careened toward them.

Pressing against the steering wheel to keep myself upright, I stomped down on the brake. The tires locked. The Tempo slid toward the parked cars. I was thrown forward against the wheel. And then the Tempo stopped.

I belched.

I didn’t park. I left the car right there in the road. Rolled
out through an open door and swung to my feet, going three steps sideways before I straightened out.

I heard the journalists chuckle as I staggered toward them through the sultry air. I saw teeth in smiles, and glints on camera lenses and glasses. “Hey, Ev,” one guy called, “you been habben ne carvenson?” That’s what it sounded like to me, but it made the others laugh.

I stumbled right into them. Felt the pressure of their bodies around me, against me. Smelled some woman’s perfume, rousing and sickening at the same time.

“I gotta talk to the Robertsons,” I said, pushing through.

“They’re not seeing anyone,” a woman answered. “They’re seeing me,” I said.

“Whoa, Ev!”

I shoved through the little crowd. I felt hands on my sleeves and felt them fall away as I moved toward the lawn.

“They said they’d give a statement after it’s over,” someone called behind me.

“They’re seeing me now,” I said, and barreled on over the grass toward the house.

I approached the cop as steadily as I could. His large silhouette grew larger, darker, as I marched on. I was drunk, all right, but some part of my mind kept fighting to come into focus. Its voice was very solid, very loud. Just take this step, it would say, and then it would say, Just take this next step, that’s all. Man; drunk, I would tell it. Less than an hour, Can’t do it, can’t do it all in less than an hour. If you can just get through this next step, the voice would answer, then you can rest a while. Gonna kill him, can’t stop it, gonna kill him, I’d say. Rest time’s over, here’s another step … And I reached the cop and stood before him.

Or stood beneath him. Because he was standing up on the front step and he was very tall and he loomed over me. A
husky black soldier with a slick moustache and a big hand resting on the billy in his belt.

“I need to see the Robertsons,” I said—I did everything I could to keep my voice steady, the words clear, but they came out too steady, too clear, like any drunken man’s.

The officer raised his big arms in a friendly gesture. “They’re not seeing anyone right now.”

“Thish—this—is an emergency,” I said. I had started swaying on my feet. And then—it suddenly seemed to be a good idea—I started screaming.
“An emergency! Emergency!”
I cupped my hands around my mouth and bellowed at the house’s lit windows.
“I need to see the Robertsons! It’s an emergency!”

“Hey,” said the cop. And now he raised his hand at me in a not-so-friendly gesture. “Go back to your friends. The Robertsons’ll be out to make a statement in a little while.”

“Listen,” I said, breathing hard, blinking hard to clear my vision. I moved closer to him as he watched me, shaking his head. “I know they would want to talk to me if they …” And I made my move: dodging to the side, leaping onto the step, thrusting out my hand, I jammed my fingers against the doorbell button, screaming, “
Emergency! Emergency! Mr. Robertson!
”

The cop jostled me back, braced his forearm against my chest and shoved. I tumbled off the step hard, my arms thrashing. I stumbled two long strides, fighting to keep my feet. When I managed to steady myself, I straightened—and there was the cop. He was coming down after me.

We confronted each other on the edge of the lawn. He placed a finger lightly against my sternum.

“Let’s have a little quiz,” he said quietly. His brown eyes were pellucid and still. “I’m a police officer; you’re a drunken asshole. If we tangle, who do you think is going to get hurt?”

“I need to speak to the Robertsons!”
I screamed, cupping my hands around my mouth again.

“Do you want me to make this multiple choice?”

“Officer …” I was gasping now. I was still swaying, but the excitement had steadied my brain a little. “I can see you’re a good guy. But there’s no time to …”

The front door opened. Mr. Robertson looked out. I recognized him from the television show I’d seen that afternoon. The tie and the studio makeup were gone—he was wearing a light blue polo shirt that bulged at the belly—but I recognized the frowning granite face beneath the white widow’s peak.