True Crime (38 page)

I collapsed against it. The anger sizzled out of me, dissipated in the warm night air. What was the use? I leaned against the door and my shoulders slumped, my legs went slack. I pressed my forehead against the wood of the frame. I felt the pressure of it against my wound, against the drying, sticky blood. I felt the uneven, splintery surface against my skin. I stayed there, breathing hard, and closed my eyes tight. I groaned. A single tear broke out from under my eyelid, touched my cheek and fell. I sobbed once—in frustration more than anything—and then just leaned there, slumped, my eyes closed, my body propped against the door.

I was finished, and I knew it.

Because there’s only so much a man can do. Isn’t there? Isn’t there a point where you have pushed it to the limit? With all the will in the world, with all the power of desperation inspiring you, isn’t there, anyway, an end to the thing, an end to anything? When you have done your best? When no one can accuse you? Accuse you? What the hell would they say? Hey, you still had twenty-five minutes? You should’ve found another lead? You should’ve found another suspect? I mean, it wasn’t even supposed to be my fucking story, man. It was supposed to be my fucking day off, all right? I mean, you don’t like my work, fucking fire me, you
shithead! You scumbug! I don’t even know how I fucking got here, what I’m fucking doing here! It was all an accident! A woman in a car. Too fast. A bad curve.

With another strangled sob, I lifted my hand, thumped it once against the door and let it fall limply to my side again.

It was not supposed to be my fucking story
.

“He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”

The Reverend Flowers walked down the hall behind the gurney. He held the book open before him in his two hands but he could not read the words and spoke them by rote.

“I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. Surely he shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence. He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: his truth shall be thy shield and buckler.”

The psalm, the rhythms of the psalm, no longer comforted him. They seemed to be consumed by the roiling sickness in his stomach which was no longer stilled. Not enough, he thought with swelling urgency as he read, as he walked behind the gurney. It’s not enough. And there was no time left. No time.

Ahead of him, the four Strap-down guards shuttled the gurney along, two on the front end, two pushing it from behind. They moved quickly, smoothly. Luther Plunkitt strode quickly ahead of them to the open door of the death chamber.

“Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flieth by day,” Flowers said. “Nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that wasteth at noonday. A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.” It was not enough.

When he glanced up over the book, he could see Frank Beachum between the bodies of the guards. A sheet was pulled over Beachum’s body, covering the straps that held him down, covering him to the chin. Only his face was visible above it, the thin face stretched, it seemed, even thinner now, his cheeks sunken and gaunt, his eyes wide, white, bulging. His eyes darted back and forth as the gurney rolled to the doorway. They darted over the fluorescent lights in the ceiling, over the cinderblock walls, strained down to see the faces of the Strap-down guards and the minister walking behind them. When they met Flowers’s eyes, the minister felt the urgency in him flame into desperation and his voice rose higher.

“Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked. Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation.”

Warden Plunkitt stopped at the chamber doorway, positioned himself to the side of it to let the gurney pass. Smiling blandly, he nodded to one of the lead guards.

“Escort the padre to the witness room,” he said.

The guard peeled off and came back toward Flowers.

“There shall no evil befall thee …” Flowers called out wildly—and then his voice broke and he looked up. Looked up and saw the guard coming for him. The gurney was at the door now. It was over. His time was over. There was no more time and it was not enough. The knowledge seemed to erupt in him, cover him from within, blacken him within. He had failed—he had failed completely. Whatever his mission had been, his ministry in this place, it was not done, it was not accomplished. By his own fault, by his own grievous fault, he had not done enough. He stared with desperate penitence at the man strapped to the rolling table.

Before he knew what he was doing, his hand shot out. He clutched at the shape of Beachum’s foot beneath the sheet.

“Tell em for me, Frank!” he said thickly. “Tell em I try to walk the walk!”

The guard took his arm gently. Beachum’s foot was pulled from his grasp as the gurney rolled away from him and through the death chamber door.

And the door opened. I heard the click of the latch, and straightened just a moment before it was pulled in. I stood back on the stoop and peered into the darkness of the brown-stone’s entryway.

Mrs. Russel was there, standing there, peering back.

That large, imposing black face of hers was scored with tears. One hand was at her throat, clutching the locket. The other held the door. The same shapeless housedress she had worn earlier spilled down around her thick body, leaving the big arms bare, the legs bare. She frowned out of the darkness at me, her stormy eyes raging, her whole great form seeming to shudder and vibrate with emotion.

I stood on her stoop like a beggar, my shoulders slumped, my own cheeks wet, my mouth open weakly.

She spoke in a hard, solid voice that did not quaver.

“I was hoping you’d come back,” she said. “I swear it to Jesus. I was hoping you’d come back.”

I lifted my hand to her. My voice was not as steady as hers, it was barely more than a whisper. “Come on, then,” I said. “We haven’t got much time.”

She came forward, not looking at me, looking past me. She let me take her arm. I felt the rough skin of her elbow as I walked her down the stoop to the street.

She seemed to walk beside me boldly to the car, striding almost fiercely, staring straight ahead. I opened the Tempo’s door for her, held it as she lowered herself onto the passenger seat. I shut the door and walked around the front.

I was not so bold. My legs felt weak under me. My heart
was beating hard. I did not dare to think. It seemed to take an effort even to breathe. I opened the driver’s door and slid in behind the wheel.

Mrs. Russel sat beside me, very straight, very stiff, very still. She gazed out through the windshield. Her broad shoulders heaved once as her tears continued to fall.

“They’re gonna kill that man at twelve o’clock,” she said quietly. “How do you expect we’re going to do anything now?”

I put the key in the ignition and turned it over. The Tempo’s engine kicked and sputtered and sparked itself alive.

“Buckle your seatbelt,” I said.

L
uther Plunkitt watched as Frank Beachum was rolled to the center of the death chamber. He nodded, and two of the Strap-down guards left the room. Luther closed the door after them. Now, there were six people present in the little chamber. There was the last guard, a weathered red-haired middle-ager named Highgate, who took up his station in a corner of the room, his hands folded in front of him. There was Luther’s deputy Zachary Platt, who stood in the far corner, wearing a headset and microphone. In the corner across from him, there was a white folding screen, behind which stood Dr. Smiley Chaudrhi and nurse Maura O’Brien with their EKG machine. The AMA did not allow doctors to participate in executions so Chaudrhi would stay behind the screen throughout and merely monitor Beachum’s heart until it stopped. Then there was Luther, at the foot of the gurney, and Frank, lying under the fluorescents, his taut face showing above the sheet, his wide eyes flitting from place to place.

None of them spoke and, in the absence of human voices, every other sound was magnified. Luther could hear his own heartbeat. He could hear the hiss of Platt’s headphones, and the phlegmy ripple of guard Highgate’s breath. Now, Nurse O’Brien stepped out from behind the screen, and Luther could hear her soft shoes squeegee against the floor. Her round freckled face was resolutely expressionless
as she moved toward the gurney. Her movements were swift and crisp. Luther held his breath as she snapped the sheet down from Frank’s chin to his waist. He saw the prisoner’s body tense and felt his own body tense. His heartbeat grew louder. He saw Frank’s eyes dart to the nurse’s face.

“This is just for the EKG,” Maura said to him coolly. Her white hands went into the vee of Frank’s T-shirt and she attached the pads to his chest, their wires running over the gurney’s side, over the floor to the machine behind the folding screen. Then, with the same crisp movements, the nurse stepped back and took hold of the intravenous stand. The wheels clattered so loudly as she rolled it up to the gurney that Luther shifted from foot to foot uncomfortably. There was a loud metal clap as Maura clamped the stand to the end of the gurney.

Then she moved back behind the screen. Luther looked composed but he felt himself swallow acid: she seemed to be taking forever to get this done. In fact, Maura reappeared quickly. She had a cotton ball held delicately between her thumb and forefinger. Deftly, she lifted the IV needle from its hook. Luther heard the paper crackle as she pushed the needle through its wrapper. She leaned over Frank’s arm and Frank looked away, stared up at the ceiling, the corners of his mouth trembling. The nurse swabbed the bend of his elbow quickly—to prevent infection. “This will be easier if you make a fist,” she said.

Luther licked his dry lips as he saw Frank ball his hand below the wrist strap.
Come on, sister
, he thought,
get it in one
. He silently blessed Maura’s skill as she slid the needle into the blue line of vein beneath Frank’s skin. When it was in his arm securely—the tube running up into the saline pouch on the stand and down again to the hole in the cinder-block wall—Maura straightened. Luther thought he saw her breath come out in a visible sigh of relief. Slipping the used cotton ball into the pocket of her skirt, she brought out a roll
of adhesive tape from the same pocket. The tape made a wet grinding noise as she pulled off two strips. Quickly, she stuck the stips onto Frank’s arm, making an X over the needle to hold it fast. The job finished, she curtly tugged the sheet back up to Frank’s throat. Frank turned his head a little and looked up at her with his bright eyes. He looked like any frightened patient on a gurney, looking up to his nurse for reassurance. Maura looked away quickly, her mouth turning down. Luther thought he saw her wobble slightly on her legs as she hurried back behind the screen.

But the warden drew a deep breath. So that was done. That was all right. He glanced up at the clock on the wall. It was only eleven thirty-eight. Luther nearly laughed. Man, he thought, there is nothing as slow as this. Not even waiting for battle. Nothing else in life took this long. Luther could feel the humming tension of the silence, the tension of the very air, the tension of the little room that seemed to have seized up between one second and the next. And he felt his own tension answering the rest, as if he were not a separate physical form but a sort of density in the general atmosphere, a thick chunk of the tension all around him. And yet, mentally, he was okay—he ran a silent check on himself and he felt completely clear in his mind. His strung nerves would only make him better at his job. He would be more alert, quicker to react.

He nodded imperceptibly. In the deep silence, he thought he could hear the plastic benches scraping behind the blinds of the soundproof window as the witnesses were brought into the witness room.

Yes. That was what happened next.

Everything was going very smoothly.

We were going fast—I don’t know how fast: fast. I couldn’t spare a glance at the dash. My eyes were pressed as hard to the road as my shoe was to the gas pedal. I did not brake. I
did not stop at lights. I slalomed through the rapid traffic, the tires screeching beneath me, burning scarlet taillights giving way before me to the white glare of oncoming heads. Horns blasted and faded behind me in an instant. The boulevard streamed by me in a strung-out blur of color. And the engine sang a single note, one ceaseless, piercing skirl, its sinews at the breaking point. The wind at the open windows was a roar, but I heard that shrilling sound all the same all around me. That sound—and the rubbery thud of my pulse which seemed to go off everywhere inside me at the same time.

In the passenger seat, Mrs. Russel sat rigid. Like some dark cliff, rearing. Her hands were fists at her sides and her eyes were lanterns beaming through the windshield. She did not turn to see the park and the brick towers and the low car lots replace one another at the side windows second by second as we bucketed past. We seemed a single presence—- to me anyway—her presence seemed the same as mine, part and parcel of the speeding car. I could feel her there—I could feel her terror—or thought I could—but I could not tell her terror from my own. I was hardly aware of her as a person separate from myself, until, as we went buzzing through the heart of University City, she spoke.

“I know the boy who sold him the gun,” she said.

“What?”
Clutching the wheel, I screamed it above the whine and the roar.

She screamed back. “I know the boy who sold it to him. He’s in jail. He might talk to them if they give him some time off.”

Ahead of me, a Volks pulled up at a red light. Cars jerked through the intersection into my path. I did not brake. I did not slow. I shot into the closing space between a Jaguar and a van. I heard the screech of brakes. A horn. Then both were gone, the Tempo screaming away from them.