Andrew Klavan - True Crime

“Well, I’m glad to hear that. I truly am,” said the chaplain. “I thought maybe … you know, if there’s anything I can do, if there’s anything you’d like to talk to me about-I wanted you to be aware that I’m here, I’m available.”

Slowly, Frank lifted his cigarette to his mouth. His open hand covered the lower portion of his face. He let the smoke drift out of his nostrils. “No,” he said. “Thanks. I don’t need anything.”

Shillerman tilted his head and clucked as if in sorrow. But Frank was sure he saw a nasty sort of disappointment in his eyes. He did not know a single prisoner-not one-who had ever gone to the chaplain for succor or advice. The chaplain! The man of God! The word around Osage was that the Reverend Shit-fer-brains walked with the guards. He walked like the guards, belligerent, swaggering, coolly wary. Oh, he read his Bible, and he held his services on Sunday. But more than anything, he loved the weight of the walkie-talkie on his belt, and he was especially proud when the atmosphere grew tense and he was allowed to carry a riot stick. Just like a guard.

Shillerman had spent a dozen years as pastor of a quiet little workingman’s church in St. Charles. A dozen years of gold-haired ladies bringing tuna casseroles to fund-raising picnics. Fat, flirty hausfraus in shapeless dresses clucking their inane moralisms at him. And the men; their husbands: smiling at him. Shillerman had had a dozen years of those men and their not-quite-mocking smiles. The men treated him with the same belittling gallantry they showed to their women: Those are sweet, pretty notions you got there, Preacher, but we fellows have business to conduct in the real world. A dozen years of that treatment in his suffocating little St. Charles chapel. Then he had used a relative’s influence to win the job at Osage.

Frank knew only some of this. But he understood Shillerman in his stomach, the same place he despised him. He knew just what the bastard wanted from him, just why he had come into the Deathwatch cell today. It wasn’t to bring the condemned man comfort or spiritual counseling. It wasn’t that, Frank was sure. Shillerman liked this sort of thing. The good reverend. He wanted to be part of the excitement, to sniff the solemn thrill of execution. He wanted stories to tell his fancy friends. What’s it like, Stan? they would ask him. What are they like just before they wheel them down the last mile? Sitting in his cage, regarding the preacher through the bars, through the smoke of his cigarette, Frank could imagine the man shifting in his living-room easy chair, thoughtfully rattling the ice in his scotch, gravely considering the question-and then pontificating for the guests out of his vast experience. He understood what the bastard wanted here, all right.

Reverend Shillerman’s chest expanded and he set his shoulders. He was winding up to deliver his pitch. “Frank,” he said earnestly with an earnest frown, “I understand you’re a Bible-reading man. That’s right, isn’t it?”

The clock on the cinderblock wall behind him swept along, the second hand in its unstopping circle, and Frank wanted to shoot to his feet, to shout at the man: Go on, get out, get out of here. It would be easy to do it. To let himself go. It was easy to think: Why not? Do it. What have I got to lose? Benson would be sure as hell to hustle the chaplain out of there in a hurry if it looked like the prisoner was getting upset.

But Frank did not jump up or shout out. He was afraid. He was holding on to himself so hard. Bonnie was coming, Bonnie and Gail, and all he had to give them was his unshaken face, his appearance of serenity, so they could remember it sometimes and be serene. If he raised his voice now-if he lost control, he did not know if he’d be able to get it back again. He couldn’t let this windbag take his last good thing away from him. His hand shook as he slowly raised the cigarette to his lips. He replied nothing.

But Shillerman went on as if he’d answered the question in the affirmative. “That’s good,” he said. “That’s real good, Frank. That Bible-reading, that’s gonna hold you in good stead today-and ever afterwards too. But you know, Frank …” He tilted back on his heels, digging in for the long sermon. His face took on a comtemplative cast. “Just reading the Bible, that isn’t quite enough, is it? It can’t be enough, Frank. You know that as well as I do. A man can’t go to his maker with the sins on his soul unrepented of, with the hurt he’s done to folks just … you know, unrepented of.”

Sitting there, hating him, fighting to contain his anger and his panic, Frank noticed everything. The watchful calculation in the bedrock of the chaplain’s eyes. His eyebrows-he must’ve clipped them to keep them so neat. The way he used three words where one would’ve done it, and the way he tried to sound important and biblical but couldn’t quite come up with all the fancy language.

Shillerman took another step toward the cage bars. “Now, you know, no one could blame you up to now for proclaiming your innocence. Heck, you’re fighting for your life here. That’s a natural thing, I understand that, everyone does. But I don’t need to tell you that the time is drawing nigh. And there’s a lot of folks out there who would feel a whole lot better to hear that you were … remorseful for the pain you caused them. You could do a lot of good with just those words, Frank. I’m saying this for you , for your sake. I’m saying this because I don’t want you to go to God without making straight the things that can be made straight.”

Frank rolled his inner eye at the God who was always watching him. Would you get this clown out of here please , he thought.

Shillerman lifted one hand and pointed back over his shoulder at the clock. “Observe the time, Frank, and fly from evil,” he said. “That’s what the good book says.”

“Thanks.” Frank’s voice was now a hoarse whisper. “I don’t have anything to tell you.”

“Frank …”

“I want you to leave me alone,” Frank said.

The smile on Shillerman’s lips never faltered. But some subtle darkening of his expression-and Frank noticed everything-told the true measure of the preacher’s scorn. Scorn for Frank, scorn for all the prisoners whom he in his moral immensity overstrode. He must’ve known how they laughed at him behind his back. He must’ve known what they called him. Proud as he was of his walkie-talkie and his cowboy jeans, it must’ve niggled at the chaplain that he was not a real guard. He had no real power to make the inmates walk the line, and they laughed at him. In his parish in St. Charles, the men might have spoken to him as if he were a woman, but at least they treated him like a lady. Frank thought about Shillerman telling his death row tales to his admiring friends. He thought those tales must’ve needed a good deal of embellishment before they really made the grade.

“Now … son,” Shillerman said, shaking his head regretfully. “Son, I don’t need to tell you that there is gonna come a time, and I’m afraid that time is not far off, when you may wish you’d made a different decision but it’ll be too late. I don’t want to be too blunt here but there’s no sense in mincing words. I’m your chaplain, and I don’t want you to go to your death with this terrible crime on your head.”

Frank’s anger surged through him, an acid gout. Christ, if he should lose control. When Bonnie was coming, when Gail …

“Now, you know, I’m your chaplain, and anything you say to me …”

“Benson,” said Frank, very softly. Then a little louder: “Hey, Benson.”

The duty officer’s chair scraped the floor as he stood eagerly from his table. “What can I get you, Frank?”