Andrew Klavan - True Crime

I followed him. I was excited now. The drive had cleared my mind and I was excited the way I had been at Pocum’s. This was it, I told myself as we went through the visitor’s checkpoint. This is the real stuff. The prison. The Death House. As in Death. Execution. Brrrrrrr . God, I love journalism.

We didn’t go through the cell blocks. We went down white halls, past office doors. But I could feel the prison around me. I could feel the thick walls hemming me in. I could feel I was descending into the place, like a man being lowered into deep water. We entered a stark corridor. A gate of bars slid open before us as a guard watched from a booth nearby. We passed through and the bars slid closed behind us with a clanking thud and I could feel the jolt of it in my belly. Deeper and deeper. No free air to breathe, no fast way out. The prison seemed to be closing over our heads. I tried to look nonchalant about it, but it was all very thrilling indeed.

The case officer led me through more bars and then through a heavy door and into a little courtyard smothered with the afternoon heat. We crossed the yard into another building. The Death House , I thought. Death Row. The Last Mile. Brrrrr .

We traveled down a hall of windows to another row of bars. We passed through and down another hall where every door pulsed at me with significance. I noticed I had to go to the bathroom now but I didn’t want to ask, I didn’t want to interrupt the moment. We came before a door with a guard sitting outside. This is it , I thought. Deathwatch . I tried to look jaded and nonchalant.

I glanced up wryly at my moustachioed guide. “Nice place,” I said. “Remind me never to commit a violent crime.”

My companion looked down at me deadpan. “They lie, you know,” he said.

“What?”

“The prisoners. That’s what they do. Every word they say is a lie.”

I nodded. “Everyone lies, pal,” I said. “I’m just here to write it down.”

The guard stood up and opened the Deathwatch door.

You’ve got fifteen minutes, Mr. Everett,” said the guard in the Death-watch cell. “By order of Mr. Plunkitt. Fifteen minutes exactly.” I didn’t answer. I looked around me. At the cinderblock wall with the white paint smeared and congealed across its rough surface. At the guard’s long table and the typewriter there and the clock hanging above him, turning round. The cage and the dull glint of the bars under the fluorescents. The table within, covered with empty paper cups and a tinfoil ashtray overflowing. The rumpled bedding on the cot. The glaring nakedness of the metal toilet fastened to the back wall. And the man and the woman. Standing inside the cage. They had risen from the cot to greet me, his arm around her shoulders. My eyes rested finally on them.

This is it , I told myself. Deathwatch . But I really didn’t have to tell myself anymore. The sickly sadness, the sickly fear were like swamp gas in the bright room, like a miasma, you could breathe them in.

I studied Frank Beachum’s face through the bars. I would have to be able to describe him in my story-my human interest sidebar-so I studied his face. I saw weariness there mostly. Weariness, and a terror deadened by dazed incomprehension. But mostly weariness. That’s how I remember him anyway. Narrow, craggy, rugged features that used to be strong but were drained of everything now but that, but weariness. With his long body held nearly erect by an almost palpable effort of will, he looked like a cancer victim, like a hunger victim, like a sleepless pilgrim coming over one more rise of an endless, endless vale. Bone-weariness, soul-weariness, weariness past imagining. When I remember Frank Beachum I remember that-that first impression-more than the last one; more than the way he was that final time I saw him.

He stood still, with his arm around his wife, and she clasped her hands together before her. They might have been any thirtyish couple out for a Sunday constitutional after church. Until you noticed how white her knuckles were, how hard her hands clutched each other. Her small, sagging face-aged, like some false antique it seemed, as if by blows-was unnaturally lit by the fever in her eyes. A horrible brightness-of insane hope, I thought, and helplessness.

The guard-Benson-pulled a chair up and set it down for me in front of the cage. I came toward it slowly. Beachum stuck his hand through the bars. I shook it. His palm was dry and cold. I didn’t like touching him.

“Mr. Everett,” he said. “I’m Frank Beachum. Have …” The words came from him thickly, painfully. They dropped like lumps of clay. It was an effort for him even to speak, he was that worn down. He gestured to the chair.

“Yeah. Thanks,” I said.

I sat and pulled my notebook out, my pen. Beachum gently disengaged himself from his wife and lowered himself into the chair at the table in front of me. Mrs. Beachum sank back, sank down again onto the cot. Her bright eyes never left me.

I was fiddling with my cigarettes by this time. I jerked one halfway out of the pack and offered it to Beachum. He held up a hand. “I got em,” he said. He removed one from his shirt pocket. I could hear my heart thudding as we both lit up on opposite sides of the bars.

We lifted our eyes to each other and filled the white space between us with gray smoke. “How’s … that girl?” he said. I didn’t understand him. He forced out more. “That other. Michelle … something. She had some accident.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah,” I said. “She was in a car crash. It was pretty bad. The last I heard she was in a coma.” I realized I’d forgotten to ask Alan for the latest details. My mind had been too much on my own troubles.

“I’m sorry,” Frank Beachum said. “To hear it.”

I nodded, faintly ashamed. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, it was pretty bad.”

Then I was silent. So was he, and we both smoked. I could feel the movement of the clock on the wall behind me. It made the hairs on the back of my neck bristle. Jesus , I thought. The poor bastard. Jesus . It was a bad few seconds. The excitement, the need to piss, the pity and the infectious fear: It was hard to get my thoughts in order. What was it I’d wanted to ask him anyway? My assignment was to talk about his feelings, give the readers a sense of the place, some vicarious Death House thrill to enjoy over their raisin bran. Don’t get into the case too much. We’ve already covered that . That’s what Bob had told me. And as for the rest: my own suspicions felt suddenly confused and inarticulate. I crossed my legs, trying to quiet my bladder, trying to focus my mind.

The condemned man broke the deadlock for me. “The girl,” he said. “That … Michelle-she said she … I don’t know … she wanted to talk to me about how it felt. Here. In here.” The long, sad, tired face continued to push the words out at me, across the table, through the bars, through the smoke. I saw him blink wearily under the shock of his lank brown hair. I supposed I should’ve felt guilty for getting my thrills, my readers’ thrills, from his agony. So I did; I felt guilty. And I nodded.

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s it,” I said. “It’s a human interest story.”

Beachum took a deep drag of smoke. He went on, speaking carefully, as if he had prepared what he meant to say. “What I wanted … What I wanted to tell everyone that … was that … I believe in Jesus Christ. Our Lord and Savior.” I nodded again, licking my lips. Then, straightening in my chair, coming to myself, I realized I had to write down what he was saying. I scribbled it onto my pad. Believe in JC … Lord +Sav … Just fifteen minutes, I thought frantically. Just fifteen minutes for me. Just eight hours for him. With another breath for strength, Beachum continued. “And I believe … I believe that I’m being sent to a better place and that …” He paused because his wife had made a sound. A shuddering sob. I saw her clench her arms against herself, force herself into silence. Beachum didn’t turn around. He said, “… and that, uh, there’s a better justice there, and I’ll be judged innocent. I won’t say I’m not afraid cause I think … I think everyone’s afraid of dying pretty much-unless they’re crazy or something. You know. But I’m not afraid that the wrongs that are done here on earth won’t be made right. The crooked will be made straight, that’s, that’s what the Bible says and I believe that. And I wanted to testify to that to people before this happens. So … that’s how I feel about it.”