Andrew Klavan - True Crime

I went on nodding, went on writing it down. Wrongs made right … crooked made straight … I nodded and wrote. It was what he’d wanted to say, I guess. It was why he’d agreed to the interview. But with the clock on the wall, with the look in his eyes, with the anguish flaming out of his wife’s steady gaze, I found the scribbled words on the narrow page made me vaguely nauseous. That clock went on behind me, turning and turning. The poor bastard , I thought. The poor frightened bastard .

I finished writing, but I didn’t look up. I gripped the Bic hard. The point dug into the paper. I still didn’t look up. I didn’t want to meet Frank Beachum’s eyes just then. I felt embarrassed for him just then. Sitting there in his cage with his terrified wife. Talking about Jesus. It was embarrassing. The fact is: I always feel that way when someone talks about Jesus. Whenever someone even says the word-says “Jesus” as if they really meant it-it makes my skin crawl, as if they’d said “squid” or “intestine” instead. It makes me feel as if I’m talking to an invalid. A mental invalid who has to be protected from the shock of contradiction and harsh reality. Whenever I hear a man praise God, I know I am dealing with a crippled heart, a heart grown sick of grief and the plain truth, sick of a world in which the strong and the lucky thrive and the weak are driven under without recompense. Sick and afraid of dying; clinging to Jesus.

I was embarrassed for the man. And now, when I did look up, the sight of him pained me. This poor guy, this once-manly guy, waiting in his cage to be carted off to nowhere, reduced to cuddling his religious teddy bear, to sucking his christian thumb, to telling himself his biblical fairy tale so he could make it down the Death House hallway without screaming, so he could confront his final midnight without going insane. Maybe I’d have done the same in his position. There aren’t many atheists in a joint like this. Maybe that’s why it bothered me so much to see him. And it did bother me. I felt my stomach boil and churn.

To avoid his weary eyes, I glanced back over my shoulder at the clock. The duty officer, sitting at his long desk, was watching me. He lifted his chin by way of a challenge.

“You got nine more minutes,” he said.

I turned back to Beachum. I smiled an embarrassed smile. I boiled inside and churned.

The condemned man in his cage spread his hands a little, his lips working, his eyes uncertain. He’d made his speech. He was waiting for me now. “Is … is that all right, Mr. Everett?” he said softly. “Is … that what you wanted or …?”

A stream of smoke came out of my mouth on an unsteady breath. I leaned forward in my chair, toward the bars. I stared-I felt my eyes burning as I stared through the bars at the man. I felt I was gazing on a pounding, leaden depth, at the incalculable toil going on inside him, the work of living out his last hours. Is that all right, Mr. Everett? Is that what you wanted? I felt his wife’s bright gaze boring into my peripheral vision. I felt my lips drawing back until my teeth were bare.

“Mr. Beachum,” I said hoarsely. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about Jesus Christ. And I don’t care how you feel either. I don’t care about justice, not in this life or in the next. To be honest, I don’t even care very much about what’s right and wrong. I never have.” I dropped my cigarette to the floor. I crushed it under my shoe, watching my shoe turn this way and that. I could hardly believe what I was saying to him. And I couldn’t stop. I raised my eyes again. “All I care about, Mr. Beachum,” I said, “are the things that happen. The facts, the events. That’s my job, that’s my only job. The things that happen. Mr. Beachum-I have to know-did you kill that woman or not?”

Another sound escaped his wife, and she brought her hand up to cover her mouth.

“What?” said Beachum. He was staring back at me through the bars, his eyes dull, so weary, his mouth hanging open.

“What happened, damn it?” I swallowed hard. “What happened?”

“What …? What hap …?”

“In that store. On that day. When Amy Wilson was shot.”

His mouth closed and opened again. His gaze held mine and mine his. We were locked together. “I … I bought a bottle of A-1 Sauce.”

The breath hissed out of me. Jesus, I thought. A-1 Sauce. Jesus. And yet it was true. I was sure it was true.

“And you paid Amy for it at the counter,” I said.

“Yeah.”

My hand went automatically to my cigarettes again. I drew one out. “And she mentioned the money, didn’t she? The money she owed you. Did she mention that?”

At first, he seemed unable to answer, to speak. His mouth opened and he gestured but there were no words. Then: “She said she was … you know. Trying to get it together. The money. I told her … I told her not to worry about it. I knew they were struggling. That’s why I did the car for them. I only charged her for parts in the first place. I told them all this at the trial. They didn’t believe me. Even my lawyer …” His voice trailed away. He shook his head.

But I believed him. He had talked with Amy about the money. That was what Porterhouse heard before he went into the bathroom.

I put the fresh cigarette in my mouth. It bobbed up and down as I talked. “Well, somebody shot her, my friend. That’s true, that’s a fact. That girl is dead and someone shot her. So if it wasn’t you, it was someone else.”

“You got five minutes over there,” said Benson behind me. His tone was dark now, threatening. We paid no attention to him. We went right on as if he hadn’t spoken.

Frank nodded, dazed. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

“Sure,” I said. I lifted my lighter. “Like who?”

“What?”

“Who could’ve done it?”

“I don’t … I don’t know.”

“Not Porterhouse,” I said. “He’s no shooter. I talked to him. He didn’t do anything. But I’ll tell you something else: he didn’t see anything either. And he’s their only witness.”

At that, Mrs. Beachum gasped. That’s the word for it. A short, wet, sobbing gasp. I didn’t look at her. I blocked out the heat of her gaze.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” said Beachum wearily. He looked away sadly, defeated.

“Come on, man,” I whispered. “What about the woman? The woman in the car.”

The condemned man gave a quick shake of his head as if I were annoying him now. “No … No …”

“Why didn’t she hear the shot?”

“I don’t …”

“Why didn’t she see that you had no gun? It was the steak sauce in your hand, wasn’t it?”

“Oh God!” Mrs. Beachum cried.

I made myself ignore her. “It was the bottle, wasn’t it? In your hand? Tell me.”

Beachum seemed now like a man half-asleep, a man too suddenly awakened. “Yeah,” he said dully. “Yeah. The bottle. I told them that. It was in my right hand, so she couldn’t see it. She backed into the other side of me. The left side. She didn’t see, she didn’t have a clear view.”

“All right. So it wasn’t her. It wasn’t Porterhouse. It wasn’t you.” I heard Mrs. Beachum start to cry. I didn’t care. I am not a caring person. I am a reporter. This was my story. This was all I knew how to do. “Who else was there? That’s what I want to know. Who the hell else was there?”

But he was too tired. His shoulders slumped. He looked down at the table. Dropped the smoldering butt of his cigarette into the ashtray there. “No one.”

I plucked the unlit cigarette from my mouth. “Somebody . That’s a fact.”

“The place was empty cept for me. The accountant guy. Amy.”

I threw the cigarette down. I wanted to grab him by the shirt-front, shout in his face. “But it wasn’t empty,” I said. “She didn’t shoot herself, did she?”