Andrew Klavan - True Crime

I turned from the wall. Bob cocked a look at me. If hate were a laser he’d have had a view through my forehead to the back of the room.

“I’m sorry, Steve,” he said gently. “I truly am.”

“You have to give me notice, Alan,” I said.

“Notice?” said Alan. He moaned.

“That’s in my contract. You can’t just boot me. You have to give me notice.”

Even the blank calm of Bob’s expression, even the sheets of ice that had dropped down to cover his eyes were not enough to contain the radiance of triumph that shone from within him. He had won.

“Just how much notice do you want, Steve?” he asked kindly.

I glanced at my watch as I started toward the office door. “Five hours and seven minutes,” I said.

The sun had not lost its color at all and blazed white even as it angled westward above the salt flats around Osage. Below, beneath the quivering lines of heat that rose from the highway, the dark figures of state policemen moved in clusters near their cars. Aside from these, and the cruisers steadily patrolling the perimeter, the great square complex of the prison seemed very still. You had to draw in close before you noticed the men in the gun towers, before you saw them turning their heads slowly to scan the long plains.

Within the walls, it was quiet too. The prisoners had been fed an early supper and locked down in their cells for the night. A double shift of guards stood watch on every block. The guards walked their sections grimly, warily. They could hear the prisoners in their cells speaking in harsh growls, the occasional angry outburst. And they could hear, beneath that murmur, beneath the unceasing rasp of movement and machinery, sprightly music from the television sets along the walls. On the screens, Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd were going Back to the Future for the third time. That was the after-dinner video. There would be other videos all night long. Arnold McCardle had scheduled the soft-core porno films for later so that they would hold the men’s attention during the actual moment of Frank Beachum’s execution.

There was more activity in the visitors’ center. The kitchen staff was at work there. They were swabbing down the floors and tables, arranging the tables side by side. They worked quickly as they wanted the smell of disinfectant to dissipate before the dignitaries and witnesses arrived. They would set out refreshments on the long tables then: coffee, soda water and chips before, wine and sandwiches afterward for those who wanted them.

The prison’s main conference room was also busy; full of people. Luther, Arnold, Reuben Skycock-the whole execution team-were there. So were the engineers who would see to the phones and machinery, so was the doctor who would monitor the prisoner’s heart, and the nurse who would find the vein in his arm, and the guards who would strap him down. Everyone who would be involved in any way in the final procedure was gathered around the meeting table or lined up against the walls, listening quietly while Luther briefed them on their duties one last time.

They listened and Luther was glad to see that their faces were becomingly solemn. Even Reuben Skycock kept his well-known sense of humor in check for decorum’s sake. Luther’s eyes moved over them as he spoke. He knew what they were feeling, all of them. Excited, ashamed to be excited; afraid, ashamed to be afraid. He saw some in the group who had never been through this before, and he knew how they were feeling too. How they wanted to do well in front of the veterans. How they wanted desperately not to screw up, not to be seen as the weak link. Luther continued talking. His eyes rested a moment on Maura O’Brien, the only woman in the room. Her chubby face was fixed and serious like all the others. Her pale lips were a thin line. Luther didn’t much like having a woman in on this, but he knew Maura and he admired her grit. She had never taken any guff from the menfolk in this place, and he could see that she meant not to falter now.

Luther’s eyes moved on and he kept on talking. He knew, finally, that they were all looking to him. The whole execution staff was counting on his steady manner, his unfaltering smile. Drawing on his easy leadership for strength. So he was careful to appear to them-as he always appeared-imperturbable. Speaking in an even drawl, slouching in his chair with his legs outstretched, gesturing comfortably with one hand. And smiling. That bland smile. As if he were telling a story about the trout that outsmarted him last June in Quenton’s Brook. That was what they needed and that was what he gave them. He couldn’t afford-none of them could afford-the whole justice system of the state of Missouri could not afford-to have the head man falter at the eleventh hour.

And so Luther Plunkitt went on talking and gave no sign whatsoever of the weight that dragged relentlessly on his interior, or of how cumbersome, how ponderous a thing it had by now become.

In the small square courtyard just outside the medical building, there was no one. Nothing was moving at all. The air was thick and hot. The patch of sky above was clear and relentless. Crickets sang from their chinks in the wall and cicadas sang in the sparse patches of brown grass that sprang out of the asphalt. But the insects did not show themselves, and everything was still.

Within the door, in the hall outside the hospital unit, there were no patients, there was no one. A single nurse moved silently through his station behind the bulletproof window. The guard in the booth at the end of the hall watched his closed-circuit monitor dully. He was a new guard, just on for an hour, while the meeting in the conference room took place.

There was a new guard at the door of the Deathwatch cell too, and a new duty officer inside because Benson was also at the briefing. The new duty officer was a white-haired muscle builder named Len. Len had been happy to grab this part-day at time-and-a-half. He needed the money because his new lover was something of a party boy and wanted to spend nearly every weekend in the expensive leather clubs up in St. Loo. The work, as it turned out, was easy enough. All he had to do was sit at the long table under the clock, and type a note into the chronological report whenever anything happened. And hardly anything did happen. The prisoner and his wife seemed like nice, quiet folks. Which suited Len just fine.

In fact, Frank and Bonnie had barely moved at all in the last half hour or so. They sat at their table behind the bars of the cage. They sat facing each other with their two pairs of hands all folded together, their eyes locked on the other’s eyes. A deep sense of stillness had come over both of them now. They knew that Bonnie would be told to leave soon and it made them feel very quiet inside. They felt a sort of leaden wonder, almost like awe, at their impending separation. And they felt very close to each other, closer than they had felt for a long time.

In intimate, hushed, husky voices, the couple spoke steadily. They didn’t have to think about what to say, it simply came out of them.

“Thing I worry about,” Frank murmured into his wife’s eyes. “Thing I worry about more than anything in all this is Gail.”

“She loves you, Frank. She loves her daddy,” Bonnie said.

“I don’t want her ever to think, you know …”

“She wouldn’t think that. She knows you.” “Don’t ever let her think it. You tell her, okay?”

“I’ll tell her, sweetheart, I swear.”

“You keep telling her.”

“I will.”

“I worry, you know,” said Frank softly, pressing her hands between his on the tabletop. “People get bored sometimes hearing something. Even if it’s true. They get tired of hearing the same old thing.”