Andrew Klavan - True Crime

“Do you want me to make this multiple choice?”

“Officer …” I was gasping now. I was still swaying, but the excitement had steadied my brain a little. “I can see you’re a good guy. But there’s no time to …”

The front door opened. Mr. Robertson looked out. I recognized him from the television show I’d seen that afternoon. The tie and the studio makeup were gone-he was wearing a light blue polo shirt that bulged at the belly-but I recognized the frowning granite face beneath the white widow’s peak.

The cop turned at the sound of the opening door and I grabbed the chance and ducked around him. I was up the front step so fast that Robertson backed away, edging the door forward, narrowing the gap.

But I got there before he closed it. I got my face in front of his.

“Please,” I said. His nose wrinkled as he caught the whiff of booze. “Describe the locket.”

“What? What the hell do you want?”

“Amy’s locket. The one the killer stole. A heart? Gold? AR with a fringe around it.”

He went blank, surprised. “Yeah. Yeah,” he said automatically. “And AW inside. She had her married initials done on the inside.”

“She …” My mouth hung open, but no more words came out. AW inside. She had her married initials engraved inside. Then Mrs. Russel knew. Warren’s grandmother-she had to know. If she hadn’t known before, she knew now. She knew after talking to me.

A strong hand took hold of my shoulder. “I’m sorry, Mr. Robertson,” I heard the cop say behind me. He started to pull me back, away from the house.

“Frank Beachum didn’t kill your daughter, Mr. Robertson,” I said.

On the instant, the man’s face darkened-I could almost see the shadow fall across him like an axe. “What are you talking about?”

“He didn’t …”

“Horseshit. Bullshit,” he said. “Who are you? Get the fuck outta here. Get this drunk the fuck offa my lawn.”

The cop tugged at me harder. I grabbed hold of the doorframe. I stared into Robertson’s hard eyes. “I’m telling you …” I said.

With a short, sharp shove, Robertson slammed the door onto my fingers- bang — and jerked it back again. I screamed. Hugged my hand to my chest. Reeled back as the cop tightened his grip and hauled me off the step.

This time, I stumbled; fell. Felt the jarring shock go through my skull. Felt the dewy grass seep cold through my pants leg. I clambered to my feet in a second, quick as I could. Clutching my own hand against me. I was clearheaded enough now. Sober enough now.

“Fuck you!” said Robertson, jabbing his finger at me from the doorway. And then the sight of him was blotted out by the shape of the big cop as he moved in.

“All right,” I said. “All right, I’m going.”

Hunched and ready, his hand on his club, the cop kept moving toward me.

“I said I’m going. But he’s innocent.”

“Get the fuck outta here,” Robertson shouted.

I turned my back on both of them and hurried away across the lawn. In front of me, I saw the clutch of journalists. Their faces big, watching me, wide-eyed, as I came on. A camera went up over their heads. A flash snapped against the night background. Blue spots spiraled in my vision as I kept walking toward them.

I heard the cop call after me-not a shout-his voice still cool and even.

“And lose that vehicle, mister,” he said. “You operate that vehicle drunk and I’ll have every badge in St. Louis on your ass.”

I wheeled round recklessly, screaming. “Are they flying jets? Cause if they ain’t flying jets, pal, they ain’t gonna catch me!”

And I wheeled back, blindly at first, but fixing my trajectory on the cluster of journalists, bulling my way toward them, toward my car.

“What is he, crazy?” I heard the cop say. “He’s driving a fucking Tempo.”

I threw back my head as I walked, and laughed like a madman.

I never knew the names of the executioners. For security reasons, they were never released. I understand they were two men from within the Corrections Department. Volunteers, trained on the lethal injection equipment. One-call him Frick-was a clerical worker of some type: stooped, crewcut and bug-eyed; an insane but intellectual demeanor. I hear he was given to delivering somewhat pedantic discourses on capital punishment-its history, its methods, the biological effects of its various tools-but that these were enlivened by a certain panting fervency he couldn’t quite seem to conceal. The other men on the execution team seemed to detest him, though no one ever said worse to me about him than that he was “some piece of work, all right.” So that was Frick.

Executioner Frack, on the other hand, was more to the general taste. A former guard would be my guess. A big, rollicking man in his fifties who generally talked baseball with the gang before he pressed the button. “I’ve got no qualms about it” was his only remark when asked. “It’s like erasing a mistake.”

The two had been trained on the machine by Reuben Skycock, who had been trained himself by the manufacturer. Their job was essentially to push a button, but it was not quite as simple as that. The machine had two buttons on its control panel. When the time came, each man would put his thumb on one of the buttons. At a nod from Luther, Executioner Frack would count out loud to three. At three, both men simultaneously would slowly depress their buttons. When the buttons clicked, they would slowly slide their thumbs off until the buttons clicked back into place. Only one of the buttons was actually operational. Only one would start the timed automatic sequence in which stainless steel plungers in the delivery module on the wall would be lowered into the canisters of chemicals, pushing their fluids down through the tubes and into Frank Beachum’s vein: the sodium pentothal, then, one minute later, pancuronium bromide and, after another full minute’s delay, the potassium chloride. A computer inside the module scrambled the circuits at random so that the two executioners would never know which of their buttons had really done the trick.

At exactly eleven-thirty-when Frank Beachum was being swiftly strapped to the gurney in his cell-Deputy Superintendent Zachary Platt ushered these two men into the death chamber down the hall. Dr. Smiley Chaudrhi and nurse Maura O’Brien were there, as well as two guards who weren’t involved in the Strap-down procedure. All four of them looked up as Platt and the executioners entered, and all four of them just as quickly looked away, running their eyes over clipboards and light fixtures and over the white walls. Platt led Frick and Frack through the chamber quickly and into the supply room where the killing equipment was.

Arnold McCardle was there, standing by the shelf of phones. The fat man nodded at the others when they came in, but he didn’t smile or offer them his hand. Reuben Skycock was stationed by the delivery module in its steel box up on the wall. He did shake hands with the executioners. Executioner Frick, the brainy one, slid a wet palm through Skycock’s grasp and then clasped his two damp hands together in front of him-nodding and smiling fatuously all the while as if trying to think of a gambit to start the conversation. Executioner Frack slapped a big mitt into Skycock’s, pumped it once and said, “Reuben. How ya doin? Been watching those Cards?”

Skycock, whose moustachioed face had grown chalky over the last hour or so, only nodded vaguely. Then he turned his back on both of them.

Executioner Frick and Executioner Frack stood together after that in a corner of the supply room. They stood in silence, as no one else would talk to them and they had nothing to say to each other.