Joel Goldman - Deadlocked

Her hatred was so deep that she kept it even from Father Steve, omitting it from her confessions, lest the priest think she might do the thing she talked of to herself and no one else. Mary admitted in her private moments of piercing despair that she could do it, gradually convincing herself that she must, recoiling at her sinfulness, praying for forgiveness and the wisdom to find another way.

She had always been puzzled, a bit unsure, about the boys' friendship. One thing Mary understood well was class differences and the gulf between her son and his friend was more than money. Hers was a family of laborers. The Kings were not monarchs, but they were Kansas City bluebloods. Only their common Catholic faith brought the boys together at St. Marks, the parochial school they attended. Ryan's family depended on the scholarships Whitney's family contributed. She had held her tongue instead of warning Ryan he shouldn't trust people like that, regretting forever that she had.

Nancy Troy, a public defender, had been Ryan's first lawyer.

She was a young woman who meant well and tried hard, but Whitney had a team of lawyers who attacked Mary's son from the outset in the press and in the courtroom, digging for dirt about her family, making it up when none was found. No one was more surprised than Ryan was when Whitney accused him of the murders from the witness stand. Mary wasn't surprised at all.

The door opened behind her, reflections of the other witnesses glancing off the window. She looked for one face, wondering if she would recognize him after all these years, a catch in her throat as he walked in. Tall and blond like his father, fine features like his mother. She hadn't seen Nick Byrnes since just after Ryan was taken from her. The boy's grandparents had taken him in and Mary had called on them to express her condolences. The grandfather had slammed the door in her face, the boy clinging to his grandfather's leg, peeking at her. Mary resisted the urge to stare though she was certain the boy would neither recognize nor remember her.

She had studied the list of witnesses. The big man with beefy hands and face was one of the policemen who took Ryan away, apologizing to her for her sorrow. Mary was glad his partner hadn't come, the Indian that had thrown her son against the wall in his bedroom. He was an awful man.

She counted the witnesses off in her mind: the woman from the governor's office, the doctor who would pronounce the moment of death, the prosecuting attorney, and the reporters, matching each face to a name except for one. A tall man with dark hair and steel eyes who glanced around as if he didn't belong. She listened without looking as the prosecuting attorney introduced him to the warden. Lou Mason, the prosecuting attorney called him. The name registered, but Mary was too distracted to struggle with the reason.

She hoped they would all ignore her. After all, what could they say to her without being cruel? She closed her eyes and waited. Where was Father Steve? Where was Ryan?

Nick Byrnes was twelve when he learned that his parents had been murdered, not killed in a car accident as his grandparents had told him when he was six and the vague story that they had gone to live with God was no longer persuasive. Truth was he never believed the God story. Nick couldn't imagine having parents so mean that they would leave him to live with anyone else, including God. And he refused to believe in a God that would let his parents leave Nick so they could move in with Him.

The car accident story worked pretty well until he was twelve. His parents didn't leave him on purpose. It was an accident. God didn't take them from him. He took them in. That's what his Grandma Esther had told Nick and it made sense.

One day, in seventh grade, Nick noticed kids at school whispering as he walked by, giving him weird looks like there was an alien arm growing out of the back of his head. His teacher, a flowery smelling woman, kept stopping at his desk, patting his hand and asking him if he was all right. Then one of the older kids, a newly muscled ninth grader named Alex, bumped him in the lunch line and asked him if he was going to the execution.

"What execution?" Nick asked.

"The guy that killed your parents, you dork. Don't you know anything?"

Nick mumbled something, and stepped out of the line, spending the rest of the lunch period in a bathroom stall, his pants down around his ankles and his stomach in his throat. He stayed after school, going to the library to read the newspaper, something he'd never done except to look at the comics. He found the article on the front page of the Metropolitan section of the Kansas City Star. Ryan Kowalczyk was scheduled to die for the murders of Graham and Elizabeth Byrnes committed nine years earlier.

Nick raced home, flush with embarrassment and anger. His grandparents had lied to him again. Bursting into the house, hot tears streaming down his cheeks, he caught his grandmother wrapping a turkey carcass with the newspaper.

"I'm sorry you found out this way," she told him, rocking him against her bosom. That was all she ever said, and it was more than his grandfather would tell him.

A judge had spared Kowalczyk that night when he was only six hours away from getting the needle; his grandparents learned about the stay of execution from a reporter who called for their reaction while they were eating dinner. His grandfather hung up on the reporter, stormed out of the house, returning hours later, sloppy drunk and crying. His grandmother retreated to her bedroom and didn't come out for three days.

That night, Nick had the nightmare again. He'd had it for as long as he could remember, though not in a while. It was always the same. In the dream, he was sleeping, awakened by an invisible, paralyzing fear, sensing that a horrible creature was hovering over him. Though awake, he couldn't see, couldn't move, and could scarcely breathe. A woman cried out, her voice familiar though he'd never heard it quite like that, so terrified, exploding in waves. Men shouting, then the woman screaming again, drowning out the men, drowning out everything as if her whole life was that scream. Then it was dark and quiet and cold, so cold that he shivered, waking up for real, his teeth chattering, holding his knees to his chest so tightly that he lost circulation in his arms and legs.

His grandparents wouldn't talk about the murders, telling him that no good would come of it, leaving Nick to find out on his own what had happened. The Internet made it easy. Not only did he find articles on the Kansas City Star 's database, he found the court file on the Missouri Supreme Court's Web site, including the transcript of the trial. He downloaded everything, devoting endless hours to reading and rereading the story of his parents' deaths, at last understanding his nightmare when he learned that he had been in the car the night his parents were killed, his life spared by the quilt his mother used to cover him.

Ryan Kowalczyk was scheduled to die three more times and, each time, Nick wrote letters to the prosecuting attorney, the governor, and the Missouri Supreme Court urging them to carry out the death sentence. A victim's advocate from the prosecuting attorney's office called and thanked him for his letters, telling him to keep writing. A reporter from Channel 6 did a story on him and Kowalczyk's mother who was conducting her own letter-writing campaign to save her son. Nick's grandparents grounded him for a week for making such a public display.

Nick tracked developments in Kowalczyk's appeals on the court's Web site, struggling with matters of due process, laughing at the notion that the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment. What's crushing his mother's face with a tire iron, he demanded to know in one of his letters, tearing up the empty, apologetic reply from the victim's advocate.