John Grisham - Chamber

"That's not true."

"How the hell do you know what's true? A year ago you were still in school, still wearing faded blue jeans all day long, still drinking beer at happy hours with your idealistic little buddies. You haven't lived, son. Don't tell me what's true."

"So you're in favor of swift executions for African-Americans?"

"Not a bad idea, really. In fact, most of these punks deserve the gas."

"I'm sure that's a minority opinion on death row."

"You could say that."

"And you, of course, are different and don't belong here."

"No, I don't belong here. I'm a political prisoner, sent here by an egomaniac who used me for his own political purposes."

"Can we discuss your guilt or innocence?"

"No. But I didn't do what the jury said I did."

"So you had an accomplice? Someone else planted the bomb?"

Sam rubbed the deep burrows in his forehead with his middle finger, as if he was flipping the bird. But he wasn't. He was suddenly in a deep and prolonged trance. The conference room was much cooler than his cell. The conversation was aimless, but at least it was conversation with someone other than a guard or the invisible inmate next door. He would take his time, make it last as long as possible.

Adam studied his notes and pondered what to say next. They had been chatting for twenty minutes, sparring really, with no clear direction. He was determined to confront their family's history before he left. He just didn't know how to do it.

Minutes passed. Neither looked at the other. Sam lit another Montclair.

"Why do you smoke so much?" Adam finally said.

"I'd rather die of lung cancer. It's a common desire on death row."

"How many packs a day?"

"Three or four."

Another minute passed. Sam slowly finished the cigarette, and kindly asked, "Where'd you go to school?"

"Law school at Michigan. Undergrad at Pepperdine."

"Where's that?"

"California."

"Is that where you grew up?"

"Yeah."

"How many states have the death penalty?"

"Thirty-eight. Most of them don't use it, though. It seems to be popular only in the Deep South, Texas, Florida, and California."

"You know our esteemed legislature has changed the law here. Now we can die by lethal injection. It's more humane. Ain't that nice? Doesn't apply to me, though, since my conviction was years ago. I'll get to sniff the gas."

"Maybe not."

"You're twenty-six?"

"Yeah."

"Born in 1964."

"That's right."

Sam removed another cigarette from the pack and tapped the filter on the counter. "Where?"

"Memphis," Adam replied without looking at him.

"You don't understand, son. This state needs an execution, and I happen to be the nearest victim. Louisiana, Texas, and Florida are killing them like flies, and the law-abiding people of this state can't understand why our little chamber is not being used. The more violent crime we have, the more people beg for executions. Makes 'em feel better, like the system is working hard to eliminate murderers. The politicians openly campaign with promises of more prisons and tougher sentences and more executions. That's why those clowns in Jackson voted for lethal injection. It's supposed to be more humane, less objectionable, thus easier to implement. You follow?"

Adam nodded his head slightly.

"It's time for an execution, and my number is up. That's why they're pushing like hell. You can't stop it."

"We can certainly try. I want the opportunity."

Sam finally lit the cigarette. He inhaled deeply, then whistled the smoke through a small opening in his lips. He leaned forward slightly on his elbows and peered through the hole in the screen. "What part of California are you from?"

"Southern. L.A." Adam glanced at the piercing eyes, then looked away.

"Your family still there?"

A wicked pain shot through Adam's chest, and for a second his heart froze. Sam puffed his cigarette and never blinked.

"My father's dead," he said with a shaky voice, and sank a few inches in his chair.

A long minute passed as Sam sat poised on the edge of his seat. Finally, he said, "And your mother?"

"She lives in Portland. Remarried."

"Where's your sister?" he asked.

Adam closed his eyes and dropped his head. "She's in college," he mumbled.

"I believe her name is Carmen, right?" Sam asked softly.

Adam nodded. "How'd you know?" he asked through gritted teeth.

Sam backed away from the screen and sank into the folding metal chair. He dropped his current cigarette on the floor without looking at it. "Why did you come here?" he asked, his voice much firmer and tougher.

"How'd you know it was me?"

"The voice. You sound like your father. Why'd you come here?"

"Eddie sent me."

Their eyes met briefly, then Sam looked away. He slowly leaned forward and planted both elbows on both knees. His gaze was fixed on something on the floor. He grew perfectly still.

Then he placed his right hand over his eyes.

10

PHILLIP NAIFEH was sixty-three years old, and nineteen months away from retirement. Nineteen months and four days. He had served as superintendent of the State Department of Corrections for twentyseven years, and in doing so had survived six governors, an army of state legislators, a thousand prisoners' lawsuits, countless intrusions by the federal courts, and more executions than he cared to remember.

The warden, as he preferred to be called (although the title was officially nonexistent under the terminology of the Mississippi Code), was a full-blooded Lebanese whose parents had immigrated in the twenties and settled in the Delta. They had prospered with a small grocery store in Clarksdale where his mother had become somewhat famous for her homemade Lebanese desserts. He was educated in the public schools, went off to college, returned to the state, and, for reasons long forgotten, had become involved in criminal justice.

He hated the death penalty. He understood society's yearning for it, and long ago he had memorized all the sterile reasons for its necessity. It was a deterrent. It removed killers. It was the ultimate punishment. It was biblical. It satisfied the public's need for retribution. It relieved the anguish of the victim's family. If pressed, he could make these arguments as persuasively as any prosecutor. He actually believed one or two of them.

But the burden of the actual killing was his, and he despised this horrible aspect of his job. It was Phillip Naifeh who walked with the condemned man from his cell to the Isolation Room, as it was called, to suffer the last hour before death. It was Phillip Naifeh who led him next door to the Chamber Room, and supervised the strapping of the legs, arms, and head. "Any last words?" he had uttered twenty-two times in twenty-seven years. It was left to him to tell the guards to lock the chamber door, and it was left to him to nod to the executioner to pull the levers to mix the deadly gas. He had actually watched the faces of the first two as they died, then decided it was best to watch the faces of the witnesses in the small room behind the chamber. He had to select the witnesses. He had to do a hundred things listed in a manual of how to legally kill death row inmates, including the pronouncing of death, the removal of the body from the chamber, the spraying of it to remove the gas from the clothing, and on and on.

He had once testified before a legislative committee in Jackson, and given his opinions about the death penalty. He had a better idea, he had explained to deaf ears, and his plan would keep condemned killers in the Maximum Security Unit in solitary confinement where they couldn't kill, couldn't escape, and would never be eligible for parole. They would eventually die on death row, but not at the hands of the state.