Patricia Cornwell - Red Mist

“You really weren’t aware.”

“I wasn’t,” I repeat, and I get the feeling she’s wondering if Lucy might have said something about this to me. When Jaime apparently confronted Farbman, she and Lucy were still together.

Marino sets paperwork on the coffee table, within my reach, and I pick up the photocopy of a document stamped CONFIDENTIAL by the Georgia Prison for Women:

Recommended Procedures for Execution by Lethal Drug Injection

Materials

Sodium Thiopental 5gr/2 % Kit Sterile 50cc Syringe

Pancuronium Bromide Injection (20mg) Simple Intravenous Line

Potassium Chloride Injection, USP (40mEq) Sterile 20cc Syringe

This is followed by directions for the preparation of the drugs included with the “kit,” instructions for mixing the solution and how to attach an intravenous line to an eighteen-gauge needle and a bag of saline to keep the line open. I’m struck by the informal, almost casual, tone of a document that is a step-by-step guide for how to kill someone.

Be sure to expel the air from the line so it will be ready for the injection….

“I did the decent thing and complained directly to the commissioner instead of going to the media,” Jaime continues to describe her conflict with Dan Farbman and NYPD.

Remember to check the prisoner immediately prior to the administration of any drugs to be sure the intracath is patent and there’s no infiltration of the IV solution….

“Unfortunately, the commissioner is pals with the mayor. It got ugly,” Jaime explains. “I got ganged up against.”

“And so the FBI decided to go into my e-mail and tap my phones because of your battle with Farbman? Because you’ve accused him of data cheating? And because some years ago I had a few run-ins with him, too?” I don’t buy it.

Marino sets down another page, and I pick it up next, reading the highlighted paragraph:

Following the injection of the thiopental sodium into the system, it is “washed in” by normal saline. THIS STEP IS EXCEEDINGLY IMPORTANT. If the thiopental sodium remains within the IV and pancuronium bromide is injected, a precipitate will form and possibly clog the line.

“It’s messy when you make enemies.” Jaime doesn’t answer my question as she removes chopsticks from their paper wrapper. “It’s been messy enough in New York for me to leave the DA’s office. My apartment’s on the market. I’m thinking about alternative places to live.”

“You’ve left your life in New York because of an acrimonious situation with Farbman? That’s hard for me to imagine,” I reply, as I look at more documents relating to Georgia’s most infamous poisoner, the Deli Devil.

Between 1989 and 1996, Barrie Lou Rivers poisoned seventeen people, nine of them fatally, with arsenic she got from a pesticide company, all of her victims regular patrons of the deli she managed in an Atlanta skyscraper occupied by multiple companies and firms. Day after day, unsuspecting innocents lined up in the atrium at her deli counter for the tuna-fish special, which was quite the deal: sandwich, chips, a pickle, and a soda for $2.99. When her sadistic crimes were finally discovered, she told police she was tired of people “griping about their food and decided to give them something to gripe about, all right.” She was sick and tired of “shitholes bossing me around like I’m Aunt Jemima.”

“There are other nuances,” Jaime Berger is saying as I read. “Unfortunately, of a personal nature. Some of what I was asked by the FBI agents who showed up at my door was most inappropriate. It was obvious they’d talked to Farbman first, and you can imagine his favorite point was about me. That you and I were almost family.”

I scan the chain-of-custody form that accompanied the execution drugs scheduled for Barrie Lou Rivers, DOC #121195. The prescription was filled at three-twenty p.m. on the first day of March 2009. Kathleen Lawler told me that Barrie Lou Rivers choked on a tuna-fish sandwich in her cell. If that’s true, she must have choked to death at some point after three-twenty p.m. on the day of her execution. The prescription for what was to be her lethal cocktail was filled but never administered, because she died before prison officials could strap her to the gurney. It occurs to me that her last meal may have been the same thing she served to her victims.

“You’ve been back and forth to the GPFW, interviewing Lola Daggette, whose appeals have run out,” I say to Jaime. “I assume she’s talking to you about something important or you wouldn’t have transplanted yourself to Savannah. Your problems in New York aren’t why you’re here, I don’t imagine.”

“She’s not been helpful,” Jaime says. “You’d think she would be, but she’s not as afraid of the needle as she is of Payback. The person she claims killed the Jordan family.”

“Has she said she knows who Payback is?” I inquire.

“ Payback is the devil,” Jaime says. “Some evil ghost that planted bloody clothes in Lola’s room.”

“Her execution is set for this fall, and she’s still saying such things?”

“October thirty-first. Halloween,” Jaime says. “I suspect the judge who delayed her execution and then reset it is letting everyone know what he really thinks of Lola Daggette, wants to make sure she’s given a trick, not a treat, four months from now. Emotions still run high about that case. A lot of people are eager for her to get what they perceive she deserves. They want her to die as painfully as possible. You know, wait just a little too long after administering the sodium pentothal. Forget to expel air from the line. Hope it gets clogged.”

Marino places a stack of color printouts on the table, autopsy photographs, and I pick them up.

“Sodium thiopental is fast-acting and can wear off just as quickly, as I’m sure you know,” Jaime continues. “If you screw up the timing when injecting the remaining drugs, and what we’re really talking about is the intramuscular blocking agent pancuronium bromide? If you wait too long? The sodium thiopental, the anesthesia, begins to wear off. A blocked line and prison officials have to put in a new one, and the efficacy of the sodium thiopental has dissipated by the time all that’s been done.

“You may look asleep, but your brain has come to,” she says. “You can’t open your eyes, talk, or make a sound as you lie on the gurney with restraints holding you down, but you’re conscious and aware that you can’t breathe. The long-acting pancuronium bromide has paralyzed the muscles in your chest, and you asphyxiate. No one watching has any idea that you’re anything but peacefully asleep as your face turns blue and you suffocate. One minute, two minutes, three minutes, maybe longer, as you die a silent, agonizing death.”

The autopsy of Barrie Lou Rivers was performed by Colin Dengate, and I have a good idea how he might feel about someone who poisoned innocent victims by lacing their deli sandwiches with arsenic.

“Except the warden knows.” Jaime retrieves a bottle of wine and a Diet Coke from the refrigerator and shuts the door with her hip. “The executioner knows. The anonymous doctor in his hood and goggles knows and can damn well see your panic as he monitors your racing heart before you finally flatline. But then, some of these very people presiding over judicial homicides, the death squad, want the condemned to suffer. Their secret mission is to cause as much pain and to terrorize as much as possible without lawyers, judges, the public knowing. This sort of thing has been going on for centuries. The executioner’s ax blade is dull or off the mark and requires a few extra blows. The hanging doesn’t go well because the noose slips and the person strangles slowly, twisting at the end of a rope in front of a jeering crowd.”