Jeff Abbott: No Rest for the Dead

Rosemary scanned the crowd and her eyes stopped on Hank Zacharius, the journalist… her friend. He’d argued in article after article that they were executing an innocent woman, a woman who had been railroaded by an avid prosecutor and judge. She could still remember his attempts to question the evidence.

Hank Zacharius triedto convince himself that he’d come strictly as a witness and reporter-not as a friend-that he’d write one last piece detailing the horrors of capital punishment and that the writing would distance him from the event, but his heart was beating fast and his mouth had gone dry. He stared through the glass at Rosemary and took several deep breaths. He could not help but notice how thin she had grown, the once delicate bone structure of her face now skull-like, her bony arms bruised where the technicians had made their clumsy attempts to insert the fourteen-gauge catheters, the largest commercially available needles, that would deliver the mix of anesthetic and poison to stop Rosemary’s heart. He thought about how hard he’d tried to prevent this from happening. His mind kept going back to the articles he’d written about the case.

Christopher Thomas’s body was found in an advanced state of decomposition due to its incarceration in a contraption known as an iron maiden, which acted as a kind of pressure cooker. The device also crushed the deceased’s teeth, though an identifiable fragment was discovered in the iron maiden itself .

This reporter has argued that it would have been impossible for the accused, a 130-pound woman, to have lifted a man of more than six feet and 180 pounds into the iron maiden by herself. The state has put forth the idea that she had help from a known drug runner, who had been seen at the McFall Art Museum and who has subsequently and conveniently disappeared from sight .

If Rosemary Thomas is executed on evidence that could have been planted, it will be the result of a witch hunt, of politicos saving their jobs, of trying to prove the wealthy can be treated as badly as the poor .

But Zacharius’s writings were tainted by his having known Rosemary since college, by their having been friends, and their relationship was used to discredit him: He is partial. He is a friend. He is distorting the evidence . And it didn’t help that he’d written a series of anti-capital-punishment articles for Rolling Stone just a few months earlier, which made it look as if he were simply taking up his cause once again.

Zacharius stared past Rosemary and through the glass opposite saw Peter Heusen, weaving slightly, as if he might fall.

He’s drunk , thought Zacharius. Rosemary’s goddamn brother is drunk .

Peter Heusen washaving trouble keeping down his breakfast of eggs Benedict chased by two tumblers of bourbon. His stomach roiled and his head ached. He swallowed hard and worried he might be sick. He saw himself in the witness box, stating how his sister had, more than once, said she’d wanted her husband dead. Of course he’d added that he was certain it was just a figure of speech, “though one could hardly blame my sister if she did kill that philandering scoundrel; I mean, who wouldn’t?”

Peter Heusen swallowed again. What he wouldn’t do for another glass of bourbon. He licked his lips and thought of Rosemary’s young children, Leila and Ben, at home with their nanny, and what he would say to them later… Oh, your poor dear mother . He glanced at his older sister and thought how she’d always taken care of him. Rosemary the Responsible, that’s what he’d called her, and he felt a tremor through his body. Even now she looked responsible, in control. Always the opposite of me , he thought, and swallowed again, and caught her eyes.

The warden tookup his position at Rosemary’s head.

The chaplain by her side asked, “Do you have anything to say?”

She looked again at the people on the other side of the windows and saw the district attorney and the judge… those who stopped at nothing to see that justice was done.

Justice?…

Oh, do I have some things to say…

And she must have nodded because a boom mike descended from the ceiling.

But instead Rosemary shut her eyes and pictured her childhood bedroom, she and her mother kneeling beside her bed.

“Now I lay me down to sleep…”

She heard her words amplified through the mike and felt a hand on her arm, imagined it was her mother, though she knew it was the chaplain.

“… if I should die before I-”

But the words suddenly made no sense-there was no if .

Rosemary tried to make her mind a blank, but images of her children bloomed like developing photographs, beautiful, innocent faces, and she could not stop herself from thinking that she would never see them again, never see them grow older, would miss their teenage years and college and marriages and grandchildren. And though she tried not to, a strangled sob burst out of her.

Melissa Franklin Forrestheard the cry and flinched. She had been staring at a spot above Rosemary’s head-anything to avoid the woman’s eyes-but now, hearing that sound and seeing the tears on Rosemary’s face, she felt her own tears gathering.

She’d spent more than half her life as a judge and was considered a fair one. She had fought for reelection more than once, but right now it felt as if all of the good work she’d done was behind her-that this was the one act she would be remembered for, the one that would haunt her for the remainder of her life.

She had not wanted to be here, had not wanted to be a witness, but the state had insisted. She twisted a plain gold band around her finger, tried to breathe normally though her heart raced and her head felt light.

Had she not been easy on that rapist; had she not set him free to rape again; had it not been the case that preceded this one…

But she had let a rapist go free, and it had been the case just before Rosemary’s.

Judge Forrest forced herself to look at Rosemary, at the straps that held her like a trapped animal, at the needles in her arms that would deliver the poison, and she thought, Now I am guilty of murder too .

Rosemary felt thecool saline solution rushing into her veins.

Then the warden removed his glasses, tilted his head toward a mirror, and Rosemary knew it was a signal, the signal, for the execution to begin.

Behind the mirrored glass, the executioner started the process.

First the sodium thiopental, a fast-acting barbiturate that was the anesthetic. Then fifty milligrams of Pavulon, a muscle relaxer that would paralyze the diaphragm and arrest the breathing. Last, the potassium chloride, which would stop the heart.

The chaplain asked again if she had anything to say, and Rosemary shook her head no as words tumbled from her mouth: “… though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no-”

Then she swallowed and tasted something bitter on the back of her tongue, and the words caught in her throat and the slight burning she’d felt in her arms became fire and her body was shaking, writhing, and she could not stop gasping and gagging.

“My God! My God!”Belle McGuire covered her face with her hands. “What’s happening?”

The curtains were quickly drawn. But Belle, the others, could hear moans and cries even through the glass.

“It’s worse than being stoned to death,” Zacharius said, pale, glaring at Nunn.

Jon Nunn squeezed his eyes shut. He had to control himself from pounding on the glass and smashing it.

The medical teamand the tie-down crew burst into the death chamber.