Before I Sleep

by Rachel Lee

  John Otis looked very much as she remembered him. He was slight, barely taller than she, with a face prematurely old. His light brown hair was cut very short, and his prison clothes bagged on his slender frame, as if he had lost weight, or as if they had nothing small enough to fit him.

  His sleeves were short, and his arms still bore the scars of burns and lacerations from his childhood. From what she had read of his past, she imagined most of his body was covered with similar scars.

  But his blue eyes were bright, almost childlike and warm as he smiled at her.

  “I never expected to see you again,” he said. He didn't approach her, as if he thought she might be frightened of him. So she crossed the small space and offered to shake his hand.

  He looked down at her hand, as if he had forgotten what the gesture meant, but then, almost hesitantly, he reached out and clasped her fingers.

  “No touching,” the guard said from beyond the cell.

  Carey stepped back and dropped her hand. Otis did the same. But she saw in his eyes that he appreciated the civilized gesture.

  He pointed to the one chair. “You sit there. I'll sit on my bed.”

  “Thank you.” She wondered if the chair was there just for her, or if he always had one.

  She looked around, noting the worn Bible and the paperback copy of A Tale of Two Cities. There were also a couple of other books, and she leaned forward to see what they were. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, and a Robert Frost anthology.

  “I brought a tape recorder,” she told him. “Do you mind?”

  “What are you going to do with it?”

  “I just want to remember what we discuss without getting it all mixed up in my head.”

  “You won't play it on the radio?”

  “Not if you don't want me to.”

  He nodded. “Okay. Turn it on.”

  She did so, holding it in her hand facing him. “I'm sorry about the death warrant,” she said awkwardly.

  He cocked his head. “Really? I thought you wanted this to happen.”

  She shook her head. “No, I don't.”

  “Why not? You prosecuted me.”

  She could feel her cheeks heating. She didn't really want to get into this with him, because she couldn't see what good it would serve. She finally found something noncommittal to say. “I no longer support the death penalty.”

  He nodded. “It's different when you know you're responsible, isn't it?”

  She started, and stared at him, wondering if he was reading her mind.

  “That's okay,” he said quietly. “You were just part of the system. If it wasn't you, it would have been somebody else.”

  “That's a very generous view to take.”

  He shrugged. “I've got nothing else to do anymore except take a philosophical attitude.”

  She found herself starting to smile, and caught her breath when he smiled back. His smile seemed to light up his whole face.

  “So what do you want?” he asked. “Do you want to know what it's like to have only a few weeks to live? I'm not sure my experience would be meaningful to anyone else. I might feel a whole lot worse about it if I were outside. Then I'd have a lot more to lose.”

  She was taken aback, and hardly knew how to answer. “I suppose so.”

  “Not that it's really so bad in here. My guards are nice. I don't have much to worry about. Nobody beats me up or anything. It could be a lot worse.”

  And had been. The unspoken words seemed to hang on the air. “I hear prison is awful.”

  “Well, of course it is. There isn't any freedom. And sometimes things happen. But overall, I don't have much to complain about.”

  As compared to what? His childhood? She supposed he wasn't the most objective judge of the horrors of prison life.

  “Anyway,” he said, “I suppose you want to ask me if I did it, and want to know if I'm sorry for doing it.”

  She nodded slowly, wondering why it was she seemed unable to take control of this interview.

  “I said all I had to say about that before the trial,” he answered. “There's nothing more to say now. It's all decided.”

  She sat there looking at him, and an understanding washed over her in icy waves. Shock held her rigid as she looked into his bright blue eyes. She couldn't say how she knew, but she knew as surely as if the message was written on his face. “You know who did it, don't you? And you're protecting someone.”

  He shrugged. He might as well have agreed.

  “My God,” she said, “why don't you speak up? It's still not too late!”

  But he shook his head. And deep in the depths of his blue eyes, she saw the flicker of fear, the flicker of pain he would never admit.

  “John, this isn't right!”

  He ignored her. “You know, during the trial you kept looking at me. You were the only person who did. And I always felt there was something you wanted to say. Something you wanted to know. What was it?”

  Lead had settled into her heart and stomach, and she could only stare and try to draw a deep breath. Finally, she managed to say, “I just found out.”

  “Oh.” He nodded as if he understood, but admitted nothing at all.

  She tried again. “I kept thinking that you wouldn't kill because of an argument. Everybody said you'd done it to your father, so you did it to your foster parents, but I didn't believe it. You killed your father to protect your brother. That's not the same thing at all.”

  He smiled then, a quiet smile, as if he appreciated what she was saying, but he still didn't answer.

  Finally, gathering her control, she began to steer the conversation, hoping that if she got him talking, she might get him to let slip something that would help him. The horror that had been riding her since she heard the death warrant was signed had dug its icy claws into every corner of her soul. She could not let this happen.

  But John William Otis was not about to help her help him. Every time she tried to come back to the Kline murders, he turned the conversation elsewhere.

  Time was getting short. Instead of trying to get him to talk about what had been, she decided to ask him about what might have been.

  “If they let you out of here tomorrow, what would you do, John?”

  He smiled, and a dreamy look seemed to come over his face. “I'd go to New England.”

  “New England? Really? Why?”

  “I've always wanted to go there. Ever since I read my first Robert Frost poem.”

  “Which one is your favorite?”

  He pointed to a paper hanging on the wall, attached there by a piece of tape. Rising, she went to look at it, and found a carefully hand-lettered version of “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

  Inexplicably feeling tears prickle her eyes, she read it aloud, her voice hushed, almost breaking as she read the last line: “And miles to go before I sleep.”

  “It's beautiful, isn't it?” Otis said softly. “I always wanted to see snow. Sometimes I dream about it, but it's not the same, you know? It's not the same as feeling how cold it is. I wonder if it's as soft as they say, and what it's like to have a snowflake fall on your cheek. I wonder what a handful of it would feel like, and what would happen when I squeeze it. I'd like to lie down in it and make a snow angel. I saw that in a movie, making a snow angel.”

  She turned to look at him, and saw that his head was bowed. An overwhelming urge to touch him filled her, but she didn't dare, not under the watchful eyes of the guard.

  After a bit, he drew a deep breath.” I guess I'll never see it.”

  Carey bit her lip and blinked hard, fighting down the sorrow that was suddenly threatening to choke her. Something. She had to find something to say, something to comfort him, but no words would come.

  “Time,” the guard said. He sounded almost reluctant.

  John leapt up from his cot and turned, lifting the thin mattress and pulling out a composition book.

  “Here,” he said, thrusting it at her.

  Carey looked
down at it, her vision blurred by unshed tears. The Poems of John William Otis.

  “Take it,” he said.

  “Why me?”

  “Take it,” he repeated. “You understand. You won't just throw it away or burn it. I couldn't stand for someone to throw it away.”

  She lifted her head, looking at him, feeling helpless and hating herself for it.

  “You have to leave now, Ms. Stover,” the guard said. He was opening the door.

  “Please,” said John Otis. “It's all that matters now.”

  The prison officials let her keep the book. They searched it first, to make sure Otis wasn't sending some kind of illicit message, and they discussed the propriety of it, then decided to let her have it.

  “He'll just leave it to her in two weeks anyway,” the warden said. “It doesn't matter.”

  But it did matter.

  Clutching the book tightly to her breast, Carissa stepped out of the gray atmosphere of Raiford Prison into the blinding sunlight and high temperatures of the first day of September and wondered how the world could look so unchanged.

  “What's that?” Seamus asked as she got into the car.

  Settling into her seat, she looked down at the notebook she clutched. “Poems. Otis gave them to me.”

  He looked at her a moment. “Fasten your seat belt.”

  She put the notebook on her lap and reached for the harness, buckling it with a click that somehow sounded final. Seamus backed out of the parking space, then headed them toward home.

  “I figured we'd get some lunch along the road,” he said presently. “Fast food, or should I look for something better?”

  “Fast food is fine.”

  “Okay.”

  She looked down at the notebook in her lap, wishing Otis hadn't given it to her. God knew what she'd find in there, but she somehow suspected it wasn't going to help her sleep any better.

  Worse, it felt like a trust. Regardless of what was inside it, she was going to feel as if she had to guard it for the rest of her life. How could she not?

  Finally, she dragged her gaze from it and looked out the window at the passing countryside, but she didn't see the trees or the houses, or even the growing line of thunder-heads before them.

  They were so close to Jacksonville that she was tempted to ignore her need to go to work tonight, and instead head for the east coast. There was a tiny little motel in Neptune Beach, high on the dunes overlooking the Atlantic, that she loved to stay in. What was it called? She couldn't remember the name.

  “Are you going to be okay?”

  The sound of Seamus's voice startled her, and she realized they were coming into Gainesville. “I'm fine. I didn't sleep much last night.”

  “I'm not surprised.”

  He took them to a burger place, but rather than eat inside with a busload of excited, noisy children, they took their food with them. Carey ate hers absently as they drove south on I-275, but it tasted like sawdust. Finally, she stuffed the remains of her burger back into the bag and drank the diet soft drink instead.

  “How'd it go?” Seamus asked.

  She figured he deserved some kind of answer since he'd been sitting on the question for nearly two hours. “It was okay. He seems nice.”

  “A lot of them do. That's why people make the unfortunate mistake of trusting them.”

  For all she considered herself a cynic, she hated Seamus's cynicism. “I know that,” she said finally. “But it was something else. He wasn't practiced. He wasn't doing a con. I think I can tell the difference. I met enough of them in State Attorney's Office.”

  He nodded, saying nothing.

  So that's how he was going to be, she thought wearily. Silent. Noncommittal. The way he had been on the trip up here.

  But then he surprised her. “Do you feel better or worse, now that you've seen him?”

  “Worse. He's not guilty, Seamus. I'd stake my reputation on it.”

  “Did he say so?”

  “No. Actually he wouldn't talk about it at all. But I'll tell you something. Not only did he not kill the Klines, but he knows who did.”

  Another five miles passed before he spoke again. “Sweetheart—”

  “Don't call me that!”

  “Sorry. Look, I have a problem with mind reading. If he didn't say that, how can you know that?”

  “It was something about the way he looked. And the way he didn't deny it when I suggested it.”

  “That's not very helpful.”

  “No, it isn't. And he knows that.” She closed her eyes against the sun and the headache that was beginning to grow in her forehead and neck. “He's protecting somebody.”

  “That only happens in the movies. Real live people don't go to the electric chair to protect somebody.”

  Yesterday she would have agreed with him. Today she couldn't.

  “At the risk of having you tell me again what a son of a bitch I am, I gotta tell you, Carey, I'm beginning to wonder if you aren't—” He broke off.

  “Delusional?” she asked. “It's possible, I guess. Although under the circumstances it'd be a whole lot more helpful if I believed John Otis was a rotten s.o.b. who killed the Klines in cold blood.”

  “Maybe. And did you ever consider that if he knows who did it, he's an accomplice?”

  A shiver ran through her. No, she hadn't thought of that.

  “I mean, if he is protecting someone, then he was part of it anyway, and he's getting what he deserves.”

  In an instant they passed from bright sunshine to the gloom beneath the line of thunderheads. The day darkened, turning greenish.

  “I hope we make it back in time for your show,” Seamus said as the first large raindrops spattered on the dusty windshield.

  Carey discovered that she didn't care one way or the other. Something inside her, stressed too far, had shut down.

  Opening the book of poems, she began to read.

  CHAPTER 10

  16 Days

  “They Tell Me Snow”

  They tell me snow is white and soft

  And downy fluffy on the ground.

  That where it lays on earth and trees

  It mutes and humbles every sound.

  They tell me snow is bright and wet

  And scrunchy hard when packed in balls.

  That snow forts shield the worst of blows

  While children's happy laughter falls.

  They tell me snow is gray and slick

  And slipp'ry slidy on the street.

  That people slide and cars collide

  When snow and our impatience meet.

  They tell me snow is gay and free

  When giddy happy people play.

  They lie and wave their arms and legs

  Leaving angels where they lay.

  They tell me snow is all these things,

  And hopeful longing I concede

  That all these snowy things seem real,

  Yet somehow, doubting, I still need

  To hear the silence in the air,

  Feel the wet cold in my hair,

  Step so lightly, not to fall,

  And leave my angel, most of all.

  They tell me all these things of snow,

  But ‘til I see it, I won't know.

  Carey finished reading the poem into the microphone, and let a moment of silence go out over the air. “And that,” she said finally, “was a poem written by John William Otis. Ted Sanders follows the newsbreak. Stay tuned.”

  She cut away to commercial then, glad that her time was over. Pulling off her headset, she stood up and stretched hugely. Sitting at the mike didn't seem to be growing any easier with time.

  Ted walked in, giving her a big smile. “Great show tonight, Carey.”

  “Thanks.” At least it had been different. She'd started with a mention of the countdown to Otis's execution date, and then had gone on to discuss other things for the full three hours, coming back to Otis only at the very end when she read his poem. She figured she could
make her point without devoting the entire show to it.

  Besides, after seeing Otis that morning, she couldn't bring herself to talk about him. The whole mess had become even more personal than it had been before.

  She should never have gone to Raiford, she thought as she walked out into the steamy night. It hadn't clarified a thing except her conviction that Otis was innocent. It certainly hadn't given her even the tiniest lever to use to prevent his execution.

  “Carey!”

  Ted's producer was leaning out the door.

  “Carey, get back to the studio, now!”

  Turning, she ran back to the building. Ted was in the studio, talking into the microphone. He waved her to come in.

  “She's here,” he said into the microphone. “It's okay, Bob, she's here.” He pointed to another set of headphones on the conference table.

  Carey put them on and at Ted's gesture spoke into the mike in front of her. “This is Carey Justice,” she said.

  “Carey,” said a voice that was somehow familiar. “I called last week about Otis.”

  “I'm sorry, I don't remember.”

  “I'm the guy who called and said he didn't do it.”

  Now she did remember. “That's right.”

  “You didn't believe me.”

  “Well, to tell you the truth, I don't believe John Otis killed Linda and Harvey Kline.”

  “You don't?”

  “No.” She looked at Ted questioningly, wondering why he had called her back in for this. This was the kind of caller a host usually cut off right away.

  Ted spoke. “Bob said he has some information about the break-in at Tricia Summers's house, but he said he wouldn't tell anyone except you.”

  “Well, I'm listening, Bob. What about the break-in?”

  “I thought it would convince everyone that John didn't kill the Klines. But nobody's paying any attention.”

  A chill began to creep along Carey's spine. She looked at Ted, who was frowning, then at Ted's producer, who was back at her post on the other side of the window. “I'm paying attention,” she said into the mike. “I thought there were similarities.”