by Bill Myers
Katherine nodded.
Mr. Paris continued staring at the printout. “I don’t think it’s intellectual. He’s proven he can think. I’m afraid much of it has to do with lack of incentive and self-esteem — along, of course, with his lack of social interaction.”
“Social interaction?”
“Does Eric have any brothers or sisters?”
Katherine shook her head. “It’s just the two of us.”
“What about neighborhood kids to play with? He keeps entirely to himself here at school.”
Again Katherine shook her head. “He stays with me at the store ’til I close. When we finally get home and eat, it’s time for bed.”
Mr. Paris frowned. Was it her imagination, or did this man seem legitimately concerned about her son? Whatever the case, this was a much different individual from the one she had seen in action last September. Again she caught herself beginning not to dislike him.
“What about Little League — any kind of sports?”
Katherine almost laughed. “I’m afraid not. Coordination is not one of my kid’s specialties. Besides, like I said, we don’t have the time.” She sensed what she thought to be an expression of disapproval. “Look, I know it’s not fair to Eric, but —”
“No, I understand. Believe me. My own mother was a single parent. She was our sole breadwinner. I know how difficult it can be.”
Their eyes seemed to connect just a fraction longer than necessary. There was no mistaking it, the man was sincere. Either that or it was the wine. Maybe both.
He glanced away and frowned again, this time tapping at the paper in his hands. “Listen, I coach a soccer team on weekends. Do you think he’d be interested in trying out?”
“He doesn’t know the first thing about the game.”
“I could give him a few pointers. Besides, as coach,” he almost smiled, “I bet I could pull a few strings to get him on the team.”
Katherine fought back a rising suspicion. “You’d do that for him?”
“Only if you think it’s appropriate.”
Again their eyes locked, again perhaps just a little too long.
“Appropriate,” she repeated. “Well, I suppose — sure. I mean, let me talk to him first. But if it’s okay with him, I guess it would be okay with me.”
Mr. Paris finally broke into a smile. It wasn’t a bad smile. Not bad at all. “Good,” he said. “Good.” With that he scooped up the test scores, apparently bringing the conference to a close. “I think we’re done for now. Unless you have any further questions.”
Katherine shook her head.
“Well, if you do,” he said, rising to his feet, “don’t hesitate to give me a call. He’s a bright, sensitive boy, and I’ll do whatever I can to help.”
Katherine took the cue and rose from her chair.
They crossed toward the door. “Oh, here,” he said, handing her the test scores. “You may want to look these over when you get a chance.”
“I wouldn’t know where to start,” she said as he opened the door for her and they stepped into the hall. At this proximity, she was certain he could smell the wine on her breath, and for some reason that made her feel a little embarrassed.
“It’s really not that difficult,” he said. “If you’d like, I’d be happy to explain them to you sometime?”
She gave him a look.
He grimaced. “I’m sorry.” Already she could see the color rising to his face. “That wasn’t supposed to be a come-on.”
She held his look, knowing better.
“Well, okay.” He shrugged. “Maybe it was, but just a little. The point is — I know we got off to a pretty rocky start last fall, but — I really do find you attractive and, well…” He cleared his throat. “What I’m trying to say is, you have every reason not to trust me, but, if you wouldn’t mind, maybe we could, you know, have dinner sometime?”
Katherine tried not to smile. It wasn’t over his request, but over the delivery. Like a tongue-tied teenager on his first date, he was blushing and fumbling for words. She liked the vulnerability, of course, but it was also nice to know she could still have that type of effect on somebody. In fact, it was so nice that, before she knew it, she heard herself saying, “Sure, why not?” For a second she was as surprised as he was.
“Well, thanks,” he said, looking a little startled. “I’ll, uh, I’ll give you a call, then.”
She nodded. Then, without a word, she turned and headed down the hall. She could feel his eyes on her, but she was too busy berating herself to care. What did she think she was doing? The man was a pig. He’d proven that the last time.
Still, people can change, can’t they? Doesn’t everybody deserve a second chance? He’s got a steady job, he’s looked up to in the community, and he made it clear that he knows he behaved like an idiot. He says he’s interested. Who knows, maybe it’s time to get back into the field again. Maybe not all men are dogs. Maybe Gary wasn’t the only exception to that rule. She had her doubts. But what would it hurt to step out again, just to see?
It had been seventy-two hours since Harold Steiner had watched the sun set over his daughter’s grave. His wife had never shown. He had driven home that evening confused, outraged, and more determined than ever.
Seventy-two hours had passed, and still he couldn’t sleep. Oh, there was the occasional hour or so of dozing, filled in by the nonstop drone of CNN, books he couldn’t concentrate on, calls to his law office about having the flu, and visits to the Golden Arches at irregular hours. But he had no rest. How could he when the law was being ignored, when justice was slowly being forgotten, first by the state, and now by his very wife?
It was 1:30 Monday morning when he stepped into the shower. He cranked up the temperature and let the water pound against the back of his neck. The headache had not gone away this time.
Did they think, did they honestly think that seven years of maneuvering, appealing, squirming for a way out — in their wildest imaginings did they think that Michael Coleman’s crimes would be forgotten? By some, maybe. By those who watched news as entertainment. Those who, after the third or fourth appeal, felt they were watching a rerun and switched over to more current amusement. But for Harold Steiner, this was no amusement. He would not forget. Everyone else could — even his wife, or what was left of her. But he would not. He could not. The law was the law. Michael Coleman had broken it, he had been sentenced, and now he must pay. No amount of stalling or exploiting the legal system would cancel that debt. Justice would be served. Steiner owed it to society; he owed it to Missy.
When the shower ran out of hot water, he toweled himself off and slipped into a pair of boxers. A thought had come to mind, and he padded down the hall to the bedroom. The room was neat as a pin. It always was.
He crossed to his desk, snapped on the computer, and logged on to the Internet. With a few clicks of the mouse, he brought up the photograph of Coleman he had previously scanned from a mug shot. It was perfect. Unrepentant, unfeeling, an animal at the peak of savagery. To make sure that the viewer felt no sympathy, Steiner had erased the convict’s serial number at the bottom. Today, in its place, he typed two words. Bold, centered, and in caps:
NEVER FORGET
A few more clicks of the mouse brought up his e-mail address book — people he’d communicated with over the years. Carefully, one by one, he went down the list, highlighting those who had been involved with the Coleman case: family members, friends, cops, attorneys, judges, relatives of past victims, members of the media, politicians, and the list went on. One hundred fifteen in all.
Once he’d selected them, he brought up the photo of Coleman, dragged the mouse down to the “SEND” box, and clicked it. He sat back and closed his eyes. In a matter of hours, all one hundred fifteen parties would receive a special marker on their computer indicating they had received an e-mail message. They would punch it up and watch as their entire screen filled with the photograph of Michael Coleman and Steiner’s admonition: “Never Fo
rget.”
Steiner snapped off his computer. Sending that message had helped to ease a little of the pain, but not enough.
CHAPTER 3
DEATH ROW AT NEBRASKA State Penitentiary in Lincoln is one of the finest in the country. No sweltering, rat-infested cells. No shotgun-toting guards busting heads, no insane droolers clinging to the bars and screaming hysterically through the night. In fact, as far as accommodations go, this death row gets four stars. Built in 1981, the cells are air-conditioned and single occupancy, with steel doors to assure a certain amount of privacy and aesthetic value — though no one can figure out why the outside of those doors are painted a ghastly lime green. Each eight-by-twelve-foot, beige, cinder-block cubicle contains a tile floor, bed, toilet without seat (toilet seats can be used as weapons), wash basin, and long (52” by 24”) bullet-proof window with two one-and-a-half-inch-thick horizontal bars running through it to prevent any unscheduled leaves of absence.
A centrally located dayroom, a cafeteria, access to showers three times a week, two fifteen-minute phone calls a week — not to mention opportunities to visit the law library, to purchase personal goods from the canteen, and to spend up to forty-five minutes a day in the exercise yard — add to the home-away-from-home ambiance for the convicted killer. The only way Coleman could have made out better was if he had been captured and convicted next door in Iowa. There is no death penalty in Iowa.
There are seven two-story housing units at the penitentiary. Each is shaped like an X, with four wings. Death row takes up the top wing in the unit furthest to the northeast. The ten men (actually nine — Sweeney, thanks to Coleman, was still visiting Lincoln General Hospital) have an entire floor to themselves. They are cut off from the general prison population, forming their own community — eating, socializing, reveling in one another’s accomplishments, and walking the exercise yard — all as an elite, fraternal order sentenced to the same fate.
The guards are few. Most of the interaction with inmates is handled by trained case managers and caseworkers with degrees in psychology, sociology, or criminal justice. The bywords for all staff involved with death row inmates are discretion and compassion.
In short, there is no torture on Lincoln’s death row, except perhaps the torture of time … and the mind.
For the next five days, Coleman sat in his cell and thought about what he was rejecting. He’d never considered himself a lucky man. In fact, he figured his luck ran out the day he came home from the hospital with his mother, when she was beaten by his father for insinuating that their newborn son, the man’s own flesh and blood, may not actually be his own flesh and blood.
As time passed, the beatings transferred from Coleman’s mother to Coleman himself. He really didn’t mind; he figured they helped make him strong. If he could survive his father’s explosive outbursts and relentless poundings, while learning to read the man’s erratic mood swings and compensate for them, he figured he could survive anything. And for thirty-five years, he had been right.
But this…
Five days he sat in his cell, holding to his bluff. He received no phone calls from Murkoski or O’Brien, no more requests for meetings. If they could meet his terms, fine. If not, with less than six weeks to live, his remaining hours were far too valuable to waste on crackpot scientists, no matter how much clout they claimed to wield. Of course, they had insisted that he keep their proposal a secret; they had even threatened to call the whole thing off if he went public. No problem there. Who would believe it? He certainly didn’t. At least most of the time.
But there were those other times, the ones that stole up on him when he was the most vulnerable, when he thought that maybe, just maybe, it might be true, that maybe science could pull off something like this, that maybe he could have a second chance.
Like most men on the Row, Coleman seldom thought of the chair. Oh, it was always there — but for the other guy. The chump. Coleman had gotten himself out of too many jams too many times to be worried. And what was Ol’ Sparky but just a little bigger jam, requiring just a little more ingenuity. True, every con talked about how they’d go — some bragging that they’d go down fighting to the end, others vowing to take the chair like a man, still others planning to make a long filibuster speech for the media about the injustice of the justice system. But deep inside, no one ever thought they’d die. The same was true with Coleman. He was a hero in his own movie, and heroes never die.
But this…
What kind of mind game were they playing? It was an impossible hope, it was crazy — so crazy that he couldn’t quite shake it. To appeal was one thing; that was a game everybody played. But this teasing of the imagination, this absurd flaunting of impossible hopes that were just crazy enough to be possible — this was inhumane.
The news came with the dawn of the sixth day. O’Brien and Murkoski would meet his demands. It would entail unprecedented maneuvers with the Witness Protection Program, not to mention some clandestine cooperation with the highest state officials and a tiny handful of prison personnel. But, if he survived the treatments, and if there was the expected shift in his personality, then Coleman had their word that somehow they would remove him from the Row and relocate him in society, a free man.
His head pounded. His suspicions rose. He had offered them impossible terms, and they had accepted. What made them so anxious? What was their angle? They were the ones holding all the cards; why did they fold? Maybe they already knew the experiment would fail, that it would kill him, make him crazy. Still, dying this way might be better than electrocution. And if he went crazy — wasn’t being a little crazy for forty more years better than being dead in a few weeks?
Coleman wrestled with these thoughts all morning, then did what he always did when faced with fear and indecision. He acted on instinct. He met these fears like he met every other fear. Head-on and from the gut. If they wanted this deal badly enough to meet his terms, then he would make the deal. He would play the odds, take his chances.
For the second time in a week they shuffled him out of death row, his hands and feet fettered with nylon bracelets called flex cuffs. Except for their length and strength, the cuffs were almost identical to the ties used to seal household garbage bags. The symbolism was never lost on Coleman.
The late afternoon air was crisp and clear. The sapphire sky already revealed traces of pink on the horizon, giving promise of a spectacular sunset. But Coleman barely noticed. He seldom did. Beauty was a luxury he had no time for, not even as a child. Beauty was for poets and women, not for a man fighting to survive. In his world, such weakness could spell death. As the hack escorted him across the yard to the administration building, the only thing Coleman noticed was the conflicting thoughts warring inside his head.
When Coleman reentered the upstairs hospital room, he was surprised to see Murkoski alone.
“Dr. O’Brien had to get back,” the kid explained. “This is a straightforward procedure; his presence wasn’t necessary.”
Coleman didn’t mind. He didn’t like Murkoski, but he knew how to play him. In some ways, he sensed that they were cut from the same cloth. The only difference was that Murkoski loved to talk, to pontificate. Coleman preferred to listen and learn. Knowledge was power. And power was something Coleman could always use.
“Will you sit on this table, please?” Coleman crossed to the metal examining table they had wheeled in. Murkoski nodded to the guard, who removed the flex cuffs and stepped outside. “Take off your sweatshirt.”
Coleman obliged, pulling off the hooded sweatshirt they’d loaned him for the walk outside.
“Listen,” Murkoski said, “we’re going to be spending a lot of time together, and I want you to know right off the bat that, despite my education and position in life, I do not consider myself your superior.”
Coleman thought of dropping the punk right there. Instead, he pushed back the impulse and remained silent.
Murkoski opened the Igloo ice chest on the floor near the drug cupboard;
a circular biohazard decal was plastered to it. “Also, I do not hold you in contempt for your past.”
“Neither do I.”
Murkoski looked up. “Seriously?” he asked. “You never feel guilty?”
“Why should I?”
Murkoski looked at him a moment, then nodded and knelt beside the ice chest. “In any case, the only difference I see between you and me is the cards we were dealt.”
Coleman sighed and rattled off the rest of the bromide. “And since I’m just the unwitting product of my environment —”
“No, actually, just the opposite.” Murkoski lifted a small plastic container from the chest. It was gray, the size of a small cigar case. It had no markings. “We are products of chemistry, Mr. Coleman. No more, no less. Chemistry determines who we are. Everything we say, think, or do is a chemical reaction — electricity firing across neurons, which in turn release chemicals to fire more neurons, racing down our nerves at four hundred feet per second until they reach our brain, which kicks in its own chemical agents. Simply put, you and I are nothing but chemical laboratories.”
Coleman frowned. He didn’t like being controlled by anything, much less something he didn’t understand. “You’re saying I’m who I am by how a bunch of chemicals got thrown together?”
Murkoski had opened the plastic case to produce a small vial wrapped in foam. “No, I’m saying you’re a product of your mother’s and father’s chemical factories.”
Coleman liked this idea even less. “So why isn’t my brother like me?”
“Please, Mr. Coleman. That’s like asking why every child of blue-eyed parents doesn’t have blue eyes.”
Coleman hated the condescending tone. As the kid flashed a syringe from the case, he thought how little effort it would take to change that tone forever. But, of course, there was the guard outside, and the experiment…
