The Program

by Stephen White

  “You’re working? As a lawyer?”

  I laughed at the very thought of it. “No, Andrea, believe it or not I’m cooking in a restaurant. I’m like an apprentice. I want to learn. For now, I don’t really need the money.”

  “In a restaurant?”

  “Yes. I like it. Nobody’s threatened me yet.”

  “You must not have burnt the borscht.”

  “It’s not that kind of restaurant.”

  “Well tell me, what kind is it? Is it healthy?”

  “You wouldn’t like it. We serve meat.”

  3

  Andrea pushed the button that would silence her office speakerphone and turned to the man who sat on the other side of her desk.

  Andrea said, “You got all that, I hope. As I’ve been telling you, she’s just not there, yet. I told you she wouldn’t be.”

  He was resting his chin on his hands. “I could understand most of the conversation. You’re sure she’s not coming around? That thing she said about clemency?”

  Andrea shrugged. The gesture was lost on Dave Curtiss. He’d lowered his head back down, exposing the bald spot near the crown. In color and size it reminded her of a glazed jelly donut. Glazed jelly donuts reminded her of her ex-husband, Patrick, and Saturday-morning sex. The combination of the two images caused a swell of nausea to rise in her gut. She said, “She has so much on her mind.”

  “But she’s not with us on this?”

  “Not yet, no. Why should she be?”

  His voice had an edge to it that was whiny, desperate. “But she may be moving that way? You think that’s possible? If you read between the lines?”

  “I’d be guessing, Dave. Khalid Granger isn’t her highest priority right now. You heard her—she sounded surprised to hear me mention him.”

  “Well, since I got that letter, it sure as hell is my highest priority.”

  “I know that, Dave. It’s mine, too.”

  “We need to know where she stands, Andrea. Actually, we need to know she stands right next to us.” He slapped the arm of the chair. “The decision on the damn appeal is due any day. If the three of us are united on this, we have a small chance of success. If it’s only two out of three of us…”

  “What are we gonna do? It’s not as though I can go plead with her. One, I don’t know where she is. Two, things are too sensitive for that. She’s been through too much, Dave. Given all that’s happened, maybe she doesn’t care what we do about Khalid.”

  The man across the desk was only two years older than Andrea but looked twenty years her senior. He wore his anxiety like a plumed hat. You couldn’t miss it. His upper lip was dotted with sweat. His face was the color of watermelon flesh. He was cracking the knuckles on his hands sequentially from pinkie to thumb, then back again, ending with the thumb once more. After the sequence was complete, he switched hands and started over. When he took a break from the knuckle cracking, his free right hand rubbed absently at his chest just above his sternum.

  “We can’t risk that. We accuse the cops and then she goes public and contradicts us? We’d be fried. You really don’t even know where she is?”

  Andrea said, “No. I don’t. Someplace with a climate that’s unlike Florida or Louisiana. That’s all I know.”

  “Drier? Like a desert, maybe?”

  “Maybe. Or mountains. Or maybe she’s in North Dakota or Minnesota. I just can’t tell.”

  “She doesn’t even trust you to know where she is? You’re one of her best friends.”

  Andrea used a sarcastic tone as she said, “I’m trying not to take it too personally, Dave. Who knows, she may have her reasons. You know she probably shouldn’t even have called me.”

  The man stood and misbuttoned his suit jacket so that it hung on his large frame like a crooked painting on the wall. “We have to do something. That’s all there is to it. I can’t live like this. I’m losing weight and I can’t sleep. My partners are beginning to look at me funny.” He turned and started toward the door but stopped short of it. “One more thing. No more cell phones when you and I talk about this. My firm keeps records. I’m sure your office does to. So no office phones either, or home phones. You know those records can be subpoenaed. This has to be pay-phone city.”

  “Pay-phone city? Dave, don’t get any weirder on me, okay? I don’t mind using pay phones when I talk to you, but I don’t have any choice about what kind of phone to use when I talk to Kirsten. I can’t call her now, remember? It was pure luck that she called while you were here. If she wants to talk, she calls me. She might call me here at the office. She might call me at my home. I have no control over that. She won’t give out her number.”

  “Caller ID! Get caller ID.”

  “You don’t think the Witness Protection program is bright enough to block her number, Dave? We’re not dealing with fools.”

  He placed his hand on the doorknob and turned his head. “We need to know where she stands, Andrea. We can’t go public with our concerns until we know where she stands.”

  “That might be too late for Khalid, Dave.”

  He grimaced. “I don’t want to hear about it.”

  4

  Peyton had asked Dr. Gregory for an additional session. They met on Friday morning.

  “What you said about me trusting you, that it’s a process that will take time—that’s not true anymore. There’s something I’ve decided that I can’t deal with on my own, so I need to trust you. And today, I’ve decided to go ahead and trust you.”

  Alan Gregory inhaled slowly, filling his lungs gradually so that his patient wouldn’t notice. His first thought was to hope that he was prepared to hear whatever he was about to hear. His only word to her was, “Yes?”

  “There’s a man on death row in Florida.”

  As Dr. Gregory took in her words she shifted her gaze toward the windows. Something was distracting her momentarily.

  When she looked back at her doctor, she added, “The man’s name is Khalid Granger. He was convicted of killing two people in a convenience-store robbery.”

  Dr. Gregory waited. He wondered what the connection was between Peyton Francis and Khalid Granger.

  “I helped convict him,” she said. “It was a long time ago. I was twenty-seven and it was my first capital case prosecution. I was living in Florida then.”

  So, the psychologist thought, whatever the issues, whatever the connection, the stakes are high. Life and death. He was aware of trying especially hard to appear as non-judgmental and neutral as possible while at the same time appearing to have more compassion than a tree.

  Peyton said, “The problem is that I’m no longer convinced that he did it. I’m not sure Khalid killed those people that day. I’m not even certain he was even in that convenience store.”

  She expected him to say something here. Needed him to say something here. He said, “That… presents quite a dilemma for you, Peyton.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It does.” She was relieved that he seemed to grasp what was on the line for her.

  IT TOOK MOST of the session for Peyton to explain the details of Khalid’s alleged crime to her doctor and to identify the holes that the police and prosecution had plugged in order to gain a conviction.

  As soon as her presentation was done, she began arguing to reinforce her case for doubt.

  “When the police picked up Khalid for questioning, he was actually walking toward the convenience store, not away from it. Now tell me, why would somebody who was trying to get away from a crime scene be walking right back toward it? That’s always bothered me. Always. The money Khalid was carrying in his boot? Although it was close to the right amount, it could never be tied to the robbery. Not one piece of it had JoBeth Reynolds’s fingerprints on it. Not one solitary bill. JoBeth was the clerk who was there that shift. She handled every one of the bills that were in the cash register that day. Her fingerprints should’ve been on some of the money.”

  Dr. Gregory could tell from the accelerating pace of Peyton’s wo
rds that she wasn’t done with her argument.

  “Khalid Granger was, and probably still is, an evil man. The kind of man you don’t want to meet on the street, the kind of man you absolutely want in jail. Priors? You bet. He’d been arrested eleven times by the time he was twenty-seven years old. That record includes two arrests for domestic violence against girlfriends, and two arrests for violent street crimes. I think the street crimes were both stickups. He’d stolen cars as a kid. Been picked up for possession and possession-for-sale. If my memory is right, at the time of the convenience-store murders he’d been out of the state prison system for all of eight months and two weeks.

  “Something else that is still troubling to me after all these years is that all four of Khalid’s prior violent crimes were committed with a knife. Khalid Granger was a cutter. And believe me, he was a proud cutter. He was known on the street for his knife skills. His knife was on his person when he was picked up. But he didn’t have a gun with him. And nobody we talked to had ever seen him with a gun. In fact, the gun used in the crime has never been recovered.”

  Dr. Gregory said, “I assume this man, Khalid Granger, was tested for gunshot residue after he was arrested.” He knew all about GSRs from his wife, who was a prosecutor.

  Peyton raised an eyebrow. “Good for you. How did you know to ask that?” She didn’t expect him to answer but paused just in case he planned on revealing something about himself. Finally she said, “Yes, he was given a GSR. He tested positive.”

  “So he’d recently fired a gun?”

  “The test results that we received from the police show that he tested positive for trace metals on his GSR.” She glanced back outside. “But, today? Right now? I actually don’t think he’d fired a gun at all.”

  “I’m not sure I understand. Are you suggesting an error in the analysis? Or are you suggesting that the results were faked?”

  “I’ve never said this out loud before. But over the years I’ve begun to think that it’s possible that Khalid was set up.”

  Dr. Gregory tried to gauge how convinced Peyton was by her own accusation. He said, “The man who was in the convenience store, whoever he was, was quite a marksman, wasn’t he? The kind of shooting skill you described earlier? Hitting a surveillance camera with a single shot? That takes some significant practice.”

  “Or—maybe—he was one lucky amateur. That was the police argument. Mickey Redondo, the lead detective, figured that the killer had a one in a hundred chance of hitting the surveillance camera with a single shot from that handgun. And he concluded that the day of the robbery was the shooter’s lucky day. The police theory was that Khalid decided to use the gun, and not his knife, for the robbery and had a hell of a first day on the job.”

  “And the shots at the elderly couple?”

  “The police made the same argument for the second shot, the one that hit the gentleman in the neck. It was either a lucky shot from a tough angle or a bad miss on an attempted body shot. Who knows? The killer missed with the next shot. The man was falling already, and I think that’s why he missed. Regardless, the slug hit the gas pump outside. Shots four and five? He stood above the woman to shoot her when she was on the floor. No skill involved there.”

  Dr. Gregory asked, “Have you decided what to do with your doubts?”

  “I can’t put Landon at any more risk. I know that. And I can’t let Khalid be executed for a crime he didn’t commit. I know that.”

  “It seems to me that by going public to save Khalid you will put yourself at risk. Putting yourself at risk puts your daughter at risk.”

  Her eyes flashed. “Don’t you think I know that? That’s my dilemma.”

  Alan Gregory waited before he spoke. He wanted his patient to digest some of the intensity she was feeling. “When you first came in today, you said that you needed to trust me. Trust me with what, Peyton?”

  She reached down and grabbed a lollipop, unwrapped it, but didn’t put it in her mouth. It was a DumDum. “I’ve always had backup in my life. Always. My parents were wonderful people who stood behind me through my successes and my mistakes. And Robert was a dream, a better man than I ever expected to find. Maybe a better man than I deserved. He completed me in so, so many ways. Even during Khalid’s trial I wasn’t lead prosecutor. I was second chair.” She allowed her words to hang. “I’m not denying responsibility for whatever role I played in Khalid’s conviction. There was a time that I was proud of it. I’m just trying to teach you something essential about me. About who I am. I’m someone who hasn’t performed without a net very often in my life.” She placed the DumDum on the left side of her mouth and asked, “Would you like one? A lollipop?”

  Dr. Gregory shook his head, said, “No, thank you,” and considered following Peyton down the lollipop road. He quickly decided that he would have ample opportunity to explore that lane in the future.

  He said, “What about your campaign against Witness Protection? You were pretty far out there on that one.”

  She shook her head. “The DA in New Orleans was behind me every step of the way. I think he had his own ax to grind with the marshals. I wouldn’t have done any of it without his support. The moment he told me to drop it, I would have dropped it.”

  “And now, what? You would like me to be your backup? Your net?” He wasn’t quite sure what the words meant to her.

  “I need you to believe in me.”

  He knew he didn’t comprehend her meaning. He said, “I’m sorry, but I don’t think I understand.”

  “If I begin raising questions about Khalid’s conviction, there may be serious casualties. Serious casualties. One of the casualties may be my best friend from Florida, a woman named Andrea Archer. And her boss, the trial deputy, a guy named Dave Curtiss. Andrea was the lead prosecutor, the one who handled the case. I don’t recall her ever having any trouble with the evidence. She and Dave may have been complicit for all I know. Assuming that I’m right, that my doubts have merit, the other casualties would be whatever police officers were involved in concocting the case and fabricating the evidence.”

  Dr. Gregory paused, waiting for her attention to settle. When she was looking at him once again, he said, “And one of the casualties may be you.”

  Peyton nodded. “I don’t know what to do. I can’t put Landon in any more risk. I just can’t.”

  “Why now, Peyton? Why not five years ago? Why have you decided to talk about this today?”

  “Because the whales are surfacing. Because the courts are about to rule on his final appeal. Because … taking someone’s life is more complicated for me now than it was back then. That’s why.” She grimaced and raised her fingertips to her eyes. “I’m worried that I may be guilty of something here, something serious. I’m afraid that I may be guilty of believing that because we arrested and convicted a bad man—a man who probably deserved to be in prison for some crime—that what we did was right. And whatever I might have believed deep down about the holes in the case, I never really allowed myself to believe that Khalid shouldn’t be in prison. I was sure he belonged there. I was sure. I probably still am sure.

  “But if he didn’t rob that convenience store and he didn’t kill those two old people from Pennsylvania, then he doesn’t deserve to die.” Peyton thought of Robert and then of Landon, and she wondered if Khalid Granger had a family. She tried to recall the facts, but she couldn’t remember any details about Khalid’s background. She found it hard to imagine him with 2.2 children and a golden retriever. The white picket fence wouldn’t even come into focus.

  “You know,” she said, “after the trial was over, Mickey Redondo—the detective I told you about?—he came up to me in the courthouse and he said, ‘That’s one more evil man off the streets. Good day of work, Counselor.’ Looking back now, I know that Mickey didn’t really care whether or not it was the right evil man who was off the streets. And I suppose I didn’t care enough, either.”

  “And your friend, Andrea? Did she care enough?”

 
; Peyton looked down at her hands. “I don’t know what she knew back then. As we prosecuted the case we weren’t questioning what we had; we were always busy trying to prop the case up. We weren’t looking for holes. Would she have conspired with the police to frame Khalid? I really doubt it. Would she have looked the other way if she thought justice was being done anyway? Maybe. Andrea was always more ambitious than me. Her work was bare knuckles. She never considered criminal justice to be a game for the weak of heart.”

  Dr. Gregory watched Peyton remove the lollipop stick from her mouth, swallow, and then return it to the middle of her tongue. Her cheeks collapsed into craters as she sucked hard on the candy.

  He said, “It’s not enough, is it? If I’m hearing you correctly, all you have right now are your suspicions that the police may have acted inappropriately. My understanding of the process is that it’s quite difficult to get death sentences overturned this late in the game. Don’t you need proof?”

  She rolled the lollipop from her tongue to the snug confines of her left cheek. She seemed lost in thought but managed to say, “Yes. To overturn a sentence you need proof.”

  “Is there proof?”

  She acted as though she hadn’t heard him. He repeated his question.

  “What? Proof? I don’t know about any proof. I don’t think I can prove any of it. To anyone.”

  He cocked his head and narrowed his eyes. “Where did you go just then, Peyton?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “Robert. I was thinking about Robert.”

  Dr. Gregory didn’t know what to ask next, so he asked nothing.

  “When I used to get discouraged—okay, bitchy—about work … or people … or life, Robert would listen to me ever-so-patiently, and at some point in the conversation he’d say something like, ‘Life is what it is, babe. Hey, mostly the three of us are blessed. Come tomorrow or the next day, this passes and the good life goes on.’”