The photographer said, “And our editor, he’s beside himself. The first face of a dead body on the cover. ‘Let the reactions begin,’ he said.”
Looked like she’d be on a People cover after all—one week after the cardinal.
I said, “Sounds as though Rona Leigh has given up.”
They both looked at me. They couldn’t have cared less about Rona Leigh.
I asked the photographer, “Is the warden limiting you?”
“Yeah. One shot.”
“How many are you planning to take?”
He said, “I got a special camera Fed-Exed to me yesterday. It’s the Uzi of the camera world. I’ll be taking pictures nonstop. One shot every second and a half. Special film. I can take eight hundred shots. Camera’s got a silencer on it, too.”
“You’re serious, aren’t you?”
He grinned. “I took a half-dozen pictures of you as you were coming in the door.”
At the restaurant we all ordered the special, chicken-fried steak with okra, which we moved around our plates into varied patterns. I said to them, “You guys have never witnessed an execution before, have you?”
They hadn’t.
“Well, that’s why you have no appetite. I have witnessed a few, and that’s why I have no appetite.”
While we didn’t eat they told me Rona Leigh would be going to bed as usual at 8 P.M. She would be awakened at eleven. They’d already taken pictures of her having her last meal at five. The meal she requested was probably not too different from the last meal she’d had before she was arrested. She wanted a Big Mac, fries, and a chocolate shake, more evidence that she had resolved herself to die. Takeout from McDonald’s was not in keeping with what an angel would eat. Rona Leigh had accepted her fate; just like the governor, she knew God would not save her.
At eleven-thirty the moon was at three-quarters, with the kind of silver light you only find above the great plains of America. Once the media equipment came on, though, it was outshone.
* * *
I stood in the doorway to the witness room with the warden. Through the window, the death chamber was exactly as it had been when I’d first seen it, except that a full IV bag hung from the metal stand with one piece of rubber tubing hanging down loose, another strung through the hole chipped out of the cinder block.
The families of the victims get the first row if they choose. Gary Scott was front and center. The empty seat next to him, between him and Melody’s brother, was for the governor. The warden told me the brother had protested the arrangement but finally saw reason; the widower was entitled to first choice. Melody’s brother had his head bent, his eyes closed, ignoring the attempts at conversation coming from Gary.
The governor was the only one who hadn’t arrived at the prescribed time, and like me—at the warden’s discretion—he wouldn’t be patted down.
There were two seats to the left of Gary and two to the right of the brother. On Gary’s side, Rona Leigh’s prosecutor and her arresting officer sat slumped, trying to act bored. On the brother’s side, two witnesses, Rona Leigh’s last-minute choices—women from the Christian Coalition who had been writing to her for ten years. Their lips moved in prayer, their eyes shut like the brother’s.
Behind them sat Vernon, his hands on their shoulders.
The warden told me Rona Leigh’s mother and sisters did not come. She had written a letter to her mother asking “one last time” who her father was. There was no response. The warden said, “As if the woman had any idea who the father was.” When Rona Leigh knew that no members of her family would be with her save her husband, she decided she wanted the reporter and photographer from People to sit in the family row and not with the three prison-assigned newsmen in the back. The warden did not deny her wish, so the photographer sat next to Frank at the end of the front row. He’d have a good angle, Rona Leigh full face to his right, her feet directly in front of him. The other newsmen did not protest. One said to me, before he went in, “I’m tired of it. If I never hear another mother keening over her fresh-killed son, I’ll be a happy man.”
Rona Leigh also asked the warden if I could be there, and he told her he’d invited me himself. She could choose another. But there was no one else.
I would be behind Frank, in the row of cops and investigators who had been involved in Rona Leigh’s case—bringing her into custody, collecting evidence, defeating her appeals. There were seven of them.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has a press secretary at all executions. His job is to go out to the media afterward and report the time of death and the prisoner’s last words. He hands out a press packet covering the events of the prisoner’s last day. He doesn’t take questions. He used to, but the questions were deemed too morbid. I’d spoken to him earlier, asked him how many executions he’d witnessed. He said, “All of them.”
Now he was talking to a guard in the corridor. His eyes kept darting back and forth, from his watch, to the door, to the witness room. “We used to just stand around like we were at a cocktail party, crowd up to the glass when it was time. But then there was this one prisoner, a young man, IQ in the sixties, fifties, maybe. He was tranquilized, but even so he didn’t know what was going on. He started to cry when they tied his arms down because he liked waving at us through the glass. His family was waving back. So the chaplain whispered something in his ear and the boy said yes, he was going to ask Jesus if he could be the one to water the flowers that grew in the gardens of heaven. Then he started to sing a song, had to hum most of it, couldn’t remember all the words. The song from his favorite TV show, that kids’ show, Mr. Rogers. His mother fainted. His sisters went down too; they didn’t faint, their knees just buckled.”
Then he excused himself. Told me he needed to hit the bathroom while he still had a few minutes. He walked as though his own knees might buckle.
Gary was trying to engage the men on his left in conversation. They ignored him just as Melody’s brother had.
The warden approached me and told me to have a seat, the governor had arrived. Before he escorted Rona Leigh to the death chamber, he would escort the governor to his chair. As I walked in front of him, Gary gave me a big smile and raised his fist, pumped the air a couple of times.
A police escort entered the witness room, four Rangers including Max Scraggs. In uniform. He touched his finger to his hat when he caught my eye. They lined up against the wall.
We all stood when the governor entered the room. The warden took him over to Gary to make introductions. Gary shook his hand and said, “You can always count on my vote, chief.” The governor stared at Gary’s hair first, then his face. He hadn’t paid much attention to the widower when he’d appeared on the local talk shows, I could tell. He expressed his condolences. Gary said, “Hey, what can I say? Me and Melody had us some damn good times.”
The warden introduced him to Melody’s brother. Up until that moment, the man had been slumped into his chair. Now he straightened and held the governor’s shocked gaze. He said, in a strong and clear voice, “It is not too late to spare this woman’s life, sir.” Rona Leigh had an advocate with a direct line to the governor after all, and she never knew it.
The governor looked away from the brother, and at that moment he knew he’d made a mistake. But there was nothing to be done except to sit there in the gray metal folding chair between the two men, two men who could not look or sound more opposite.
Gary took over, leaned into him, and whispered in his ear. The governor pulled as far away from him as he could. The cops all watched, wishing they could go and get the big boss and yank him out of the room away from Gary Scott, just the way his aides had done when I’d crossed him.
The warden walked out of the witness room, leaving the door to the corridor open. A guard stood there, stiff as a board. It became still in the room except for the governor whispering to Gary. Whatever he said, Gary finally shushed.
The scene took on the feel of a wake except there was no body, just a
window looking onto a peculiar bed rather than a coffin. We were all about to see someone enter and then watch that person be killed. Only then would we view a body.
The witnesses began to cough and shuffle, particularly those who had never experienced what was about to happen. The governor pinched the bridge of his nose, perhaps a way to keep his eyes covered.
The People photographer’s hands were trembling. Frank patted his arm, whispering to him. Blurred photos would not do.
Then I noticed the new clock on the wall over the cot, a large clock with shiny black numbers and hands. It hadn’t been there before. I looked at my watch anyway. In fact, everyone was glancing at their watches as if wishing the big clock was fast, its time somehow off. It was exactly correct.
At five minutes to twelve, two guards entered the death chamber and positioned themselves on either side of the cot. One of them was Harley Shank. His eyes were red, his face flushed. Then another guard escorted the nurse and a medical technician into the room. The nurse was short and chubby. She wore a high-waisted princess-style uniform, the skirt six inches above her knees. And a cap. She was young but she was old-school. She and the technician stood on the other side of the cot from the window and waited at attention. Their guard stood with them.
Outside the bungalow singing began, just a soft barely audible melody. The words of “Amazing Grace” became clear enough to make out, but they were quickly drowned out by a chant, increasingly louder, more raucous with each second that ticked on the big clock.
Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her. Kill her.
That was what Rona Leigh would hear as she lay dying. I wondered whether Melody Scott had heard the same.
The warden entered the death chamber. As soon as he’d planted himself by the side of the cot, we could hear the heavy footfalls coming from down the hall and the clank of Rona Leigh’s chains. And then the words were called out: Dead woman walkin’.
With that, the People photographer gained total control of himself. I could see the tiny movement of his wrist.
Two more guards followed the warden in, and then the doctor, stethoscope swinging around his neck. A doctor whose job was not to save a patient’s life but to watch carefully as a woman expired so he could declare her officially dead.
Then Rona Leigh stood in the doorway, wrists and ankles shackled, chin up, smiling. She saw the cot, its arms stretched toward her, and her smile disappeared. The cardinal was directly behind, and he was a spectacle: in full regalia, purple vestments, the color representing death. His hand was on her right shoulder. He must have squeezed her because she looked down at his hand and then moved forward, as did he, and we could hear again the clank of the chains and the swish of heavy silk.
It is difficult to walk with any sort of dignity with ten pounds of locks hanging from you and just a short length of chain connecting ankles to wrists, but Rona Leigh managed it. She didn’t shuffle. With each step, she got her foot up off the floor.
She stopped at the edge of the cot, next to the warden, and looked through the window. She took us all in, and a wisp of a smile came to her lips. She said, “May Jesus rain His many blessings down upon you.”
Gary shouted out, “God damn you to hell!”
The governor jerked.
A guard immediately stalked over to Gary and warned him to keep quiet or he would be ejected.
I looked back to Rona Leigh. She was staring at Gary. The chains clinked. Vernon began to sob loudly.
Her gaze went to him. She said, “I love you, Vernon.”
Vernon choked out, “I love you too.”
The warden came up to the glass and reminded us that we were to remain silent.
Rona Leigh’s gaze shifted. Her eyes met the governor’s. She said, “I appreciate your honoring me with your presence, sir.”
From my angle, I could see his lips press together. He hadn’t intended for honor to be part of his decision.
And through it all, the photographer’s camera shifted left, right, up, down, catching it all.
Captain Shank took a large black ring of keys from his belt. He bent to unlock her ankle chains. He drew the chain out through her wrist cuffs, but they remained shackled together.
The technician smiled at Rona Leigh. He said, “Just hop on up here for me,” and he patted the table as if she were there for a physical.
She turned, faced the cot, and stepped up onto a metal stool. He took her two hands in his and steadied her as she inched herself onto the cot. Then he placed his palm between her shoulder blades and said, “Just lie back now.”
She complied and he gently lowered her down, adjusted a little pillow behind her neck. The cardinal got right behind the head of the cot and put his hand on her forehead as if she were a child and he needed to see if she were running a fever. The two women from the Christian Coalition began to weep.
Shank jangled the keys as he freed her wrists. The other guards grabbed hold of her arms and legs and strapped them to the paddles. Then the belt across her shoulders: the warden made a gesture, and the shoulder strap was tightened. Rona Leigh called out, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”
My stomach turned over. I had wondered at what point it would do that.
The cardinal put his other hand along the side of her face. The warden touched him, gave him a stern look. The cardinal stepped back.
Outside, ever louder, the words were coming out faster: Kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her. I looked down at my watch. Three minutes had passed since she’d entered the death chamber.
The technician tied a length of rubber tubing around Rona Leigh’s upper arm. The nurse, who had stood as unmoving as a statue, hung the needle on a hook, bent over Rona Leigh’s arm, and with her fingertips pressed a spot just above her inner wrist until she’d patted up a vein. Then she took a small bottle and cotton balls from her pocket and swabbed the spot she’d chosen. This step was normally dispensed with. There was no point to preventing infection. But this nurse was going by her training, though I didn’t think a course of study leading to an RN degree included execution procedure.
The nurse took up the needle and stuck Rona Leigh. Rona Leigh flinched. She was not sedated. The technician freed the rubber.
The intimacy of one human being killing another is not easily described. I could see tears coursing down the cheeks of the People man who would have to do the describing. Poor Frank.
The nurse attached the tubing hanging from the IV to the needle and then checked to see that the glucose solution in the bag was flowing down through the tubing and into Rona Leigh’s vein. It was as if Rona Leigh were suffering from dehydration. The nurse and the technician went into their closet, and as soon as the door closed behind them, the warden said, “Rona Leigh Glueck, do you have any last words?”
Rona Leigh turned her head toward him and said, “Yes, sir, I do.”
He waited but got no further response. His voice trembled. “Please say the words.”
She said, “Lord forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
I could hear Gary mumble something. I didn’t know what it was, but the governor did. His shoulders seemed to pull inward. Too bad. Try as he might, he could not shrink away.
The warden stepped back and touched his cheek as if he had a little itch. That was the signal to the guard to go to the door of the closet and tap it three times. The cardinal went down on one knee. The clock on the wall read six minutes after twelve, as did my watch. Time had refused to stand still.
I watched for the first sign. It came in seconds.
Rona Leigh’s fingers lost their flex as her lids dropped closed. Her lips parted. With the sodium Pentothal injected, she had been rendered unconscious.
Much louder now, a few bullhorns added to the decibels: Kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her.
And Gary took up the chant too. He sang out, “Kill her, kill her, kill her.”
A guard rushed over, leaned over, and hissed in his ear. Gary sa
id, “I have my rights!” The guard took hold of his shoulder, a judo restraint. Gary shriveled up a little, an involuntary reaction to the pain. The guard let go and went back to his post, leaving Gary wincing.
Rona Leigh’s entire body twitched. Her chest rose up, higher and higher, then fell. The second chemical was coursing through her bloodstream. The pancuronium bromide forced her lungs into collapse as it paralyzed her diaphragm. Her chest rose again, the human will fighting asphyxiation. Her chest fell again, rose one more time, and then fell.
She was no longer breathing.
The doctor looked at his watch. I looked at mine. There would be no sign when the potassium chloride stopped the beating of Rona Leigh’s heart.
The witnesses were paralyzed themselves during the two-minute wait.
Then the doctor walked to Rona Leigh’s side, placed his stethoscope upon her chest, over her heart, and listened. He moved the instrument slightly to her aorta. He stood straight. The stethoscope swung against his lapel. He felt her neck with his fingers. I’d never seen that before.
He looked at the clock on the wall. He nodded to the warden and recited, “I pronounce Rona Leigh Glueck dead at twelve-o-eight,” and then he said the date.
The warden ordered the drapes be closed. The nurse came out of her hiding place. She looked to the warden. He nodded at her, and she began to remove the IV. A guard went to the side of the window and pulled the drapery cord. Nothing happened. The warden signaled to Harley Shank to help the guard with the drapes. But Captain Shank didn’t move. His eyes were still on Rona Leigh. So the technician made a move toward the drapes.
That was when Gary leaped up out of his chair and shouted, “Take a whack at her for me, Melody. Take a couple!”
The governor stood, his eyes darting to the troopers. He was thinking one thing: Get me out!
Then Harley Shank clasped his hands tightly together. His knuckles turned white. Trying to control himself, I thought. His eyes narrowed. I followed his gaze to Rona Leigh. I saw the tiny tremor in her chin, her vulnerable little chin. Her lips parted very slightly and closed, and parted again, and closed the same way the mouth of a beached fish will.
Love Her Madly Page 13
