Death Sentence td-80

by Warren Murphy

  "Yes, Warden Reeves, please. This is Warden McSorley down in Florida State.... Yes, I'll wait.... Hello? Sorry to bother you this early, Warden Reeves. I'd like some information about a prisoner you had up there at one time. A Remo Williams.. . . Certainly, call back anytime today."

  Warden McSorley hung up. Harold Haines stood up.

  "Don't you want to wait for the callback?" McSorley asked.

  "I think I want to have a few words with Williams. This is driving me crazy."

  "That's not wise. You'll be disturbing a condemned prisoner unnecessarily."

  "If I ever want to sleep again, I gotta do this. Please, Paul."

  McSorley considered silently. "Very well. I can see this has affected you deeply," he relented. "The guard will take you. Just remember, Williams knows he's the next to go. Even though his final appeal hasn't been decided on, he's apt to be on edge."

  The last control door rolled shut and Harold Haines walked gingerly to the cell containing Convict Six, Remo Williams.

  Williams was stretched out on his cot, his hands clasped behind his head, his eyes shut.

  Harold Haines cleared his throat noisily, but the prisoner's eyes didn't open.

  "I see you in my dreams," he said, his voice hoarse. "And I see Betty Page. Go away."

  "You don't understand, Williams. Your name is Williams, isn't it?"

  "In here, I'm Convict Number Six."

  "You're supposed to be dead."

  "Dead Man's my other nickname. So what?"

  "I executed you."

  "You did a lousy job of it." Williams' voice sounded bored, but his dark eyes opened. They regarded the ceiling.

  "It was a long time ago," Haines continued. "Up at Trenton. I used to work at Trenton State, where you were. "

  The prisoner took his time sitting up. He didn't want to show any interest, but his movements were too casual. Harold Haines knew every trick in the convict book. Williams wanted to get a closer look at him without betraying his interest. Every convict knew that once you let the man know what you wanted, he'd use it against you.

  "Do you remember me?" Haines asked.

  Remo's eyes bored into his. They were flat, dead-looking eyes. Bullet holes in concrete had more life in them than Williams had in his eyes. He looked older. Not twenty years older, just older. The dead eyes narrowed involuntarily.

  "You look familiar, yeah," Williams said slowly. "But I don't place the face exactly."

  "Up at Trenton, I wore a hood that night," Haines said tightly. "The night I pulled the switch on you. But I was the prison electrician during the day. You might have seen me around."

  "Sorry."

  "But I remember you real good. Where you been these last twenty years, Williams? What've you been doing?"

  Remo Williams said in a voice as dead as his eyes, "Time. I've been doing time."

  "Well, you ain't been doing it at Trenton State. Everybody up there knows, like I know, that you died way back when."

  "You're dreaming. I'm here because I killed a guard up at Trenton. His name was . . ."

  "Yeah?"

  Remo's forehead wrinkled in thought. "MacCleary or something like that," he said slowly. "Yeah, MacCleary. He was hassling me. So I offed him. Now I gotta pay for it."

  "I don't know if I have the stomach to fry you a second time."

  Remo gave out a sad grunt of a laugh. "Don't you know?" he said airily. "Second time's the charm with guys like me."

  "But you don't get it. You're already dead. I executed you twenty years ago!"

  When, after a long time, Remo Williams said nothing in reply, Harold Haines shuffled off down the line. He felt like a Dead Man himself.

  Remo Williams stared out the bars of his cell, wondering what was going on. The executioner's face had looked familiar. Where had he seen it before? And what was that crap about having been executed up at Trenton State? Remo suddenly remembered the dream of the other night. The dream in which he had been executed up at Trenton. But that was only a dream. It had never-could never have-happened.

  Then the buzzer announced lunch and Remo sat up. His lungs felt like concrete. He wondered if it was the fear in his gut or the heavy cigarette smoke in his lungs. Funny how he'd been reacting to cigarettes.

  Harold Haines returned to Warden McSorley's voice on leaden feet.

  McSorley looked up sharply. "Have your little talk with the condemned, Harold?"

  "He didn't know what I was talking about," Haines said dully.

  "Well, it may not answer all your questions, but it settles some of them. If the man were dead, he'd certainly know it."

  Harold Haines did not return Warden McSorley's tight smile.

  The phone rang and McSorley answered it with a curt "Excuse me." Then: "Yes, Warden Reeves.... What's that? ... When?" McSorley's face suddenly tightened. "I ... I see. Actually, Warden, it was just that his name came up in a death-cell confession. Yes, I agree with you. We can't very well try a man who's already paid the state the ultimate penalty. Thank you for your time, Warden Reeves."

  When Warden McSorley hung up the phone, his face was even paler than Harold Haines's running-to-fat features now.

  "He's dead," McSorley said in an arid tone. "He was executed in 1971 for murdering a pusher. The Warden didn't seem aware that it was his signature on the release that transferred Williams to this facility."

  Harold Haines sat up with a start. "Why don't you say something?"

  "Because I value my job and my pension," Warden Paul McSorley said flatly. "I've got a man on death row who's supposed to be in his grave. I can't send him back to Trenton. They'd never accept him and they'd begin investigating. I know how these things work, believe me. Someone handed me a red-hot potato knowing if I ever found out the truth, I'd be the man with microwaved fingers."

  "But what are we-you-going to do?"

  "If they turn down his last appeal-and right now I'd wager my home and life savings that they do-the governor will sign his death warrant, and you, Harold, will not only carry it out, you'll never speak of this to anyone. Is that clear?"

  "For God's sake!" Haines burst out. "The guy was a cop once. He was on our side."

  "According to his sheet, he killed a prison guard named Conrad MacCleary in cold blood. I don't know what's real here and what's not, but I'm simply going to do my job and I strongly urge you to do the same. We're not young men, either of us. We know how the world works. Let's deal with this unpleasantness as quietly and quickly as good public servants and get on with the rest of our lives. Now, I expect you'll want to go home, Harold. You killed a man today and you look like you could use a stiff belt."

  "I don't drink. You know that. I gave it up when I felt myself sliding into the bottle."

  "Harold," Warden McSorley said, handing him a file, "I'd give alcoholism a second look were I you. Now, please excuse me. And take this with you. On your way out, ask my secretary to kindly return it to Central Files."

  Harold Haines took the file marked "Remo Williams" and closed the door behind him silently.

  Chapter 13

  George Proctor perspired in the stupefying Florida heat as he left his parked car and approached the prison gatehouse, which, except for its pastel green coloring and lack of a sign, might have been a forgotten Fotomat booth.

  "Business?" a guard wearing mirrored sunglasses inquired in a laconic voice.

  "The usual," Proctor said, flashing his ID. "Client."

  "Pass on through," the guard said, signaling to the booth. Another guard hit a switch and the tall fence rolled back on creaky casters. Proctor stepped through the opening, thinking that today's business was anything but usual.

  It had started with an appearance before a judge at the Florida Supreme Court -a judge known to be sympathetic to death-row appeals. The judge had gaveled the appeal down so fast that George Proctor was halfway down the courthouse steps, briefs in hand, before it dawned on him that the telephone call he had received the night before was no prank. That, and the ju
dge's uncharacteristic coldness, were somehow related.

  Proctor entered the main doors and identified himself for the guard in the cramped control booth and was escorted through the growing din and into the conference room. After a brief wait, Remo Williams was brought in.

  He sat down with an even deader look to his eyes than before. Proctor had wondered why those eyes had seemed so familiar before. Now, seeing Williams again, he thought he understood. The man had cop eyes. The flat expressionless eyes that come to police officers after too many years of seeing too much of society's dark underbelly. Proctor never connected that flicker of recognition with the artist's drawing he had seen in a supermarket-checkout-line tabloid. He never read those rags-except when the person ahead of him paid with a check. And then he always put the things back unpurchased.

  "It's not good, is it?" Williams asked in a voice as dead as his eyes.

  "The State Supreme Court turned us down." Proctor emphasized the word "us" to let Williams think they were in this together. In fact, he had already decided this would be their last meeting.

  "Then you're going up to the Supreme Court." Proctor couldn't lie. He took a deep breath.

  "I have to be honest with you, Williams," he said. "I did file, but I don't think I can continue with this case."

  Remo's eyes tightened. "What?"

  "Look, I don't know what's going on," Proctor said miserably, "but I put this before justice Hannavan, and he turned me down cold. The guy is an incurable softy." Proctor looked around the room before speaking, even though it was empty but for a single out-of-earshot guard. "I ... I think they got to him."

  "They? Who?"

  Proctor leaned forward, his eyes on the woodenfaced C.O. Even though this conversation fell under the client-confidentiality statutes, he dropped his voice.

  "The same ones that got you transferred to this state," he said. "The ones who called me last night."

  "Be straight with me. Who?"

  "I don't know who, but they have to be connected on the federal level. I was warned that I had been videotaped doing cocaine at a party."

  "Oh, that's just peachy," Remo said. "My lawyer, the cokehead."

  "It was only a line. Maybe two," Proctor said quickly. "Strictly recreational. But they're threatening to slap me with a possession-with-intent-to-sell beef But I'm innocent. Really!"

  "You sound like a con," Remo said nastily.

  "I feel like a political prisoner, Williams. This is scary police-state stuff. Someone wants you dead. And they want you dead yesterday. I had no sooner left the hearing than I received notice that the governor had signed your death warrant. I filed for a stay with the U.S. Supreme Court and got us a short date."

  "For when?"

  "The day after tomorrow."

  "What do you think our chances are?"

  "Not great. Your excecution is set for tomorrow morning. "

  Proctor steeled himself for the ex-cop's reaction. He didn't know what to expect. Remo's cop eyes seemed to recede into his head. Actually, it was an illusion caused by a slight bowing of the man's head. The overhead light threw his socket hollows into shadow, making them look like skull holes.

  I'm looking at a dead man, Proctor thought, suddenly chilled. Poor bastard.

  "They can't execute before the appeal is decided," Williams said quietly, not looking up. "Can they?"

  "Normally, no. But in this case, I don't know. Look, I'm sorry, I shouldn't even be telling you any of this, but I would lose my practice if I took an intent-to-sell fall. And for what? A pro bono appeal that was dumped in my lap? Put yourself in my place. What would you do?"

  "Put yourself in my place," Remo said between set teeth. "What would you expect from your lawyer?"

  "I'm sorry. I really am."

  "The least you could do is refer me to another lawyer," Remo grated. "Fast!"

  "That's the other thing," Proctor added. "I called your former lawyer, hoping to dump this on him. I got a delicatessen. I redialed, figuring I had misread the letterhead, and got the same place. I checked with the Jersey bar. The man who represented you went out of business twelve years ago. He's been dead four."

  "Impossible. I saw him only last ... month. I think. "

  "Not unless there are two of him. For God's sake, Williams, who are you? Nobody gets railroaded like this. It wouldn't surprise me if they had the Supreme Court rigged."

  "I'm Remo Williams," Remo said vaguely. "Aren't I?"

  "If you don't know, who would?"

  George Proctor watched as his client seemed to shrink in his tight-fitting apricot T-shirt. His eyes were staring down at his hands, which lay flat on the counter in front of the glass partition. He looked calm-calmer than Proctor thought he had any right to look.

  "He said he had already killed me," Williams intoned without looking up.

  "Who?"

  Williams raised his face, his eyes bleak. "The executioner. They buried Popcorn this morning."

  "I have no idea what you're babbling about."

  "Mohammed Diladay. They called him Popcorn. He was executed this morning."

  "That's odd. There was no press coverage."

  "The executioner walked by my cell," Remo went on. "He did a double-take. Said something about having executed me up in Trenton State twenty years ago."

  "You're not making this up, are you? I mean, it's a little late for an insanity plea."

  "A few nights ago," Remo went on as if talking to himself, "I dreamed that I had been executed. At Trenton. It seemed real. And for some reason, the executioner's face looked familiar."

  "Oh, Christ!" Proctor said hoarsely. He grabbed up his valise hastily.

  "What does that tell you?" Williams asked tightly.

  "It tells me that I should get the fuck out of here. Sorry, Williams. You have my sympathy. But I want no part of you."

  "What about my rights? What about the law?"

  "A few years ago I would have fought this tooth and nail, believe me. But I've got a wife now. Two kids. A condo. I get jammed up, she'll leave me and take the kids with her. I'm not an idealistic young guy anymore. Sorry. Good-bye."

  Remo Williams watched his last hope in the world walk off in a six-hundred-dollar suit, his insides feeling like chopped liver too long in the refrigerator. He didn't hear the door behind him open and the guard shouting his name.

  "Williams!" the guard repeated, taking him by the arm.

  Remo tensed, nearly jumped to his feet and down the guard's open throat. Then his eyes refocused and, head bowed, he allowed himself to be led back to his cell.

  His biggest regret was that Popcorn wasn't there to talk to. Already he missed the little con. But on this, the last day of his life, he had no interest in trying to start up a new friendship through pink cinder block.

  Remo thought back to the night his fellow officers came to his apartment and apologetically informed him he was under arrest for the murder of a black drug pusher whose name, over twenty years later, Remo could no longer remember. An important fact like that, and he couldn't summon it up. The judge and the prosecution must have repeated it a thousand times throughout the trial. What was the judge's name? Harold something. Smith, that was it. Smith. A sourpuss, with his starchy white hair and puritanical mouth. The guy had worn rimless glasses, so he looked like a high-school headmaster gone old and sour.

  "Wait a minute," Remo blurted out. "That face!" Suddenly he remembered. Judge Harold Smith. That was the face in one of his strange dreams. What did it mean?

  Dinner was spaghetti with meatballs. Remo refused it. His appetite had fled.

  "You sure?" the guard had asked. It was the one who had questioned him over the National Enquirer article the other day. His name tag said: Fletcher. "I hear this could be your last supper."

  "Then it's true," Remo said, hollow-voiced.

  "They're keeping mum about it. But that's the buzz. Pardon the expression."

  "Look, I don't want the food. But you can do me a favor. "

 
"And I could lose my job," the guard said, his voice going from solicitous to crystal hard in midsyllable.

  "It's nothing illegal," Remo assured him. "You had a newspaper the other day. It had my face on it. How about letting me have it, huh? Just something to read, to take my mind off my troubles."

  The guard hesitated. He rubbed his undershot jaw thoughtfully. "Can't see that it'll do any harm," he admitted. "Just do me a favor. After you're done with it, shove it under the mattress. I'll get it after . . . you know."

  "It's a promise," Remo said as the guard snatched up the tray from the cell-door slot.

  Remo had to wait until the guard was finished feeding the row before he wandered back. His first words made Remo's heart sink.

  "I checked the prison library," he said. "Couldn't find it. But the new one came in." He stuffed the folded paper into the slot. Remo had to use both hands to wrestle it through without tearing it to pieces.

  "That do?" the guard asked.

  "Yeah," Remo said as his eye caught sight of the headline STARTLING FURTHER RELEVATIONS OF "DEAD MAN."

  "Remember that promise," the guard said, walking off.

  "Sure, no problem," Remo said vaguely, folding open the front page. There was a reproduction of the earlier artist's sketch of his face. It looked like a police I.D. sketch, but beside it was another sketch. This one was of a wizened old Asian man with a wisp of a beard hanging from his chin, and clear, penetrating eyes.

  In a box beside that face was the following: "First Look at Dead Man's Spirit Guide, Identified by Enquirer Panel of Psychics as Lim Ting Tong, High Priest of the Lost Continent of Mu. See Page 7."

  Remo, reading this, sank onto his cot heavily. The face of the old Asian was identical to the face from his dream. The one called Chiun. Swiftly Remo turned to page 7. He read so fast his eyes skipped over whole sentences as he searched for his own name. He found it.

  The gist of the article was that Enquirer readers from across the country had written in to share sightings of Dead Man, who had been brought to the Enquirer's attention by renowned University of Massachusetts anthropology professor Naomi Vanderkloot. According to Vanderkloot, Dead Man, by virtue of his superhuman feats, could be none other than the vanguard of the next evolution in Homo sapiens.