There was silence in the office for a long, solemn moment, each of the four men with his own secret, perhaps even fearful, thoughts. Then the governor broke the spell.
"All right. What do we do now?” His eyes settled on the attorney general. “Fred, how about it?"
Fred Willis shrugged. “We appeal to a higher federal court. That's all we can do."
"And if we lose there?"
Another shrug. “We go to the top: the U.S. Supreme Court. We won't lose there, I guarantee that."
Governor Marlow groaned. “If it goes that far again, we may be looking at years before we get a ruling this state can live with."
"Fred, isn't there some way,” McWade asked, “that we can satisfy the lower court about this initial drug injection? Some way we can reasonably assure the court that the condemned man is so deeply unconscious that he won't feel anything?"
"I don't know,” the attorney general admitted. “I have one idea—"
"Well, let's hear it,” the governor said.
"All right. Under our present procedure, an electrocardiograph machine is connected to the condemned person and a flat-line monitor indicates when the heart stops and death occurs, after which our state doctor in attendance verifies that the person is dead. Now then, the federal court might—and I emphasize might—be impressed if we offered to also attach a brain-wave monitor of some kind to measure the activity of the brain before, during, and after the initial dose of sodium pentothal is injected, to ensure that the brain is receiving no pain signals."
"Can that be done?” the governor asked. He looked at his surgeon general. “Art?"
"An electroencephalograph machine could be used, I suppose,” the surgeon general said. “What that does is measure the activity of brain neurons. See, the brain is made up of about a hundred billion nerve cells—neurons. They do all the gathering of information and transmitting of electrochemical signals in the body. As the sodium pentothal is injected, those neurons essentially take naps, and the brain-wave monitor reflects the diminishing activity that results."
"Is it reliable?” the governor asked.
"As reliable as any other method. A lot of things about the brain are still pretty much a mystery to us."
"But do you think the court would buy that?” McWade asked the attorney general.
"Art and I have discussed it. We think that, unless one of the judges is a neurologist, there's a fair chance they would. It only takes two of the three judges on the panel to lift the stay."
Grant Marlow rose from behind a stately mahogany desk that had once belonged to President Jefferson Davis of the Confederate States of America and walked over to gaze out a large picture window that overlooked the splendid grounds of the executive mansion. Somewhere deep in the recesses of his own brain lay the hope of someday looking out the windows of the Oval Office. After a long moment's reflection on his options, he turned back to his top advisors.
"Well, a fair chance of winning is better than no chance at all,” he told his attorney general. “Can we get it done by Friday?"
"Maybe. I mean, it's possible."
"Then go for it,” the governor ordered.
* * * *
After the meeting, Grant Marlow asked McWade to stay behind.
"Lucy is expecting you for dinner tonight, Bobby. I hope you won't disappoint her."
McWade smiled wryly. “Is the lovely first lady playing matchmaker again?"
"If you're asking whether Rose Fuller will be there, the answer is yes.” Rose Fuller was the governor's private secretary. A divorced, spousally abused woman several years younger than Bobby McWade, she was shapely, attractive, and intelligent, a longtime friend of Lucy Marlow, the governor's wife, who was convinced that she would be a perfect match for the lifelong bachelor McWade.
"Grant,” McWade said patiently, “Rose and I are good friends, but I don't think she's any more anxious to get married again than I am to get married at all."
"That's not what Lucy thinks. She thinks that Rose is ready, willing, and able. Come on now, Bobby, you've got to admit she'd be quite a catch."
"That she would,” McWade conceded. “If I was fishing.” He sighed quietly. “Tell lovely Lucy I'll be there."
As McWade started to leave, the governor asked, “Incidentally, have you picked a replacement for Duval yet?"
"Not yet.” Ross Duval was the warden at Parmalee State Prison, which held Death Row and the execution chamber.
"Any chance he'll reconsider his resignation?"
"I doubt it. It's a moral issue with him. He's opposed to capital punishment and since it was reinstated he's been required to personally push the buttons on four men. It's something he says he just can't live with any longer."
"Too bad. He's a good man.” Marlow turned to some papers on his desk. “See you tonight, Bobby."
"You bet."
In the reception room to the governor's office, Rose Fuller occupied a desk similar to the governor's, somewhat smaller, but mahogany nevertheless, which had once belonged to Varina Howell Davis, wife of the Confederate president. The governor's desk and hers were the only two pieces of furniture rescued when Davis was forced to abandon the Confederate capitol in Richmond, Virginia, and move his headquarters farther south to Greensboro, South Carolina. The desks fell into Union hands when the Confederacy capitulated. Governor Grant Marlow's family purchased them at auction sometime later and he had ultimately inherited them. He had wanted his wife, Lucy, to have the desk that belonged to Varina Davis, but she insisted that the two remain a pair, so they followed her husband into the executive section of the governor's mansion.
Dropping into a chair next to Rose Fuller's desk, Bobby McWade said, “Let's pull a fast one on our boss and his marriage-broker wife and elope over the state line tonight."
"Lucy Marlow would never forgive us,” Rose drawled in a husky voice that men seemed to find extremely provocative. “She has dedicated herself to finding me a new husband, and she looks upon you as a kind of wayward bachelor brother who is far too adept at avoiding matrimony to please her. She wants to hostess a wedding in the executive mansion so badly, I think she'd commit murder to do it."
"I guess your refusal to elope means we'll be having dinner with them tonight. Dress code?"
"Casual. Just the four of us."
"Cozy.” McWade patted one of her creamy white hands. “See you tonight."
"Ten-four on that,” she replied with a wink.
McWade wondered on his way out whether Rose had any idea how disarmingly fetching she could sometimes be. He could easily see, from Lucy Marlow's perspective, how suitable he and Rose would be as a married couple. A couple who would follow Lucy and Grant Marlow to the U. S. Senate and ultimately to the White House. But Rose was gun-shy after being used as a punching bag by her ex-husband, a drunk by whom she thankfully had borne no children. And McWade had always given his public-service career priority over finding, or even looking for, a marriage partner. Although clearly interested in each other, neither of them seemed to be able to muster the emotional strength to take that first crucial step toward a more intimate relationship.
Walking toward his office in the adjoining state administration building, McWade abruptly changed directions and took an elevator down to the parking garage. Ten minutes later he was on the Interstate driving through soybean fields toward the maximum-security state prison.
* * * *
Parmalee State Prison had been built ninety years earlier using convict labor from a nearby minimum-security penal farm, with stone cut from a state quarry and hand-molded into bricks, bulwarks, and bastion blocks to form cellhouses, walls, and parapets. It was, at the time the construction was completed, a classic and much praised example of American penology at its finest. Now, nine decades later, it was an ugly, outmoded, scorned work of a system of silent incarceration long rejected. Governor Grant Marlow was at the moment having a shiny new modern facility built nearby, using bid-produced private contractors, union laborers,
powerful heavy equipment, and construction material imported from Mexican quarries. It would be ready for the state's growing inmate population in another year. Meanwhile, there was Parmalee.
In the prison's administration building, which was half inside and half outside the big wall, McWade entered the reception area of Warden Ross Duval's office.
"Good morning, Leon,” he said to the warden's secretary. Leon, a former college professor, was a lifer in his twenty-first year for having murdered a young student of his with whom he had been having an affair that he had wanted to continue, but which she told him would end with her graduation. Being unable to part with her, Leon had strangled her to death the night before commencement. “Warden busy?” McWade asked.
"No, sir, Mr. Director,” Leon replied. “Go right in, sir."
Ross Duval looked up and smiled as his boss walked in. He and McWade were longtime friends, having served as rookie corrections officers years earlier. It was McWade who had appointed Ross Duval warden of Parmalee.
"Hey, Bobby,” the warden said. “You're just in time for lunch, or is this something official?"
"Unofficially official, but lunch sounds good. This may be the most dilapidated prison in six states, but nobody can say our convicts aren't well fed."
"They ought to be, with six inmate farms sowing and reaping everything we eat. Not to mention the best dairy farm in the state."
Ross told Leon where he would be, and he and McWade made their way through a double-deadlocked corridor into the prison proper, and across an immaculately manicured interior lawn toward the prison dining hall, which sat between two massive cellblocks.
"A federal court stayed Graham's execution,” McWade told him as they walked.
"You're kidding!” Duval responded. “On what grounds?"
"The way lethal injection is carried out. They said there's no way to prove that the condemned man is unconscious and can't feel pain before we kill him."
"What nonsense!” Duval groaned. “The dosage of sedative alone is probably enough to kill him."
"Probably,” McWade pointed out, “is the operative word. The appeals court wants to be positive."
Duval fell silent. As an opponent of capital punishment, he disliked seeing any execution carried out—but if one had to be, there was no question in his mind that lethal injection was easily the most humane.
"Listen, Ross,” McWade said, “this won't affect your resignation in any way—"
"But it will,” Duval disagreed. “I said I'd stay on until after Carter Graham was executed."
"Yes, but that was contingent on him being executed this Friday. And you already have a new position waiting for you—what organization is that with again?"
"The National Movement to Abolish Executions. It's based in New York."
"I wouldn't want you to lose that, Ross.” McWade stopped before they reached the building where the huge dining room was located. “Look, I know how your anti-capital-punishment sentiments have been growing over the years, and how you've been struggling to juggle those feelings with your sense of duty to your corrections career. I think if we hadn't been such good friends, you'd have walked out on this job a couple of years ago. But you've been honorable enough to come to me, to discuss candidly your changing views, and to give me enough advance notice of your decision so that we would be able to work out a transition without the liberal press making a major issue of it. I appreciate how you've handled this, and so does the governor. I want you to let your resignation stand as of next Monday, just as if Carter Graham had been executed this Friday.” McWade put a hand on his friend's shoulder. “Take your New York job, Ross. We'll handle Carter Graham without you having to push the buttons."
Ross Duval choked back an emotional swallow. “I don't want to dump my responsibilities on anybody else—"
"You won't. Believe me. It'll be all right. Come on—"
McWade started walking again, and presently he and Duval entered the cavernous inmate dining hall where some two thousand convicts were fed two meals a day—breakfast and supper. The noon meal, brown paper-bagged, was eaten by the majority of them in the fields and shops where they worked. At the moment, only a couple of hundred clerical and maintenance workers were lining up for the midday meal. McWade and Duval moved into line with them, had their food dished up, and carried their plastic trays to a cordoned-off corner area in which there was a sign reading: staff only. As they sat down to eat, Duval suddenly said, “Oh, I almost forgot. A young woman claiming to be Loretta Graham's daughter came to see me this morning. She wants permission to witness Carter's execution. It's a moot point at the moment, I guess."
McWade frowned deeply. “I didn't think Graham and his wife had any children."
"There are none on record.” Duval shrugged. “But she claims she's the victim's daughter and has a birth certificate to prove it. Her name is Roberta Rudd. I told her she would have to get permission from you. She's coming to your office in the morning."
McWade's frown did not go away.
* * * *
That night, in the residential quarters of the governor's mansion, Grant and Lucy Marlow entertained their longtime friends, Rose Fuller and Bobby McWade. During dinner, the governor reminisced about his and McWade's college days.
"I wouldn't have made it through the freshman year without Bobby,” he recalled. “I concluded during the first week of orientation lectures that he was the smartest person in the incoming class, and from that moment on I made him my best buddy."
"You're exaggerating, as usual,” McWade demurred. He winked at the first lady. “Typical politician."
"Oh, I don't think so,” Lucy Marlow said firmly. “Don't forget, I live with this man. Would you believe, I sometimes have to balance his personal checkbook for him? He contends that he can't be overdrawn if he still has blank checks. Brilliant he definitely is not."
The laughter around the table was genuine and warm. The laughter of friends: comfortable, unself-conscious.
"Seriously,” said the governor, “if Bobby had been able to finish college, he might very well be in my office today. He was that bright."
"Bright but poor,” McWade added.
"The governor we had then was a scoundrel and a thief,” Lucy Marlow declared. “He cut off more educational funding than any chief executive in this state's history, depriving smart young men like Bobby of their hardship scholarships after just one year. Scandalous, that's what it was."
"Well,” Rose Fuller pointed out, “Bobby has done pretty well for himself without finishing college. Director of Corrections is not exactly clerking at Wal-Mart."
"I've done well because I have a good friend with a long memory,” McWade said, raising his glass in a silent toast to Grant Marlow.
"Nonsense,” said the governor. “You'd have done just as well without me. Might have taken you a little longer, but you'd have gotten there. Remember, you had already risen to the rank of guard lieutenant before I was elected to my first term. You were moving up the ladder in state corrections very nicely.” He laughed. “Hey, remember after my first inauguration when I was making an inspection of our prisons and saw you again? I think my mouth dropped open five inches, I was so surprised!"
"Fate, that's what it was,” Lucy Marlow stated emphatically. “Plain old God-given fate. Just like when Rose and I ran into each other at the airport that day, after not being in touch for ten years. Now look at us, here we are, all together, the best of friends, enjoying our good fortune and prosperity!"
His own prosperity, McWade knew, had come through the generosity of Grant Marlow. As a poor small-town boy fresh out of high school, young Bobby McWade had taken advantage of a newly instituted state hardship program to enter the university tuition free, contingent upon maintaining a 3.0 or better (out of 4) grade-point average. Naturally intelligent, unusually diligent in his studies, McWade consistently reached 4.0 in all classes—even while finding time to tutor, coach, and sometimes aid in artfully cheating, his newfound fri
end, Grant Marlow, the progeny of a prominent state political family.
But all of McWade's hard work was negated when, after only one year, the then-governor, citing unexpected cost increases in ongoing highway improvement, abruptly repealed the hardship college-tuition program. Failing to obtain a student bank loan, because he had no credit history or collateral, McWade had to drop out. Rather than take a menial job with no future, he enlisted in the Marine Corps, intending to make a career in the military.
During the final months of his second enlistment, after distinguishing himself in the Gulf War and subsequently rising in the ranks as a military policeman, McWade was recruited by representatives of his home state's new governor to become part of a program to train fresh, higher-caliber corrections officers to replace retiring old-line prison “bosses” who ran the penitentiaries with billy clubs instead of brains.
Weary of military life, impressed by the prospect of civil-service advancement, liking the idea of settling down in his own home state, McWade took his discharge and entered the Parmalee State Prison corrections-officer training program. Upon completion, he remained on the job for a decade, achieving promotion from junior officer to senior officer, to sergeant, to senior sergeant, and finally to the rank of corrections lieutenant. His name was at the top of the list for promotion to Captain of the Yard when, one day, a new governor and his entourage came to inspect the prison.
McWade remembered Grant Marlow from college, of course, and had followed his political career from county prosecutor to district attorney to state attorney general to lieutenant governor, and finally to the governor's office itself. Lieutenant McWade doubted, however, that Grant Marlow would remember him. He was very mistaken. During a review of prison officers, Governor Grant Marlow glanced at McWade, looked away, frowned, turned back, and looked down at the nametag on McWade's uniform, which read: Lt. R. McWade. His mouth dropped open.
EQMM, June 2008 Page 6
