Here’s how lethal injection worked:
First, you were strapped down on a black gurney, arms extended like in a crucifixion. Then an execution technician (who cannot be a doctor or a registered nurse because their code of ethics forbids it) swabbed your forearm with alcohol to prevent infection, of all things, and probed your arm for a vein. When the vein was found he inserted a needle into it. The needle was connected to an intravenous line that channeled sodium Pentothal into your veins to knock you out. After that, panchromium bromide and potassium chloride were introduced. The first paralyzed your diaphragm, collapsed your lungs, and made it impossible to take a breath. The second stopped your heart from pumping. How long your brain continued to receive and transmit messages and brain waves was undetermined.
During the first death by lethal injection that I witnessed, it took nearly a half hour to kill the man. The tube that had been attached to his arm broke away. The witnesses were sprayed with the deadly chemicals and the condemned inmate began to convulse and foam at the mouth and nostrils. His eyes were wide open the entire time.
During “my” second death by lethal injection, the execution technician gave the inmate too weak a dose of the chemicals, causing him to choke and heave blood for nearly fifteen minutes before he died with a blue face.
The third and last time I witnessed an execution, the conditions were considered perfect all around though the “patient” heaved, spit, choked and even broke a rib from the strain.
I’d witnessed three lethal injections during my time in the department, all of them in states where execution was still legal. If I ever found the man who’d killed Fran, I’d see a fourth. That is, if I ever got myself out of this mess. But first I had to find Cassandra. Without her and her testimony, I faced jail. What I faced in jail was more horrible and just as deadly as lethal injection.
I took a deep breath and lit a cigarette. I sucked in the smoke and felt the rush of nicotine and the slight rise in blood pressure that always accompanied it. I knew I had no choice but to try and relax, to try and think logically. It was a beautiful spring day with unusually warm temperatures. Maybe Cassandra had spring fever, literally. Maybe fourteen hours spent in a five-room cabin had become too confining for her.
I had to do something to prevent myself from thinking, because I didn’t want to suffer the anxiety that went with thinking. So I busied myself with transporting the supplies from the trunk of the Pontiac to the cabin. I made every attempt to be as organized as possible, making slow deliberate movements under the assumption that this would make the time pass faster. Maybe, I thought, she would come back while I was working.
I placed the extra clothing on the bed in the back bedroom and stacked the few canned goods on the exposed shelves in the kitchen. I put the milk and the beer in the refrigerator, and the three loaves of white bread on the table my grandfather had built into the kitchen wall. I checked the chambers and the chokes on the two Remington 1187 twelve gauges to make certain they weren’t loaded, and then I leaned them against the waist-high bookshelves beside the fireplace.
When there was nothing left to do, I started thinking again, and this gave new life to the old anxieties.
In the seventeen or so minutes it had taken to transfer the supplies from the car to the cabin and to arrange it systematically, Cassandra had not come back. I knew then, as I slammed the trunk of the Pontiac closed, that if she was not coming back to me, I’d have to go looking for her. And that’s exactly what I set my mind to doing.
CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE
I SEARCHED THE PERIMETER of the cabin looking for footprints. But the earth around the cabin, although muddy in spots, was fairly dry from the strange bout of spring heat that had affected the entire northeast, even as far up as the Adirondack mountains (although the nights were still cool, if not downright cold).
I swatted a black fly from the sweat-covered skin on the back of my neck and I walked the length of the driveway, downhill, until I came to the hard-packed east-west road. I looked across the road and across the trout stream, and I surveyed the empty field beyond it.
Again, not a thing.
I turned west and then faced east.
Nothing but open road and the constant hum of black flies.
Suddenly, I felt like the lost one.
Standing there in the middle of the open road, I turned and faced my grandfather’s cabin. Directly behind it, I could see Old Iron Top, its bald, granite summit sparkling in the late-morning sunshine.
And then it hit me. That’s where I would find her.
I walked back up the drive and went to the edge of the second-growth forest surrounding the base of Old Iron Top. The trail my grandfather had cut decades ago was still accessible about thirty yards southwest of the cabin. The summer renters must have used the trail often because the narrow footpath was still freshly cut. Footprints were plainly visible in the mud. Cassandra wore cowboy boots similar to my own. But the heels on her boots were shorter and flatter. The prints at the beginning of the trail could not have been made more than an hour earlier. I could even see how the groundwater that had been squeezed away from the dirt had puddled in the heel area of the print.
Here’s what I did before I entered the woods: I pulled out the.45, pointed the barrel up toward the tops of the trees, and chambered a round, safety on. I slipped the piece back through my belt, this time against my backbone, and walked into the woods.
Maybe the forest had lived without me for more than three decades, but there was something about it-about the birch trees and the scattered sections of pine and the grouse that nearly made my heart stop when it drummed and took off from the soft, pine-needled floor-that made it seem like time had stood still. But the forest was not the same, and I knew it had changed as I had changed. But then there was the rich smell of vegetation, there was the way the sunlight broke through the leaves and branches of the trees, and the way the mosquitoes buzzed around my face that made it all seem the same. These were sights and sounds and feelings you just did not get inside a maximum security prison. A few feet in, I felt the tingle of a spider web that broke off against my face when I unknowingly walked through it. My blue-jean work shirt turned damp at the arms from the dew that clung to the vegetation even at midmorning on this hot spring day, and the world seemed suddenly foreign to me. Foreign but the same.
The dimensions of the trail were as I remembered them, too.
The trail dipped at first, descending for about twenty-five yards until it reached the base of the hill where the trail went severely vertical again. I wasted no time starting the climb, wishing, after five or six raised steps, that I was wearing hiking boots instead of cowboy boots. In a word, these boots weren’t made for hiking. But then, what choice did I have? I moved uphill, the branches scratching and snapping at my face, stinging the sensitive facial skin beneath the three-day beard growth. A small twig poked me in the eye, filled me with enough pain to draw a tear.
But I didn’t stop for anything, not even to take the breath that I desperately needed.
One thing was certain: I was drowning in my own inhalations. Too many cigarettes for too many years. As the arteries pressing against my temples began to pound with blood, I promised myself that if I got out of this mess, I would quit smoking for good. I would get my life back together, start living the good life again-like a man who cares about the life he’s got left.
But in the woods, I began to drown in something else, too. I couldn’t shake the image of Cassandra being left for dead on the summit of Old Iron Top. This time I was seeing the future, and the future in my mind was crazy, morbid even. What if Pelton’s men had followed us out to the cabin, gotten to Cassandra this morning when I was with Val? What if Pelton’s men had dragged her into the woods and shot her or sliced her neck with a straight razor? In my mind, I pictured a razor moving across the smooth bronze flesh of Cassandra’s neck the same way I had witnessed a CO die at Attica. As I forced myself up the hillside, I knew that with Cassandra dead
I was as good as finished- porn film or no porn film to use against Pelton. I needed Cassandra alive to testify on behalf of what she’d witnessed, not only during the last five days, but during all the years of her relationship with Vasquez.
Maybe it was the lung-scraping breaths or the way the blood pulsed and boiled inside my skull, but I couldn’t prevent an image of Cassandra’s head cut completely away from her body, just the way Fran’s had been when the black, four-door Buick sedan ignored the do-not-enter and slammed into the side of the car at sixty-five-per in a thirty-mile-per-hour zone. It had taken only a split second for Fran to be thrust forward, her head and shoulders through the windshield, the jagged edge of which, like a razor, took her head clean off at the base of the neck, her body slumping back into the passenger seat like nothing had ever happened. Like our lives had not been changed by the split second of time it took for a windshield to shatter. And then nothing but the sight and sound of the battered Buick tearing away from the scene of the accident, only the back of a man’s shaved head visible…
How do I describe the shock, the timelessness of the moment, the rapid beating of my heart, the buzz in my brain that sucked the air out of my lungs, filled them with the poison of instant grief? The sickness rose up from my stomach and spread through my body and my veins, like rigor mortis.
All I could do was close my eyes, try to convince myself that the accident had been a figment of my imagination, like a nightmare. But they had revived me in the hospital bed I’d been strapped to some thirty-six hours before, and they had made a point of telling me the entire story of the accident, detail for detail, as if I had not been a part of it or the cause of it, or as if I had not been stained with my wife’s blood or as if I had not been there to smell the smoke or feel the fire. As if I had not seen the flashing red-and-white lights of the cop cruisers and useless ambulances. As if I had not seen the tears shed, not for Fran, but for me. And when I asked them why they had to tell me all this so soon and in such detail, they said, “So you’ll believe it.”
They called themselves doctors, priests, and friends, and they surrounded my bed and told me the story of my wife’s death as if the reality of it was good for me. You must tackle the grief head-on, they’d said. The Lord dishes out only what you can handle, they’d said. The death of my wife was like a commendation from the Lord because He knew I could take it. Your wife, they said, she’s an angel now.
Go fuck yourself, I said.
I felt the anger boil inside my gut, and I would have killed them all if I’d had the chance. I would have ripped their heads off. But all I could do was lie in the hospital bed and feel my face distort and my muscles wrench because they had me strapped to that mattress and they had the God awful nerve to tell me the truth about my dead, decapitated wife and the bald-headed man who’d gotten away with it.
And somehow, one year later, I was climbing a hill I had not climbed in thirty-five years. And as my lungs began to collapse from the strain, it did not seem possible that it had taken only thirty minutes to make the entire climb, because it seemed to have taken much longer when I was a kid. And when I reached the peak of Old Iron Top, I could plainly see Cassandra through openings in the heavy vegetation surrounding the rocky clearing. She stood on the rock face, dressed in blue jeans and a white button-down shirt that was now unbuttoned. Under the shirt was an elastic band, like an Ace bandage, only wider. The flesh-colored elastic was wrapped flat around her entire stomach as if to hold it in, like a makeshift girdle. And as she began to button her shirt up over it, I could only assume that Cassandra was pregnant and didn’t want anyone to know about it, least of all me.
I quickly moved to the left of the trail and ducked down in the tall grass while Cassandra buttoned her shirt. She ran both hands through her long brown hair so that I could see the tattoo on her neck, and then, from where I crouched in the tall grass, I saw her pull that.32 caliber pistol out of the pocket of her jeans. I saw her walk to the opposite side of the clearing and toss the pistol into a patch of thick briars. She made a quick check of the surrounding area and only when she was certain no one had seen her did she begin to make her way back across the rocky summit toward the trail. I was forced to lie down flat in the grass and remain as still and quiet as humanly possible. More than humanly possible. Because, after all, she was about to pass right by me, and I did not want her to know that I had seen everything and that I now knew for certain that she was not the woman I had thought she was.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
I WAITED THERE IN the tall grass for more than three minutes after she’d passed. During that time I held my breath and listened to the steady, rapid pulse pounding against my temples. I could only hope that she would not make out my tracks in the soft earth. I hoped her concern about getting rid of that.32 and concealing her pregnancy was so great that she wouldn’t worry about footprints.
When all was clear, I moved out of the grass and sprinted across the granite clearing. Stepping down into the thick vegetation, I fought my way through the briars and pine scrubs. I squatted and felt with my hand around the area where I thought the pistol might lie. It took about five minutes of tearing and scraping the skin on my left forearm, but eventually I found the piece resting on a nest of thick tree roots.
I stood up and began picking the briars away from my shirt and pants. Maybe it was the cold, almost slimy feel of the tree roots, but for some reason I began to picture a nest of snakes and I moved back onto the clearing as quickly as I could. I cracked the cylinder of the snub-nosed revolver and brought the six-round chamber up close to my face. I smelled each chamber separately. The pistol had been fired in the past three days. I was certain of it. The smell of the exploded gun powder was that fresh, that pungent. The question was this: Had Cassandra fired the pistol? If not, then why would she go to all the trouble of hiding the piece on Old Iron Top?
Standing on the open rock face, I knew that the answer most likely lay in the events that had gone down in Athens the day before. Maybe the answer lay with Vasquez. But then everybody knows that dead men don’t talk.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
ON THE CONCRETE FLOOR of the Times Square catwalk, three buck steers pin Wash Pelton down on all fours. They pull his pants down and stick it to him from behind. They make no attempt to squelch his screams because the louder he screams the more they like it, the more it turns them on.
Oh God, I say, as his screams burn a hole through my skull. Get me out of here.
To my left, the blunt barrel of a black-plated.38 service revolver is stuffed inside Wash Pelton’s mouth, while a shiv made from a razor blade planted inside a plastic toothbrush handle is pressed up against his throat. The rebel inmate holds Pelton’s head back, mouth open. He manages this by grabbing onto a fistful of hair, pulling the hair back like the reins on a horse. Pelton gags on the pistol barrel. I see his eyes rolling in their sockets while the rebels take turns on him. His Adam’s apple does a bobbing dance. Blood runs from the gash in his neck. Sweat oozes through the pores of his forehead, runs down his face, off his nose, mixes with the blood on his neck.
I try and turn away, but the inmate who has hold of me won’t allow it.
Pressed against the back of my head is a spoon that’s been lifted from the mess hall. The spoon has been scraped along the concrete floor of a prison cell until razor-sharp. Directly to my right, the barrel of a police-issue M-16 is aimed, point-blank, at Mike Norman’s head. But Norman can’t stand up. Norman lies on his stomach on the wet concrete floor of Times Square. A black-and-white helicopter hovers overhead. Below, a crowd of twelve hundred inmates faces us, the hostages on parade. They wave their fists in the air, not in solidarity, but in a defiant show of force. Why give a sign of peace when you can wave a fist?
I lower my head, stare at my bare feet flat against the gray concrete. I feel the edge of that sharpened spoon suddenly pressed harder against the back of my head, ready to spear the skin and bone.
“On three,” the inmate behi
nd me says. “We execute on three.”
CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR
I MANAGED TO MAKE the hike down from Old Iron Top without falling, despite the smooth-soled cowboy boots. I jogged the entire way, feeling the muscles in the backs of my legs tense up as I grabbed onto the thick branches and tree trunks lining the narrow footpath. The day was growing noticeably hotter, even in the shaded woods, and by the time I reached the bottom, I was drenched in sweat and out of breath.
When I came to the edge of the woods, just a dozen or so yards from the cabin, I waited until I was certain that Cassandra was inside and had no plans for coming back out. I crouched and moved quickly to the Pontiac. I found the car keys in my pocket, opened the trunk, and peeled back a portion of the black carpeting. I slipped the.32 out of my pants and put it in the trunk, then I pressed the carpeting back in place and closed the trunk as quietly as I could. I turned, took a breath, and walked into the cabin like nothing had happened at all on the summit of Old Iron Top.
Cassandra was already asleep on the floor in front of the fireplace, on the same wool blanket she had slept on the night before. I knelt down, shook her shoulder. She stirred and looked up at me with glazed eyes. She gave me a dreamy smile, and for just a quick second, I had the distinct sensation that she was going to kiss me on the mouth.
“What took you so long?” she said, yawning and curling back into the blanket, hands pressed together as though praying, only using them for a pillow under her head.
I sat down on the floor and did my best to suppress the urgency building up inside my sternum. It was a sensation that screamed, Tell me everything you know; hold nothing back! But I knew I had to take it slowly, carefully, not give Cassandra any reason to back away.
The Innocent Page 23
