by Joel Goldman
She hoped they would all ignore her. After all, what could they say to her without being cruel? She closed her eyes and waited. Where was Father Steve? Where was Ryan?
Nick Byrnes was twelve when he learned that his parents had been murdered, not killed in a car accident as his grandparents had told him when he was six and the vague story that they had gone to live with God was no longer persuasive. Truth was he never believed the God story. Nick couldn't imagine having parents so mean that they would leave him to live with anyone else, including God. And he refused to believe in a God that would let his parents leave Nick so they could move in with Him.
The car accident story worked pretty well until he was twelve. His parents didn't leave him on purpose. It was an accident. God didn't take them from him. He took them in. That's what his Grandma Esther had told Nick and it made sense.
One day, in seventh grade, Nick noticed kids at school whispering as he walked by, giving him weird looks like there was an alien arm growing out of the back of his head. His teacher, a flowery smelling woman, kept stopping at his desk, patting his hand and asking him if he was all right. Then one of the older kids, a newly muscled ninth grader named Alex, bumped him in the lunch line and asked him if he was going to the execution.
"What execution?" Nick asked.
"The guy that killed your parents, you dork. Don't you know anything?"
Nick mumbled something, and stepped out of the line, spending the rest of the lunch period in a bathroom stall, his pants down around his ankles and his stomach in his throat. He stayed after school, going to the library to read the newspaper, something he'd never done except to look at the comics. He found the article on the front page of the Metropolitan section of the Kansas City Star. Ryan Kowalczyk was scheduled to die for the murders of Graham and Elizabeth Byrnes committed nine years earlier.
Nick raced home, flush with embarrassment and anger. His grandparents had lied to him again. Bursting into the house, hot tears streaming down his cheeks, he caught his grandmother wrapping a turkey carcass with the newspaper.
"I'm sorry you found out this way," she told him, rocking him against her bosom. That was all she ever said, and it was more than his grandfather would tell him.
A judge had spared Kowalczyk that night when he was only six hours away from getting the needle; his grandparents learned about the stay of execution from a reporter who called for their reaction while they were eating dinner. His grandfather hung up on the reporter, stormed out of the house, returning hours later, sloppy drunk and crying. His grandmother retreated to her bedroom and didn't come out for three days.
That night, Nick had the nightmare again. He'd had it for as long as he could remember, though not in a while. It was always the same. In the dream, he was sleeping, awakened by an invisible, paralyzing fear, sensing that a horrible creature was hovering over him. Though awake, he couldn't see, couldn't move, and could scarcely breathe. A woman cried out, her voice familiar though he'd never heard it quite like that, so terrified, exploding in waves. Men shouting, then the woman screaming again, drowning out the men, drowning out everything as if her whole life was that scream. Then it was dark and quiet and cold, so cold that he shivered, waking up for real, his teeth chattering, holding his knees to his chest so tightly that he lost circulation in his arms and legs.
His grandparents wouldn't talk about the murders, telling him that no good would come of it, leaving Nick to find out on his own what had happened. The Internet made it easy. Not only did he find articles on the Kansas City Star's database, he found the court file on the Missouri Supreme Court's Web site, including the transcript of the trial. He downloaded everything, devoting endless hours to reading and rereading the story of his parents' deaths, at last understanding his nightmare when he learned that he had been in the car the night his parents were killed, his life spared by the quilt his mother used to cover him.
Ryan Kowalczyk was scheduled to die three more times and, each time, Nick wrote letters to the prosecuting attorney, the governor, and the Missouri Supreme Court urging them to carry out the death sentence. A victim's advocate from the prosecuting attorney's office called and thanked him for his letters, telling him to keep writing. A reporter from Channel 6 did a story on him and Kowalczyk's mother who was conducting her own letter-writing campaign to save her son. Nick's grandparents grounded him for a week for making such a public display.
Nick tracked developments in Kowalczyk's appeals on the court's Web site, struggling with matters of due process, laughing at the notion that the death penalty was cruel and unusual punishment. What's crushing his mother's face with a tire iron, he demanded to know in one of his letters, tearing up the empty, apologetic reply from the victim's advocate.
Nick's memories of his parents had faded long ago to gauzy images of faces kept familiar in photographs his grandmother hid in a box on a basement shelf. He felt guilty that he didn't remember his parents well enough to miss them, though he desperately missed having parents. His grandparents did the best they could for him, though they didn't have the energy to raise another child and he detected in their remoteness not only the pain of their loss, but their resentment at the burden they inherited, adding to his own guilt.
Nick hoped that Ryan Kowalczyk's execution would ease their burden and his, finding comfort in justice, no matter how long delayed. There would be no more appeals, no more last minute stays. This time Nick was certain that Kowalczyk would pay and it was only right that Nick should be there to witness his death. The world is round, his grandfather was fond of saying.
Nick had researched death by lethal injection. He knew that Kowalczyk would receive three drugs through the IV lines that would be inserted in his arms. The first drug would put Kowalczyk to sleep; the second would paralyze his diaphragm so that he couldn't breathe; the last drug would stop his heart. Death by lethal injection was supposed to be painless. Anything else would have been cruel and unusual punishment. Even so, Nick hoped for one thing. That in the moment when Kowalczyk's IVs were hooked up to the drug pump, in the instant the poison flooded his veins, in the last second of his life, Kowalczyk would scream.
Nick knew that Kowalczyk's death would not be the end of it. His mother's scream would continue to rupture his sleep. After tonight, there would be more work to do. Whitney King had gotten away with murder long enough.
Chapter 3
Lou Mason didn't know what to do. He had said yes when Harry asked for a ride, listened to Harry's rendition of the case against Kowalczyk during the three-hour drive, and gotten out of the car in the prison parking lot, a driver, not a witness, with no interest in watching someone die.
Harry lumbered ahead, chin down, broad shoulders rounded. Mason hung back, taking in the prison grounds. The main entrance led into the administration building, an unremarkable three-story, brick structure that could easily have been home to some insurance company in Kansas City. Dated, durable, and modest, except for the twelve-foot steel fence topped by razor wire surrounding the grounds, guard towers looming in the corners of the campus, stadium lights showering everything in perpetual daylight, and clouds of moths fluttering in the glare like summer snow.
Behind the administration building, four rows of squat dormitory-style buildings cast long shadows in the artificial light. Each one housed a segment of the prison population, the building farthest away segregated for death row inmates.
Though some of Mason's clients were tenants in the first three buildings, he had kept his clients out of the last.
Slapping at a mosquito drawn to the sweat rising on his neck in the thick night heat, Mason followed Harry inside, glad for the air conditioning. Space was limited, group functions not the prison norm: a couple of chairs, a vinyl-covered sofa, soft light from floor lamps and a weak ceiling fixture, thin brown carpet bearing the brunt of state budget cuts, a picture of the governor on one paneled wall.
The witnesses clustered according to their backgrounds. Cops and prosecutors exchanged biting verb
al jabs, Harry joining them as if he hadn't been retired for a couple of years. Reporters tried to one-up each other, the doctor and the woman from the governor's office shuffled their feet, anxious to be anywhere else. The warden, an older man near Harry's age who was losing the battle with his gut, was the only one wearing a suit, bouncing between the groups, a good host at a bad party. Mason hung near the front door, ready to make his exit.
Mason guessed that the tall, blond-headed kid staring out the window at the parking lot was the son of the murder victims. Harry said his name was Nick. He was raw boned, all angles and no meat, blue polo shirt hanging over bone-colored chinos. A long face stretched by the shadows under his eyes, too dark for a kid but just right for the memories Mason was certain the boy carried. He looked to be the right age and Mason couldn't think of any other reason for the kid to be there. No one talked to the kid-another clue.
On the other side of the room, a petite woman with gray streaks scattered through black hair sat alone in a chair, rubbing rosary beads through her fingers, her hands tight against her dark green dress. Must be Kowalczyk's mother, Mason decided. Harry hadn't mentioned her name. No one spoke to her either.
Mason couldn't imagine a worse fate for a mother than to watch her child die. Stepping into her shoes for a split second was enough to spin Mason's attention back to Nick. Mason realized both he and the kid had lost their parents when each was three years old. Mason's parents had died in a car accident. He felt a strange kinship with the kid, both members of an exclusive club, one without a waiting list to get in.
The warden stopped to talk to the mother. The woman rose, asking the warden something Mason couldn't hear. The warden was shaking his head, the mother smiling grimly, her smile laced with steel. The warden dwarfed the woman. He shrugged his shoulders and turned his palms up, his body language saying he'd like to but he couldn't. The mother stiffened, placing her hand on the warden's arm, rosary beads draped across his sleeve, repeating her request. The warden shrugged again, this time in surrender, leading the mother through a doorway and into the prison. Mason admired the woman's tenacity, wondering what they were arguing about.
Harry peeled away from the cop group. "I talked to Ortiz. He says he'll add you to the witness list, if you want to come," he told Mason.
"Count me out," Mason said. "I don't like the prosecutor doing me favors and that's not much of a favor."
"Suit yourself," Harry said, heading back.
"Hold on," Mason said. "That the kid?" he asked, nodding at the boy next to the window, Harry nodded back. "Nick, right?" Mason asked, moving toward the boy, drawn to the kid by their common loss.
"I'm Lou Mason," he said, sticking out his hand.
"Nick Byrnes," the kid replied, shaking Mason's hand, his grip dry and firm, letting go quickly and staring again at the parking lot.
"Sorry for your loss," Mason managed, feeling like an intruder, but not ready to walk away.
"It was a long time ago," Nick said, not looking at Mason, the practiced response dry as his handshake.
"It's never over though, is it? I mean not even after tonight," Mason said, realizing he was talking about himself, wondering why he was telling the kid things he only thought about when he visited his parents'graves. "My folks died when I was three," he explained. "Just like you. It makes you different from everyone else, no matter what happens the rest of your life."
Nick turned to Mason, his gloomy eyes lighting up, his face guarded by a flat expression. "How did they die?"
"Car accident."
"Right," Nick said, shaking his head.
"Am I missing something here?" Mason asked.
"Sorry," Nick said, shaking his head again. "I didn't mean anything by that. It's just that my grandparents fed me the same story until I found out the truth."
"You were just a kid. They were probably trying to protect you," Mason said.
"That's what they said. So, who was trying to protect you?" Nick asked, the question knocking Mason back.
Harry stood in the doorway to the hall, the warden next to him as the other witnesses paraded past. He interrupted, saving Mason from having to answer.
"Lou. You coming or not? Ortiz says it's your last chance."
Mason looked at Nick, caught the caution in the boy's eyes, waiting for Mason to answer. Mason saw something else. A kid about to watch as the man who killed his parents is executed. The mother about to watch her son die had an edge on agony, but not much of one, Mason decided.
"Yeah. I'm coming," he said.
They passed through three security checkpoint X-ray scanners, emptying their pockets, standing with arms outstretched while a guard passed a metal detecting wand over their bodies.
"Now I know where the airlines learned how to do it," Mason said to Nick as they refilled their pockets.
The boy barely nodded at Mason's weak joke, shuffling his feet like a runner waiting to get down in the blocks, shaking his long arms, twisting his head from side to side, rolling his shoulders, and finally settling his limbs as the warden led them into the witness room. The mother was standing in front of the window looking into the execution chamber. She turned as they entered, a small gasp escaping her throat, her face pale, her eyes red, as her gaze settled on Nick. Just then, a priest wedged past them, crossing the room to the mother, embracing her. Mason overheard their brief exchange.
"Father Steve? Did he?" the mother asked the priest.
"Yes, Mary. Ryan made a confession," the priest said, the mother searching the priest's face with another unasked question. The priest answering. "To everything, Mary. To everything. I'm sorry. He did the right thing."
The woman buried her face against the priest's round chest for a moment, gathered herself, and returned to the window, her palms against the glass, her back to the rest of them. Mason glanced quickly at the witnesses, each of them nodding as they listened, satisfied that justice was about to be served.
The layout of the witness room and the execution chamber reminded Mason of a lineup, suspect and ringers arrayed on one side of a two-way mirror, cops and lawyers on the other. Mason wondered for an instant if Kowalczyk would be able to see them or whether the last image he would see would be his own. The warden answered his question.
"Mr. Kowalczyk can see us but not hear us. We will be able to hear him should he wish to make a last statement," the warden added, pointing to a speaker in the wall next to the window. "I am certain each of us recognizes the solemnity and difficulty of this occasion and will act accordingly."
The warden stationed himself next to the phone by the door, ready to answer if the governor called. No one spoke, a few of the witnesses taking seats in the back row, the others on their feet, holding their ground.
The silence was like an extra witness, crowding the small room, making everyone uncomfortable. The scrape of a chair by one, a cough by another, every sound grating on thin nerves. A round clock with a white face and black numbers mounted on one wall hummed with electrical current, seconds passing with a low buzz. Five minutes left.
Nick edged toward the left side of the window, leaving the right side for Mary and Father Steve, stealing glances at her, twirling a pen with one hand, the other drumming against his thigh. His breathing was shallow, turning rapid. Mason, worried that the boy might hyperventilate, stayed close to him.
Mary ran her beads through her fingers, praying in a soft, staccato whisper, the priest's hand on the small of her back. The door to the execution chamber opened, and Mary ended her prayers, forcing a smile as she let her beads slither to the floor.
Harry migrated to the window, filling the space between Nick and Mary, his jaw set, his eyes dark, his catcher-mitt hands gripping the ledge beneath the glass. His chest swelled as he took a deep breath, holding it as if it had to last forever. Four minutes left.
Ryan was on his back, head flat, no pillow, short brown hair matted, sweat reflecting the floodlights beaming from the ceiling. His wrists and ankles were strapped to the gurney,
his thin white legs and bare feet sticking out from beneath his hospital gown. His palms were turned up, the blue veins in the center of his arms throbbed, impaled with IV needles, white tape holding the needles in place, a trickle of dried blood running toward one elbow, long clear plastic tubes dangling from each arm over the sides of the gurney. He raised his head, holding the angle as he found his mother, moistening his lips as he smiled. Mary smiled back. Ryan mouthed "nice dress," his mother nodding, her eyes glistening.
A guard pushed the gurney into position next to the far wall. Another guard threaded the IV tubes through the small openings until they were pulled taut from the other side by unseen hands. The two guards looked at the warden for a moment, then left, the door sealing behind them. The warden picked up the phone, flipped a switch on the wall, the speaker crackling. Two minutes left.
"Do you wish to make a last statement?" he asked, broadcasting the question into the execution chamber, a hiss of feedback spitting into the witness room.
Ryan craned his neck, whipsawing between the wall hiding his executioners and the window keeping his mother from him, watching for the first trace of death as it slid down the IV tubes toward him. His arms and legs trembled despite the straps, his chest heaved, his neck bulged with corded blood, his eyes widening as if someone had stretched his lids to their limit. He licked his lips again, swallowing to find his voice. One minute left.
Mary spread her hands wide on the glass, tilting her head a bit, her pained smile encouraging Ryan to be brave for both of them. Nick stopped twirling his pen, lacing it between his fingers and clamping down hard. Harry squinted, taking a short breath, his face turning red. The priest wiped his brow with a handkerchief, Mary touching her fingers to her lips, a last kiss.
