by Joy Fielding
“He died of pancreatic cancer. How can she blame you for that?”
“She blames me for everything.”
I looked toward the receptionist, then over at the two women waiting in the chairs across from us. “What else does she blame you for?” I asked.
My mother smiled and said nothing, her eyes drifting back to the bare bosoms on the pages of Elle. “Oh my,” she said.
“That’s what she told you?” Jo Lynn asked over the phone later that afternoon.
“She says you blame her for his death.”
“She would say that.”
“Do you?”
“He died of cancer.”
“That’s beside the point.”
“There is no point. Not to this conversation, anyway. What did the doctor say?”
“Not much. She’s going to run a bunch of tests. Apparently, Alzheimer’s is one of those diseases that they identify more by a process of elimination than anything else.”
“What kind of tests?”
“EKG, CAT scan, MRI, mammogram.”
“Mammogram? Where’d that come from?”
“Dr. Caffery feels we might as well do a complete physical. She wants me to have one too,” I added.
“You? Why? Aren’t you feeling all right?”
“She thinks I might be starting menopause,” I admitted.
“What?”
“It’s no big deal,” I lied.
“So, are you coming up to Starke with me this weekend?” The question was deceptively casual in its delivery, as if we’d been discussing this for some time and were simply tying up a few loose ends.
“You must be kidding,” I answered.
“I thought you might find it interesting.”
“Not a chance.” There was an awkward silence. “You could do me a favor, though,” I said, surprising myself.
She waited, said nothing. I could almost feel her body tense.
“You could ask your boyfriend what he did with Rita Ketchum.”
There was another pause, this one redolent with silent fury. “You know what?” Jo Lynn asked, her voice edgy and cold, like chipped glass. “If you have anything you want to ask my fiancé, I suggest you ask him yourself.”
Chapter 20
Which may, or may not, explain what I was doing sitting beside my sister as she raced her old red Toyota up the Florida Turnpike toward the state prison outside Starke the following Friday night.
“Don’t you think you should slow down a bit?” I fidgeted in my seat, eyes darting through the darkness for state troopers along the side of the highway. “I thought the police had this area pretty well covered.”
“They never stop me,” Jo Lynn said confidently, as if surrounded by an aura of invincibility. “Besides, I’m not going that fast.”
“You’re doing almost eighty.”
“You call that fast?”
“I think you should slow down.”
“I think you should relax. I’m the driver, remember?” She lifted both hands off the wheel, cracked her knuckles, stretched.
“Get your hands on the wheel,” I said.
“Will you please calm down. You’ll make me so nervous, I’ll have an accident.”
“Look, you’ve been driving for almost three hours,” I said, watching the speedometer stubbornly climb, trying a different approach. “Why don’t you let me take over for a while.”
She shrugged. “Sure. Next time we stop for gas, it’s all yours.”
I stared out the front window at the battery of signs that regularly interrupted the flat stretch of road along the ink-blue sky, most of them announcing the imminent arrival of Disney World, located just outside the city of Kissimmee, twenty miles southwest of Orlando.
“You want to go there?” Jo Lynn asked.
“Where?”
“Disney World. We could go on Sunday.”
I shook my head in amazement. The state penitentiary one day, Disney World the next.
“Or we could do Universal Studios. I’ve always wanted to go there, and it’s around here somewhere.”
“I think I’ll pass.”
“What about Busch Gardens? It’s supposed to be terrific.”
“We were there about five years ago,” I reminded her. “Remember? You went with the kids on that water ride and everybody got drenched.”
Jo Lynn squealed with delight. “‘The Congo River Rapids’ ride! I remember. That’s the place with all the animals. It was great. Let’s go there.” Her head snapped toward me, her eyes appealing longingly to mine.
“Would you please keep your eyes on the road.”
“Party pooper.” Her eyes returned to the highway stretching monotonously before us. “How about one of those alligator farms? You know, the ones you hear about where some poor kid always falls off the bridge and gets eaten?”
“You’re not serious.”
“Of course I’m serious. I love that sort of stuff.”
“I can’t,” I told her, watching the enthusiasm drain from her face, like liquid from a straw. “I promised Larry I’d be home tomorrow night.” Actually I hadn’t promised him any such thing. In fact, Larry had encouraged me to wait until Sunday to make the long drive home. But I knew my tolerance level for my sister would take me only so far.
“You’re such a wet blanket,” Jo Lynn said, her mouth a pronounced pout.
“I’m here, aren’t I?”
She scoffed. “Colin doesn’t know anything about what happened to Rita Ketchum. You’ll see.”
What about Amy Lokash? I thought, but didn’t say. What about the scores of other women who crossed his path and disappeared? “Where is this place anyway?”
“It’s either in Raiford or Starke, depending on who you talk to,” Jo Lynn explained. “Between Gainesville and Jacksonville, in Bradford County. Another couple of hours and we should be at the motel.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever been to Bradford County,” I said.
“Well, it’s one of the state’s smallest counties,” Jo Lynn pronounced with the authority of a tour director. “Its early settlers were farmers from South Carolina and Georgia. The main businesses are truck crops, tobacco, timber, and livestock. The largest private employers include manufacturers of work clothing, wood products, and mineral sand. Population around 23,000, about 4,000 of whom live in Starke, which is also the county seat. Raiford’s even smaller.”
“My God, where’d you learn that?”
“Are you impressed?”
“Yes,” I said honestly.
“Would you still be impressed if I told you I made it all up?”
“You made it up?”
“No,” she said grudgingly. “But I kind of wish I had. Actually, the manager of the motel we’re staying at supplied me with the details.”
“What else do you know?”
“About this area?”
I nodded, though it was my sister who fascinated me far more than the data she was reciting.
“Well, Starke is twenty-four miles away from the nearest airport, which is in Gainesville, and there are three colleges and universities within fifty miles of the county, as well as three community colleges and two vocational schools.”
“Not to mention the state penitentiary,” I added.
“Actually, there are five prisons between Starke and Raiford,” she said, her voice adopting a world-weary tone. “There’s the North Florida Reception Center, for newly arriving prisoners from the north, the Central Florida Reception Center, the South Florida Reception Center, as well as the Union Correctional Institution, which is just across the river from Florida State Prison. Colin will probably be transferred there when there’s a vacancy.”
“I thought he was on death row.”
Even in profile, I could feel the glare in Jo Lynn’s eyes. “They have death rows in both places,” she said slowly, between newly clenched teeth. “The executions, however, take place in Florida State Prison. If Colin were to be executed, and he won’t be
, then he’d have to be transferred back again.”
“What’s happening with his appeal?” The Florida Supreme Court, which automatically reviews all death sentence convictions, had already upheld Colin’s sentence.
“His lawyers are appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.”
“And if they refuse to hear the case?”
“Then there’s a hearing before the governor and his cabinet. If the hearing is denied and the death warrant is signed by the governor, then we petition the Florida Supreme Court a second time with briefs stating that new evidence is available.”
“Even if there isn’t?”
“If that petition is rejected,” Jo Lynn continued, ignoring my question, and continuing on as if she were a recorded message, “then Colin’s lawyers go to the trial court and insist that the defendant didn’t get a fair trial the first time and that he should get a new one. If that fails, we go back to the Florida Supreme Court for a third time with a request to stay the execution.”
“And if that fails?”
“You needn’t sound so hopeful.” Jo Lynn straightened her shoulders, tightened her grip on the steering wheel. “If that fails, we go to the federal district court, where we say that the defendant deserves a stay of execution or that the sentence is unfair. If this court refuses to do anything, then we go to the U.S. Eleventh Court of Appeals in Atlanta, requesting that the execution be stopped. And if that doesn’t work,” she said softly, “there’s a final appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court. If that fails, Colin gets the chair. Would you like to hear about that?” she asked, continuing before I had a chance to object.
“Florida began using the electric chair in 1924. Prior to that, hanging was the execution of choice. Between 1924 and 1964, when executions were temporarily halted because of court battles challenging their constitutionality, Florida electrocuted 196 people. The oldest was fifty-nine; the youngest three were sixteen. Two-thirds of the total were black. Electrocutions resumed in September of 1977, and today there are more than 340 residents living on death row.
“The executioner, a private citizen whose identity is never disclosed, is hired from a host of applicants for the job. He wears a mask when he throws the switch, and makes the princely sum of 150 dollars per execution.
“As for the death chamber itself, it’s pretty basic. A twelve-by-fifteen-foot room whose only furniture is this massive oak chair bolted down to a rubber mat. The source of power for this chair is a diesel generator capable of producing 3,000 volts and 20 amps, although I’m not sure I understand the distinction. At any rate, it’s irrelevant because a transformer behind the chair turns those 3,000 volts and 20 amps into 40,000 watts, which is enough to shoot the body temperature of the person in the chair up to 150 degrees.”
“My God.”
“Once in the chair, the prisoner faces a glass partition behind which is a small room with twenty-two seats, twelve of which are for official witnesses picked by the warden, and the rest of which are for reporters. Just before the execution, the prisoner is taken to a so-called prep room, where his head and right leg are shaved for electrical attachments, just like you see in the movies. What you don’t see is that his head is also soaked with salty water to assure good contact. Of course, when he’s in the chair, his head is covered with a rubber hood. There are also rumors that a tight rubber band has been fitted around the inmate’s penis and a pack of cotton wadding stuffed up his ass. Oh, and did I mention that behind Old Sparky, as the chair is affectionately known, are two telephones, one for the institution and the other for the governor in case he changes his mind at the last minute?”
“Unbelievable,” I said, trying to rid my mind of the graphic images that were filling it.
“Less than four minutes after the prisoner enters the death chamber, he’s toast. The body is then slipped into a dark coat, ready for burial. The state of Florida is nothing if not efficient.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
“I’m not making any of this up,” she said.
“That’s not what I mean.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you’re amazing,” I told her.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I think you’re amazing. I can’t believe you know all this stuff.”
She shrugged. “I’ve been doing a little reading, that’s all. I can read, you know.”
“But you actually remember everything. That’s the amazing part.”
“What’s so amazing? I have a photographic memory. No big deal. Besides, I have kind of a vested interest in all this.”
“Have you ever thought about going back to school, becoming a lawyer?” The idea was forming as I spoke.
“Are you nuts?”
“No, I’m serious,” I said, warming to the idea. “I think you’d make a terrific lawyer. You have a great mind. You have all these facts and figures at your fingertips. God knows, you know how to argue. I bet you wouldn’t have any trouble at all swaying a jury to your point of view.”
“I flunked out of college, remember?”
“Only because you never tried. You could go back, get your degree.”
“Degrees aren’t everything,” she said defensively.
“No, of course they’re not,” I agreed quickly. “But you’d be a natural. I mean, you should have heard yourself. You’re really good at this stuff. I bet you’d do great. You could go back to school, get your law degree, then defend Colin yourself. If anyone can keep him out of the electric chair, it’s you.” My sister, the lawyer, I thought. My brother-in-law, the serial killer.
A slow smile crept onto Jo Lynn’s face. “I probably would make a good lawyer.”
“You’d be great.”
She took a deep breath, held the smile for several seconds, then allowed it to tumble from her lips, like a baby’s drool. “No,” she said quietly. “It’s too late.”
“No, it’s not,” I insisted, even as I knew it was. “We could make some inquiries when we get back home, find out what you’d have to do, how much it would cost. Larry and I could loan you the money. You’d pay us back as soon as you started raking in the dough.” Raking in the dough? I asked myself, knowing I’d traveled beyond the realm of reason into the territory of giddy.
“I bet Mom would give me the money,” Jo Lynn stated, and I held my breath. She’d made me promise not to discuss our mother during the trip, and I’d reluctantly agreed. Now she was the one bringing her up. Was she opening the door, beckoning me to step through?
“I bet she’d be happy to.”
“She owes me,” Jo Lynn said. “Oh, good, there’s a service station.” She quickly transferred lanes and pulled off at the next exit.
The brightly lit service station contained both a gas station and a Burger King. “I’ll take care of the gas if you go get us something to eat,” Jo Lynn said as we opened the car doors and climbed out.
I arched my back, stretched my legs. “Oh, that feels so good.”
“You stupid idiot,” a girl’s voice screamed, and for an instant, I thought it was Jo Lynn screaming at me. But when I looked across the top of the car at Jo Lynn, I saw that her attention was directed at the young couple standing by the car in the next aisle, a blue Firebird as bruised as the young girl’s arms.
The girl couldn’t have been more than sixteen, her boy-friend only marginally older. Both were pale-skinned, fair-haired, and painfully thin, although the boy’s arms were muscular and veined, as if he’d been pumping iron. His cheeks were flushed with anger; his fists clenched at his sides. “Who are you calling an idiot?” he raged.
“Who do you think?” the girl challenged, emboldened perhaps by those of us watching nearby.
“I don’t need this kind of crap from you,” the boy said, opening the car door. “Now, get in the goddamn car. We’re outta here.”
“No.”
“You want me to just leave you here? Is that what you want? ‘Cause I’ll do it. I’ll drive off and le
ave you in the middle of goddamn nowhere.”
I was debating with myself whether or not there was anything I could say or do that might defuse the situation when my sister came up behind me and whispered in my ear. “Stay out of it,” she said.
“Maybe we should call the police,” I said.
“Maybe we should mind our own business,” she countered, directing my attention to the Burger King. “I’ll have a cheeseburger, large fries, and a jumbo Coke.”
I went to the bathroom, splashed water on my face, stared at my tired reflection in the mirror, noting the deep bags tugging at my eyes. “Turning into an old crone,” I whispered.
There was a line at the Burger King counter and it took almost ten minutes for my order to be placed and delivered. “What kept you?” Jo Lynn asked as I handed her the cheeseburger, fries, and soft drink. She slid into the passenger seat while I walked around the car to the driver’s side. If I saw the thin wisps of dishwasher blond hair in the back seat, my subconscious refused to acknowledge it until I was behind the wheel of the car and halfway out of the lot. “Where’s your food?” Jo Lynn asked, unwrapping hers.
“I didn’t get anything.”
“Want some?”
I shook my head. “I’m not very hungry.”
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she said, and I screamed as a thin hand reached across the front seat from the back.
I spun around, saw the young girl with the bruised arms staring back at me, pale green eyes wide and frightened.
“For God’s sake, watch where you’re going,” Jo Lynn admonished with a sly smile. “You want to get us killed?”
I clutched the wheel as tightly as I could, more to keep from strangling my sister than for safety’s sake. Hadn’t she told me, just moments ago, to mind my own business? What was she doing inviting a stranger into our car? Didn’t she know how dangerous it was to pick up hitchhikers?
“This is Patsy,” my sister said by way of introduction. “Patsy, this is my sister, Kate.”
