Cold Fear

by Rick Mofina

  “Tracy, I--”

  She saw desperation in his face. In the short time they talked, they both realized they were two painfully lonely people at the crossroads of their lives. Each had something the other wanted, needed, yearned for. Yet each was so afraid. A strange feeling came over her.

  Would he be good with Mark?

  What was happening? It was like meeting someone wonderful at a funeral. There is time, Bowman thought. If it is meant to be, there is time.

  “The morning is almost here, Frank,” she said. “We’ve got to see this thing through to the end.”

  He nodded and walked off, checking his watch. He was going to his room to review the videotaped interviews of Doug and Emily Baker. In a few hours he expected to be laying charges in the death of their ten-year-old daughter, Paige.

  FIFTY-THREE

  Emily was alone, listening to the night wind whipping her tent at the command post. Depriving her of sleep, of rational thought, fraying her soul.

  She was slipping from sanity into a yawning abyss.

  Paige’s face. Rachel’s eyes. Falling.

  God. Please.

  Darkness into darkness. The accusing wind.

  Where’s Rachel? Where’s your sister?

  Where’s Doug? He’s been gone so long. The FBI took him. Zander took him. Leaving her alone with strangers. The agents, who never smiled, were watching her, and it was so cold. Lord, help me. I am begging you. End this, please. If Paige is not alive, I cannot bear to face it again.

  My Sun Ray. Her eyes. Her hand brushing mine, slipping from mine.

  The wind would not stop.

  Remembering her obsession after it happened. After Rachel died, her need to comprehend, to understand, to know...what a human being experiences in the seconds they are falling to their death.

  She had to know.

  Emily actually studied it.

  Terminal velocity. Vestibuar sensory input. Horror in her eyes. The overload of messages through the neurological system. The automatic impulse to defy reality by “grabbing at air” in order to save one’s self. Fear in her face. Hands reaching. Suspended in space as the earth rushes to hammer your life into heaven. Knowing death was upon her. The “agonal phase,” the instant before death when all that is physical in a being ends. Did she suffer? Emily had spent her life searching to know if her sister could have been comforted by some spiritual phenomenon.

  Rachel was only five years old.

  Did she suffer? She had to know.

  The wind would not tell her.

  Where’s your daughter, Emily? Where’s your husband?

  Doug had been alone with Paige. Had been the last to see her.

  Emily, I sent her to be with you. I thought she was with you. She followed you with Kobee, I swear, not more than five minutes after you left. I thought all this time she was with you.

  His hurt hand. Her T-shirt was wrapped around it. Chopping wood. They had argued so intensely. He was incensed with her for not talking to him about her family history.

  No.

  Stop thinking like that. She was drunk with exhaustion. Struggling.

  She was slipping. Falling.

  Paige, come back, please.

  FIFTY-FOUR

  Is Paige still alive?

  She has to be.

  Doug had to hope beyond hope. Not give in to doubt, the traitor. Paige had to know he had not abandoned her.

  Bitter winds shook the command center, clattering the window of his room. He lay on a soft, dry cot, under the warmth of a woolen blanket. A huge bowl of vegetable soup and butter biscuits sitting cold, untouched a few feet from him, tempting him, mocking him. He broke down and wept.

  If Paige was alive, she was fighting for her life.

  He had no appetite.

  Oh, Paige, can you ever forgive me?

  If you’re dead…

  Doug stared as his wounded hand.

  She had only wanted to talk and I chased her away with an ax in my hand. “Get the hell away from me and go find your damned mother!”

  Emily.

  Emily had a sister. Her sister was dead. Emily was present with Isaiah Hood when he sister was killed. Do I actually believe my own wife could have harmed my daughter?

  The night they arrived in Montana.

  He recalled again watching Emily slip out of bed at the Holiday Inn watching the TV item about Hood’s execution. He remembered glimpsing her as she rummaged through her purse, retrieving something. She sat by the window, staring at the retrieved item, then into the night, weeping softly.

  In the morning when Emily showered, he scoured her bag and found it. Old snapshots. She had sat up studying old pictures. Girls. A group of girls playing in the mountains. Smiling, laughing. Childhood friends, he thought.

  One of the girls looked familiar.

  It became clear to him now.

  The face in the newspaper. The little girl Isaiah Hood had murdered. Emily’s sister.

  Rachel.

  Oh Christ. It’s true. The FBI is not lying. He had not wanted to think about it. It was starting to fit together. This was the ghost of her past.

  What do the police know that he didn’t?

  His skin prickled.

  They were digging hard into their lives. Revealing nothing.

  “Do you know Cammi Walton?”

  Yes. Most teachers knew Cammi was having terrible problems with her parents’ divorce.

  “Did you strike her?”

  Had she made a wild accusation about him? It’s possible. Her life was in turmoil. She’d had outbursts. He had done nothing wrong.

  His lawyer telling him, “The fact is they are trying to build a case against you. They want to charge you.”

  Doug had to find out the truth about his family.

  About his wife.

  They know. The FBI knows something.

  The wind swirled.

  “Will you love me always no matter what, Doug?”

  Paige.

  Not a trace of her. Not a trace.

  Doug searched the darkness for answers.

  FIFTY-FIVE

  Tom Reed called his wife, in Chicago, on the chance she would be up so he could say good night to her and their son, Zach.

  “He’s sleeping like a log. Went to a Cubs game tonight with his uncle. Do you want me to wake him?”

  Ann had just returned from her sister’s bridal shower.

  It was late. Reed was alone in his darkened room at the Sunshine Motel. Missing his family as the night winds blew down from the Rockies near Kalispell. His TV muted on All the President’s Men.

  “No. Let him sleep. Say, he’s been doing pretty good, hasn’t he?”

  “Yes he’s doing quite well since…the thing.”

  The thing.

  That was Ann’s name for Zach’s abduction and near murder in the case of a madman who held three San Francisco children hostage several months ago. Reed had been reporting on it when “the thing” reached into their lives and nearly destroyed his family.

  “Tom, you never answered my question. What do you think happened to that little girl in the mountains?”

  He had told her about obtaining Emily Baker’s confession-like letters, interviewing Hood, the looming execution, the FBI polygraphing Doug Baker, how everything was mounting with increasing intensity.

  “It’s difficult to know what happened. Isaiah Hood could be innocent. The Bakers--Emily Baker, because of her troubled past--could be guilty of something. You and I know firsthand that scenario is realistic. But she could be the victim of circumstance. Who knows?”

  “Hmmm.” Ann digested what her husband said. “Well, the entire search story is playing big here. Front of the Tribune and the Sun-Times. Local TV have people on the scene.”

  “It’s the story of the moment.”

  “I’d love it if you were here right now, Tom.”

  “Would you?”

  “Mmmm. To help me undress and rub my back.”

  “Well
, I’d love it if you were here in the Sunshine Motel with me.”

  “Hey, are you sure you’re going to make it to Chicago for the wedding?”

  “Yes. Molly Wilson’s here. I’ve checked flight times and--”

  “Molly’s there? Why?”

  “The Star wanted more bodies on the story; it’s building. Besides, I can throw to her when it’s time for me to go.”

  “Well, you just better make it for the wedding in Chicago, or you’re fired.”

  “Fired. From what?”

  “Your job as my personal masseur.”

  “Don’t rub me the wrong way, lady.”

  He loved the way she giggled.

  “Good night, idiot. I love you,” she said.

  Reed switched off the TV and fell into a fitful sleep, wondering if Isaiah Hood, a man he had met a few hours ago, was innocent of the crime he was going to be executed for a few hours from now.

  In the darkness, Reed saw Hood’s eyes. Pleading.

  “I’d like to know why she put me here.”

  Emily Baker sobbing before the cameras for her lost daughter.

  “She is all we have in this world.”

  Her letters to her friend over her little sister’s murder twenty-two years ago.

  “I am guilty of her death. I will never forget her eyes staring into mine as she fell. God, please forgive me.”

  FIFTY-SIX

  Four guards, bearing chains and somber faces, came to Isaiah Hood’s cell, standing before him like his pallbearers.

  The most senior guard, the one with the kind eyes, touched his shoulder and said softly, “It’s time, Isaiah. We have to move you now.”

  Move you closer to your death.

  The other men averted Hood’s gaze, allowing him a final, private look at the eight-by-ten-foot space that had served as his tomb for twenty-two years of his life. All of his personal effects had been dispatched, given to other inmates--his books, his chess game. Hood swallowed hard, absorbing his cherished poster of Montana’s Rocky Mountains. That was going to David Cohen, for his Chicago law office. Hood was transfixed by it. His gateway to paradise.

  That is where I live. That is my home.

  Although it was a practiced security ritual, the guards were more solemn than usual slipping the chain around the waist of Hood’s orange prison jumpsuit, locking a link to the handcuffs that secured his wrists.

  Hood closed his eyes, clasping his hands.

  Tense seconds ticked down with all four corrections officers hoping Hood’s sessions with his spiritual adviser and the Warden, who gently stressed the virtues of “being a man and facing his consequence with dignity,” would make the process a smooth one for them.

  Hood opened his eyes to his poster. A last drink of paradise.

  Then he faced the senior guard. His knees weakened. He overcame it, nodding.

  “Let’s go, boss.”

  The machine was in motion.

  A certified copy of Hood’s death warrant had long ago been delivered to the Helena office of the state’s director of the Department of Corrections. In accordance with Montana’s Corrections Act, Montana’s Execution Procedural Manual requires that at least twenty-four hours before execution, a condemned offender is moved from his cell to an isolated holding cell.

  The Death House.

  The ringing of Hood’s shackles echoed as he was escorted down death row’s corridors, past the cells of other condemned men, who offered farewells.

  “God’s speed, Isaiah.”

  “Meet you on the outside, my friend.”

  “Freedom, brother. Freedom.”

  Hood looked straight ahead. Unblinking. His body numb. He was taken to a seldom used area of death row. Out of range of the noise and clamor of prison activity, the place where his death sentence would be carried out in the manner prescribed by law.

  Electric current hummed. Keys jingled. Steel doors clanked, rolled and thudded. Hood entered his new reality.

  The Death House.

  He felt the temperature drop. His heart skipped a beat. He exhaled slowly. They had incarcerated him in the holding cell with floor-to-ceiling bars so they could easily keep a suicide watch.

  The senior guard, his eyes mixed with duty and compassion, looked hard into Hood’s face after they had removed his restraints.

  “You take it easy now, Isaiah,” he said softly.

  Hood nodded.

  Then the barred door closed on his cell.

  It was the same size as other cells, only its walls were cream-colored. Supposedly, psychologically soothing. There was a bunk, a pull-down shelf table, a pad of lined yellow prison-issue paper and envelopes for letters, and a form for last meal request. Nearby, outside the bars, there was a TV stand supporting a small color TV controlled by the prison. Near it stood a small table draped in white linen with a telephone and a Bible resting upon it. A short distance down the corridor was a private shower. As the Warden had already explained to Hood days earlier, “You can shower beforehand if you choose, Isaiah.” Several feet from Hood’s cell sat a guard at a desk with a computer and telephone. He gave a gentle wave. According to the procedural manual, guards would take shifts performing the pre-execution duty of keeping a vigil over the condemned offender.

  Upon Hood’s arrival, the guard’s computer keyboard began clicking as he created a new file and typed:

  AO#A041469

  ISAIAH HOOD

  DEATH WATCH

  The guard noted the time and Hood’s activity.

  “Sitting on bunk.”

  An hour later, the guard typed: “Talking with spiritual adviser.”

  Reverend Phillip Wellsley was from a small church near Anaconda. In his late seventies, with a hunched back, he had white hair and a pale wrinkled face. He smelled of vinegar and sat in the chair on the other side of the bars of Hood’s cell, reaching in to pat his shoulder as he talked.

  “Soon you will stand before the Creator debt-free, my son. To begin life anew in eternity.”

  Hood was motionless. His eyes glistening. His whole life was a mistake.

  The first of the cars and vans of death penalty opponents began arriving in Deer Lodge. They had come at their own expense from all over the United States and Canada. College students, doctors, mothers, clergy, retired soldiers, school teachers, compelled to act on their beliefs. They assembled that night at a local church to make placards and begin a prayer vigil. At dawn on the day of Hood’s execution, they would travel to the edge of state property where they would stand in serene protest before prison security vehicles within sight of the penitentiary and the majestic Rocky Mountains. Among prison staff in death penalty states across America, they were known as “the candle people.”

  Inside the prison, as Reverend Phillip Wellsley said good night to Hood, preparations for Hood’s death were being made.

  Outside, just beyond Hood’s cell, within a few final paces was the double-wide trailer that has been fashioned into Montana’s execution chamber.

  Hood knew the procedure. Every detail of it. Tomorrow night, at the stroke of midnight, the Warden would come to his cell and read his death warrant; then he would be handcuffed, removed from the cell, escorted outside a few short steps to the small death chamber and the waiting gurney. Hood would be requested to hop up on to it, whereupon his body would be secured at five points by thick caramel-colored leather belts. His arms would be extended and secured onto the armrests, which were encased in white medical tape, filling the chamber with the antiseptic smell of a health clinic.

  As a medical official would affix an IV to Hood’s arm and a monitor cable to his heart, he would gaze around the intimate plain room, at the bright light above, hearing the witnesses shuffle into place at the nearby viewing area, feeling their steps vibrate on the trailer floor. He would look at the two dedicated phone lines on the wall of the room. One to the governor’s office, the other to the attorney general’s office. The lines would remain open during the process in the event of a last-mi
nute stay.

  The warden would ask him for any final words, then offer him best wishes, as the prison chaplain would pray and the process would commence. Beyond the prison walls, the candle people would begin singing “Amazing Grace.” The IV tubes from Hood’s arm would run through a small port into the executioner’s room where an anonymous medical official would begin the lethal injection as the chaplain would pray.

  “Naked and alone we enter this world. Naked and alone we leave it.”

  First, a flow of Sodium Thiopentol would put Hood into a deep sleep.

  “Look to the light, son.”

  Followed by a large measure of Pancuronium Bromide to relax his muscles. Then the lethal dose of Potassium Chloride, which stops the heart. The price of death? About $75 for a process that would take less than ten minutes. Hood would be declared dead and his death certificate would be signed. A hearse waiting at a secured area within the prison walls would take his body to a local Deer Lodge funeral home where his remains would be cremated and, in keeping with his wish, his ashes taken by his lawyer, David Cohen, to be dispersed in Glacier National Park among the Rocky Mountains.

  “It is not over yet, Isaiah.”

  Odd, he heard David’s voice comforting him. Then Hood saw him, on the other side of the bars of his cell, as he came back from his thoughts to listen to his lawyer.

  “The interview with Tom Reed will help. His story will have an impact, take us closer to our goal.”

  Hood just stared at him. He could see David was ashen, scared to death himself. “I’ve got something planned for tomorrow morning, Isaiah.”

  So do I, Hood thought.

  Hood heard the clicking of the guard’s computer keyboard.

  “Visiting with lawyer.”

  “I am not guilty of her death anymore, David.”

  “Yes, I believe you. I am doing something in the morning.”

  “What is there left to do?”

  Cohen did not answer because the guard apologized and said their “time was up.”

  Cohen patted Hood’s hand, his eyes shone. He bowed his head and left. “I’ll be back to see you tomorrow.”