The Executioner's Song (38 page)

GILMORE I ain’t going to tell you nothing else without a That’s all, can I eat?

NIELSEN It’s getting close to breakfast time, you hungry?

them.

GILMORE My hand still hurts too …

NIELSEN Without an attorney and off the record, you

swer what I asked you a while ago?

GILMORE What was that?

NIELSEN About why they were killed when you left.

GILMORE

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NIELSEN I hope that’s true because that just worries me, that part. I can’t understand it. I can understand the other. I can understand the stick-up thing.

6ILMORE I didn’t stck nobody up, and I didn’t kill nobody.

NIELSEN IS it all right if I come back this afternoon to talk to you after I check on some of this?

GILMORE I ain’t killed nobody, and I ain’t robbed anybody.

NIELSEN Gary, I hope not but I have a hard time believing other wise. At this point I have a hard time believing otherwise … GILMORE I’m hungry, and I’m in pain.

By the time Wootton got home on Wednesday morning, he had about decided to charge Gilmore with First-Degree Murder on the motel case. While the only print on the gun was too smudged to check out, they had the paraffin test and a witness, Peter Arroyo. He had seen Gilmore in the motel with the gun and the cash box. It looked promising to Wootton.

Around three-thirty that morning, Vai Conlin received a phone call. A

voice said, “This is the police. We have impounded a car of yours.” Val was so drowsy, he said, “Well, okay, fine.”

“We want to let you know we have the car. There’s been a homi cide.” “That’s fine,” said Val and hung up and his wife said, “What was that all about?” He said, “They’ve impounded a car. There’s been a homicide. I don’t know why, I don’t know why, gee, you know.” He went back to sleep. In the morning he’d forgotten about it.

When he came into the office next morning, Marie McGrath was there waiting to tell him.

“You got to be kidding,” said Vail “Did he kill that guy the other night?”

Marie said, “What do you mean, the other night? Last night.”

“Last night?” said Val. He was bringing up the rear in every heat.

“Yes,” said Marie, “they caught him on the one he killed last

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night.” That was when Val heard about the motel murder. The call. 3:30 A.M. came back to him.

A little later, the police were out examining the Mustang. taking out clothing and looking for blood. Val was asked, “Did he trade any guns with you?”

“Not to me,” said Val, “I don’t like guns. I don’t like “Well,” said the cop, “he stole a bunch of guns. We’re looking them.” “Hey,” said Val, “not me.”

The police were there an hour. After they left, Rusty took trash out to the back. She came in saying, “Look what I got.”

The wind had been blowing everything around. She had ered a sack stuffed under an old soft-drink chest. Opening it, found several pistols wrapped in newspaper.

When Val saw them, he shouted, “Hold it, wait a minute. DON’T TOUCH THAT STUFF! Get on the phone. Call a detective!’

When the police came out, they again asked whether Gilmore fered any guns. Val said, “No. If he had, I would have shit. I like guns.”

veant to see policemen I knew getting sent out and their wives left as widows. They’re my neighbors.” She added, “You’re alive, aren’t yOU?”

“It would have been a lot simpler if they’d wasted me out there.”

“I really didn’t want you to get blown away like some common criminal,” she said. “To me, you’re very uncommon. You’re crooked, but you’re not common.”

“You could have taken me,” he said, “to the state line.” “Gary, that’s good dreaming, but it isn’t real.” “I’d have done it for you,” he said.

“I believe that,” she said, and added, “Gary, I love you very

much, but I couldn’t’ve done that for you.”

“You betrayed me.”

“I didn’t know any other way to round you up,” Brenda said. “I love you.”

There was a long pause, and then he said, “Well, I need some clothes.”

“Why did they take yours?” she asked.

“Evidence.”

“I’ll bring some.”

“I gotta have them by ten o’clock.”

“I’ll be there,” she said.

“Okay, coz,” he said, and hung up.

At 9 A.M., Gary was on the phone. “Where are you?” Brenda He kind of snickered. “It’s all right,” he said, “I’m in custody. I get to you.”

She went down to the Provo City Center where they had the new modern jail with the dark brown stone. It looked a lot like the modern Orem City Center with the dark brown stone that also had a jail. She took some of John’s old work clothes. Since she couldn’t get them back, no reason to give away his best things.

She said, “Oooh, God, thank goodness.” Her voice sounded in her ear. She was as strung out from lack of sleep as she’d

been. “Hey, really,” Brenda said, “you okay?” “Why,” asked Gary, “didn’t you come?” “I was scared,” said Brenda. “What about John?” Gary asked. “They wouldn’t let him come, Gary.” “You betrayed e, he said.

“I didn’t want to see you smeared all over Highway 89. I

When she arrived, they had him in some cell downstairs. Told her he hadn’t been arraigned yet, so she couldn’t see him.

“Goddamn,” said Brenda, “the man can’t go into court naked.” “We’ll take it to him,” they said.

Now, while Brenda was still in the lobby, a TV crew arrived; and the hall became jammed with cables and minicameras, and people she’d never seen before in her life. She didn’t have any makeup on,

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her hair was in a dumb ponytail, she had a pair of shorts on: must have looked as overweight as she felt. She just wasn’t abo get on camera.

Gary was being brought up the stairs, however, so she behind a TV rig and a big cameraman, and watched as he went the hall. She could see he was looking for her. To herself, guess I really hate facing him.” She thought she prqbably feel ashamed, but she did.

Mike Esplin, the court-appointed defense attorney, looked a like a rancher. In fact, he came from a ranching family. He reasonable height, pleasantly built, and wore a small brush tache. His eyes were a watery blue-gray as if he had been into harsh sunlight for too long. He was, however, dapper in dress, real dapper: a gray shirt, red tie, a gray plaid suit with stripe.

The first he heard of Gary Gilmore was when the Clerk in City Court of Provo called that morning to say the Judge had Esplin to come over, if he could, for the arraignment.

It was no problem. There was hardly a lawyer in Provo didn’t have offices within a block or two of the Court. But things moving so quickly, Mike Esplin didn’t have an opportunity to anything with his new client. In fact, he only met him in the

room.

Of course, there was nothing unusual about that. A appointed lawyer didn’t even have to be there for the arrm They had called him in this early only because it was a First-De Murder case. Esplin found himself standing with Gilmore in the Court one minute after he had introduced himself.

After the charges were read, they went to an anteroom, and gave a brief opportunity to chat. But the scene was confusing.

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with four or five officers and several news people, they were hardly alone, and Gilmore seemed ill at ease. He immediately said to Mike, “I’m new in the area and don’t know any lawyers.” Then he said he had no funds.

Since Esplin wanted to interview him a little more agreeably than this, they were moved down to the holding room in City Jail, a small cell with two bunks. Gilmore seemed paranoid that someone might be listening in on a bug, so they whispered, therefore, in low voices, and Gilmore said he had gone down to City Center Motel and happened to walk right into the robbery.

When Esplin asked Gilmore why he didn’t go to the police after he was shot, Gilmore said being an ex-con, he was afraid they wouldn’t believe him. To the lawyer, the story sounded like a bunch of bullshit.

In First-Degree Murder cases, the defense was allowed two attorneys, so, after the interview, Esplin went back to his office and called a few people. When two other lawyers told him that Craig Snyder, whom he knew slightly, did good defense work, he phoned and asked Snyder if he wanted to be involved. While he, Esplin, would be doing this as part of his regular salary, $I7,5oo a year, a Court-appointed attorney like Snyder, Mike explained, would be paid $t7.5o an hour for legal work and $22 an hour for Court time. Snyder said that would be agreeable.

Esplin then went back to the jail around noon, and told Gilmore the name of his new attorney. He also mentioned that they would charge Gary with the Jensen murder. Gilmore looked him in the eye and said, “No way, man.”

After the police had driven off, Nicole kept saying that Gary was crazy and she should have left him a long time ago. “That crazy bastard, that crazy bastard,” she was still telling .herself in the morning. When the Orem police called, however, a little before noon, to say they wanted Kathryne and Nicole to come down, she was pretty deliberate and cool about it. Even kind of flat

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She told Lieutenant Nielsen that she had had fights with Gilmore, and left because she was afraid of him. One time, she said, she had to get out of the car and run down the highway because he started to choke her. Then she told Nielsen that Gary had stolen the guns from Swan’s Market in Spanish Fork. Added, “I can’t tell you much more than that.” “Look,” said Nielsen, “I’m not going to prosecute you.” So she told him that Gary had given her a Derringer for protection, but that after a while she felt she wanted protection, from him. ‘

When the interview was over, Nicole said, “Please don’t tell him I told you these things because …” She paused and her seemed to slide away from all of them. It was as if she was lookin something a distance away, and then she murmured, “Because I love him.” A little later Lieutenant Nielsen drove her to the ment in Springville and Nicole turned over her gun and a box bullets. Nielsen couldn’t get over how depressed she was about it He was used to taking the depositions of people who were real but Nicole would equal any of them.

After he came back to the station, the Lieutenant began to into what evidence had accumulated. Two casings had been under Jensen’s body, and one in the blood by Bushnell’s head. Tho were useful, because an Automatic’s markings were easy to

It looked like Provo would have authentication for Bushnell, Orem for Jensen. If they could tie the gun to Gilmore, the case solid.

Nielsen went over to see Gary about five in the evening. had moved him already from Provo City Center to County, and was one old jail. It was dirty. It was noisy. A real slammer. had a real interview.

He brought along a briefcase on which you could flip the and a tape recorder inside would start functioning unseen. He dare take it, however, into the cell. Gilmore would have the ri inquire what was in that briefcase, and whether he was being orded. Nielsen would then have to open it up. That would

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confidence Gilmore might have in him. So he left it turned on in the hall just on the other side of the bars. It would pick up what it could.

The county jail had to be one of the oldest buildings in Utah County. By July, it was hot enough inside to offer a free ticket to hell. With its windows open, you had to breathe the exhausts of the freeway. The prison sat on the edge of the desert in a flat field of cinders midway betweenthe ramp that came off the freeway and the one that went up to it. The sound of traffic was loud, therefore. Since a spur of railroad track also went by, boxcars rumbled through the interview. When Nielsen tried listening to the tape recorder in his of-rice, the sound of traffic on a hot summer evening was the clearest statement he could hear.

The detective had hopes for the interview. He felt Gilmore would talk ever since the moment right after the capture in Pleasant Grove when Gary asked for him. Nielsen had a strong feeling then that there would be a chance to get his confession. So he moved quickly and not at all unnaturally, into the role of the old friend and the good cop.

In police work, you had to play a part from time to time. Nielsen liked that. The thing is, for this role, he was supposed to show compassion. From past experience, he knew it wouldn’t be altogether a role. Sooner or later, he would really feel compassion. That was all right. That was one of the more interesting sides of police work.

He had had his experiences. Years ago, when a patrolman, Nielsen did some undercover work in narcotics. There was a working agreement then with the Salt Lake City Police. Because Orem was still small, its police were well known to the locals. To get any effective undercover work, they had to import officers from Salt Lake City. In turn, Orem paid back the debt by sending a few of their own cops. That was how Nielsen first got into it.

His personal appearance, however, presented a problem. He had been a scoutmaster for seven or eight years and looked it. His substantial build, his early baldness, his eyeglasses and red-gold hair gave him the appearance of a businessman, rather than a fellow who might be dealing in drugs. For cover, therefore, he had pretended to

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be a Safeway meat-cutter, a job he knew something about, since had done a little of that while working his way through BYU. even had a union card.

In Salt Lake City he became known for a time as the meat-c who was always looking for dope on the weekend. That worked. A of meat-cutters weren’t known as the straightest people. even used to wear working clothes that showed bloodstains on chest of’his white smock, and below the knees of his white where the apron gave no protection.