The Executioner's Song (65 page)

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versation. Several times, Gilmore would say, “I really appreciate rap ping with you. I can’t talk with anybody else here.”

Once in a while they got into deeper conversations. Gilmore would say, “This is stuff I wouldn’t even tell the shrinks,” and men tioned a time when he first went to MacLaren and a couple of boys held him and he was raped. He hated it, he said, but would admit that as he got older, he participated in the same game on the other side. They nodded. There was the old prison saying, “In every wolf is a punk looking for revenge.”

One time, Gilmore made a statement Campbell did not forget. “I’ve killed two men,” he said, “I want to be executed on schedule.”

Then he added, “I want absolutely no notoriety.” His voice was emphatic. He told Campbell he didn’t want news coverage, TV, radio interviews, nothing. “I just believe I ought to be executed, I feel myself responsible.”

Campbell said, “Well, that can’t be all of your motive for wanting to die, Gary, just responsibility?” Gary answered, “No, I’ll be honest with you. I’ve been in eighteen years and I’m not about to do another twenty. Rather than live in this hole, I’d choose to be dead.”

Campbell could understand that. Generally, the LDS Church did believe in the death penalty. Campbell certainly did. He thought to watch a man become more debased, more hateful, more resentful and mean, both to himself and to others on Death Row, was abso lutely cruel. The man was better off, and would change less, and be more himself after he was executed, than right here. It was wiser to pass into the spirit world-and await resurrection. There a man could have a better chance to fight for his cause. In the spirit world, one would be more likely to find assistance than degradation.

Campbell had been an LDS missionary in Korea, then a Chaplain in the Army with an airborne outfit. He taught seminary for six years after he got out. Also worked as a weekend cop. He would pick up a patrol car at six on Friday night, and turn it back in Monday at 8 A.M.

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Since he had grown up in the boonies on a Utah ranch, he never needed any training in firearms. He had carried a gun as a boy, and was pretty quick with it. From the hip, he could hit a gallon can fifty feet away in a quarter of a second. Grew up thinking of himself as a second Butch Cassidy.

He was not too tall, but he would have considered it on the side of sin not to be in good shape and well groomed. He stood real straight, shoulders back, and looked like a marksman. He had the pa tina of finely machined metal. During those weekends when he used to work as a cop, he was on for 24 hours a day, taking all calls. Of course, it was a small town, and he usually had time to go to church, but he carried a beeper so he could always be contacted and actually made more arrests in Lindon City than the other two officers put together, since on the weekend you had to handle every drunk and fracas.

The last time he had seen Nicole was one of those weekends, at two o’clock in the morning. He was driving down a road in Lindon and there she stood hitchhiking. He said, Get in the car, what are you doing out here? It’s dangerous.

He had heard she had a child, and now she was obviously loaded on drugs. He had every reason to take her to jail, but she trusted him, and he saw that she got home. He kept thinking of all the times he had counseled her once a week from five to thirty minutes, and knew what a bad situation she had at home. She had told him about Uncle Lee. It was a touchy thing, however. He could not really get her to go into it. Sometimes she would sit in his seminary class looking dreamy, and have no idea she was there.

Now, on this morning that Campbell went over to find Nicole for Gary, she was asleep on the couch and her two children were asleep on the floor with a blanket over them. After she kind of combed her hair a Little, she let Campbell in. Didn’t even know who it was.

Cracked the curtain. Didn’t recognize him. He said, “How are you, Nicole, do you remember me?” She looked hard and she said, “Sure, come on in.” He said, “I’m Brother Campbell.” She said, “Yes, of course, come in.” They exchanged a few courtesies, and he said he’d come because Gary wanted to see her.

She dropped the children off with her ex-mother-in-law, Mrs.

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Barrett, and on the way out to prison, Campbell discussed her

situation. She just said to him without any particular ado, that if Gary died, she might also.

It was quite a remark for Campbell to keep to himself, yet he could hardly turn it in. His life at the prison consisted of holding secrets.

Sometimes a convict would come in and say a particular man was after him. Campbell wouldn’t go to the Warden and discuss what the man had said. The action taken would enable other inmates to pick up that the man was snitching. They’d be after him even more.

So Campbell didn’t disclose a thing unless it was a matter of life and death. Then he would get the man’s permission.

Now, even though he knew Gary and Nicole were thinking of suicide, he could not speak. That would only increase the pressure. There’d be a guard sitting in Gilmore’s cell every minute after that. He could hardly pretend his mind was easy, however. The quiet way Nicole had discussed it worried him most of all. Except for those occasions when he was angry, Gary had the most relaxed eyes Campbell had ever seen — they looked at everything with no strain, graceful as a good outfielder sitting under a fly ball he would never fail to catch. Nicole’s voice had something of the same. It never stumbled when she told the truth.

October 26 Remember the nite we met? I had to have you, not just physically but in all ways, forever — there was a wild wind blowing in my heart that nite.

It will remain forever the most beautiful nite of my life. I love you more than God. I’m glad you understand the way I mean that Angel. It still feels a little awkward to say. But I mean no offense to anything by a statement like that. I just love you more than anything — I think God would smile. In one of your early letters you talk of climbing in my mouth and sliding down my throat with a

strand of your hair to mend the worn spot in my stomach. You write good.

Last Friday you told me you would like us each to think of the other at a certain hour of the day, that we might become closer. But I never know what time it is here. I can’t see a clock and I just have a general idea of the time. I know they feed at about 6 or 7 or so in the morn and about I or I2 for lunch and around 4 for dinner but I don’t even know if that’s always the same-they might rotate and feed one section first one day and another — the next. Fuck, in short I just don’t know what time it is.

Now darlin we come to something that can’t be avoided discussing. The rest of your life. I don’t want any man to have you. I don’t want any man to have you in any way but especially I don’t want any man to steal any part of your heart.

If I was to look from the other side and see another man with you I can’t say right now what I would do.

I believe that I would seek a way to have my soul, my very being, extinguished forever from existence.

!f a thing like that is not possible I would consider hurtling my soul into the center of the planet Uranus, that most evil of places, that I might become forever such that I could not change.

October 28 Baby I would love to be able to meditate. I already can to some degree. I do, but not real deeply, you know? Even when it’s quiet there’s always the expect.ation of noise. I know you can get the right answer to anything through meditation, but I ain’t, because of my surroundings, very deep into it. It’s more than the noise, you just can’t let yourself go in a. place like this —there is an atmosphere of tension, a climate of violence, in prison —all prisons-and it’s in the air. Lot of paranoid motherfuckers in these places and they walk around putting out negative, hostile paranoid vibes.

I like it a lot that you meditate. I don’t know if I’m too crazy about the automatic, writing. I think with things like automatic writing, Ouija boards, it’s possible to open doors that are better not opened. I think that there are many lonely lost forlorn spirits seeking an inroad into a human mind. All spirits are not benevolent. Many are merely lonely, but many are malevolent, too.

Baby, if you mess with spirits you must beware, i ain’t trying to

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sound dark and.foreboding and I don’t know just how I know this as certainly as I do, but I do know that you got to remain in control. You gotta be stronger than the thing that you are communicating with. Weigh care.fully the “Messages” you receive, and i.f a.fter a while you begin to .feel a pull, something that ain’t right, i.f it makes you .feel sad or strange or in some way not good — then you should back off. Like about everything else in life, yo–u gotta remain in control. Be strong, don’t .fear.

Baby, I don’t know just what happens when you die except that it will be .familiar. It’s just an awful strong .feeling I have-it’s something I’ve thought of, known really, .for years. The thing about dying is that you gotta remain in control. Don’t be sidetracked by lonely.forlorn spirits who call to you as you pass by — they may even reach and clutch.

Whenever this does occur to us we must each keep the other in mind. Somehow, Angel eyes, this is one o.f those things that I KNOW. When you die you will be .free as never be.fore in life-be able to travel at a tremendous speed just by thinking o.f some place you will be there. It’s a natural thing and you adjust-it’s just consciousness unencumbered by body.

Hey, this guy next door to me lets the goddamdest .farts I’ve ever heard. I That that Gibbs was a .fartin mother.fucker-but he don’t hold a candle to this .fool! Loud, harsh, rumbling, angry sounding .farts—Never heard nothin like it. Sounds worse than startin a lawn mower.

Snyder and Esplin had a couple of postmortems with Noall Wootton over the case. They would run into each other in the corridors or the coffee shop, and sometimes bring up questions they had about the other side’s strategy: having won, Wootton did needle them a little, but didn’t think he was too bad about it. His tone went: “Are you sure you suckers got all the cooperation you could from your client?” Or, “Why in Christ didn’t you put his girl friend up there? …. He wouldn’t let us,’; they would answer. All agreed it was quite a question. As long as a defendant was sane and competent, he probably had the right to run his defense.

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Since Gary had been at Utah State, Snyder and Esplin had had little communication. They talked to him on the phone a couple of times, and in the beginning, made arrangements for Nicole to get in, but they didn’t actually go themselves until a couple of days before the Appeal Hearing on November 1. That day, however, they were given physical contact in the visitors’ room at Maximum. Enough space to pace the floor, maybe 15 by 2o feet.

They were coming as the bearers of good tidings. Their chances of getting the death sentence reduced to life were, they thought, pretty nimble. Number one, as they laid it out for him, the Utah statute on the death penalty passed by the last Legislature did not provide for mandatory review of a death sentence. That was serious. Probably, it was constitutionally defective. This criticism, “constitutionally defective,” was about as strong as you could get in such areas of the law. A lot of lawyers felt the Utah statute was almost certainly going to be overthrown by the U.S. Supreme Court. So it was Snyder and Esplin’s opinion the Utah Supreme Court would now be very hesitant about enforcing a death sentence on November 15th. That Utah Supreme Court would certainly look bad if shortly after they let a man be executed the Supreme Court came down against them.

Besides, they had another good legal vein to work. During the Mitigation Hearing, Judge Bullock had admitted evidence of the Orem murder. That had to have a big effect on the Jury. It certainly was easier to vote for a man’s death if you heard about an additional murder he had committed; therefore, Snyder and Esplin were feeling optimistic. The brunt of their defense had been to maneuver onto these good appeal grounds. Now, they were feeling, in fact, a little excited. Some of this would be brand-new legal stuff for Utah County.

Gary listened. Then he said, “I’ve been here for three weeks, and I don’t know that I want to live here for the rest of my life.” He shook his head. “I came with the idea that maybe I could work it out, but the lights are on 24 hours a day and the noise is too much for me.”

The lawyers kept talking about their grounds for appeal. Wootton’s closing argument with his comments on the suffering of Debbie

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Bushnell could easily be called prejudicial to Gary. The prospects were good, even excellent.

Gary paced back and forth, and looked a little nervous. He repeated the difficulties he felt with living in Maximum. Finally, he said quietly, “Can I fire you?”

They replied that they guessed he could. However, they said, they thought they might have to go ahead with the appeal anyway. It was their duty.

Gilmore said, “Now, don’t I have the right to die?” He stared at them. “Can’t I accept my punishment?”

Gary told them of his belief that he had been executed once before, in eighteenth-century England. He said, “I feel I’ve been here before. There is some crime from my past.” He got quiet, and said, “I feel I have to atone for the thing I did then.” Esplin couldn’t help thinking that this stuff about eighteenth-century England would sure have made a difference with the psychiatrists if they had heard it.

Gilmore now began to say that his life wouldn’t end with this life. He would still be in existence after he was dead. It all seemed part of a logical discussion. Esplm finally said, “Gary, we can see your point of view, but we still feel duty bound to go ahead on that appeal.”