True Crime (17 page)

I raised my eyes. I felt tired now and depressed. “So there’s no question in your mind that Frank Beachum was the man you saw running out of the store that day?”

The same swaggering half smile. A virile nod of his circular head. “That’s right. No question whatsoever.”

“You saw his face. You saw the gun in his hand.”

“Yes, I did,” he said proudly. “I guess you could say I’m as sure of that as I am of anything in this world.”

“From the entryway in the back of the store. Where the bathroom is.”

“That’s correct.”

I nodded slowly, looking at him. His round, pink and certain features, that smug simper on them. It was a dumb question, I thought. Was he sure? Hell, yes. Of course he was sure. He would’ve had to be. To convince the cops, to go into court. To fend off the business end of a cross-examination. To send someone to the Death House. He was a cock-proud little man maybe, but he wasn’t a bad-guy, after all. He wasn’t a villain. Of course he was sure. I could not for the life of me remember why it had seemed so urgent that I talk to him like this.

We are going to the zoo!

Porterhouse cleared his throat and glanced down at my
notebook. Roused, I quickly made a show of writing.
As sure as anything … this world
. Across from me, the accountant inflated himself with a breath, well satisfied. He brought his hand to his mouth and lightly groomed his small moustache.

“How could you see anything over the potato chips?” I asked him.

The question came out of me suddenly. I had almost given up on asking it. There seemed no point. Then I had asked it anyway without thinking.

I want to describe what happened after that as precisely as I can. Because precisely nothing happened. Nothing happened at all. Porterhouse did not rear back, one hand flung above his pate in a horror of discovery. He didn’t spill his coffee or stutter lies or fidget with his collar in a revealing way. He didn’t blink.

He simply said, after a moment’s pause, “I don’t understand. What potato chips? I had a very clear view.”

And I knew that he was not telling the truth.

How did I know? How can I explain? If it was nothing I saw, if it was nothing he said. What minute signal, what electrical force, what inaudible intonation, what chemical, what smell convinced me—I couldn’t begin to say. All I know is: I sat across from him, sat across the linoleum table at the Bread Factory, and in the moment’s pause before he answered me, I sensed—something—what should I call it?—his spirit—I sensed his spirit guttering like a candle. And I knew he hadn’t seen Frank Beachum running out of that store.

He wasn’t lying. I was almost sure of that. But he was a little man who wanted very much for people to think he was a big man. This, also, I understood—or thought I understood—without a word. He wanted to be a big man, and for a moment, some six years ago, he was. He had been in a store when a young woman was murdered. He had seen a man
come into the store and chat with the woman behind the counter. And maybe she had apologized because she owed him money. Or maybe he had said:
Don’t forget, Amy, you owe me some dough
. And then Dale Porterhouse had gone into the bathroom to take a leak. And he had heard her cry out,
Please not that!
And the gunshot.

And then the policemen had come. The big, tough policemen with their heavy utility belts and guns. They had asked him what he knew, what he saw. And he wanted them to be pleased with him. He wanted them to clap him on the shoulder and say:
Well done, friend
, in their big deep voices. And there were the girls back in his office whom he wanted to tell, and the men who would envy him, and the trial … By the time the trial started, I think he believed it himself. I don’t think he would’ve committed perjury. I don’t think he would’ve survived cross-examination if it was not all clear to him by then in his mind. I think he believed it then, and I think he believed it now. I think he believed it all until the moment I asked him about the potato chips. Then, for a moment—for that moment’s pause before he spoke—then, I think, he remembered the truth. His memory stood ajar for that moment and the light of his spirit guttered in the breeze. That’s what I saw. And he remembered that he could not see, that he had not seen anything over the bags of potato chips.

Then, I think, in the next moment, he believed his own story again. It was all as fast as that.

“I saw everything, just as I said,” he told me now. “Obviously, I would inform the authorities right away if there were any doubt.”

I nodded. From the cheap chandeliers above, harsh lamplight glared in the corners of my glasses. Through that reflected glare I looked at him. I thought:

He didn’t, he didn’t see it. They don’t have a thing, not a thing, on this Beachum guy. No one saw him. No one heard the shots. No one could trace the gun. They don’t have a
goddamned thing on him. And they’re gonna put him to death tonight
.

“Thank you very much, Mr. Porterhouse,” I said, reaching for my coffee cup.

And what if he’s innocent?
I thought.

W
ho gets the roast beef?”

“That’s mine,” said Luther Plunkitt.

“What do they got on there, Russian?” Arnold McCardle asked him. He handed the sandwich over.

“S’posed to anyway,” said Luther. “Isn’t that un-American?” murmured the Reverend Stanley B. Shillerman. He was always making lame jokes in an effort to be one of the boys.

Luther only just managed to turn his bland smile at him. But both Reuben Skycock and Pat Flaherty answered at once, “Not anymore it isn’t.”

They were sitting around the long wood-finished table in the main conference room. From the windowless walls, official photos of the governor and the president looked down. The core of the Execution Team was there: Luther, Arnold and the other deputy director, Zachary Platt, the two maintenance men Reuben and Pat, and the chaplain. Arnold and Zach were pawing through the paper sacks, distributing the sandwiches and sodas. There was a low burr of conversation and chuckling, the crackle of container lids being removed, of food being unwrapped.

Luther sat back against the leatherette seat cushion and watched them, his sandwich unwrapped in his hand. He felt better now, here, with the boys, talking business. The weight on his insides lightened a little. The image of Frank
Beachum on the gurney dimmed. He just wanted to get through this day, as he had gotten through all the others. This was what the state of Missouri paid him for.

Arnold McCardle peeked under a piece of rye bread at his corned beef. “Seems like there’s more fat and less meat every time I get this,” he said.

Chewing, smoothing crumbs out of his handlebar moustache, Reuben Skycock said, “Ain’t that the way you order it, Arnold? Hold the meat, leave the fat.”

The enormous McCardle’s jowls colored. But he forced his trademark wink. “S’best part,” he said softly. He hoisted the sandwich, dwarfed by his large hand, and tore into it.

Luther could feel himself relaxing. “Now, Arnold’s all right,” he said. “The more of him the better.”

“Amen to that,” said Reuben.

Reverend Shillerman’s damp eyes strained as he tried to think of some banter to chime in with. In that cowboy shirt, those jeans, thought Luther, watching him from the corner of his eye. Hell, even Reuben and Pat wore ties today.

“What do you say we do some work while we feed our faces?” Luther said. He laid his sandwich on the table and began to fold away the wax paper. “Not to put a damper on the party or anything.”

“Man acts like a prison warden,” Reuben said.

McCardle chuckled around a mouthful, to show there were no hard feelings over that fat remark.

Luther took a bite of roast beef and leaned back in his chair as he chewed. “Just want to go over our schedule for the rest of the day,” he told them. “Make sure no one’s in Jerktail when they oughta be in Ferguson.”

“I’m not supposed to be in Jerktail?” Reuben said. But the others were settling down now. They were listening; munching and listening.

Luther went on, setting his sandwich on the table after
his single bite. “First of all, be advised that there’s been a change in terms of this sixteen hundred interview thing with Beachum. The girl they were sending over has been in some kind of accident or something, so they replaced her with that guy Steve Everett.”

Arnold McCardle, his cheeks bulging with food, shook his head and smiled ruefully. When he’d heard about Michelle’s accident, he thought Luther should have seized the chance to quash the whole stupid interview business right there. But good relations with the media were important to Luther. Somehow, Michelle had talked him into this, and he wasn’t going to back out now.

“I figure the
News
owes us one for this,” he said. “And the other papers won’t figure out we’ve broken protocol till next time. As far as Everett goes, I’ve dealt with him a couple times before. He’s a real sleazy smartass. But he gets his facts right most of the time, and his stories are pretty balanced, I’d say, overall. So, actually, I think this is kind of an improvement. Anyway …” He passed briskly on to more familiar matters. “At eighteen hundred hours, everyone, the whole procedure staff, meets here for a final briefing. We’ll review the postings at that time, make sure everyone knows his place. I want everyone to be stationed and ready by fifteen after the hour.”

“Uh … scuse me … Warden.”

Impatience sparked in Luther’s eyes though the bland smile remained in place. It was the chaplain speaking; Shillerman. “Right, right,” said Luther. “The chaplain here’ll be holding a prayer meeting at the end of the briefing which is optional for anyone who wants to stay.” Which would be no one, if it was anything like the last time. Luther pointedly turned away and Shillerman lapsed into silence, picking grimly at the crust of his BLT. Luther went on. “Now at nineteen hundred, Reuben and Pat are gonna be checking all
the phones in the chamber, make sure we got the open lines working.”

“So the governor won’t get a busy signal,” Reuben said.

“Right, and Arnold, you’ll make sure the clocks in there are synchronized and the one in the press room too. Seems we left that out the last time and some of our friends got a little exercised at the discrepancy.”

The others nodded, chewed, listened, and Luther went on.

They would give Beachum clean clothes at 23:00, he said, and get him into the special diaper he had to wear to keep the gurney clean. Reuben would check the lethal injection machine and the Strap-down Team would get the gurney ready with Arnold supervising. They’d check the clocks and the phones again and the machine again too, with special attention to the manual override in case both the electrical systems failed. And at 23:15, all six of them would report to the execution chamber where Reuben would load the machine with three canisters of drugs: sodium pentothal to put Frank Beachum to sleep, pancuronium bromide to paralyze his heart and potassium chloride to shut down his breathing. There would be a saline solution injected in Beachum’s arm for about half an hour before the procedure itself in order to keep his vein open and ready to receive the poison. The solution would also include an antihistamine, which would prevent Beachum from coughing and gagging during the procedure, as this was unpleasant not only for him but for the press and witnesses.

“Now the prisoner will be with his chaplain after twenty-two hundred,” Luther said. There was an embarrassed pause after that—embarrassed because everyone realized that the prisoner’s chaplain would not be Stanley B. Shillerman. It was never Stanley B. Shillerman. Not one of the condemned men had ever requested a meeting with him.
Luther coughed and added, “It’s that black fellah down from St. Louis. Seems a good enough guy and I don’t think he’ll be any trouble.”

He was about to keep going, but Shillerman apparently couldn’t help but put in, “I, uh … I myself had a personal heart-to-heart with the prisoner myself this morning.” He himself shook his head sadly at the memory. “I can’t exactly say he was filled with spiritual remorse. But, going by my experience with men, I think he’s accepted his fate. I can confirm that he won’t be any trouble, in my opinion.”

They all nodded silently, averting their eyes from him. Old Reuben looked like he was trying not to laugh. Luther knew all about his heart-to-heart with the prisoner. According to the duty officer, Shillerman had nearly set Beachum off like a rocket. Luther held his breath. Reverend Shit-ferbrains, he thought. In his dreams, he could feel the point of his boot going right up the useless blowhard’s ass. In real life, however, there wasn’t much he could do about it.

Shillerman, probably sensing the mood, added importantly, “Of course, Sam Tandy in the governor’s office has asked me to keep in personal contact with the prisoner throughout the day.”

Luther smiled more blandly than ever. His gray eyes glinted out from their depths in his putty flesh with a light that was downright metallic. This was the crux of it right here. Sam Tandy. The governor’s aide and, just by coincidence, Shillerman’s brother-in-law. No doubt Mr. Tandy was right proud of himself for having placed his relation in such a good position—that is, in such a good position from which to observe the model prison in action. And to report back to the governor’s office directly. The whole staff knew that Shillerman was the governor’s spy.

The others busied themselves with their lunches while Luther, ever smiling, struggled against the impulse to squash
their resident holy man like the bug he was. Then, having mastered himself, he continued.

“Anyway, the chaplain—Flowers his name is—will be in the cell by twenty-two hundred. The prisoner has so far refused a sedative but—” Luther sighed, “—like the chaplain here said, I don’t think he’s likely to offer up any resistance.”

Now, no one spoke again until Luther was finished. He took them all the way through the operation, though they knew it as well as he. The bigwigs from Corrections would arrive soon after the chaplain. The department director himself would recheck the equipment and phones and would even carry a portable radiophone in case the electricity failed. A hearse would be on hand to carry Beachum’s body to a local funeral home from which his wife Bonnie could pick it up for burial.