Forever (3 page)

Rousing applause greeted this news.

'It sure is, Joe. But as anyone out there
who's been to a supermarket knows, money isn't worth what it used
to be ... '

Carleton set down his sandwich and shot a
scowl at the TV set. Then he went into the connecting bathroom,
plopped his dentures into a glass, took a high blood pressure pill,
and limped back out. He was still wide awake, too wide awake to go
to sleep just yet. Maybe he'd work on the Schneider biography for a
few more hours. Every hour is precious, he thought. And there's
still so much to do.

' . . . And just so nobody gets the wrong
idea, Joe, we've got to make our viewers understand that they
shouldn't be fooled by what seems like a lot of money pouring in.
It really isn't much, not for what CRY wants to do.'

'That's right, Shanna. We've got to make
people understand that knowing someone else is calling in and
pledging a donation just isn't enough. You know, CRY isn't just the
sound of a child weeping, it's -'

' - A call for help,' Shanna finished
smoothly for him.

'CRY needs help all right!' Carleton
snarled, glowering as he snapped off the TV. 'Goddamn hypocrites!'
he muttered.

Just then, from out in the hallway, he heard
the doorbell.

Frowning, he cocked his head. It was nearly
midnight.

'Now who the hell can that be?' he muttered
to himself, before shuffling painfully off to see.

New York City • Raiford Prison, Starke, Florida

'The eighth amendment in the Bill of Rights
is the right to bear . . .no. That is the second. The eighth . . .
'

Pham Van Hau kept his voice soft as he
inserted the key in the last lock and turned it. He was a slim
Vietnamese refugee in his early thirties, and his upcoming U.S.
citizenship test loomed large and foremost in his mind.

The lock cylinder clicked and he opened the
door, slipped into the high-ceilinged reception room with his usual
light step, and drew back as the rank smell of corruption abruptly
hit him. He crinkled his nose in disgust and waved a
slender-fingered hand in front of his face. What on earth was that
smell? Spoilt meat?

Perhaps he took off travelling again, and
forgot to put out the trash, he thought as he closed the door and
bolted it, set down his Balducci shopping bag, and hung up his
light-weight sports jacket on the coatstand. For a moment, he just
stood there frowning, his high-cheekboned head cocked to one
side.

The apartment was quiet.

'Nobody is at home,' he murmured to
himself.

He could always tell right away. Empty
apartments always had that peculiar lack of sound, that feeling of
dead air.

Well, there's no use loitering. But first
things first.

Moving quickly, he pushed open the door to
the double parlour that overlooked the corner of Fifty-seventh and
Seventh. He stood in the doorway and looked around the room. No.
Nothing here. Crossing the room, he threw up the three bay windows.
The sound of traffic from below drifted in, but Pham paid it no
heed. If anything, he welcomed the noise. It made the apartment
seem more alive . . . less spooky, somehow.

Sniffing suspiciously, he went in search of
the source of that sweetly cloying odour. It did not come from the
kitchen. Going from room to room, he raised all the windows to air
out that terrible stench. Passing a sideboard, he ran an
exploratory finger across the top, and left a shiny walnut streak.
Holy Buddha
. The dust! He eyed his finger and then wiped it
off on a handkerchief.
That is what happens when I take a week
off
. . .

Miss Stephanie's old bedroom. The smell
seemed stronger at this end of the hall. Pham's shiny dark eyes
searched the room. No, nothing in here, either. He went into the
adjoining bathroom. 'No,' he said aloud, and frowned deeply.

The guest bedroom at the end of the hall was
neat as a pin; it only needed vacuuming and dusting. And a good
airing out. He threw up the two windows.

Master bedroom. He paused outside the
half-open door, hands on his slight hips. It had to be coming from
in there, that smell. His ears caught the muted sounds of buzzing,
almost like a swarm of bees.
Bees! In the house? In the middle
of the city?
Cautiously he pushed on the open door, breathing
only through his nose.

Straight ahead, an overturned chair lay on
the floor. And directly in his line of vision, a pair of bare feet
dangled slackly above it. He heard a strange whimpering and didn't
realise the sound came from within him.

Trembling, he made his eyes drift up the
naked legs, flaccid abdomen with its shrivelled privates and - oh,
Holy Buddha! - the lolling, bloated features of Mr Merlin! A swarm
of flies, startled by Pham's arrival, rose up from the corpse's
skin and buzzed madly around it like a swirling cyclone.

Pham stood there, frozen in horror. His
employer ... his former employer . . . was hanging from the heavy
Dutch chandelier, a belt around his swollen neck and festering
face. And already, the cyclone swarm was thinning, the body
darkening as the flies blatantly alighted to continue their
interrupted feast.

Pham overcame his paralysis. Stumbling
backwards, he clapped a hand over his mouth and then turned and
bolted back to the reception room as fast as his legs could carry
him. He fumbled with the bolts, threw open the front door and,
although he didn't realise it, was yelling incoherently, as loud as
his lungs would permit - which, neighbours could attest, was loud
enough to wake the dead.

Only it didn't wake Carleton Merlin.

'You know what, lady?' Jed Savitt, convicted
serial killer and death-row inmate, held Stephanie Merlin's gaze
with eyes like flat grey pebbles. 'You're the best piece of tail
ever walked through that door.'

'Cut,' Stephanie Merlin called out wearily
to her camera crew.

The floodlights abruptly dimmed. The
videocam stopped rolling.

Stephanie pushed a hand through her hair,
sighed, and then folded her hands as she leaned across the metal
desk. She locked eyes with the killer. 'Mr Savitt.' She fought to
keep her voice unemotional and professionally clipped. 'Must I keep
reminding you that we are taping this programme for prime
time?'

Savitt's chilly eyes seemed to bore straight
through her, and she shivered involuntarily. They're dead eyes, she
thought with a shudder.
Thank God I'm not alone with
him.

Just the idea made her skin crawl.

Besides herself and him, there were six
others in the small, airless room on death row. Two uniformed
prison guards, the warden, who manned the telephone in case the
execution was stayed, and the crew from
Half Hour
,
Stephanie's syndicated news magazine show which aired once a week
on two hundred independent television stations nationwide.

Stephanie stared at Savitt and took a deep
breath. He was leaning back in his chair, his eyes eating her up.
In his early thirties, he was a six-footer with virile good looks.
He had thick, straw- coloured hair, a strong chin, freckles, and
could have been Mr American Pie - except for a nose that had once
been flattened and one little mental defect. He had a thing about
young girls. And baseball bats.

Stephanie found it hard not to let her
loathing show.

She told herself that this was all part and
parcel of her job. Some job.

Unconsciously, she squared her
shoulders.

Stephanie Merlin was twenty-eight years old
and handsome, too big-boned to ever be called exquisite, and too
challenging and authoritative to be considered beautiful. She was,
however, undeniably striking, and for some reason, camera lenses
tended to emphasise her high cheekbones and wide-spaced, pale-topaz
eyes.

She was five feet nine inches tall, one
hundred and twenty-five pounds, with luminous pale-ivory skin and
strawberry-blonde, shoulder-length hair. She wore it pulled back,
clipped with a large blue bow. Gold earclips in the shape of snail
shells and a simple thick gold necklace set off her dark blue suit
and white silk blouse.

Jed Savitt wondered what she would look like
naked with her hair down while impaled with two baseball bats.

'Let's get a few things straight before we
continue,' she told him in her brisk, business voice. 'I didn't ask
to come down here. Your lawyer called us and offered me an
exclusive interview. See that door?' She pointed and he nodded.

'You're either going to cooperate, or my
crew and I are marching right through it and then it's,
Ciao
baby.
Capishe?
The choice is yours. Now which will it
be?'

Savitt looked at her long and hard and then
grinned. Rather, his lips grinned; his eyes never came to life.
'You know, you're one tough lady,' he said admiringly. 'Sure you
weren't a prison matron once?'

She didn't dignify the remark with a
response and started to push back her chair.

'Okay, okay.' America's most notorious
serial killer waved at her camera crew. 'Tell them to roll.'

Rusty Schwartz and Rob Manelli, the
cameraman and lighting technician respectively, looked at her for
confirmation.

She nodded. 'All right, guys,' she said,
'you heard the man. Pick up where we left off.'

The lights clicked back on, bathing the room
in a glaring white flood, and the tape in the videocam began
rolling.

Stephanie crossed one leg over the other and
continued where they had left off. 'Now then, Jed.' Her voice
sounded appropriately professional. 'You have one hour remaining
until your scheduled execution. Before you die, is there anything
you would like to say to the families of your victims?'

He smiled. 'Stephanie,' he returned with the
easy first-name familiarity of television. 'They were not my
victims. As you know, I was convicted of the ... ah .. . crimes,
yes. But I still maintain my innocence.'

'Then you're saying you did
not
commit the twenty-eight murders?'

'That's precisely what I've been saying
these past seven years, but no one would listen.' He smiled into
the camera, displaying a mouthful of very white and very even
teeth.

'Do you feel hostility towards society about
your sentence?'

'Hostility?' He blinked his eyelids rapidly.
'Why should I feel hostile?'

'If you are innocent, as you claim -'

'I am,' he said automatically.

'Then surely you're of the opinion that
there is no justice, that you're getting a bum rap.'

He shrugged. 'Life's a bum rap. But to
answer your question:

No, I'm not angry. You've got it all wrong.
It's not society that wants to electrocute me, Stephanie. It's the
stupid prosecutor and that stupid judge. Not to mention all those
misguided relatives screaming for blood - anybody's blood.'

'Then you don't believe you've received a
fair trial by a jury of your peers?'

'Peers?' he scoffed. 'Who are my peers?' He
paused, and she was aware of precious seconds of life ticking away.
'Postal workers?' he asked distastefully before pausing again.
'Housewives?'

She was aware that the floodlights, aimed
straight at him, turned his stony eyes into silver pinpoints.

'Are
you
my peer, Stephanie?'

There! He's doing it again! Taking control.
Asking the questions.

All right, tough guy!
she thought.
Let's see how you react to this one.

'Tell me, Jed.' She kept her voice
deliberately level. 'Are you afraid of dying?'

He kept right on smiling at her. 'I'd be a
liar if I said I wasn't. You see, Stephanie, we're all afraid of
dying. Show me one man or woman who doesn't want to live forever,
and I'll show you a liar.' He paused. 'Don't you want to live
forever, Stephanie?' His voice had dropped to the barest
whisper.

The hairs at the nape of her neck rose.

The silence seemed to hum.

Then the telephone bleated. It sounded like
a bomb going off. They all jerked and stared at it - except for
Stephanie. She kept her eyes locked on Jed Savitt.

He thinks it's the governor with a
reprieve
, she realised.

The warden, a tall, ruggedly built man with
salt-and-pepper hair, picked up the receiver by the second ring.
'Warden Woods here.' He listened and then snapped, 'Goddamn it!
Transfer this call to extension one six! And for Chrissakes, don't
tie up this goddamn line again!' Angrily he slammed the phone back
down.

Stephanie's eyes never left Savitt's; now
she saw the hope that had come into them fade, like a lightbulb
dimming.

'That call's for you, Miss Merlin.' Warden
Woods's voice intruded.

She turned to him. 'Who was it?'

'I didn't take the time to ask; we've got to
keep this line clear for the governor or a last-minute Supreme
Court decision. If you want to take it, the extension phone's out
there, in the press room.' He nodded towards the riveted steel
door.

She shot her producer a look. 'Ted, could
you please go and see who it is?'

'Right-o.' Ted Warwick gave her a mock
salute; when the guard unlocked the door and opened it, she could
hear the raised rumble of dozens of voices. Then the door quickly
clanged shut again and the intense silence returned.

Stephanie folded her hands on the table and
looked thoughtful. 'Tell me something, Jed. During the trial, it
came out that you'd been using seven different aliases -'

He smiled and shook his head. 'What you
mean, Stephanie, is that the prosecution claimed I used seven
different aliases. There's a difference.'

'But they introduced evidence! Drivers'
licences, passports with your photographs in them -'

'Really, Stephanie.' He looked disappointed.
'And here I was, giving you credit for being such a smart
girl!'