Fury (22 page)

Saturday, September 22
11:38
P.M.
Day 6 of 6

It was like a small-town carnival. Bright ballpark banks of mercury vapor lights threw an unholy purple glare on the overhead coils of razor wire. The blaring music made the ominous front gate of the Washington State Penitentiary look like the clown’s-mouth entrance to the fun house. Closest to the wall, an irregular midway sported food stands, T-shirts, souvenirs, and sno-cones. The remaining commercial sprawl was spread haphazardly about the parking lot, as if the vendors had been unable to agree on any pattern of arrangement whatsoever. Farther back in the shadows, a herd of motor homes grazed placidly among the bands of vans and packs of pickups. Maybe a dozen remote TV feeds, parked hip to hip inside the first chain-link fence, pointing their blank white eyes at the sky. The seething crowd was nervous and constantly on the move. Hard to count. Two, three thousand anyway, Dorothy figured. The air was electric.

Warden Danson was a short, contentious-looking man with eyes like rivets. He’d met them just inside the west gate, his breath rising toward the orchard of stars in the night sky, his small hands massaging each other for warmth.

Without bothering to introduce Dorothy, Marvin Hale had pulled Danson aside. They’d spent the past five minutes forty feet away, gesturing like spastic mimes and hissing at each other in stage whispers.

What, from the outside, had appeared to be a single stone wall was actually two parallel walls, with the guard towers spanning the gap at intervals. A prisoner scaling the inside wall, instead of facing a mere half dozen steel fences, two of which were lethally electrified, found himself trapped between the proverbial rock and the hard place of song and story. Almost wasn’t fair.

Hale used one hand on Dorothy’s elbow and the other to point to the right. Dorothy looked down his arm. At that moment, a red light came on over the door at the far end. “Go down to that door,” Hale said. “They’re expecting you. Whoever’s there will take you to witness orientation.”

Dorothy pushed the little button on the side of her watch and the dial lit up: 11:40. Twenty minutes to go. Without a word she turned and began marching toward the light, stepping along, her arms swinging smoothly at her sides, her chin held high. Inexplicably, “Onward, Christian Soldiers” began to play in her head.

11:40
P.M.
Day 6 of 6

“I seen seventeen of ’em go now,” said the sergeant. “You see enough of them, you learn to tell the difference.” Smitty looked reverentially at the sergeant. This was Smitty’s first execution. He’d requested the death-watch assignment because they said it was quiet in the death house. None of that screaming-in-their-sleep babble of the cell blocks. Everybody said, Hell, the state of Washington never offs anybody anyway. Easy duty, they’d said. Now Smitty wasn’t so sure. During the past week his dreams had turned increasingly gruesome. Turned to nightmares of such severity that, on three occasions, some primal instinct had been forced to intervene, shouting at him from the darkness of sleep, “Wake up; you don’t have to die; it’s just a dream,” catapulting him upright in bed, his lungs empty from gasping, his cheeks washed with tears.

“Seen the big mouths who talk a good game. They’re always the ones we got to stop halfway down the mile and hose out their pants for ’em. Seen the mealymouth little bastards you gotta carry the whole damn way. Little fuckers get so strong at the sight of the table, takes eight of us to strap ’em in.”

“How do you figure old Walter’s gonna go?” Smitty asked.

The sergeant chuckled. “Walter’s gonna walk down that hall like he’s goin’ out for an ice cream cone.”

“You really think so?”

“Count on it, kid,” the sergeant said. “That guy’s known nothin’ but hate his whole life. No way he’d give anybody the satisfaction of seeing him crawl. He’ll jump up on that damn table like Cindy Crawford’s waiting up there for him.”

For reasons he couldn’t explain, the image made Smitty feel better.

11:52
P.M.
Day 6 of 6

“Please remember that Mr. Himes has a right to make a final statement,” the woman was saying. “We have no control over the content.” She looked up from the page in her hand and noticed Dorothy for the first time. “Are you…,” she began. Eight heads turned Dorothy’s way. Two Butlers, two Nisovics, two Tates, Alice Doyle, clutching a picture of her daughter Kelly in her lap, and on the far left, John Williams, come all the way from South Dakota in search of something without a name. Dorothy waved a hand at the woman, as if to tell her to carry on, which she did. “Sometimes inmates express contrition, sometimes not.” She checked the crowd. “You’ll need to be prepared for whatever he might say.”

She looked from person to person again. “We insist that you refrain from saying anything to the inmate. Although I am given to understand that Mr. Himes will not have family members in attendance, I believe his ACLU attorney, Mr. Adams, will be there. So for the sake of Mr. Adams, at least…” She let it go.

She turned the paper over in her hand. “On the back,” she said and waited for her stunned audience to follow suit, “on the back is a description of the inmate’s final hours. “At ten-thirty this morning, Mr. Himes was transferred to a segregation cell adjacent to the death chamber. At six o’clock this evening, Mr. Himes had a final meal of cheeseburgers and French fries. Between ten o’clock and eleven, he spent an hour with his mother. Subsequently, Mr. Himes was afforded the opportunity to consult with clergy…an opportunity which Mr. Himes rejected.” She checked her watch. Dorothy did too. Ten minutes.

“So that you’ll know what to expect, let me tell you what’s going to happen.” Again she paused to let the audience catch up. She began to read from the sheet. “In the state of Washington, lethal injection comes in three phases. The inmate is first injected with thiopental sodium which many of you know as sodium pentothol, or truth serum. The first injection immobilizes the inmate.”

The first injection would immobilize a rhinoceros, Dorothy thought.

“One minute later the inmate is injected with Pavulon. Pavulon is a curare derivative that immediately halts the diaphragm.”

Mrs. Butler’s shoulders began to shake. Her husband rubbed the back of her neck. Whispered in her ear.

“One minute later the inmate is injected with potassium chloride, at which point the heart can no longer beat. Inmates generally emit an audible gasp at this point.” She checked the crowd again. “A minute later the inmate is pronounced dead.”

Sounded almost serene. Except that Dorothy had once heard a couple of medical examiners discussing the process.

“They make it look like the guy’s just gone to sleep,” one of them said.

The other had laughed out loud. “Are you shittin’ me? All three of those drugs have a pH higher than six. Must feel like the fires of hell are being injected into your veins. If they could, they’d sit straight up and make noises like nobody’s heard on earth since the Spanish Inquisition.”

The other guy had nodded grimly. “Except, strapped down, with the lungs immobile, the closest you can get to a scream is that one little gasp they all let out.”

“Yeah,” said the first guy. “In the end, all they leave you with is the whimper instead of the bang.”

And then, on the other side of the glass, Himes stepped into the death chamber. Standing there. Bald. No eyebrows. He cast a contemptuous glance at the white-covered gurney and then stood glaring at the viewing window.

“You all got your popcorn ready?” he asked.

Warden Danson now entered. “Mr. Himes would like to exercise his constitutional right to make a final statement,” he said.

Himes stepped closer. “I ain’t neva killed nobody,” Himes said. “So I know where I’m goin’ from here.” He took them in again, moving only his eyes. “Probably the same place you-all think you goin’. So if we both right, old Walter Lee’ll see you when you get there.” He showed the stubs of his teeth. “And if we ain’t…I’ll see you-all in hell.”

Alice Doyle got to her feet and pressed the picture of her daughter Kelly tightly against the glass. She turned back toward Dorothy, her pouchy eyes streaming.

“I want this to be the last thing he sees. The very last thing,” she cried.

Somewhere in the room somebody was making noises like a gored animal.

Dorothy turned and ground her face into the wall.

Sunday, September 23
10:15
A.M.
Day 6 + 1

Corso dreamed of that cobbled street again. Of the soldiers and the door intended solely for him. Only this time, in the moment when he closed the door behind himself, before putting that first foot on the tread and watching the walls fall away…this time someone began knocking on the door. The knocking got louder. He hesitated, foot in the air, torn between the insistent sound at his back and the bright promise waiting above.

Corso sat up in bed. More knocking as he struggled into a Mariners T-shirt and a pair of black sweatpants. Slipped on boat shoes. Up three steps, into the galley.

Corso checked the clock over the nav station: 10:15
A.M.

With a yawn, he pulled open the door and stepped out on deck, rubbing his eyes. The wind was up. Overhead, the sky was electric blue. No clouds at all. He checked the tops of the masts. Six, eight knots from the south. All over the marina, loose halyards banged against masts like drunken tinkers.

Wald and Donald. Cleaned and pressed. Showered, shaved, and swapped suits.

Hadn’t helped Donald as much as it helped Wald, though. On Wald, the extra lines seemed to disappear into his already pouchy face. Donald, on the other hand, looked like he’d been snorting speedballs for a week. For some reason, Corso was cheered by the sight.

“A little early for protecting and serving, don’t you think?” Corso said.

“We never rest,” Wald assured him.

“You seen the papers?” Donald asked.

“Not yet.”

“I’ll bet you missed our press conference too.”

“Next time I’ll set the alarm.”

Both cops checked the area. “We kept it simple,” Wald said. “Phone tip. We go out for a look-see and, out of the blue, the guy attacks us. Densmore and Defeo get offed in the struggle.”

“Works for me,” Corso said, rubbing his face with his hands.

Donald stepped in closer to Corso. His blue eyes were filigreed with red. “You sure?” he asked. “Last night isn’t going to show up in a book or something, is it?”

Corso looked him over. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I spent last night right here.” Corso yawned. “Read till about midnight.”

“Nothing like a good book,” Donald said.

Corso agreed and then yawned again. Covering his mouth this time.

“You ready for a little mirth?” Wald asked.

“I love the smell of irony in the morning,” Corso said.

“The lab says Defeo had a bullet in his head.”

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer guy.”

“They say the bullet’s the cause of death.”

“So?”

“They also say the slug came from Densmore’s piece.”

“No shit,” Corso said.

“Who taught you to shoot? I may want to take lessons,” Donald joked.

“I learned from the KGB,” Corso said with a straight face.

“We told ’em Andy must have gotten a salvo off on the way down,” Wald said with a grimace.

“Was that before or after the top half of his head got vaporized?”

“We opted for before,” Donald said.

Corso shrugged. “It’ll look better on his record than on mine.”

Wald shook his head. “Amazing, ain’t it? Densmore makes every mistake a cop can make, damn near gets us all killed, and he comes out of this thing looking like Rambo.”

“Radio said Himes had already said his final words when the call came from the governor,” Corso said.

Wald whistled silently. “Six more minutes and your boy Himes was history,” Wald said.

“He’s fired his ACLU attorney and hired Myron Mendenhal,” Donald said, naming Seattle’s most successful personal-injury specialist.

“He’s gonna get millions,” Wald offered.

“Got a press conference called for this afternoon.”

“What about you guys?” Corso asked.

Wald looked as if he was going to puke. “I’m getting promoted to lieutenant. Chucky here’s getting a commendation for valor.”

“The public does
so
like a happy ending,” Corso sneered. He got to his feet. Stretched. And then side-stepped up the slip, past the cops.

The good weather had the weekend warriors out. Four boats up, a red-haired woman he’d never seen before was scrubbing the deck of a Morgan Out-Island. Farther along on the far side, a couple of boatyard types were replacing the roller furling on a Catalina thirty-six. The new cable and fittings ran nearly the length of the dock. Half a dozen other boats had people crawling over them. Sunday on the dock.

“What about this Defeo guy?” Corso asked.

Wald shrugged. “The usual. School record full of shrinks and counselors. Been through the mental-health system and back. Diagnosed as schizophrenic when he was sixteen. Applied to the Seattle and King County police departments, about three times each. Took the tests for all four branches of the armed services. Nobody wanted any part of him.”

“A regular super criminal,” Corso said.

“His current doctor and his therapist are both playing hardball. Claiming doctor/patient privilege. Holding out for court orders. It’ll be a week or so before we can be certain, but we’re pretty damn sure Defeo must have told his mama what he was doing back in ninety-eight.”

“Either that or she figured it out on her own,” Donald added.

“You guys see that pile of burnt stuff in the back-yard?” Corso asked.

“His mama’s stuff,” Wald said.

“Interesting relationship there.”

“Freud’d have a field day,” Donald agreed.

Wald rolled his eyes. “Anyway…instead of dropping a quarter on her own flesh and blood, Mama took away his genuine lambs of God ear tags, got him on medication and into therapy. Which, if you don’t count eight murders, worked just peachy until she died a couple of months back.”

“At which time, he, of course, stopped taking the meds,” Wald added.

“And the killing started again,” Donald finished.

“You find the rest of the clothes?”

“One set was still at the dry cleaners. He had ’em all cleaned before he mounted them. Thoughtful of him, don’t you think?”

“We’ve identified six sets for sure,” Wald said. He ran down the list from memory. Kate Mitchell, Analia Nisovic, and Jennifer Robison from ninety-eight. And all three recent victims, Alice Crane-Carter, Denise Gould, and Tiffany Eyre. “The other four we’re working on,” Wald concluded.

“Five,” Corso said.

“Five what?” Donald demanded.

“The other five sets of clothes. You said you’d identified six. That leaves five.” He looked from cop to cop. “There’s eleven victims, right?”

“We’ve got ten sets of clothes,” Wald said. “Nine from the house and one from the dry cleaner.”

“Where’s the other set?” Corso asked.

“You read the shit in that room, didn’t you?” Donald said. “That crap about the ten brides of Christ. He only needed ten sets.”

“Which,” noted Wald, “our Bible-toting brethren in the station house assure us is a notion not to be found in the Bible.”

“So there’s a missing set of clothes, then?”

“Who the hell knows?” Donald said. “Maybe they got torn up during the attack. With that crazy bastard anything could have happened.”

“The dry cleaners only cleaned ten,” Wald said.

On the Catalina, one guy was winching the other guy up the mast in a yellow canvas boson’s chair. “Pretty weird,” Corso noted. “You’d think with Defeo so fixated on his ten brides of Christ thing…you’d think he could keep track of the damn number.”

Donald moved toward Corso with a stiff-legged gait. His face suddenly red. His voice suddenly loud. Along the dock, all work stopped.

“What the fuck is the matter with you, Corso? What is it? The only way you can get up in the morning is if you feel superior to everybody else? You can’t feel good about yourself unless you see something that nobody else sees? Is that what floats your boat, Corso?” Donald was close now, crowding Corso.

“Just wondering,” Corso said affably.

“You know what I think? I think you’re a big-time loser. I think you’re such a loser, you don’t even have sense enough to know when you’ve won, and that’s the biggest kind of loser there is.”

“Hey, hey,” Wald was saying. “We’re all on the same side here.”

He stepped between the two men, stood facing his partner.

Corso kept his eyes locked on Donald. “Wald,” he said, “you better take the lieutenant here home for his nap. He seems to be a bit out of sorts this morning.”

Donald made a show of trying to swim his way past Wald to get at Corso.

“You’re a loser,” he was yelling. “A loser.”

Corso stood his ground, smiling as Wald began shoving Donald down the dock. Halfway down, right after Donald took to walking on his own, Wald stopped for a moment and threw a long quizzical look back Corso’s way, then turned and followed his partner toward the gate and the ramp beyond.

“Two Killed in Trashman Battle.” Big as headlines get. Picture of Wald and Donald standing beside the bullet-riddled car in their spiffy Kevlar vests. A sidebar on Densmore and his career. Corso folded the paper beneath his arm, pulled open the front door of the
Seattle Sun
, and stepped into the lobby.

Behind the security desk, Bill Post looked up and smiled. “Hey, Mr. Corso,” he said. “You seen they got him, huh?”

Corso crossed the room. Leaned on the desk.

“I saw,” he said. “I hear Himes is already out.”

Post nodded. “I’m workin’ security at the Hilton this afternoon. Himes and his new mouthpiece are havin’ them a press conference.”

“A guy can always use a little extra Hawaii money,” Corso said.

“Yeah,” he beamed. “Leavin’ next Wednesday. Ten glorious days and nights on Maui.”

Corso said, “Congratulations,” and started for the elevator. Post waddled out from behind the desk, following Corso down the hall. “You shoulda seen my granddaughter’s face when I told her. Never seen the kid so happy before. Nancy says she’s already packed and ready to go.”

Corso stopped his finger just short of the Up button. Turned to Post. “Where do the people who answer the phones work? What floor is that?” he asked.

“Down two,” Post said. “That’s basement, B.”

Corso thumbed the Down button. “If I don’t see you again,” he said to the guard, “have a mai tai for me.”

“Thanks,” Post said. “I’ll make it a couple.” They shook hands.

The door slid open silently. Corso stepped into the car. Pushed B. Post waved.

Basement B was just that. A windowless room filled with cubicles. The dull roar of a hundred conversations rolled like waves just below the ceiling. Corso had to ask three times before he found the right row. Three desks up. Leanne Samples wore a white plastic band in her hair. She was making conversation with the stout African-American woman at the next desk when Corso turned the corner.

“Mr. Corso,” she squealed when she saw him.

She tried to jump to her feet but the cord on her headset wasn’t nearly long enough and jerked her right back into her chair.

“Oops,” she said, dropping the headset to the desktop and throwing her arms around Corso’s waist. “It’s all done, huh? They got the guy.”

“They got the guy,” Corso repeated. Changed the subject. “You’re looking great. I hear you’re a regular whiz at your job.”

She took him by the hand and led him to the next cubicle. “Georgeanne, this is my friend Mr. Corso.” Georgeanne, whose last name turned out to be Taylor, allowed how it was a great pleasure to meet the famous Mr. Frank Corso and how she faithfully read his column. Leanne dragged him on. They zigzagged the length of the room in a frenzy of rushed introductions and hurried handshakes. Fifteen minutes later, they stumbled out of the maze, directly in front of the elevators.

She pulled at his elbow. “And you must meet my friend Ellie over here…”

Corso resisted. “I’ve gotta go,” he said. “I need to have a few words with Mr. Hawes.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh…,” she said. “We mustn’t keep Mr. Hawes waiting.” She was suddenly flustered. Looked around the room as if she’d never seen it before. “I probably ought to get back to work myself.” She managed a wan smile. “After all, they’re not paying me to stand around and talk to famous writers, are they?” Corso managed a smile of his own. They shook hands. Changed their minds and hugged. Said goodbye and then hugged again.

Corso turned and rang for the elevator. “Mr. Corso,” Leanne said, “thank you for everything.” He nodded. “Everything is different in my life now. Better. It’s like, for the first time, I actually have a life of my own.”

Corso held up a hand. “That’s your doing, not mine,” he said.

She started to argue, but he cut her off.

“You know what
my
mama used to say, Leanne?”

“What?”

“She used to say, ‘If a miracle takes place within five miles of you, take credit for it.’ That’s what she used to say.” Corso stepped into the elevator, pushed six.

The car slid upward. Corso watched the numbers turn red until the car bounced to a halt on six. Corso held the door open with his arm. The newsroom. Normally, on a Sunday, they’d be down to a skeleton crew and the building would be silent. Last night’s developments cost people another day off. He stepped out of the car and started up the aisle toward Bennett Hawes’s glassed-in office, leaving silence in his wake as phone conversations suddenly ended and coffee cups stopped short of lips. Claire Harris waved. Corso gave her a salacious wink.

“Hey, Claire,” he said, stopping by her desk.

“I’ll tell ya, kiddo…whatever your other failings may be, you sure know how to set the woods on fire.”

“Thanks, Claire.”

“You’re not going to upset poor Bennett, are you?”

“I’m too tired.”

Hawes gestured him in with a nod of his head. Corso continued up the aisle toward Hawes. Pulled open the door and stepped in. He dangled a set of keys from his thumb and forefinger for a moment before tossing them across the desk. Hawes snatched them out of midair and put them in his top drawer. “Once and for all,” Corso said. “Here’s your car back.”

Hawes rocked back in his oversize chair and took Corso in. “Seems your security-guard angle was right on the money.”

“A lucky guess,” Corso said with a smirk.