Killing Red (31 page)

Outside of Annie’s apartment, Andrews was fighting a verbal turf war with a Chicago cop. He had already won the debate, the feds almost always do, but he was letting the captain get his two cents in. It was his way of giving a fellow officer an opportunity to save face.

“He’s pissed at you,” Chapa said once Andrews had sent the guy to the sidelines.

“Baum’s a good man, he’ll get over it. Quite a mess up there.”

“Have you found out what’s causing that smell?”

“We’re still working on that, but I have a feeling some animals in this neighborhood have gone missing lately.”

Chapa sighed. “Strasser,” he said under his breath.

“Let’s just say that apartment won’t be going back on the market anytime soon.”

“I think while you’re up there you might find a reason to revisit the Rudman murder.” Chapa was feeling lightheaded as he slumped against a wall.

“The EMTs have patched you up as best as they can for now,” Andrews said. “But this time you are going to the hospital.”

“Not before Annie.”

She looked over at Chapa from the other side of the room where she was sitting, still answering Sandro’s questions, and gave him a tight smile. A minute later the young agent was helping Annie to her feet.

“I’m going to ride with her in the ambulance, Chief,” Sandro said.

Chapa wondered if the agent was putting the moves on Annie, and felt oddly protective of her. But after noticing how the guy swaggered for no one in particular, Chapa decided it was just a case of Sandro being Sandro.

Annie walked over to Chapa and gave him another hug, not quite as all-encompassing as the first, but still substantial.

“Take good care your little girl. Be there when she needs you.”

Chapa watched her walk away as Sandro hurried to keep pace.

“Tough kid,” Andrews said.

“Yeah, she is. But she’s fighting a mountain of survivor guilt.”

“I can’t say I’m surprised.”

Chapa was staring at the bloodstains on the shirt he was wearing.

“About these clothes you loaned me.”

Andrews reacted as though he had forgotten all about them, then stepped back and surveyed the wreckage. The sports coat was so soiled and torn that he was probably unable to recognize it as anything that could have ever hung in his closet. The shirt, one sleeve having been cut away by EMTs anxious to treat Chapa’s wounded arm, resembled the beginnings of a Jackson Pollack painting. The impeccably dressed agent grimaced as he forced himself to look at the slacks, but only got as far as the blood smears across the right front pocket.

“Tell you what, consider this my donation to the Alex Chapa museum. I have no doubt there will be one someday.”

“I can have it all dry cleaned.”

“No need.”

“What about the shirt? A needle and thread and—”

“It’s yours.”

Chapa could tell Andrews had something else on his mind.

“I am going to need that parking permit back.”

“Oh, Joe, I tossed it, you know, back somewhere.”

“Funny, I could’ve sworn I just saw it on the dash of your illegally parked car.”

Chapa rubbed his chin as though he was searching for some wisdom, or maybe a way out.

“Hmm. Yeah, how ’bout that.”

“You know, Al, with everything that’s happened, I could put you away for the rest of your natural life.”

“Probably, but then you’d spend the rest of yours searching for a new role model.”

Andrews smiled and nodded, then struck his best David Caruso pose. If he’d had a pair of sunglasses with him, he would have put them on for Chapa’s benefit.

“You did good, Al.” He started to pat Chapa on the shoulder, but thought better of it when his friend flinched. “It was messy, but you got this one right.”

Thick, green-gray tubes pushed out through a wall of whitewashed concrete bricks. They led to the gurney, which lay empty and ready in the middle of the execution room.

A large rectangular window separated the witnesses from the instruments that would soon render the condemned. If he stretched forward from where he was sitting on the far left side of the front row of the gallery, Chapa could see the small black video camera directly above the gurney.

Beyond the two-foot square window in the back of the chamber, just above the tubes, sat the technician who would push a series of buttons and end Kenny Lee Grubb’s life. The control booth was a hive of activity, and it reminded Chapa of a television studio.

He made a note of that. The only other time Chapa had covered an execution he’d been a last minute replacement, and given very little prep info. As a result, he never managed to get his head around that story, especially when it all turned out to be so anticlimactic. That prisoner was brought in, he said something about speaking to God the night before, and five minutes later society had one less threat to worry about.

This time, however, Chapa was locked in. Annie seemed much less curious about the process. She was silently taking inventory of the whole scene, like a quality control expert who wanted to make certain nothing could go wrong.

The two had not spoken to each other since they were ushered into the witness observation room. The seating area consisted of five rows in all, each a bit more elevated than the one before. Chapa would have preferred to sit farther back, instead of in the front row. But that’s where Annie wanted to be, and he had promised to stay right next to her.

Andrews was standing in back, at the opposite end of the room, next to reporters from two other papers, as well as a network TV guy. They all turned and looked when Lance Grubb was shown to his seat in the middle of the first row.

He had a look of absolute resignation on his face, as though he’d known this day would come but had not gotten around to preparing for it. Still, Chapa wondered, there had to be a certain amount of relief now that it was almost over, something that could be a very hard thing for anyone to admit.

Chapa watched as Lance dusted some lint off the dark brown sleeve of his dated sports coat, the one he probably dug out for the occasional wedding or funeral. The condemned’s only living sibling then folded his hands on his lap, eyes straightforward. It was as if he was getting ready for church to begin.

Fifteen silent minutes passed before Kenny Lee Grubb was brought in. A last minute attempt at getting a judge to grant a stay based on the self-inflicted wound in Grubb’s leg had failed. Though courts had delayed executions in the past based on a prisoner’s health issues, the judge in this case determined that since Grubb had no feeling in his injured leg, and therefore no discomfort, there was no justification for putting it off any longer.

From the confines of his wheelchair Grubb looked at the setup and nodded. A trio of muscular guards with dour expressions surrounded him. Then two of them lifted Grubb onto the gurney and strapped him down, as the third one wheeled the chair out of the room. After that, a team of much less physically imposing technicians went to work.

A sheet was pulled over Grubb’s body, covering him all the way up to his neck. One of the tubes protruding from the wall was hooked up to his left arm. A tech took the other tube and slid it under the bed sheet, connecting it to a catheter.

The expression on Grubb’s face was vacant as an empty grave. He occasionally looked over at the gallery without focusing on anyone in particular. Chapa wondered whether the light from inside the execution room kept Grubb from being able to see beyond the glass.

After they attached a heart monitor, it was places everyone, then the warden stepped forward.

“Kenneth Lee Grubb, you have been condemned to die by the people of the State of Illinois by means of lethal injection. Do you have any final words?”

Grubb slowly surveyed the witnesses again, this time he studied every face on the other side of the glass, and stopped when he saw his brother.

“Is it done?” Grubb asked as though Lance was the only other person in the room.

Lance trembled just a little, and Chapa wondered if Kenny Lee Grubb could see that.

“Bro, did it get done? Is it over?”

A moment later, the levers and pulleys in Lance’s face began to coax a nod. A final twisted gift to a brother on his deathbed.

Kenny Lee Grubb was smiling when the warden gave the signal to begin. His gaze continued to drift until it reached Chapa. His smile grew broader, and it might have stayed that way had he not seen who was sitting next to him.

As the sodium pentothal began its journey from the control room to Grubb’s vein, the expression on the killer’s face turned from satisfaction to fear, then to terror as he looked into Annie’s eyes. The first drug would ease Grubb into unconsciousness. The next would paralyze him and stop his breathing before the third delivered a knockout to his heart.

In his life as a journalist, Chapa had absorbed dozens of images he’d trade a year’s pay to erase from his memory. But in that moment he understood that nothing would ever haunt him as much as Kenny Lee Grubb’s last facial expression. The look of all-consuming horror and desperation was so complete that it seemed unnatural. It came from somewhere beyond anyone’s reach and would travel with the killer to his next stop.

There is something sad yet comforting about October rain in the Midwest. It’s cold, but not threatening, and usually not accompanied by thunder and lightning. It’s just nature crying for another lost summer.

Chapa listened to the tiny drops clamoring for attention as they slapped Erin’s bedroom window, only to blend into one shapeless sheet of water. His week of full moons was finally drawing to a close, and he wondered whether he would ever get around to telling anyone half of all that had happened.

“I saw a man die today.”

Erin stopped massaging the few areas of Chapa’s upper body that weren’t bruised, or stitched, or bandaged.

“You don’t seem too bothered by it.”

“Wasn’t much of a man.”

It was hard to believe Grubb’s execution had also been part of this day. The past twelve hours had forged a chasm between those events and the warmth of Erin’s touch.

On their way out of the prison Chapa and Annie had agreed to stay in touch. She seemed to mean it, but he knew it wouldn’t happen. Their connection to one another had been left back in that room when the heavy doors of the prison closed behind them. They had nothing in common that either of them wanted to spend too much time thinking about.

Erin leaned down and pressed her lips to his wounded back. Kisses that burned. As soon as she stopped, he rolled over and wrapped his arms around her. Chapa meant for it to be a quick, forceful, and seductive move. But in his present physical condition he was forced to settle for gradual, tentative, and amusing, though in a way that engendered a sexy sort of sympathy.

Chapa slipped his hand beneath Erin’s lush, shoulder-length hair, gently massaging the back of her neck, and met her mouth with his. He kissed her like he might never get the chance to again, because that’s the way he’d felt, just like that, twenty-four hours earlier.

“I think you missed me,” Erin said, her lips full and wet.

“Yeah, sure looks that way.”

“I missed you too.”

He did his best to hide the intensity of his need to be with her. As much as he wanted her at that moment, Chapa also felt a need to protect Erin and her son from ever brushing up against the sort of trouble he’d brought them over the past few days.

“There’s something we should talk about.” His words didn’t sound the way they had all those times he’d played this conversation out in his head.

Erin nodded, and asked, “Are you going to spend the night?”

He gave her a look that gently suggested,
you know better
.

“I’d love to, but I can’t,” Chapa said and tipped his head in the direction of Mikey’s room. “Besides, tomorrow is going be here in a hurry.”

The soft look in her eyes told him that she understood.

Then she said, “We could talk about that something and still make the most of what’s left of the evening,” and kissed his chest. Her kisses held the promise of a great deal more to come, until Mikey called for her from his bed.

Chapa sat up faster than he should have, and managed to get his shirt on before the door opened. The child’s well-rubbed eyes were nearly as red as his Transformers pajamas.

“I can’t get to sleep, Mom.”

“Honey, you have to be wiped out. Go back to bed.”

In the background they could hear chirping coming from Mikey’s room. Hobbs was still awake.

“And you need to say good night to your new friend.”

The bird actually belonged to Chapa, a replacement gift to ease the loss of Jimmy. He’d named it Hobbs after the main character in
The Natural
. Chapa had decided to leave the bird with Erin for a few days, but was already starting to think that maybe it belonged here.

“I was hoping Alex could tell me a story.”

“Alex is exhausted too.”

Chapa forced himself to his feet, successfully masking his discomfort.

“I’m not that tired.”

He put his arm around Mikey’s shoulders.

“Let’s see if we can conjure up a tale or two.”

His mind was a barren wasteland and coming up with a decent story would be a challenge. But Chapa got over all that as soon as he looked back at Erin and winked as they headed out the door and into the hallway. The look on her face made him feel like he was the most amazing man who ever lived.