Love Her Madly (7 page)

He said, “But … Rona Leigh
confessed.
”

“I know. Vernon, people confess all the time to crimes they didn't commit. They confess because they want to be famous. Or because they're alone and confused. Because they're being threatened or tortured, or, if they're young, they want to please those in authority. Conversely, sometimes when they're young they need to brag about how tough they are. There are a lot of reasons why people confess. Perhaps Rona Leigh confessed because she had faith in the authority who told her to confess. Faith, or maybe … trust.”

“But who else could have done it?”

“Lloyd Bailey.”

His chest puffed out. He pulled his hand out from under mine. He found a foothold. “They were equally guilty.”

“Is she guilty if he convinced her that she'd committed the crime when she hadn't? So he could get a lighter sentence? What if the police got her to admit it by reinforcing what he told her? She was in withdrawal. What if she confessed because she was promised drugs?

“Reverend Lacker, you never answered the first question I asked you. How did she find redemption with such ease? Perhaps the answer is because she's innocent.”

He leaned way back into the sofa. Sank himself into the cushions. His eyes filled. “Ma'am, please. She was besieged by Satan. What difference does it make whether Lloyd killed them or she did? She was there with him, in the room where the killing happened. The point is that they became one evil entity in a marriage of degradation. They had been joined by the devil. The details of who did exactly what are pointless. They committed the crime together.”

If Rona Leigh didn't do it, he couldn't give his hero, Jesus Christ, credit for saving her.

But I had to make amends and do it fast. I said, “Pray for me.”

With a stinking great heap of humility, he said, “I will.”

Little son of a bitch.

*   *   *

The warden had an office-cum-sitting room on the third floor of the house under the eaves. He was probably more comfortable in his home than in an official office. That's because he was, in effect, a plantation owner, the prison fields his land, the prisoners his chattel.

He sported formal cowboy wear: white shirt, black string tie with a silver ornament, pressed jeans, and boots. The boots were chestnut brown, the leather shiny but with a patina that muted the shine to a lovely warm glow. A nice leather jacket hung on a hook behind him, and a Stetson, a perfect sculpture, white and solid as if carved from bone, rested on the shelf above.

I hoped I'd be able to see a view of the mountain from the window—we were just high enough to see over the top of the post oaks. On the map I got from the library, I noticed that the highest elevation in the Gatesville area had in fact been something called South Mountain. Through the window, I looked south. The highest hill seemed ever so slightly higher than the second highest.

I said to the warden, “Is that South Mountain?”

“Yes, Agent, it is.”

I'd say the elevation of South Mountain was maybe nine hundred inches. There was no mountain. Someone gave the women's death row its name as a joke.

Beyond the prison complex I made out a narrow line of muddy water, one of those creeks the army engineers had impounded and turned into Belton Lake. The prison fields were surrounded by a wetland that spread out into the far distance. State School Road had been laid across a swamp, the houses on either side built on fill.

The warden said, “So you've come to speak to the prisoner.”

I turned from the window. “Yes, I have. But there are a few things I'd like to know before I do.”

“For instance?”

“When will she be transported to Huntsville?”

“Rona Leigh's not goin' anywhere.”

“I'm sorry? I understood…”

“The death house in Huntsville is smack in the center of town. It's a big brick box, takes up two city blocks. The Walls. Nickname 'cause that's what you see: walls. The holding pen is in the Walls too. We've decided we can't send her to a unit where the population is entirely men. If we do they will become, let's say, agitated. The law says executions shall be carried out at the Walls. However, the wording doesn't say
women
shall be executed there, it says
men.
So we were able to get around it. Rona Leigh will die right here at her home, something all of us wish for when it comes time for our own passin'. It'll be real hard on my corrections officers. The guards. They've all come to know her. Whereas at the Walls, the boys execute strangers. So I've had to make clear to our own boys that they're just cogs in the wheels. The people responsible for the execution of Rona Leigh Glueck are her jury, her arrestin' officers, ex cetra. The governor himself.

“The holding pen is in our death house, in the same building as the execution chamber. The execution will be carried out on my turf, and I intend to do my turf proud.”

He sounded like the father of the bride.

I said, “Will the details be the same? I mean, the holding pen, for example. Is it a cage?”

“Nothing could describe it better. It just arrived from the manufacturer three days ago.”

“Where is the building?”

He rose and joined me at the window. He pointed.

“See just inside the front gate? The little bungalow? Used to be a rest station for the watch guards, if they needed a little nap during their break. It's been converted to a death house. It's not quite ready. End of the week.”

“May I have a look?”

“Can't see why not.”

He took a key from a wall safe and grabbed his Stetson. Same one that the Texas Rangers wear. He set it on his head at a perfect angle without having to look in a mirror.

Outside, we climbed into his pickup for the fifty-yard trip. I asked him, “Have you spent much time with her?”

“Yes, Agent, I certainly have. She is allowed to ask to speak to her warden. I have accommodated Rona Leigh as to all reasonable requests, just as I have accommodated yours. And that brings me to a request of my own. Strictly based on curiosity. I think I am entitled to know what your aim is here, considerin' my hospitality.”

I would be honest. Why not? “Rona Leigh Glueck's defense requested information from the FBI pretrial. Through a bureaucratic laxity, they didn't get the information. I have it. I want to determine if it would have had any bearing on the outcome of the trial.”

“You aim to spring Rona Leigh?”

He was half smiling at me.

“I aim to know the truth.”

“Ain't got a hell of a lotta time, have you?”

“No, I don't.”

“You know, ma'am, I have had to call on her many times without her askin'. I had to lay down ground rules throughout this past year when all the other do-gooders decided to come to her rescue.”

I was a do-gooder. I'd been demoted from
agent
to
ma'am.

“She isn't deserving of rescue is your feeling?”

“My feeling? My feeling doesn't enter into it. I am not paid to cross the courts, no matter what my feeling might be.”

“Warden, why do you think there is such a clamor to save her? The do-gooders aren't your typical anti-death-penalty people. Many of the people who are calling for the governor to save her life support the death penalty.”

“All but one of 'em: the pope. He ain't for the death penalty. But the rest of them—Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, each and every member of the Christian Coalition—they are. But them and the typical do-gooders like that Morley Safer, say, or the guy from
20-20 Vision,
all those fools think Rona Leigh isn't a murderer anymore. She was, sure, but now she's a woman-aglow-with-Jesus instead. Hell's bells.

“A murderer stays a murderer, no matter what she's like years after she committed the crime. And all murderers are actors, I'll tell you that right now. Some movie producer ought to cast these killers for their pictures. A psycho can act any role he wants to. Rona Leigh Glueck has spent every wakin' minute playin' a part. That sweet-as-molasses smile a hers? An act. You ever see a picture of that Catholic statue, ma'am? The one with Mary holding Jesus across her lap after they took him down from the cross?”

“Yes.” I didn't say I'd seen the statue itself. “The
Pietà.
”

“That's the one. Who built that?”

“Michelangelo.”

“Right. I was readin' about that statue one day in
Christianity Today.
Long time ago, someone asked Michelangelo why he'd given his statue the face of a young girl. And he said that the mother of Jesus was chaste, a virgin; he was a Roman Catholic, after all. He said, Therefore she don't age.

“Rona Leigh, at her trial? She was still in her teens, but she had the face of a played-out, drugged-up, alcohol-sodden, hooker killer, which is what she was. Inside a few months, once Rona Leigh was dried out? She didn't want to be in prison anymore. She figured it would take a miracle to get her off death row. So that's what she decided to go for: a miracle. Honest to Pete, she put on the face of the actual mother of Jesus, like Michelangelo's statue. No lines, no wrinkles, pure white skin, and she's stayed the same even now and she's no spring chicken.

“I'm sure you know, ma'am, the power a psycho can call upon. Besides that power, she was able to make the most of her hookin' skills to create something a lotta johns paid good money for. She became young, innocent, a darlin' child who could pray with a sincere and heartfelt fervor.

“Now, ma'am, you're FBI. I know I can't shock you. So I'll tell you that not long after she got here her sister came to visit. Rona Leigh had the corrections officer tell the girl she was too busy prayin' to have any visits. Sister raised a little fuss so I got called over—girl was goin' on about how she'd come all the way from Houston and Rona Leigh wouldn't see her. Girl told me her sister's prayers were nothin' but fake. Said lots of times the johns'd make 'em kneel in prayer, their eyes lifted to the heavens, their hands folded. Have them recitin' the Lord's Prayer while they was—excuse me—fuckin' 'em up the ass. The sister said Rona Leigh sure knew how to pray good. Real good. They all do. Hookers, I mean.

“In my mind, Rona Leigh has played that role, on her knees, eyes lifted to heaven, prayin', managin' to fool 'em all, for seventeen years. And you want to know somethin'? She hasn't slipped once. Hasn't lost her cool, hasn't got mad, hasn't told us all to go do somethin' unmentionable to ourselves when each of her appeals to the board was tossed out. I admit I thought she would. In fact, I thought she'd end up like a pig on a wet deck, slippin' and slidin' back to what she was.

“But who knows? Pat Robertson is a highly educated man. Maybe he's right, but I don't think so. My feelin' is that Pat Robertson is a fool just like all the rest.”

Warden had feelings after all. All right to have them as long as they don't stray across a court's verdict.

The bungalow was right next to the gate. It was no more than twenty feet from State School Road.

The same four cars were in the lot. The warden said, “This here's where the corrections officers park. There's a big lot for visitors back up the road at the main entrance to the complex, and that's what the media'll have to be content with, come Rona Leigh's date. We have shuttle buses for visitors, but the newspaper and TV folk are goin' to have to walk.” He smirked to himself, probably imagining Morley Safer made a fool of.

I said, “You're going to have a crowd right outside these windows, aren't you?”

“The windows have shades. The night of the execution, we'll put up barricades at the end of the drive to keep the protesters and the cheerleaders out.”

He pressed the bell at the gate. The guard who came out was the same one I'd spoken to earlier. The warden introduced him to me.

“I already had the pleasure.” I shook hands with Captain Shank.

The warden looked at me from beneath the exquisite curve of the Stetson brim. “You been by here already, Agent?”

I would be Agent in front of the underlings.

“I came here first. I thought your office would be in the … unit.”

He and the guard caught each other's eye. They both laughed. Captain Shank said to me, “We don't put our wardens in the death house.” Then he turned back to his boss. “I love these Yankees, I surely do.” They laughed some more. I joined in. I'm not a Yankee, but no Texan considers Washington, DC, as being south of the Mason-Dixon line.

The guard let us through the fence and the warden took out his key.

There were three rooms carved out of the bungalow, all in a row, identical signs on each door:
OUT OF BOUNDS
. Inside the first of them was the mesh cage, the holding pen, centered exactly in the middle of the room, no different from the one the men have. Rona Leigh would spend the end of her life like a zoo animal.

We walked back out to the hallway and went in the next door. It was the death chamber, and it was set to go.

The slim cot was the lone object in the room, its two paddles extending straight out at right angles, solidly primed to embrace its victim. A final embrace.

There were no such paddles on the first cots. But they would become a necessity. It's hard enough to get an IV drip into a relaxed still arm, let alone a flailing one. When I'd watched a condemned man secured to an identical cot and paddles, the whole scene took on the feel of a new-age crucifixion. Crucifixions for the millennium, an epidemic of them. I'd been part of the epidemic.

Now a woman would be crucified.

Seven wide brown leather straps hung down from the cot, heavy brass buckles dangling from each. One would be laid across her shoulders, one over her rib cage, one across her hips, and one each for her wrists and ankles.