Love Her Madly (9 page)

I imagine the flabbergasted look on my face brought on the new and ever-so-condescending smile.

“See, Miz Rice, Jesus has given me back the DNA that was taken, and I am beholden. In His name, I will do whatever He asks me to do. Vernon says Jesus has asked me to give you my heart so that you can bring it to the governor. He wants you to make the governor understand the woman that Texas wants to execute is already dead.”

Sometimes, even I can be rendered speechless.

“Ma'am, I was born with drugs and alcohol in my DNA. My mother put whiskey in my baby bottles so's I'd sleep. I did hard drugs, me and my mother and sisters together, from the time I was conceived. Then she introduced me to her johns. Drugs and alcohol and havin' sex as a child transformed my nature. Poisoned my DNA.

“Through Jesus' love I have recognized what was stolen from me and have gotten it back, because Jesus is by my side. I battled Satan so's I could find out who I was before he fouled me in my mother's womb.

“By trusting in the Lord Jesus, I have found that person. I am not a killer. I am not a drug user. I am not a drunk. I am not a prostitute. That was someone else. I am not that other person anymore. I am born again.”

She spoke with enormous conviction. She'd become a preacher. But the tone, the woeful tone, was one I'd heard before: the tone of a convict who needs you to understand that he or she didn't kill anybody, rob anybody, rape anybody, slash anybody's face.

I said to her, “Even if the woman I am talking to now represents a rebirth, there are people who have suffered as much negligence and abuse as you have—more—who
didn't
grow up to become prostitutes or addicts, let alone killers. I need to convince the governor with facts, not a sob story. Excuse my harshness here. We need to—”

She leaned forward. “Harsh? Ma'am, harsh don't bother me none. Jesus has stepped in to protect me from harshness. Jesus wants you to be my witness. The woman you are looking at is innocent. The Rona Leigh I once was has been vanquished by my acceptance of Jesus Christ as Lord and Master. Jesus has baptized me with His love. He has helped me to root out that other Rona Leigh. I am sorry for what these hands have done. But these hands are now clean,
clean.
Washed by Jesus, may I be forever deserving.”

She held out her hands to me to see how clean they were, her delicate hands. Then she pushed her chair back. “I don't understand why you have chosen to make this effort for me. I have confessed my crime. I—”

She would never understand. “Rona Leigh, yes, you have confessed. But a confession doesn't mean you did it.”

Her eyes opened wide just the way her husband's had. What an amazing thing for anyone to say. She smiled down at me. She said, “Exactly right. Exactly what I been tellin' everyone. I confessed, but I didn't do it. Satan did it.” She straightened her back. “Tell the governor I am a
lady.
I now have the DNA of a lady, thanks to the Lord whose arms enfold me now. That is what will sway the governor. Never mind your facts. The governor is a Christian, a good Texas boy. He will not kill a lady.”

And she took on an air of remove, a haughtiness. Indeed, she was a lady, the kind of lady recognized in such places as Texas. We don't have them in DC. Just like we don't have the hairdo.

Captain Shank stepped forward to escort his prisoner back to the other ladies on death row, and she flashed him a beatific smile. The little creases that had come into her forehead in the last ten minutes melted away. All aflutter, she said to him, “We will pray for this peace officer today, Harley. She will crusade for us with Jesus by her side.”

He said quietly, “Amen,” and they were gone.

Was she utterly deranged? At least now there was no doubt in my mind that she could well have been set up to kill, was convinced she did kill, and then agreed to sign a confession. But derangement didn't matter, as Captain Shank had made clear.

*   *   *

I checked out of the Holiday Inn and into the Best Western. I put my stuff in the closet, in the drawers, into the bathroom. And then there was a knock at the door. I opened it.

A Texas Ranger filled the doorway, Nick Nolte in a white Stetson.

He said, “Max Scraggs. May I come in, Agent?”

“How did you know I was here?”

“My job.”

“What job is that?”

“The job to see this execution through. To see that chaos doesn't break out. But if it does, we want you to know that there is someone on the scene you can turn to.”

My, my. “Come on in.”

I invited him to sit down. He took the chair. I took the edge of the bed.

I asked him, “What the hell are you talkin' about?”

“I'm talkin' about this. Every day, more and more people are turnin' up to support Rona Leigh. She's becoming some kind of holy martyr. Now, turns out, we got a big-time FBI agent in town who could maybe give them the hope they need to cause us some serious trouble. But you're doin' your job and that's that. If trouble breaks, you need a cop? You come to me. If some other trouble of a more personal nature gets aimed your way? Trouble from people who don't like the thought of Rona Leigh bein' a martyr, embarrassin' people? I want you to know we will be happy to be of assistance, ma'am.”

He stood up. He touched the brim of the Stetson. “You need a cop for any reason whatsoever, come to me.”

I suppose I might have told him to watch the tires of my car. But instead I thanked him and he left.

I could see that I'd reached a point in my day where I needed to talk to a familiar voice. So I called my assistant. It was quarter to five, her time.

“You checkin' on me, boss?”

“If I were, I'd be calling twenty minutes from now. The day you answer the phone at five after five, I'll know it's time for me to race back there and take your temperature.”

My assistant's name is Delby Jones. When I interviewed her I asked her why the name on her social security card was not Delby Jones. She said, “You were actually the first to notice.”

She made up the name, she said, when she was a singer. She left the band because that line of work wouldn't pay for Pampers and the complete works of Dr. Seuss. The name Delby Jones had grown on her.

I liked that. Imaginative way to clear the past out of your system while still holding on to the dream.

In addition, Delby has great reasoning skills and can keep a boss, an office, and herself finely organized. Mostly, she doesn't miss a trick. Impeccable instincts. So in the end, her terms were worth it. Her terms meant she'd pick up her girls at our day care every day at one minute past five. And besides the five o'clock thing, at one minute before noon, she leaves to have lunch with them. Once, the President was in my office and so was she. She cleared her throat to serve me notice that it was the children's lunchtime. The President ended up going to the day care center with her. Like me, he knows that the value of devotion is much more visceral than loyalty. So off he went with Delby while the Secret Service scrambled into formation and followed. I was left with a couple of technicians staring at their backs. After lunch, the President said to me, “I forgot how good a peanut butter and jelly sandwich can be.” Delby told me he'd left his carrot sticks on the plate just like all the kids.

Now, on the phone, she said, “You want to know something fast, right?”

“I do. But first, real quick, did that fabric sample I gave you, let's see…”—I looked at the notes on my computer screen—“number eight-four-two, did it come back?”

“'Course it did. You'd be here kickin' ass for a week if it didn't.”

“So what was that stuff?”

I heard her clicking away at her own computer. By the time I'd finished the question, she had the answer. She's like that guy Radar on
M*A*S*H.

“Let's see. We got mostly sugar, gelatin, fumaric acid, an artificial flavoring agent, disodium phosphate, sodium citrate, couple of coloring agents—yellow five and blue one—and BHA. Says here, the only thing differentiating the sample from lime Jell-O is a woven elastogen agent.” Then she hmphed and said, “Well, I am really pissed off now, boss. Don't it kill you that lime Jell-O has no lime in it? I ain't buyin' it anymore.”

“Me neither. When I get back, I'll make us some gin and tonics and we'll throw in a couple of genuine limes apiece.”

“And when might that be?”

“Could be tomorrow, at the rate I'm going.”

“Tomorrow? That's good to know. People never can understand why I don't have your schedule. I tell 'em, Because you don't know it yourself. For example, how come you're not at the Holiday Inn?”

“Found someplace better.”

“Okay.”

“How much time have I got?”

“Thirty seconds.”

“Delby, can you send me everything there is on two of the guys I had reassigned? The two who ended up in the Houston office?”

“Sure.”

“I mean, can you do it now?”

“Honey, it'll get done. You sure you don't want me to know where you are? I just got through tellin' an agent from the Waco office to quit pesterin' me, and I'd let him know where you are as soon as you call in.”

“Send the stuff I need to the hotel where I'm supposed to be. The pest can do his own work. And thanks, Delby.”

“Welcome. And where'm I sendin' the lime Jell-O analysis to?”

“Nearest trash can.”

“Right.” She hung up.

It'll get done
meant she'd order someone else to do it as she ran out the door. Someone unlike herself who was always looking for work after hours to avoid going home to where the hard work was.

*   *   *

Joe found me. He always does. I wondered if he'd met a cop named Max Scraggs when he was camped in Waco.

I said, “Joe, those edible underpants you bought me?”

“Yeah?”

“You'll be pleased to know they were really edible.”

“I could have cared less.”

“I know. I was worried all the same. I tested the residue. Lime Jell-O.”

“I hope the taxpayers find out about that test.”

“Me too. But there's something else you should know.”

“What?”

“Jell-O doesn't have real fruit in it.”

“There's a right time for junk food.”

“Listen, I might come home tomorrow. I hope we can get together, okay?”

“Okay? Nothing could make me merrier. So did you see Rona Leigh?”

“Her, the chaplain at the prison—her husband—and her warden.”

“How'd it go?”

“None of them want to discuss the possibility that she might not have committed the crime, not even her.”

“How come?”

“Cowed by Texas law. The thirty-day rule. Do you know about that?”

He said, “The law is a deliberate one. A lot of feeling out there that a few sacrifices have to be made since, as we all know, the death penalty lowers the crime rate.”

“Out where?”

“Out in any roomful of men when they're in their Jurassic dinosaur-hunting mode. Kill a few marginal ones, if that's what it takes to eliminate the bad ones. They say things like that when there are no women around to point out that they're all a bunch of assholes.”

“Joe?”

“Yeah?”

“When did you become a feminist?”

“At that dinner at the White House. The night Kool and the Gang played.”

The night we met. Joe was a he-man. But the night that Kool and the Gang played the White House he told me twenty thousand things that revealed his soft side, one of which was that the death penalty was capricious.

“Poppy, it says in the
Post
this morning that William F. Buckley thinks the death penalty is appropriate because murder victims deserve respect and dignity posthumously.”

“How does the state killing a mentally retarded teenager give anyone respect and dignity? William F. Buckley is, always has been, and always will be full of shit.”

“Well, that's what I thought when I read it. What's the matter, Poppy? Why so hung up lately? What the hell is bothering you?”

I chose not to tell him about the letter I'd gotten a couple of weeks ago. “I don't like this.”

“What
this?
”

“This execution. Rona Leigh.… I mean, she thinks she's an angel. She
is
angelic, really. Joe, I do believe the governor might well have given her a stay if she was about to be electrocuted rather than euthanized. Or if she were going to be hanged or stood up against a wall to be shot. The clean lines of lethal injection are what is preventing the stay. So maybe if we're going to have capital punishment, it should be messy. When you throw a switch that sends a zillion volts of electricity through a live human being, the witnesses can smell hair burning. And the reason for the blindfold is that poached eyes explode. People think blindfolds lend a note of glory—the romance of the firing squad. Women being executed ended firing squads. Mata Hari steps up, takes off her clothes, and where are the guys supposed to aim?

“This upgrade to death by injection. Finally there's a way to kill where the condemned only feel terror, not pain. Therefore the gender issue is gone. She'll just close her eyes and fade away.”

“Poppy—”

“You know why all those priests and bishops and Puritans loved burning women at the stake? Because their clothes burned off first. They got to see naked bodies incinerate.”

“So it's all connected to sex. Executing women.”

“Yes. Therefore, you can't do that kind of thing to someone who looks like Rona Leigh. Who looks like an angel. Maybe if they shaved her head and starved her first.… Joe, she's a
lady.
She told me so. You don't force a lady onto a table, tie her down, and kill her. That's what all those people coming to her rescue have been trying to cram down the governor's throat.”