Three Classic Thrillers (111 page)

Mann suddenly hung up the phone and shoved a hand at Adam. “Nice to meet you, Mr. Hall. Please have a seat,” he said softly in a pleasant drawl as he waved at a chair. “Thanks for stopping by.”

Adam took a seat. “Sure. A pleasure to meet you,” he replied nervously. “What’s up?”

“A couple of things. First, I just wanted to meet you and say hello. I’ve been the attorney here for twelve years. I do most of the civil litigation that this place spews forth, you know, all kinds of crazy litigation filed by our guests—prisoners’ rights, damage suits, that kind of stuff. We get sued every day, it seems. By statute, I also play a small role in the death cases, and I understand you’re here to visit Sam.”

“That’s correct.”

“Has he hired you?”

“Not exactly.”

“I didn’t think so. This presents a small problem. You see, you’re not supposed to visit an inmate unless you actually represent him, and I know that Sam has successfully terminated Kravitz & Bane.”

“So I can’t see him?” Adam asked, almost with a trace of relief.

“You’re not supposed to. I had a long talk yesterday with Garner Goodman. He and I go back a few years to the Maynard Tole execution. Are you familiar with that one?”

“Vaguely.”

“Nineteen eighty-six. It was my second execution,” he said as if he’d personally pulled the switch. He sat on the edge of his desk and looked down at Adam. The starch crackled gently in his chinos. His right leg swung from the desk. “I’ve had four, you know. Sam could be the fifth. Anyway, Garner represented Maynard Tole, and we got to know each other. He’s a fine gentleman and fierce advocate.”

“Thanks,” Adam said because he could think of nothing else.

“I hate them, personally.”

“You’re opposed to the death penalty?”

“Most of the time. I go through stages, actually. Every time we kill someone here I think the whole world’s gone crazy. Then, invariably, I’ll review one of these cases and remember how brutal and horrible some of these crimes were. My first execution was Teddy Doyle Meeks, a drifter who raped, mutilated, and killed a little boy. There was not much sadness here when he was gassed. But, hey, listen, I could tell war stories forever. Maybe we’ll have time for it later, okay?”

“Sure,” Adam said without commitment. He could not envision a moment when he wanted to hear stories about violent murderers and their executions.

“I told Garner that I didn’t think you should be permitted to visit Sam. He listened for a while, then he explained, rather vaguely I must say, that perhaps yours was a special situation, and that you should be allowed at least one visit. He wouldn’t say what was so special about it, know what I mean?” Lucas rubbed his chin when he said this as if he had almost solved the puzzle. “Our policy is rather strict, especially for MSU. But the warden will do whatever I ask.” He said this very slowly, and the words hung in the air.

“I, uh, really need to see him,” Adam said, his voice almost cracking.

“Well, he needs a lawyer. Frankly, I’m glad you’re here. We’ve never executed one unless his lawyer was present. There’s all sorts of legal maneuvering up to the very last minute, and I’ll just feel better if Sam has a lawyer.” He walked around the desk and took a seat on the other side. He opened a file and studied a piece of paper. Adam waited and tried to breathe normally.

“We do a fair amount of background on our death inmates,” Lucas said, still looking at the file. The statement had the tone of a solemn warning. “Especially when the appeals have run and the execution is looming. Do you know anything about Sam’s family?”

The knot suddenly felt like a basketball in Adam’s stomach. He managed to shrug and shake his head at the same time, as if to say he knew nothing.

“Do you plan to talk to Sam’s family?”

Again, no response, just the same inept shrug of the shoulders, very heavy shoulders at this moment.

“I mean, normally, in these cases, there’s quite a lot of contact with the condemned man’s family as the execution gets closer. You’ll probably want to contact
these folks. Sam has a daughter in Memphis, a Mrs. Lee Booth. I have an address, if you want it.” Lucas watched him suspiciously. Adam could not move. “Don’t suppose you know her, do you?”

Adam shook his head, but said nothing.

“Sam had one son, Eddie Cayhall, but the poor guy committed suicide in 1981. Lived in California. Eddie left two children, a son born in Clanton, Mississippi, on May 12, 1964, which, oddly enough, is your birthday, according to my Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory. Says you were born in Memphis on the same day. Eddie also left a daughter who was born in California. These are Sam’s grandchildren. I’ll try and contact them, if you—”

“Eddie Cayhall was my father,” Adam blurted out, and he took a deep breath. He sank lower in the chair and stared at the top of the desk. His heart pounded furiously, but at least he was breathing again. His shoulders were suddenly lighter. He even managed a very small smile.

Mann’s face was expressionless. He thought for a long minute, then said with a hint of satisfaction, “I sort of figured that.” He immediately started flipping papers as if the file possessed many other surprises. “Sam’s been a very lonely man on death row, and I’ve often wondered about his family. He gets some mail, but almost none from his family. Virtually no visitors, not that he wants any. But it’s a bit unusual for such a noted inmate to be ignored by his family. Especially a white one. I don’t pry, you understand.”

“Of course not.”

Lucas ignored this. “We have to make preparations for the execution, Mr. Hall. For example, we have to know what to do with the body. Funeral arrangements and all. That’s where the family comes in. After I talked to Garner yesterday, I asked some of our people
in Jackson to track down the family. It was really quite easy. They also checked your paperwork, and immediately discovered that the State of Tennessee has no record of the birth of Adam Hall on May 12, 1964. One thing sort of led to another. It wasn’t difficult.”

“I’m not hiding anymore.”

“When did you learn about Sam?”

“Nine years ago. My aunt, Lee Booth, told me after we buried my father.”

“Have you had any contact with Sam?”

“No.”

Lucas closed the file and reclined in his squeaky chair. “So Sam has no idea who you are or why you’re here?”

“That’s right.”

“Wow,” he whistled at the ceiling.

Adam relaxed a bit and sat up in his chair. The cat was now out of the bag, and had it not been for Lee and her fears of being discovered he would have felt completely at ease. “How long can I see him today?” he asked.

“Well, Mr. Hall—”

“Just call me Adam, okay.”

“Sure, Adam, we really have two sets of rules for the Row.”

“Excuse me, but I was told by a guard at the gate that there was no death row.”

“Not officially. You’ll never hear the guards or other personnel refer to it as anything but Maximum Security or MSU or Unit 17. Anyway, when a man’s time is about up on the Row we relax the rules quite a bit. Normally, a visit with the lawyer is limited to an hour a day, but in Sam’s case you can have all the time you need. I suspect you’ll have a lot to talk about.”

“So there’s no time limit?”

“No. You can stay all day if you like. We try to
make things easy in the last days. You can come and go as you please as long as there’s no security risk. I’ve been to death row in five other states, and, believe me, we treat them the best. Hell, in Louisiana they take the poor guy out of his unit and place him in what’s called the Death House for three days before they kill him. Talk about cruel. We don’t do that. Sam will be treated special until the big day.”

“The big day?”

“Yeah. It’s four weeks from today, you know? August 8.” Lucas reached for some papers on the corner of his desk, then handed them to Adam. “This came down this morning. The Fifth Circuit lifted the stay late yesterday afternoon. The Mississippi Supreme Court just set a new execution date for August 8.”

Adam held the papers without looking at them. “Four weeks,” he said, stunned.

“Afraid so. I took a copy of it to Sam about an hour ago, so he’s in a foul mood.”

“Four weeks,” Adam repeated, almost to himself. He glanced at the court’s opinion. The case was styled State of Mississippi v. Sam Cayhall. “I guess I’d better go see him, don’t you think?” he said without thinking.

“Yeah. Look, Adam, I’m not one of the bad guys, okay?” Lucas slowly eased to his feet and walked to the edge of his desk where he gently placed his rear. He folded his arms and looked down at Adam. “I’m just doing my job, okay. I’ll be involved because I have to watch this place and make sure things are done legally, by the book. I won’t enjoy it, but it’ll get crazy and quite stressful, and everybody will be ringing my phone—the warden, his assistants, the Attorney General’s office, the governor, you, and a hundred others. So I’ll be in the middle of it, though I don’t want to. It’s the most unpleasant thing about this job. I just want you
to realize that I’m here if you need me, okay? I’ll always be fair and truthful with you.”

“You’re assuming Sam will allow me to represent him.”

“Yes. I’m assuming this.”

“What are the chances of the execution taking place in four weeks?”

“Fifty-fifty. You never know what the courts will do at the last minute. We’ll start preparing in a week or so. We have a rather long checklist of things to do to get ready for it.”

“Sort of a blueprint for death.”

“Something like that. Don’t think we enjoy it.”

“I guess everybody here is just doing their job, right?”

“It’s the law of this state. If our society wants to kill criminals, then someone has to do it.”

Adam placed the court opinion in his briefcase and stood in front of Lucas. “Thanks, I guess, for the hospitality.”

“Don’t mention it. After you visit with Sam, I’ll need to know what happened.”

“I’ll send you a copy of our representation agreement, if he signs it.”

“That’s all I need.”

They shook hands and Adam headed for the door.

“One other thing,” Lucas said. “When they bring Sam into the visiting room, ask the guards to remove the handcuffs. I’ll make sure they do. It’ll mean a lot to Sam.”

“Thanks.”

“Good luck.”

T
he temperature had risen at least ten degrees when Adam left the building and walked past the same two trustees sweeping the same dirt in the same languid motions. He stopped on the front steps, and for a moment watched a gang of inmates gather litter along the highway less than a hundred yards away. An armed guard on a horse in a ditch watched them. Traffic zipped along without slowing. Adam wondered what manner of criminals were these who were allowed to work outside the fences and so close to a highway. No one seemed to care about it but him.

He walked the short distance to his car, and was sweating by the time he opened the door and started the engine. He followed the drive through the parking lot behind Mann’s office, then turned left onto the main prison road. Again, he was passing neat little white homes with flowers and trees in the front yard. What a civilized little community. An arrow on a road sign pointed left to Unit 17. He turned, very slowly, and within seconds was on a dirt road that led quickly to some serious fencing and razor wire.

The Row at Parchman had been built in 1954, and officially labeled the Maximum Security Unit, or simply MSU. An obligatory plaque on a wall inside listed the date, the name of the governor then, the names of various important and long-forgotten officials who were instrumental in its construction, and, of course, the names of the architect and contractor. It was state
of the art for that period—a single-story flat roof building of red brick stretching in two long rectangles from the center.

Adam parked in the dirt lot between two other cars and stared at it. No bars were visible from the outside. No guards patrolled around it. If not for the fences and barbed wire, it could almost pass for an elementary school in the suburbs. Inside a caged yard at the end of one wing, a solitary inmate dribbled a basketball on a grassless court and flipped it against a crooked backboard.

The fence in front of Adam was at least twelve feet high, and crowned at the top with thick strands of barbed wire and a menacing roll of shiny razor wire. It ran straight and true to the corner where it joined a watchtower where guards looked down. The fence encompassed the Row on all four sides with remarkable symmetry, and in each corner an identical tower stood high above with a glass-enclosed guard station at the top. Just beyond the fence the crops started and seemed to run forever. The Row was literally in the middle of a cotton field.

Adam stepped from his car, felt suddenly claustrophobic, and squeezed the handle of his thin briefcase as he glared through the chain link at the hot, flat little building where they killed people. He slowly removed his jacket, and noticed his shirt was already spotted and sticking to his chest. The knot in his stomach had returned with a vengeance. His first few steps toward the guard station were slow and awkward, primarily because his legs were unsteady and his knees were shivering. His fancy tasseled loafers were dusty by the time he stopped under the watchtower and looked up. A red bucket, the type one might use to wash a car, was being lowered on a rope by an earnest woman in a uniform. “Put your keys in the bucket,” she explained
efficiently, leaning over the railing. The barbed wire on the top of the fence was five feet below her.

Adam quickly did as she instructed. He carefully laid his keys in the bucket where they joined a dozen other key rings. She jerked it back and he watched it rise for a few seconds, then stop. She tied the rope somehow, and the little red bucket hung innocently in the air. A nice breeze would have moved it gently, but at the moment, in this stifling vacuum, there was scarcely enough air to breathe. The winds had died years ago.

The guard was finished with him. Someone somewhere pushed a button or pulled a lever, Adam had no idea who did it, but a humming noise kicked in, and the first of two bulky, chain-link gates began to slide a few feet so he could enter. He walked fifteen feet along the dirt drive, then stopped as the first gate closed behind him. He was in the process of learning the first basic rule of prison security—every protected entrance has either two locked doors or gates.