Three Classic Thrillers (128 page)

“So what? Do we then ask for lethal injection? What’s the point? Seems kind of silly for me to say I prefer not to die in the chamber, but, what the hell, lethal injection will do just fine. Put me on the gurney and fill me up with drugs. I’ll be dead, right? I don’t get it.”

“True. But we buy ourselves some time. We’ll attack the gas chamber, get a temporary stay, then pursue it through the higher courts. We could jam this thing for years.”

“It’s already been done.”

“What do you mean it’s already been done?”

“Texas, 1983. Case called Larson. The same arguments were made with no result. The court said gas chambers have been around for fifty years, and they’ve proven themselves quite efficient at killing humanely.”

“Yeah, but there’s one big difference.”

“What?”

“This ain’t Texas. Meeks and Tole and Moac and Parris weren’t gassed in Texas. And, by the way, Texas
has already gone to lethal injection. They threw away their gas chamber because they found a better way to kill. Most gas chamber states have traded them in for better technology.”

Sam stood and walked to the other end of the table. “Well, when it’s my time, I damned sure want to go with the latest technology.” He paced along the table, back and forth three or four times, then stopped. “It’s eighteen feet from one end of this room to the other. I can walk eighteen feet without hitting bars. Do you realize what it’s like spending twenty-three hours a day in a cell that’s six feet by nine? This is freedom, man.” He paced some more, puffing as he came and went.

Adam watched the frail figure bounce along the edge of the table with a trail of smoke behind him. He had no socks and wore navy-colored rubber shower shoes that squeaked when he paced. He suddenly stopped, yanked a book from a shelf, threw it hard on the table, and began flipping pages with a flourish. After a few minutes of intense searching, he found exactly what he was looking for and spent five minutes reading it.

“Here it is,” he mumbled to himself. “I knew I’d read this before.”

“What is it?”

“A 1984 case from North Carolina. The man’s name was Jimmy Old, and evidently Jimmy did not want to die. They had to drag him into the chamber, kicking and crying and screaming, and it took a while to strap him in. They slammed the door and dropped the gas, and his chin crashed onto his chest. Then his head rolled back and began twitching. He turned to the witnesses who could see nothing but the whites of his eyeballs, and he began salivating. His head rocked and swung around forever while his body shook and his mouth foamed. It went on and on, and one of the witnesses, a journalist, vomited. The warden got fed up
with it and closed the black curtains so the witnesses couldn’t see anymore. They estimate it took fourteen minutes for Jimmy Old to die.”

“Sounds cruel to me.”

Sam closed the book and placed it carefully onto the shelf. He lit a cigarette and studied the ceiling. “Virtually every gas chamber was built long ago by Eaton Metal Products in Salt Lake City. I read somewhere that Missouri’s was built by inmates. But our little chamber was built by Eaton, and they’re all basically the same—made of steel, octagonal in shape with a series of windows placed here and there so folks can watch the death. There’s not much room inside the actual chamber, just a wooden seat with straps all over it. There’s a metal bowl directly under the chair, and just inches above the bowl is a little bag of cyanide tablets which the executioner controls with a lever. He also controls the sulfuric acid which is introduced into the affair by means of the canister. The canister makes its way through a tube to the bowl, and when the bowl fills with acid, he pulls the lever and drops the cyanide pellets. This causes the gas, which of course causes death, which of course is designed to be painless and quick.”

“Wasn’t it designed to replace the electric chair?”

“Yes. Back in the twenties and thirties, everyone had an electric chair, and it was just the most marvelous device ever invented. I remember as a boy they had a portable electric chair which they simply loaded into a trailer and took around to the various counties. They’d pull up at the local jail, bring ’em out in shackles, line ’em up outside the trailer, then run ’em through. It was an efficient way to alleviate overcrowded jails.” He shook his head in disbelief. “Anyway, they, of course, had no idea what they were doing, and there were some horrible stories of people suffering. This is capital
punishment, right? Not capital torture. And it wasn’t just Mississippi. Many states were using these old, half-ass rigged electric chairs with a bunch of jakelegs pulling the switches, and there were all sorts of problems. They’d strap in some poor guy, pull the switch, give him a good jolt but not good enough, guy was roasting on the inside but wouldn’t die, so they’d wait a few minutes, and hit him again. This might go on for fifteen minutes. They wouldn’t fasten the electrodes properly, and it was not uncommon for flames and sparks to shoot from the eyes and ears. I read an account of a guy who received an improper voltage. The steam built up in his head and his eyeballs popped out. Blood ran down his face. During an electrocution, the skin gets so hot that they can’t touch the guy for a while, so in the old days they had to let him cool off before they could tell if he was dead. There are lots of stories about men who would sit still after the initial jolt, then start breathing again. So they would of course hit ’em with another current. This might happen four or five times. It was awful, so this Army doctor invented the gas chamber as a more humane way to kill people. It is now, as you say, obsolete because of lethal injection.”

Sam had an audience, and Adam was captivated. “How many men have died in Mississippi’s chamber?” he asked.

“It was first used here in 1954, or thereabouts. Between then and 1970, they killed thirty-five men. No women. After Furman in 1972, it sat idle until Teddy Doyle Meeks in 1982. They’ve used it three times since then, so that’s a total of thirty-nine. I’ll be number forty.”

He began pacing again, now much slower. “It’s a terribly inefficient way to kill people,” he said, much like a professor in front of a classroom. “And it’s dangerous.
Dangerous of course to the poor guy strapped in the chair, but also to those outside the chamber. These damned things are old and they all leak to some degree. The seals and gaskets rot and crumble, and the cost of building a chamber that will not leak is prohibitive. A small leak could be deadly to the executioner or anyone standing nearby. There are always a handful of people—Naifeh, Lucas Mann, maybe a minister, the doctor, a guard or two—standing in the little room just outside the chamber. There are two doors to this little room, and they are always closed during an execution. If any of the gas leaked from the chamber into the room, it would probably hit Naifeh or Lucas Mann and they’d croak right there on the floor. Not a bad idea, come to think of it.

“The witnesses are also in a great deal of danger, and they don’t have a clue. There’s nothing between them and the chamber except for a row of windows, which are old and equally subject to leakage. They’re also in a small room with the door closed, and if there’s a gas leak of any size these gawking fools get gassed too.

“But the real danger comes afterward. There’s a wire they stick to your ribs and it runs through a hole in the chamber to outside where a doctor monitors the heartbeat. Once the doctor says the guy is dead, they open a valve on top of the chamber and the gas is supposed to evaporate. Most of it does. They’ll wait fifteen minutes or so, then open the door. The cooler air from the outside that’s used to evacuate the chamber causes a problem because it mixes with the remaining gas and condenses on everything inside. It creates a death trap for anyone going in. It’s extremely dangerous, and most of these clowns don’t realize how serious it is. There’s a residue of prussic acid on everything—walls, windows, floor, ceiling, door, and, of course, the dead guy.

“They spray the chamber and the corpse with ammonia to neutralize the remaining gas, then the removal team or whatever it’s called goes in with oxygen masks. They’ll wash the inmate a second time with ammonia or chlorine bleach because the poison oozes through the pores in the skin. While he’s still strapped in the chair, they cut his clothes off, put them in a bag, and burn them. In the old days they allowed the guy to wear only a pair of shorts so their job would be easier. But now they’re such sweethearts they allow us to wear whatever we want. So if I get that far, I’ll have a hell of a time selecting my wardrobe.”

He actually spat on the floor as he thought about this. He cursed under his breath and stomped around the far end of the table.

“What happens to the body?” Adam asked, somewhat ashamed to tread on such sensitive matters but nonetheless anxious to complete the story.

Sam grunted a time or two, then stuck the cigarette in his mouth. “Do you know the extent of my wardrobe?”

“No.”

“Consists of two of these red monkey suits, four or five sets of clean underwear, and one pair of these cute little rubber shower shoes that look like leftovers from a nigger fire sale. I refuse to die in one of these red suits. I’ve thought about exercising my constitutional rights and parading into the chamber buck naked. Wouldn’t that be a sight? Can you see those goons trying to shove me around and strap me in and trying like hell not to touch my privates. And when they get me strapped down, I’ll reach over and take the little heart monitor gizmo and attach it to my testicles. Wouldn’t the doctor love that? And I’d make sure the witnesses saw my bare ass. I think that’s what I’ll do.”

“What happens to the body?” Adam asked again.

“Well, once it’s sufficiently washed and disinfected, they dress it in prison garb, pull it out of the chair, then put it in a body bag. They place it on a stretcher which goes into the ambulance which takes it to a funeral home somewhere. The family takes over at that point. Most families.”

Sam was now standing with his back to Adam, talking to a wall and leaning on a bookshelf. He was silent for a long time, silent and still as he gazed into the corner and thought about the four men he’d known who had already gone to the chamber. There was an unwritten rule on the Row that when your time came you did not go to the chamber in a red prison suit. You did not give them the satisfaction of killing you in the clothes they’d forced you to wear.

Maybe his brother, the one who sent the monthly supply of cigarettes, would help with a shirt and a pair of pants. New socks would be nice. And anything but the rubber shower shoes. He’d rather go barefoot than wear those damned things.

He turned and walked slowly to Adam’s end of the table and took a seat. “I like this idea,” he said, very quiet and composed. “It’s worth a try.”

“Good. Let’s get to work. I want you to find more cases like Jimmy Old from North Carolina. Let’s dig up every wretched and botched gas chamber execution known to man. We’ll throw ’em all in the lawsuit. I want you to make a list of people who might testify about the Meeks and Tole executions. Maybe even Moac and Parris.”

Sam was already on his feet again, pulling books from shelves and mumbling to himself. He piled them on the table, dozens of them, then buried himself among the stacks.

T
he rolling wheat fields stretched for miles then grew steeper as the foothills began. The majestic mountains lined the farmland in the distance. In a sweeping valley above the fields, with a view for miles in front and with the mountains as a barrier to the rear, the Nazi compound lay sprawled over a hundred acres. Its barbed-wire fences were camouflaged with hedgerows and underbrush. Its firing ranges and combat grounds were likewise screened to prevent detection from the air. Only two innocuous log cabins sat above the ground, and if seen from the outside would appear only to be fishing lodges. But below them, deep in the hills, were two shafts with elevators which dropped into a maze of natural caverns and man-made caves. Large tunnels, wide enough for golf carts, ran in all directions and connected a dozen different rooms. One room had a printing press. Two stored weapons, and ammunition. Three large ones were living quarters. One was a small library. The largest room, a cavern forty feet from top to bottom, was the central hall where the members gathered for speeches and films and rallies.

It was a state-of-the-art compound, with satellite dishes feeding televisions with news from around the world, and computers linked to other compounds for the quick flow of information, and fax machines, cellular phones, and every current electronic device in vogue.

No less than ten newspapers were received into the
compound each day, and they were taken to a table in a room next to the library where they were first read by a man named Roland. He lived in the compound most of the time, along with several other members who maintained the place. When the newspapers arrived from the city, usually around nine in the morning, Roland poured himself a large cup of coffee and started reading. It was not a chore. He had traveled the world many times, spoke four languages, and had a voracious appetite for knowledge. If a story caught his attention, he would mark it, and later he would make a copy of it and give it to the computer desk.

His interests were varied. He barely scanned the sports, and never looked at the want ads. Fashion, style, living, fanfare, and related sections were browsed with little curiosity. He collected stories about groups similar to his—Aryans, Nazis, the KKK. Lately, he’d been flagging many stories from Germany and Eastern Europe, and was quite thrilled with the rise of fascism there. He spoke fluent German and spent at least one month a year in that great country. He watched the politicians, with their deep concern about hate crimes and their desire to restrict the rights of groups such as his. He watched the Supreme Court. He followed the trials of skinheads in the United States. He followed the tribulations of the KKK.

He normally spent two hours each morning absorbing the latest news and deciding which stories should be kept for future reference. It was routine, but he enjoyed it immensely.