_ _____________________________Chapter One (Cont.)
___Lena pulled into
a parking space across the street from the redbrick prison building.
The trip from Austin had been quickerthan she’d expected.
She was early and in no hurry to get inside. Leaving her engine
on and the air conditioning running, Lena picked up her notebook
and leafed through it. For the last three months she’d
been working on a series on capital punishment and the Texas
prison system. So it made sense for her to witness it firsthand.
It seemed logical, but what was the point?
___For that matter, what was the
point of the whole series? Back when Lena had first pitched
the idea to her editor, she’d hoped it would be a way
to encourage debate and change opinions. Maybe even alter policy.
But the deeper she got into her research, the more pointless
it seemed. The whole system was humming along on automatic pilot
and nothing was going to change that. Lena glanced at her watch
and turned off the engine. Enough stalling; it was time to go
inside.
___ As she stepped out of her car,
the heat hit her like a wave. This had to be the hottest day
of the year. Just a second outside and already a sheen of sweat
glazed her arms. It felt like her skin was melting. It was a
mystery to Lena how people here stood the heat. After two years
she still couldn’t deal with it. Maybe that was the real
issue. Not the weather, but that she needed a change of scene.
Two years in Texas and she still felt like an outsider. It was
time to get back East. Besides, she thought, she’d gone
as far as she could with the Star.
___ Clutching her notebook, she
scanned the area. The street dead-ended at the prison. The parking
area was on one side, a vacant lot on the other. There were
times at past executions, she’d heard, when the whole
area overflowed with people — though that hadn’t
happened anytime recently. Today the only ones here were a small
group on the corner across from her — a priest and two
nuns. They had to be miserable in their black robes, she thought.
Lena glanced at her watch again and walked toward the prison
gates. At least it would be cooler inside.
___ At the gate, she signed the
register and walked through the metal detector. The young guard
frisked her with his eyes. “This your first time for one
of these?”
___Lena nodded.
___“It’s real peaceful,
I’m told.” He smiled and adjusted the holster on
his hip. “Just like falling asleep. I hope it don’t
bother you none.”
___Lena looked away. “I’m
expected inside,” she said.
___“Sure. I didn’t
mean to keep you or anything. I really didn’t mean nothin’.”
The guard lowered his head as he let her through.
___ An older guard led her into
the building. It was cooler here, but not by much. The lights
were dim and the air stagnant. The red bricks lining the hallway
had faded to a burnt pink. It was a hallway, Lena thought, not
unlike the one the prisoner would walk down later that night.
She wondered how he’d feel as he walked that hall, knowing
what was to come. What emotions would he feel? Fear for sure.
Maybe anger, or grief. Would he be praying? Searching for a
God he’d only recently found?
___ Lena wondered, what would she
be thinking if she knew that she was about to die? And almost
immediately she knew, Is this all there is? Here she was, twenty-nine
years old, not beautiful maybe, but others considered her attractive.
She was tall and slim with short ash-blond hair and cool blue
eyes. Her features were plain but her lips were full and her
smile golden. She had a good job with the Austin Star where
her career was on the fast track— that was her focus.
But something was missing.
___ Midway down the hall, the guard
ushered Lena into a small room, much like a classroom. It had
desks with hard plastic seats and a blackboard in the front.
No one else was there yet.
___“The orientation’s
in here, but it won’t start for another twenty minutes.
The execution’ll be at six.” The guard closed the
door, leaving her alone. Lena sat down and tried to make herself
comfortable. At least this room was air-conditioned.
___ At the orientation Lena met
some of the other witnesses; mostly relatives of the condemned.
Three other reporters would be at the execution later, too,
but this was their regular beat and they already knew what to
expect. Another group of witnesses, relatives of the victims,
would also view the execution. But they’d be seated in
a separate witness area. One of the prison chaplains, a Methodist
minister, gave the orientation. This was his fifty-second execution
in the two years he’d been there, he said quietly. He
went into detail about the process and took extra time to answer
questions. After the orientation the group was led down to another
room to wait. Lena used the time to interview the other witnesses
and plan the outline for her story.
___ The execution was scheduled
for six, but they didn’t go down to the witness booth
till six-forty-five. One of the guards told Lena that the prisoner
had been a substance abuser and they’d had a hard time
finding a vein they could use.
___ In the witness booth, two rows
of auditorium seats faced a large window. Lena sat in the back
row. Through the glass she looked in to the death chamber. It
was a small room painted a robin’s-egg blue, giving the
space a false cheer. Her gaze quickly moved to the center where
a large gurney faced the window. The prisoner was already there,
fastened tight with leather straps. A large man, with a huge
misshapen nose, he barely fit on the gurney. IV needles stuck
out from each arm.
___ The prisoner, Billy Dale Burke,
fit the mold for death
row. High school dropout, drug addict, a long record of prior
convictions. There was no question of his guilt, either. Some
twelve years earlier Billy Dale had killed a customer and a
clerk while robbing a gas station. He’d been convicted
of robbing the same station five years before and both times
he was caught on video. Appeals dragged the case out for years;
now, all appeals exhausted, his sentence was to be carried out.
___ The warden stood at the front
of the witness booth. He faced the prisoner through the glass
and, by microphone, read the death decree. When he was done
he asked if there were any final words.
___A boom mike came down from the
ceiling. “1 want everyone to know how sorry I am,”
Billy Dale said. His voice wavered and his hands, though bound
at the wrist, shook. Tears formed in his eyes. “I didn’t
plan on none of this happening, and I wish to God I had another
chance. I hope the Lord is forgiving. That’s all.”
___ The warden paused a moment,
then removed his glasses. Lena knew this was the signal to start
the process. She glanced at her watch. Six-forty-nine. The fluid
in the IV tubes changed color and after a few moments Billy
Dale’s eyes closed. A minute later he let out a long sigh,
almost a snore. And then he lay still.
___ Lena sat back and waited. No
one tried to talk. The only sound in the room was the muffled
sobbing from a blonde in the front row. Though the room was
air-conditioned, it still seemed stuffy. The scent of someone’s
aftershave filled the air. After a few minutes one of the witnesses
nervously cleared his throat and shifted in his seat. The minutes
dragged by.
___ After what seemed an eternity,
the prison doctor entered the chamber through a separate door.
Using a stethoscope he bent over the body and listened for a
full minute. Then he announced the time of death as 6:59 P.M.
The whole thing took less than fifteen minutes.
___ Lena took a deep breath and
held it in. She still didn’t know how to react. A man
had died in front of her eyes. And all she felt was numb.
FORTY-FIVE MILES away in the segregation section
of the Terrell Unit in Livingston, Ramon Willis lay on his bunk
unable to sleep. He’d tried reading, but the words on
the page could have been written in Chinese for all the sense
they were making. He couldn’t quiet his mind to concentrate.
It were as if there were a neon sign flashing in his head with
the message saying, You’re next.
___ One week, just seven more days,
and his life would end. And there wasn’t a thing he could
do about it. He stood up and moved around his cell. It measured
nine feet long by five feet wide—hardly enough room to
turn around in, let alone pace. He was filled with nervous energy
and needed some form of outlet. He felt like rattling the bars
of his cage and screaming out in anxious rage, but he refused
to lose control. He couldn’t. He got down on the floor,
and wedged between his bunk and the far wall, he pumped off
one hundred push-ups. He followed this with another one hundred
sit-ups. Ramon had been doing this several times a day since
he’d first arrived ten years ago, although then he couldn’t
do more than a few at a time.
___ He stood up, barely panting
from the exertion, and surveyed his cell. Three concrete walls
with the cage in front. A stainless-steel bunk built into the
wall, covered with a thin mattress and sweat-stained sheets,
a concrete stool and a concrete desk, a stainless-steel toilet
next to a stainless-steel wash basin with a mirror also made
of polished stainless steel. There was a small shelf above his
bed. Placed there were a few books, a radio, and some photographs.
This small room was his life. Everything that he owned was in
this small enclosure. Once he was gone, all evidence that he’d
been here would disappear,too, like a stone sinking below the
surface of a pond without leaving a ripple.
___ Ramon moved over and looked
into his mirror. He thought of how he had changed in prison.
Physically he hadn’t changed much. He was older of course,
and much stronger, even healthier-looking despite the starch
and fat that served as a diet here. If someone had known him
before, they’d surely be able to recognize him now. He
had a distinctive look. From his Mexican mother, he’d
inherited the high cheekbones, jet-black hair, and bronzed complexion.
From his father he’d gotten his eyes. Deep blue eyes that
caused people to do a double take. Viking eyes in an Aztec face.
___ But in other ways he had changed
a lot. It was his attitude mostly. He felt different, he thought
different, he acted different. Ramon believed that the measure
of a man was how he responded to adversity; and he thought that
he measured up well. Death row is the end of the line. Once
a man is sent there, he might as well give up his humanity at
the door. It’s filled with society’s ultimate losers,
and being caged together doesn’t bring out their finest
qualities. But Ramon had responded to prison as a wakeup call,
too late, saying that his life had to change. He wasn’t
the same person he’d been ten years ago when he first
entered this prison.
___ Not that it mattered
— they were about to kill an innocent man.
From Berkley Publishing in March 2003
