by Ninie Hammon
“You know I can’t do that! I’m her pastor. Anything she tells me is confidential. I couldn’t tell you even if I wanted to.”
The man took up the study of his own shoes again, looked so defeated Mac felt a little sorry for him.
“Look, you already know her better than I do. She asked for a minister yesterday and I drew the short straw. I’ve only had the one conversation with her.”
Bartlett lifted his head. “Do you want to know more about her? Wouldn’t it help you counsel her more effectively if you knew her better?”
“Yeah, I suppose.”
“I’ll make a deal with you. You ask her to talk to me.” He held up his hand before Mac could protest. “Ask, that’s all. And I’ll tell you anything you want to know about her.”
Mac hedged. “I’ll ask, but just so you know—I’m going to advise her to say no.”
Bartlett’s laugh sounded genuine. “You sure don’t polish it up before you say it, do you?” He let out a breath and squared his shoulders. “All right, I can live with that. It’s not much, but it’s more than I’ve got right now.” He leaned back in his chair. “What do you know about her already?”
“The basics, what everybody knows, that she was convicted of murdering her little sister and she’s been on death row for fourteen years.” Mac didn’t call it the Long Dark or mention that she’d been in solitary. The man might already know those things and he could certainly find out somewhere else. But it seemed to Mac that both tidbits reeked of yellow journalism.
“She didn’t just kill her little sister. Emily beheaded her, then chopped her up with an ax.”
Mac groaned.
“The child’s name was Angela, by the way,” Bartlett said. “Emily described how she had trouble chopping through the kid’s bones, how she had to take the dress off the body because it made it harder to cut up. And that the head was—”
“Okay, I think we’ve covered that part.”
“I’m just saying, this isn’t a case where there’s doubt about whether the defendant committed the crime. No circumstantial evidence or uncertain eye witnesses. Emily admitted it, described it in excruciating detail. Almost seemed … proud of it.”
“Why’d she do it? What was her motive?”
“She never said and the prosecution never could come up with a reason. She confessed and then clammed right up, refused to answer any questions or talk about anything but the murder. That’s why I want to talk to her. There are a bunch of things about this case that don’t make any sense to me. I want to write a story that clears up all the mysteries. Right now, the only person who can is about to take the answers with her to the grave.”
“For instance?”
“She ran away from home, was on the run for almost two weeks and she took Angela with her when she split. So, did she take her little sister because she was planning to kill her? Or did she kill her because of something that happened during those two weeks? What was it? And once she’d killed the child and disposed of the body—?”
“How?”
“Threw the pieces of it in the Three Forks River, never recovered anything for the family to bury. But after that, why didn’t Emily at least try to get away with the crime?”
“How’d they catch her?”
“She went to a circus in Fisherville all covered in blood! The clips said she threw some kind of fit there.”
“The warden told me she’s an epileptic.”
“So here’s this blood-covered teenager flopping around on the ground in a crowd of people, foaming at the mouth. Of course, somebody’s going to call the police! And when she came to, she told them the whole story.”
“Never tried to deny anything?”
“Nope, pleaded guilty and the judge sentenced her to death, court proceedings didn’t take but a couple of hours. Of course, that was before that female lawyer got into the act.”
“How could Prin … Emily afford a lawyer and why’d she bother?”
“I don’t think she had a whole lot to say about it one way or the other. Some East Coast law firm on a crusade against the death penalty somehow got hold of the case and they made major hay with it. Said the defendant didn’t understand her rights before she confessed and hadn’t been properly represented, claimed diminished capacity. Convinced an appellate judge to throw out Emily’s confession and they had to take her to court and try her in front of a jury. Result was the same, though. There was plenty of physical evidence to convict her even without a confession. She’d kept the bloody dress Angela’d been wearing and the murder weapon, the ax. Had strands of her sister’s hair, long curls, on it.”
Bartlett paused. “You know, I could show you pictures of the evidence, the bloody ax and—”
“I’ll pass, thanks.”
The reporter shrugged and continued the narrative. “I remember reading some of the testimony of Emily’s step-father at her trial. I swear, that’s what got her the chair, what he said on the stand. Him being a preacher and all—” The reporter stopped, looked uncomfortable. “I’m just saying, he was very … convincing.”
“I’ve heard Jackson Prentiss speak—not just on TV, live—and I know how persuasive he can be,” Mac said. “But I didn’t know he was Emily’s stepfather.”
“Angela’s stepfather, too, but he adopted them, changed their names to Prentiss. Emily’s parents joined his church in Texas when Emily was about ten. Then right after her mother got pregnant with Angela, her father ran off with another woman and they divorced—a big deal in the forties. So the reverend married the pregnant divorcée, said he wanted to ‘help her raise her children.’ At some point, he moved the church way back in the Ouachita Mountains in Arkansas. He called it a ‘family’ then.” The reporter leaned close and whispered, “Shoot, we’d probably call it a ‘commune’ now.”
He straightened and continued the story. “Emily’s mother died in childbirth having Angela. Prentiss broke down sobbing on the stand talking about it. The baby wasn’t his blood kin, but he said as soon as he saw her, he loved her like she was his flesh and bone. Said she was pure and … ‘unsullied’ was his word. His wife of only a couple of months had given her life to bring the baby into the world and then Emily took that innocent child and ... It was genuinely heartbreaking.”
There was a beat of silence before he continued.
“But even after Emily was convicted by a jury, that lawyer—her name was … Solomon, Gretchen Solomon. She absolutely would not let it go, filed appeal after appeal.”
That explained Princess’s fourteen years of solitary confinement. It would have been far more merciful to have executed her on the spot.
“Why’d the woman keep dragging it out?”
“She didn’t think Emily did it.”
“After she confessed? That’s nuts.”
“I’m with you, pastor, but there you have it. The lawyer was quoted in a story, saying something like, ‘if you’d ever talked to Emily, you’d know she couldn’t possibly have done this.’ Said that no matter what the evidence ‘appears to show,’ Emily couldn’t have harmed the kid, that she loved Angela.”
A sudden chill ran down Mac’s spine. There was a part of him that could understand why the woman felt that way, bizarre as it sounded. There was just something about Princess …
“So the lawyer finally ran out of appeals, huh?” he said.
“Nope. Died. I think she was killed, stepped in front of a bus or something in Boston about a year ago. And without somebody putting on the brakes, the wheels of justice finally ground around to Emily Prentiss.”
Mac was quiet.
“What else do you want to know?”
“Not a thing. Truth is, I think I was better off before. All this information does is make me sick.”
“Are you going to hold up your end of the bargain, be an honest man, and ask her if she’ll see me?”
Be an honest man? A much more intriguing question than Sam Bartlett realized. Mac had been a minister his whole adult life
and that afforded a code of conduct. Tracks to run your life on. Without the code, was Mac an honest man?
“I agreed to ask her and I will. And if she wants to talk to you, that’s her business.” After hearing her story, Mac didn’t feel quite as inclined to protect her.
Chapter 11
Mac didn’t know if he was supposed to go by Oran’s office every day when he went to visit Princess or if he could just process through security at the check-in center and be taken directly to the envelope room. When he showed up at the main gate at 3 o’clock, the guard looked in vain for his name on a list. Apparently prison visitors were required to give prior notice.
He was struck by a small burst of panic, thinking that because he hadn’t called ahead, they wouldn’t let him see her. And it surprised him that the thought of not seeing her now exceeded the angst he’d felt at the prospect of meeting her in the first place.
Finally, the guard placed a phone call, spoke for a few moments, then waved Mac through.
“You need to get a pass from the warden’s office,” he said. “I’m not supposed to let you in without your name being on the day sheet.”
Mac drove directly to the administration building, where he was greeted at the check-in center by the unsmiling, Olympic wrestling team guard from before. She patted him down and told him to empty out his pockets into a metal basket. Unlike the guard working security the day before, she began to meticulously examine the contents of the basket, setting aside everything metal, sharp or pointed—his car keys and two ballpoint pens. She could be all day at this.
“Just keep it all, I’ll pick it up when I come back later.”
She shrugged, marked the basket and set it in a shelf unit of baskets. Then she led him wordlessly through the rabbit warren of hallways up to the fourth floor to the desk of Oran’s secretary.
“Didn’t know you’d be back today, Reverend McIntosh.”
“I’m sorry. I should have said something before I left yesterday. I promised Miss Prentiss that I would come and talk to her every day this week.”
She looked up, surprised.
“That’s okay, isn’t it? I thought Oran said she was entitled to see a minister.”
“She is. Let me explain the protocol.” Her voice lapsed into the sing-song rhythm of one who has repeated the same words hundreds of times. “Gen pop prisoners are allowed visitors once a week, on Thursdays, for one hour, if they have not had any infractions of the rules, not gotten any marks against their names. Those visits are in the visitation center on the first floor of building three.” She paused in the recitation to add a commentary. “The center has glass walls between the inmates and visitors, to keep down the flow of contraband—or worse. Death row inmates get to use the lawyer conference room on the third floor of this building, which has no such restrictions.”
Ah, but the room does have a crack in the wall. Princess found it.
The secretary took up the litany again. “On the last week, a death row inmate is allowed daily visits, up to a maximum of three people a day, between 9 a.m. and noon and from 1 to 5 p.m. On Friday, the day of the execution, no visitation is allowed before noon or after 4 p.m.”
She reached into her desk drawer and pulled out a badge, the kind you pin to your lapel at a Shriner’s convention, wrote his name on it, then signed and dated it herself.
“With this, the guard will let you in the front gate without you having to call first or have your name on the day sheet.”
“Thanks.”
She looked at the clock on the wall.
“Prentiss is outside for her hour in the exercise yard right now. I’ll send somebody to get her.”
She reached for the phone as she spoke to the guard. “Would you take Reverend McIntosh to the lawyer conference room, please? Take him through the yard and up the back stairs. Maintenance is replacing the cracked hinge on the security door.”
He walked beside, instead of respectfully three steps behind, Godzilla as they headed down the hallway.
Wonder if she’s a high enough order of primate that she can actually speak?
“So, your name’s …?” He said as he glanced down at her name badge. Smooth move. It was some Polish or Russian name, all consonants, totally unpronounceable. “Uh, what is your name?”
She grunted something that sounded like, “Warsa-cowski-peder-inski-wasniak ... ski.”
Silence, just the sound of her black jackboots stomping on the concrete.
“Well … I hear there’s a new guard on the Long Dark,” he prattled on mindlessly, remembering what Princess had told him yesterday. “A Mexican woman from Nogales. Do you—?”
She stopped to unlock a door for them to cut across an empty corner of the quadrangle to the back stairs leading up to the third floor of the administration building.
“Don’t know who you been talkin’ to, Rev’rend,” she grunted, the accent pure Oklahoma, regardless of the cultural heritage. “There ain’t no Mexicans working on the Long Dark. Newest guard there’s name is Bradley.”
Her words shoved a tiny silver ice pick into his side just below his ribcage. He probably would have asked more questions, but the door swung open and the sound came then, not from anywhere so much as from everywhere, all around him.
Oran had been right about Princess’s singing—surely that’s who it was. Mac had never heard anything like it. The melody seemed vaguely hymnal, something she remembered from a church service perhaps, or a camp meeting, maybe even a funeral. No not a funeral, not dark and somber. This was light and airy, each note a cherry dipped in the warm chocolate of Princess’s husky voice. It was almost … Gaelic! Yes, like the old songs his Irish grandfather used to sing when he got drunk.
The melody sparkled in the glistening May sunshine as they continued across the quad. Even the Neanderthal guard seemed to be walking more softly in response to it.
The words weren’t English or any language he’d ever heard. They were merely a collection of sounds, backwards syllables, perhaps, their not-quite-ness haunting and tantalizing. Words spoken in a dream before the harsh light of waking dissolved them and they dissipated even as you grabbed at them, wisps of smoke from a dying campfire.
He vaguely remembered some myth—high school English class, he should have paid better attention. Was it the Iliad or the Odyssey? The story of a warrior rendered helpless by a siren’s song.
Surely, this was a siren’s song.
The singing ended abruptly. But the sound lingered somehow in the stillness, the air empty and vacant without it, as if the music was the flip side of silence in the same way that light was the flip side of darkness.
The guard unlocked the door into building one, locked it behind them, and led through more locked metal doors, narrow, dark hallways, and up a staircase until they arrived at the manila-envelope room from the other direction.
Princess was already there. Sitting quietly, her hands folded demurely on the table in front of her.
“’Lo, Princess.”
“Reverend,” she said, in the voice that didn’t belong in the scrawny body with the scarred face and brown teeth.
He walked to the table, pulled out the chair, and sat. Then he opened his mouth to tell her he’d heard her singing, to ask her about the words, the melody.
And to tell her there was a reporter who wanted to talk to her. And to ask about the fictitious guard and how on earth she …
Instead, he said. “You do realize, don’t you, that you have your dress on wrong-side out?”
Seams showed at the shoulders and on the sides of the shapeless brown shift; the buttons down the front were invisible; a tag dangled in the back.
“It’s Tuesday.”
Mac’s mind stumbled, trying to catch the train of Princess’s thought. “Is that something like, ‘I’m sorry, I can’t hear you, my shoe’s untied’?”
Princess wrinkled her brow. “Rev, you ain’t making a lick of sense.”
Mac started over, his speech slow and measured.
“Am I supposed to see some connection between Tuesday and wearing your dress wrong side out?”
“Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays is wrong-side-out days. Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays is right-side-out days. And Sundays they give out clean uniforms.”
“You change it because it’s dirty?”
“’Course it’s dirty. You don’t change clothes but once a week, what you got on’s dirty on both sides! Ain’t got nothing to do with dirt. I switch it back and forth so’s I can keep track of what day it is.”
“Oh, so you—”
“So I get up Monday morning with a clean uniform on—ain’t ironed or nothing, all wrinkled like an old dishrag, but it’s clean, smells like bleach. And I sleep in it Monday night and when I get up Tuesday morning, I take it off, stand there nekkid and splash water on me from the sink to clean up best as I can and I put my dress back on wrong side out. I wear it all day, sleep in it Tuesday night, and then Wednesday morning—”
“I get it.”
“You don’t do something to keep track, you lose time and you don’t know where it went. A day, a week … you can lose months, years even. It’s just slipping through your fingers ‘thout you knowin’ and one day you look up and it ain’t the same old same old, day in, day out. It’s all gone.”
She was sitting perfectly still, her face animated, but the rest of her body motionless. Then she was up and across the room, gazing out the window.
A ground squirrel, Mac amended in his head, She didn’t move herky-jerky like a squirrel—just quick, like the hot-dog-shaped chipmunks that lived in community burrows on the Texas and Oklahoma plains, the ones that called out to each other at sundown with a plaintive, chig-chig-chiggeree cry.
“Only way not to lose days is to grab hold of the little bitty pieces of ’em and hold on tight as you can to ever’ one.”
“Like …?”
“Like … like scratchin’ a itch!” She turned to him, a smile on her face brighter than her brown teeth. “Ain’t that a fine thing, to scratch a itch? Do you know you can make yourself itch, just by thinking ’bout it hard?”
She crossed the room toward him, but at the last moment caught herself and stepped so the table was between them.