“Bud Curtis could well have fetched that glass of water, couldn’t he? That doesn’t disprove his complicity, in my opinion. Why would Curtis lie about something like that?”
“For God’s sake, Bill—pardon my language again, I’ll try to be careful—but that’s what I’m saying! He wasn’t lying! He did have the glass with him! The prosecution just wanted to destroy his credibility with the jury. If he could lie about a little detail like that, what couldn’t he lie about?”
“I see your point. The only thing you still have to prove is that he had that glass when he came back in. How can you do that?”
T was excited. He was making headway. “You can see now, Bill . . .” He clicked on a couple of files and hoped it would work. “Look, now I’m connecting the NBC clips together so you can see them in sequence. Both what was shown on TV, and what wasn’t—that is, what was recorded on Marvin Gallegos’s camera while it was lying on the floor. . . . And now we’ll run the entire NBC sequence concurrently with the hotel’s surveillance video.”
He pointed at the two small pictures on the screen, one on top of the other. “We’ll stop the surveillance video exactly when the shooting occurs.” T listened intensely to the tape. “Here it comes . . . there!” He pushed PAUSE. “Now we’ll run the NBC file to the same spot so they’ll be synchronized, then we can rewind and run them together—I hope.”
He clicked back and forth a little and could feel how Falso was losing interest. “Just a sec, Bill, I’m not too good at this.” He tried again, praying that the gunshots would come at the same time.
One could just make out Gallegos in the background of the surveillance video, standing on tiptoe with his camera. Then the shots came—at the same time on both recordings, luckily—and one could see people throwing themselves to the floor. Then, suddenly, one camera was shooting sideways from the floor while the other showed Bud Curtis entering from the side and giving a little jerk of surprise as the shots fell. T stopped the tapes.
“This is the moment where Bud Curtis drops the glass, if he ever was holding one. We agree on that, don’t we? You saw how he gave a start, and now he’s standing with his hand open, right?”
Falso folded his hands over his paunch with studied patience. But just one call from death row, and he’d be gone—T knew it. “Yeah, let’s say that.”
“Okay, look at the picture underneath. The one with the camera lying down. We’ll take it frame by frame. One . . . two . . . three . . . and hey! What happened there?”
“It’s your gray spot.”
“It sure as hell is. Oops, sorry again, Bill. Yes, it is—and why? Because Bud Curtis dropped his glass—there, where he opens his hand on the other video—and he was close enough to Gallegos’s camera that a drop of water splashed onto the lens. Just one little drop, but it sure as h . . . heck adds credence to Bud Curtis’s testimony.”
Bill Pagelow Falso wiped his nose and remained silent. He’d obviously been paying attention. He’d read stacks of trial transcripts in his time and probably knew more about case law than most. Plenty of appeals had crossed his desk, too, and now here was one he couldn’t refute on either technical or ethical grounds. The question was whether Falso saw it this way, too.
T leaned in over the desk and lay his hand on Falso’s pale arm. “I don’t know why Ben Kane wouldn’t take responsibility for shooting Toby O’Neill, Bill, I have to admit. Maybe he had something on his person that couldn’t stand being discovered. Maybe it was Kane who picked up Curtis’s water glass. Then he just stuck it in his pants pocket and got rid of it later.”
Falso pulled his arm away. “Then why couldn’t he have had the gun in his pants pocket, too?”
T thought a moment. “Maybe he did, now that you mention it!”
“Yes, or else it happened some other way, or yet another way, or none of the above. So maybe you should consider removing Sunderland from the list of suspects, shouldn’t you?”
T heaved a sigh. “These last couple of days have been long ones, Bill. I’ll get back to you with a decent answer to that question at a later date. But you can’t explain away the drop of water, can you?”
Falso shook his head. “No, but if you’re right about all this, why don’t you go to the state prosecutor?”
“We don’t have time. You have no idea how long everything takes these days.”
Now it was Falso’s turn to give a sigh—one that made his whole huge body expand and recede again. “Yes, you bet I do. If anyone does, I do. It really is a mess. But you know the law and you know what my job is, T. So you have to make sure you get this right.”
“Then provide me some time. Delay the execution a day or two.”
“Nonsense, I can’t do that. On what grounds?”
“I don’t know. On the grounds of everything I’ve just told you. Isn’t the risk of executing an innocent man grounds enough? Bill, let Curtis fail the medical examination; that’ll give us a little time.”
Falso gave a dry laugh. “We stopped giving them medical exams a couple of weeks ago. Now we just execute them. Straight from their cell to the execution chamber—end of story. That’s the only way we can handle the situation, understand?”
T. Perkins was getting anxious. “How many times have you had to watch, while a doctor punched around in the condemned’s arm, looking for a vein he could use?”
“Don’t talk about it.”
T took a dart out of his breast pocket and jabbed it at the air to demonstrate. “Think of all the times you’ve had to use the neck because the veins were either no good or infected.” He put the dart in his pocket again.
“It doesn’t happen that often, but it does happen, I’m sorry to say.”
“So, say Curtis has a vein infection and has to be treated with antibiotics before the sentence can be carried out. Can’t he trade places with the next guy in line? Just one day, please, Bill?”
“I can’t, T, you know that.”
“Okay, you have a direct line to the governor. The line will be open for the execution this evening. Call him up and tell him there are strong indications that Bud Curtis might be innocent.”
“It’s not my job to come forth with an allegation like that, and it’s not the governor’s to listen to it anymore, either, by the way. Now it’s the Department of Homeland Security we call.”
“I don’t give a . . . Sorry, Bill . . . I couldn’t care less who you call, just do it! Before they call you up from death row in a second.”
“No, T, you’re on your own. I don’t think the evidence you’ve shown me is strong enough.”
“My God—gosh, Bill! What’s wrong with it?”
“What you’ve indicated yourself. That there isn’t a strong enough hypothesis about how the gun made its way to Toby O’Neill, and therefore there’s no clear case. I admit the drop on the camera lens is mysterious, but it could be something like spit, sweat—almost anything. People were diving for the floor at that moment.”
Falso opened a drawer in his desk and took out a neatly folded handkerchief. It was what he used to dry the condemned’s brow as he lay on the pad, being asked if he had any last words. T had seen the ritual performed more than once.
Falso looked at him with his calm, mixed-gray eyes—eyes that, in a couple of minutes, were the last ones a condemned man was ever going to look into. Somehow that gave them a very, very frightening effect. “On the other hand, I find it quite strange that this Ben Kane—if he really was the one who shot O’Neill—didn’t take the honor for bringing him down. But if you really are right, and it really was Kane who gave the gun to O’Neill, then I have a possible explanation for why he didn’t.”
T’s hand froze on its way to his packet of cigarettes. “You do?”
“Do security agents wear gloves?”
“No, of course not.”
“There you go, then. That was a problem f
or Ben Kane, if he’s the one who passed the gun to O’Neill. Because, as I remember, at the trial there weren’t fingerprints mentioned on that weapon other than Bud Curtis’s and O’Neill’s, were there?”
“Oh . . . no!” T’s eyes widened, struck by a bolt of clear-sightedness.
“That might just explain the whole sequence of events,” continued Falso. “Sunderland pushed the gun out of his jacket pocket from inside, which is why the lining was hanging out as we saw before. And where was Ben Kane? Right next to Sunderland, ready to take the gun with the flap of his jacket so he could place it in O’Neill’s pocket. That way neither of them got their prints on it.” He stuck out his lower lip and rubbed his chin. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if there were other clues that could tell us about how the gun made its way to O’Neill. A tiny spot of gun oil on Kane’s jacket, for example. But this is something a quick-witted wolf like Kane would realize in the middle of everything. Animal instinct. That’s probably why he reacted so fast in picking up the glass, too.”
T nodded. That could easily be the explanation. Why not?
Falso stood up and grabbed a zippered sweater that he proceeded to put on over his short-sleeved white shirt. T’d seen him do this before, prior to attending to his ritual down on death row. It was probably cold down there.
Warden Falso gave him a look that said the audience was soon over. “If that theory works, both Sunderland’s tweed jacket and Kane’s were probably destroyed afterwards. Have you happened to check the videos and photographs to see whether they’re still wearing these jackets later the same evening? Of course they could have changed into jackets identical with the ones they had on . . .”
T looked at him in amazement. “Jesus . . . uhh . . . Gosh darn it, Bill! That’s what happened: one or the other of those scenarios. First you shoot my theories down, then you reinforce them.”
“Listen, T: No matter what our deductions lead us to, there are still some game rules. I don’t know what’s going to become of us in these weird times, but the day of reckoning will come, both for those who followed the rules and those who didn’t. Mrs. Falso and I would like to look forward to spending our old age in peace and comfort, so it doesn’t make sense for you to ask me to do things that could jeopardize it. I can’t just decide whether Bud Curtis should have another chance, all on my own. Not based on speculation of this nature. Come on, old boy, we’re just sitting here, playing with possibilities. In reality, everything could have happened completely differently. Remember: Not every lawyer, investigator, technician, judge, witness, and jury member involved with this case has been corrupt, or a dummy. They’re my guarantee that I can do the work I do in God’s name, with a clear conscience. That’s how it’s always been, and that’s how it’s going to stay until I retire soon. You have to understand that.”
A crackling voice came over the intercom. Falso nodded. It was time for him to do his share of the work downstairs. They’d removed the prisoner’s last-meal tray, and the priest had arrived.
Falso looked at his watch one last time as T frowned. “Come on, Bill. Talk with them at Homeland Security. Time’s almost run out. Do it for my sake.”
“T, I’ve heard your case. It’s even possible I’ve given you some useful tips. But I can’t go any further with it. You’re a sheriff; you know about legal procedure. Use what you know. You’ve done it before.”
“Yeah, but, Bill, we’ve only got till the day after tomorrow at six P.M.”
“Correction. We only have till the day after tomorrow at six A.M. Starting Monday, we’re executing two a day, and Bud Curtis has the honor of being the first to try out the new system.”
T opened his mouth to protest but realized it was useless. Falso was heading toward the door.
Six in the morning? It was a desperate situation made twelve hours worse. How was he ever going to get to the bottom of this?
Falso looked T. Perkins up and down with a somber expression. “It’s time,” he said. “I’ll have to leave you now.”
“Hey, Bill, let me come with you. I want to speak with Bud Curtis—you won’t deny me that, will you? Let me speak with Curtis in his cell. Is that a deal?”
CHAPTER 30
T. Perkins found Bud Curtis in the far corner of his cell. He sat on his cot facing the steel toilet, staring at the wall. He seemed completely oblivious to the sounds from the cell a few yards away, where they were applying handcuffs for the last time to the man about to be executed. Curtis gave a start when the guard put the key in the lock to let T in, as though he’d miscalculated and it was he they were coming to execute. He didn’t recognize the sheriff until Perkins stood well inside the cell, and even then the terror and doubt remained engraved in his face.
“I’ve been allowed to visit you for a moment,” said T, looking over his shoulder at the guard who was about to lock the door after himself. He shook his head and patted his revolver. The guard still wasn’t convinced that the situation was secure, and threw a set of foot chains over to him.
T nodded, asked Curtis to stretch out his legs, and applied the chains. Bud Curtis’s ankles were thin and freckled, and his eyes were full of mistrust, groping for some clue as to what was going on. T tried giving him a smile.
“Put your own cuffs on him, T. Behind the back,” said the guard.
T clapped the handcuffs on Curtis, locked them tight to show his good intentions, and sent the prison officer a look that he’d used for years in his reelection campaigns: authoritative, competent, and slightly threatening. It always seemed to have a good effect.
Metallic clanking and some shouting could be heard from cell twelve, sending a shiver of unrest down the row of cells.
“Well, well, well. Sound like today’s casket case don’t want his life erased,” laughed the man in the cell next to Bud Curtis. It was a hollow, nasty laugh, made more macabre by the fact that the man was due to die the following day himself. “He don’ fucking wanna, and I don’ fucking wanna, either!” he cried, grinning and beating on the bars. His gleeful, defiant scream proclaimed some kind of control of the situation. It sounded like someone who’d already departed this world, and it really got the cellblock going. A chorus of squeals and shrieks emerged from the cells. Howls, cries, bitter invectives, and curse words beyond belief.
Then panic suddenly overcame the condemned man in cell twelve. He tried to release his pain and fear, yelling wildly as he kicked everything in sight, including the guards who were attempting to hold him down. The guard at Curtis’s cell door left his bunch of keys dangling in the lock and disappeared down the hall to cell twelve. T and Bud Curtis could hear several prison guards trying to calm the man down, and they heard Falso’s voice say, “Just relax, Harrison. It’ll all be over soon.”
Some consolation.
In the meantime, Curtis’s facial expression began to relax a little. “Did you get my message? I mean, the battery ran out,” he whispered.
T nodded and held his finger to his lips. He looked at his watch. In five minutes the man Falso called Harrison would be lying on the execution gurney. No dilly-dallying with family farewells. No little room to give one’s honey a last hug. The show would begin in five minutes, and that’s how long they’d have to wait.
* * *
—
When the deputation with Falso in the lead had made their way down the hall with the condemned man and slammed the door behind them, T backed out of the cell and glanced up and down the hallway. Several arms were waving through the bars, and there was still plenty of shouting and cursing, even though the guards were gone. T eased the bunch of keys out of the lock. This was an unexpected turn of events—a sudden chance. He’d actually only expected to speak with Curtis, just ask him the few questions he’d been planning to, so he’d feel he was on solid ground when he called the Department of Homeland Security. But now he had the keys in his hand and Falso’s words echoing in his head: “Curtis is a
lready a dead man,” he’d said. Well, not if he could help it.
He looked at Curtis while he tried to figure out what to do. They had somewhere between twenty minutes and a half hour before the first personnel would come back out of the execution chamber, and by then they should be far, far away. He knew people down in both Sebrell and Courtland. Decent, ordinary folks he could trust, and who trusted him. They’d be able to keep Curtis out of sight for a while. The drive would take twenty minutes at the most—precisely the time he needed. He prayed that by simply nodding and jingling the keys at the video cameras, he’d be able to get Curtis through the hallways and all the locks. The officers watching the monitors in the guardroom would probably wonder why the two men weren’t being accompanied by one of the prison personnel, but they’d seen him go down to death row with Falso, so what could there be to worry about?
He placed his mouth close to Curtis’s ear. “You just follow me, nice and quiet. They’ll think I’m carrying out a federal transfer.” He took a firm grip on the man’s arm. This really had to look good.
Bud Curtis glanced at him, clenched his teeth, and took a deep breath.
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