by Joshua Corin
The blue curtain in front of the observation room whooshed open.
There was the gurney. Its sheets were white and were tucked neatly underneath a twin mattress. A white blanket woven of thin cotton rested on top of the gurney. Between the sheeted mattress and the cotton blanket lay the man. His name was Jeremiah Stanhope. He was forty-three years old. He had the same black skin as his father, and his father’s father, and so on back to a plantation not far from here, and so on back to Africa, as far from here as humanly possible. His bare head reclined on a solitary pillow. His arms, also bare, were stretched away from his body at a thirty-degree angle by the gurney’s metal wings. His wrists, thin like rivers, were bound to the gurney’s wings by leather straps. The straps had shiny golden buckles, like one might find on a child’s belt. Clear plastic tubes wormed from his bare arms and along the floor and into an adjoining room hidden behind a one-way mirror.
“Why does he have two IVs?” whispered Hayley.
“In case one of them gets blocked up,” replied Xana.
Behind Jeremiah, silent as stone, stood a prison guard, and a much smaller man in a reverend’s frock. The reverend held a Bible. The guard held a clipboard. In another corner of the room stood a doctor with her head bowed. Then the warden entered. This particular warden, John-Dave Smith, had overseen six executions in ten years. It showed on his face. Warden Smith was forty-three, same as Jeremiah, but the wrinkles on his skin and the deep depressions under his small blue eyes made him appear at least two decades older. Xana recalled a rumor from a year ago, that the warden would be retiring, that he was going to join the church. But here he was.
The reverend stepped forward to Jeremiah’s left shoulder and placed a pair of fingers on him. Warden Smith stepped forward to Jeremiah’s right shoulder.
This was when some of the attendees began to sob. Soft, wet sounds.
“Son,” said the warden, “do you have any last words?”
Jeremiah replied, “No, sir.”
The warden nodded and then stepped back.
In the adjoining room, hidden behind the one-way mirror, a member of the staff pressed a button. This activated the pentobarbital.
Jeremiah, lying in his bed, under his cotton blanket, shut his eyes.
The cotton blanket rose and fell with each breath.
Up, down. Up, down. Up, down.
Up…down. Up…down. Up…down.
Six minutes later, the doctor pronounced Jeremiah Stanhope dead.
Almost immediately, the blue curtain was once again drawn, but this time, one of the attendees, an older woman with dark skin, pounded on the window with both of her curled arthritic hands. Her jaw worked up and down, up and down, but she wasn’t saying anything. She continued to strike against the glass until another older woman with dark skin took her in her arms. One of them, Xana was certain, was the mother of Jeremiah, and one of them was the mother of Jeremiah’s victim. She had deliberately not reviewed the case before coming here so she wasn’t sure which woman was which. Then she felt Hayley tug on her sleeve.
It was time to go.
Chapter 7
As they left the visitors’ lot and drove past the mob of reporters with their cameras and then past the mob of protesters with their placards, Xana and Hayley didn’t talk. Xana wanted to talk, of course, but she at least waited until they reached the highway before opening her big mouth.
“So did you get what you needed out of that?”
Hayley shot Xana a look that could have punched a small bird. “I appreciate you coming with me.”
“Hey,” replied Xana, “what else was I going to do on a Tuesday night?”
The dashboard clock read 11:53 P.M. At that moment, sixty miles to the north, Crystal McCormick was stepping out of her shower in Room 2702 of the Peachtree Marriott. Hayley checked the radio for suitable music, but soon flipped it off.
“Why didn’t he have any last words?”
Xana shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“I mean, whether he believes in God or not, why not apologize? He must have known who was in the room with us. He must have known that’s what they came there to hear.”
“They came there to see the end of the life of the man who ruined theirs. Would a heartfelt I’m-so-sorry have made their hearts any less broken? Eh. Probably as much as watching him die cured all their woes.”
“So you are against the death penalty.” Hayley said it triumphantly.
“No, I’m against futility. But seriously, why did you want to come here? I get that you want to experience as much as you can before you…you know…die, but we could’ve gone to Nashville or this strip club in Nashville that I love that’s just down the street from the Grand Ole Opry and—”
“You really want to know?”
“Yeah.”
Hayley sighed, which never was easy for her and often was followed by a series of coughs. Once her coughing had subsided, though, she answered Xana’s question.
“In a year or two, that’s going to be me. And that’s going to be my parents watching me lying in a bed. I guess I wanted to know…what I was going to put them through.”
“Seriously?”
“Yeah.”
“Wow. You’re a fucking idiot.”
“I knew that was coming.”
“No, seriously, Hayley. For someone who supposedly got a perfect score on her SATs, you’re sometimes a moron. You wanted to know what they’re going to be feeling? News flash: They’re going to be feeling awful! It’s going to be the worst moment of their lives! And bullshit you needed to witness an execution to realize that. So what’s the real reason, huh? Because since the day you were diagnosed you’ve known what that day, in a year or two or more, is going to be like for them. So what’s the real reason?”
“Never mind.”
“I think I deserve to know. You dragged me out here. And for what? Huh? Curiosity? Sociology? Something to check off your bucket list?”
“I said never mind!” yelled Hayley, and then she wheezed, and then she gripped the steering wheel until she was able to regain control of her breathing, and by then Xana had grown silent as well. By the time they crossed the city limits of Atlanta, the police had already swarmed Room 2702. By the door, which was propped open with a rubber wedge, the forensics team was gauging the temperatures of the corpses. In the bedroom, Scott and Crystal McCormick were being quizzed for the fourth time about the events of the evening.
Once they neared the intersection of I-75N and the I-285 belt, Xana said, “I need you to drop me off in Decatur.”
“What’s in Decatur at one A.M.?”
“The United Methodist church on Scott Boulevard.”
“What’s at the United Methodist church on Scott Boulevard at one A.M.?”
“A meeting.”
“Oh,” said Hayley.
“Yeah,” said Xana.
“Shit. Now I feel terrible.”
“You should. My alcoholism is entirely the fault of a nineteen-year-old girl.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Very, very rarely.”
Once they reached the church, Hayley shifted into park.
“Want me to wait?” she asked.
“Em is here. She’ll give me a ride home.”
“So you already knew you were coming here.”
“Call me crazy, but given what we just saw? Yeah, I had a feeling I might need a meeting after. The question is—are you going to be OK?”
Hayley nodded. But she wasn’t convincing anyone.
“I’d invite you in,” said Xana, “but…”
“I get it. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
As Xana watched Hayley drive off, she imagined a part of herself remaining in the passenger seat to keep the dying girl company on the ride home. Xana had never wanted a family, certainly not the family she was born with. And yet…
Ah well. Einstein was wrong. The gods did indeed play dice.
The United Methodist church on Scott Boulevard in Dec
atur possessed no outstanding features at all. In architecture, with her pitched black roof and white wooden frame, she could have been mistaken for any of the several hundred other churches in the Atlanta metro area. Her small lawn was well maintained and the bushes along her brick foundation were neatly trimmed, but so were several hundred other small lawns and several thousand other bushes. Her steeple was unornamented, but this was a Protestant church—of course her steeple was unornamented. No, the United Methodist church on Scott Boulevard in Decatur possessed no outstanding features at all, none whatsoever, save one, save this: From 12 A.M. to 5 A.M., her basement was open, and well lit, and occupied, and to a twelve-stepper like Xanadu Marx, just knowing that this place was here, these people were here, night after night, just in case, provided equanimity.
But sometimes equanimity wasn’t enough.
Xana wove around to the rear of the building and climbed down the steep brick steps. A solitary bare bulb jutted out from the back wall of the church and illuminated the path, more or less, although Xana was convinced that this—the solitary bare bulb, the steep brick steps—was some kind of gauntlet meant to deter those lacking in conviction and/or sobriety. Or grace, although that was a loaded word in these parts, wasn’t it?
For a moment, it looked as if tape had been slashed across the door at the bottom of the steps, but those were just the shadows of tree limbs. Xana mused at the illusion, at herself, and knew she had made the right decision to come.
Tonight’s meeting was well attended, or as well attended as these late night meetings were. Seventeen of the twenty-five folding chairs were occupied, and an eighteenth person was up at the front, offering a testimony. It was Em. How about that timing. Xana ladled herself a Styrofoam cup full of strawberry Kool-Aid and took a seat in the back. She could recognize the people she knew in here by the backs of their heads, but the person she paid attention to was Em.
“—and so, I guess, ever since, that phrase has always struck me as funny. ‘Rock bottom.’ It makes me think of a mine. There’s a pit in the mine, right, and it’s boarded over, but the boards are plywood, so you got to be careful when you’re walking over the pit, and you got to walk over the pit because it’s right there in your path. You got to walk over the pit every day. And because you got to walk over the pit every day, you get used to it. You stop worrying about it. You even stop thinking about it. Your feet step over the plywood boards and that’s that. You’re on to another part of the mine. And sometimes they even replace the old boards with new boards. Same cheap plywood, right, but so what. And maybe in the back of your mind you realize the reason they had to replace the board. And maybe in the back of your mind, you wonder if whoever fell through those old boards and down into that pit is still there. And maybe you just get real good at ignoring the back of your mind.”
To this, several of the men and women nodded. Their heads bobbed up and down, up and down.
Damn it.
Xana had never been real good at ignoring the back of her mind. As a child, she had self-medicated with research, shredding the solid continent of her brain into dozens of islands, and each island a different language and culture. But then, one miraculous night, an assistant of her father’s returned to the base camp and introduced her to booze. Xana was ten years old. They were at a dig on the steppes of Tibet. They were always at a dig. Later that week, the assistant also tried to introduce her to sex. He must have convinced himself that here was this pliable girl with whom he could have his way. He must have been surprised when she fought back. He must have been very surprised when she dug her girlish fingers into the upper left quadrant of his face and tore out his eyeball.
Em was winding down. “Because we’re not in the mine alone. And we forget that. We can ask for help. And we forget that. Someone put down those boards to make it safe for us to walk and we can thank them by putting down boards of our own to make it safe for someone else. Without you all, I would still be in that pit. I’m grateful and I love you all.”
Later on, in bed, Em asked Xana how the execution went. They were both breathing through loopy grins and staring up at the twin fans Em had going 24/7 in her bedroom.
“These fans are always running the same speed,” Xana said, “but they never are the same. They never match. What is that? Is that thermodynamics? Is that stubbornness?”
“Just one of the fans is stubborn. I call her ‘Xanadu.’ ”
Xana grinned.
And then Em asked again how the execution went, and Xana turned on her side, and Em fitted spoon-like behind her lover, and soon one of them was asleep while the other listened helplessly to the whir of the twin fans while the back of her mind gibbered on and on.
Chapter 8
So when the cops showed up the next morning, trilling the doorbell at 9:39 A.M., Xana had accumulated as little sleep as they had. At first, Xana had assumed Em would answer the door. She knew Em would be awake. Em was always up with the sunrise and out in the living room with her yoga mat and her headband and her maddeningly chipper videogame, aping the gestures and postures and stretches of the digitized fitness gurus on the screen, and all to a soundtrack provided by the world’s whitest disco cover bands. But Xana heard no terrible music. No sounds of Em counting along with every rep. Just the doorbell.
And then the doorbell again.
And then the doorbell again.
And then:
“Miss Marx, it’s the police. Are you here?”
The police? Had something happened to Em? Xana scooted out of bed and padded barefoot toward the apartment’s front door wearing only a giant pink-and-green Sex Pistols T-shirt.
The two plainclothesmen were a match made in contrasts. The younger detective was tall, broad, Samoan. His blue suit was tailored. His black shoes were alligator. The older detective was short, hunched, Caucasian. His suit may once have been blue, but the years had not been kind to its hue or its smoothness. The wrinkles in its sleeves rolled back on their owner like accordions. His face was similarly haggard, wrinkled, faded.
His UGA ball cap was brand-new, its brim not even bent.
“Good morning, Miss Marx,” he said. “My name is Detective Abe Konquist. This is my partner, Victor Chau. May we come in?”
“What is this about?” she asked.
“Victor, show Miss Marx your ID.”
He showed her his ID.
“Fantastic,” she replied. The morning sun was in her eyes. “What is this about?”
“May we come in?”
“Detective, if we’re going to keep asking each other the same questions—”
Chau piped in, “Are you alone, ma’am?”
She was. Why she was, well, that was another story. But she had a feeling it was a story these detectives knew nothing about. They were sleepy eyed, impatient. Coming off a long shift during a long night. Whatever they were here about had nothing to do with Em.
Xana stepped aside and the two detectives slipped into the apartment. She closed the door and sat with them in the living room. She sat leaning forward. Her T-shirt may have been over-sized, but it wasn’t made of magic.
“Miss Marx, do you know anyone by the name of Phillip Wilkerson?”
“Who’s Phillip Wilkerson?”
Chau handed her his phone. On it was the ruddy face of a man in his early thirties. Probably a selfie snatched from Wilkerson’s social media. Xana returned his phone.
“Never seen him before in my life.”
Chau swiped to another photograph. “How about this man?”
This was a full-body picture of a diminutive dark-skinned gentleman taken from an angle high and to the right in Hartsfield-Jackson Airport’s customs processing.
“No,” she said, “but now I’m going to ask a couple questions.”
Konquist opened his hands in welcome. “By all means.”
“Actually, first, if you don’t mind, Miss Marx, could we get a cup of coffee?”
“Nah.”
“Excuse me?” Chau frowned.
“Do you not have coffee or…?”
“No. We have coffee.”
“Then why can’t we have some?”
Xana shrugged. “Just ’cause. Anyway, here’s my first question: Are you Missing Persons or Homicide?”
“Miss Marx—”
“I’m thinking Homicide. And that’s fine. So did the Haitian kill Wilkerson or did Wilkerson kill the Haitian?”
Konquist and Chau exchanged a glance. “What makes you think the second man is Haitian?”
“You do know who I am.”
“We know who you were,” Chau corrected.
Xana sighed. So it was going to be like that. She grabbed Chau’s phone and pointed at the tattoo on the dark-skinned man’s right forearm.
“That’s a palm tree. And the little red hat on top of it is called a Phrygian cap. It’s the center image in the Haitian flag.”
“His name was Hercule Dacy,” Konquist told her. “And he did in fact arrive in Atlanta three days ago from Port-au-Prince.”
“Any criminal record?”
“He was a Catholic priest.”
“That’s hardly an answer.”
Chau took back his phone. “We’re getting off-track.”
“So Dacy killed Wilkerson,” mused Xana. “Who killed Dacy?”
Konquist chuckled.
Chau did not. “What makes you think that Father Dacy is dead?”
“We used the past tense,” said Konquist. “His name was Hercule Dacy. He was a Catholic priest.”
Xana shrugged an I-told-you-so.
“Wilkerson shot Dacy, and then Dacy cut open Wilkerson’s throat with a hacksaw.”
“Yikes.”