He stopped. His lips remained parted but he didn’t speak. He was thinking.
And then came the famous grin. “In fact, next week, I intend to show the stuff I am made of. I will witness the execution myself. Personally. I can only hope you’ll be there too so’s together we can watch the woman pay for her crime. What do you say?”
“Oh, I’ll be there, Governor.” I ripped out my last card and played it. “But that won’t be the end of it. I will carry on this investigation after she’s dead if that’s what I determine is required. I love exercising my power.”
He squinted. Slumped a little. But he wouldn’t say any more because his aides were managing to drag him out. The one who stayed behind said to me, “You’d better hope the man doesn’t end up in Washington someday, because, ma’am, you’ll be out of a job sure.”
I had now antagonized two men in Texas to the point of hysteria, one the scum of the earth, the other a greater scum, even if he was the governor.
Max Scraggs had designated himself to be the one to get me out of the mansion via a side door. He’d put his hat on for the occasion. He said, “You mean business, don’t you?”
“I always mean business.”
“What are you going to do?”
I looked up at him. The curve of that brim, the solidity of a Stetson.…
I said, “For now, I’m going to buy a hat. Need one to go with the boots.”
I stalked off. I got in my car and drove the block and a half to my hotel. I said to the concierge, “Where can I buy a Stetson?”
She said, “Boot Hill.”
I guess I just stared at her.
She smiled. “The store, not the cemetery. Corner of Seventeenth and Wilson.”
“How far is that?”
“Straight on down the street we’re on. I’ll call your car back.”
“How far down the street exactly?”
“Two blocks.”
I walked out of the lobby and strode the two blocks. To be in a city and have an entire sidewalk to yourself almost calmed me down.
Inside Boot Hill, the fragrance of cowboy hats calmed me further. I told the salesman I needed a hat.
He looked me up and down. “I imagine you do.” Then he went into his pitch. “Now, ma’am, let me just say that a Stetson is made of felt and the best Stetsons are made of beaver felt. Would you be interested in the latter?”
I asked, “Do they kill the beavers?”
With a perfectly straight face, he said, “No, ma’am.”
I put on the Stetson nearest me. I looked like the flying nun. He said, “Wrong size, for starters.”
He measured my head. He said, “You have a prominent occipital bone.”
He went into the back room and brought out a hat and laid it on the glass counter. It was jet black and sleek. It looked like a beaver that had just come out of the water. He said, “You need a hat like this. You’ll get away with it when you wear it back east. It’s a real nice style, smaller crown than a ten-gallon. And, course, it’s black. I mean, your bein’ blond and all.”
He touched the hat gently, with reverence.
“What is it, an eight-gallon?”
He said, “It’s the Gambler, ma’am.”
I shouldn’t take my frustration out on a salesman. I said, “I’m sorry, I was just joking.”
“I can take a joke.”
He slid the inside door of his counter back. Under the glass were what I thought were necklaces. They were hatbands. He lifted out a strand of small silver ovals, said, “You’ll like this one,” and hooked it around the hat.
Then he picked up the hat like it was a tiara and placed it on my head. He tipped it a little here and there and then studied me. “Turn around, ma’am.”
I did. The wall behind me was all mirror. The Gambler was one fabulous hat. I looked very good. I turned back. “Wrap it up.”
He smiled. “You know, I figured you wouldn’t ask me how much. I knew that when I saw the boots comin’ through the door. Other thing you need is a belt, and I got some beauties right over here.”
He fixed me up with a jeans belt with various images of armadillos etched into the leather and a silver buckle with “the finest scrollwork you’ll find anywhere in Texas.”
Then, his turn to joke, he said, “’Course, you’ll need a gun.”
I held back my jacket.
He said, “Well, I am duly impressed.”
He took my hat and my belt and came back with a big red-and-black Stetson box and a little bag for the belt. He held the door for me. He asked me if I had any plans that evening. No, but the man didn’t quite thrill me.
“Next time I’m in town,” I told him.
He smiled but shrugged. Good sport.
* * *
I headed back to the hotel, had dinner from room service, and rented a movie during which I fell asleep. The next morning, People magazine was out, the cardinal was featured on the Today Show, and the governor had scheduled a press conference for 10 A.M. Outdoors, on his porch.
So I went.
The mansion was surrounded by demonstrators protesting the execution of Rona Leigh. They were circled by a parade of pickup trucks, the drivers and riders hooting obscenities at them. The governor stepped out on the porch and horns started to blow. He smiled and waved at the pickups and the honking stopped. He bent his head to the mike and his demeanor grew serious.
He said, “I thank you all for coming here today to express the strength of your feelings concerning the sentence of death for the prisoner, Rona Leigh Glueck, which will be carried out in a matter of days. I, in good conscience, cannot grant Miss Glueck the reprieve she seeks. She has had her day in court, and she was found guilty of a heinous crime, the brutal murder of two innocents. It is my duty as governor to consider whether or not the sentence handed down to her by a jury of her peers was fair.
“Well, it was. It was a fair sentence. The most harsh sentence to match the most harsh crime one human being can commit against another. The Old Testament commands: An eye for an eye.”
A woman somewhere began singing “Amazing Grace.” The rest of the demonstrators joined in.
The governor raised his voice. “It is not a simple thing to put a woman to death. I pray for the clemency board who made a good and sound decision not to grant her the clemency she sought; I pray for the jury who found her guilty; for the prosecutor; and for the police officers who arrested her. I pray for her warden and for her executioner. But I pray most of all for the families of her victims.
“Cardinal de la Cruz will stand by her and pray for her as she meets her maker. And I will stand by the people I have just mentioned, the people I am praying for. I will stand by those heroes who saw to it that Rona Leigh Glueck would be held accountable for her crime, and I will stand by those who have suffered terrible loss. I will be there for them. I will be there with them. I will stand witness to the execution of the killer. I will be there at the Mountain View Unit in Gatesville when that woman’s time comes—as it should.
“Thank you very much, God bless y’all, and God bless America.”
Maybe if I’d worn the Gambler, my boots, my new belt, and my jeans I wouldn’t have been noticed. As soon as the word America came out of the governor’s mouth, I heard a loud clunk. It was the sound of something heavy coming down on my head. The clunk was immediately followed by an explosion. The bright Texas sun went out.
7
Not very long after the sound of the clunk I heard a siren. I opened my eyes. I was on my stomach, face to the side. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a video camera two inches from my nose. I tried to push myself up but hands were all over me keeping me prone while anti-death-penalty ladies kept telling me to lie still and try not to speak. I must have been trying to speak.
The paramedics broke the crowd apart, cradled my head, rolled me over, and lifted me onto a stretcher. The sun came on again. I said, “The sun in my eyes isn’t helping here.”
And then my eyes were shad
ed by a white Stetson. Max Scraggs. He accompanied me to the hospital in the ambulance.
Like the ladies, he also advised me not to talk and then he advised me once I could talk that he was the one I needed to talk to most.
The ER doctor who examined me said that with a concussion, even a mild one, it was best to submit to a twenty-four-hour observation. I told him a mild concussion was a headache. A little Tylenol and I’d be fine. Hovering above my head, he said, “Well, now, what say first things first? First, instead of shavin’ a circle around that cut, I’m takin’ advantage of your long hair. Lovely hair and we’ll see the blood’s washed out soon’s I’m finished.”
He employed a creative nonstitching technique, taking four strands of hair from either side of the split in my scalp and then tying a knot. He repeated each knot ten times.
He said, “Double sheet bend.”
I said, “What?”
“Sailing knot. Use it when you want to be extra sure the line’ll hold but look neat at the same time.”
Next time I needed stitches I’d remember to ask for a doctor who owned a ketch.
While he knotted, Scraggs said, “We’ve got four witnesses willin’ to identify the fellow who put you out. Don’t really need ’em. Got the action on amateur film several times over.”
I said, “Then what are you doing here? Go after him.”
“We’re hopin’ to find him before the Austin Constitution gets put to bed.”
“This is going to make the papers?” It wasn’t a real question. I knew the answer.
“We’re seein’ to it that you will still be referred to as an unidentified woman. Some people, of course, will recognize you. Tomorrow is another day. So you’ll have time to reveal yourself as the identified woman to those you see fit to inform.”
“Thanks, Scraggs.”
The doctor said, “What’ve I got here, a movie star?”
I thanked the doctor sailor for the compliment.
Scraggs said, “Tomorrow morning, I’m goin’ to need to talk to you.”
“Give me a ride back to my hotel, and you can talk to me in five minutes.”
He looked at the doctor, who nodded.
Then a half-dozen stricken faces appeared in the doorway. FBI. The locals had amassed for a fallen fellow. Behind them, white Stetsons.
The doctor looked a little stricken too. Figured he’d just closed up the head of one dangerous con. “Nurse, we are through. Let’s pack up our riggin’ and go where we’re needed. Have an aide clean her head.” He said to me, “I get a mild concussion every time the boom hits me. Hits me three or four times per sail. But hear me, ma’am. If you throw up or faint? Y’all come back.” Plural. Figured I always traveled with a Ranger.
He left and I sat up. I did not wince at the pain. I said to the gathered state and federal law enforcers, “Here’s the thing, guys. Whoever your infiltrators are, fire them. They’re supposed to tell you things like Someone intends to put Joe Blow out of commission. And then you’re supposed to see that Joe Blow doesn’t get put out of commission. And, plus, you warn Joe Blow. Then you find out when the deed is planned for and you lie in wait and arrest the perp when he comes waltzing down the street with a big brick in his hand.
“Somebody want to tell me what the hell happened?”
Scraggs answered me. “I’ll tell you exactly what happened. Your boys didn’t tell mine how someone hammered a few nails in the tire of a car you were meant to drive. Our infiltrators found that out, but just a little too late to protect Joe Blow. If they had, they’d have gotten the someone before he had any chance whatsoever to take a brick to Joe Blow’s head.”
An agent said, “We’d figured the nail incident was in-house. Disgruntled employee.”
I said, “Scraggs, what were we supposed to do? Arrest everyone I got fired?”
An aide started dabbing at my head, gently because she was an aide, not a graduate of medical school. I looked at all the downcast law gathered around. I said, “I’m going back to my hotel. Please find the guy. I’m fine.”
Scraggs got to push me in a wheelchair to his car. He never shut up the whole time. He lectured me, couldn’t understand why I needed to get Rona Leigh this reprieve so bad that I was risking my life.
I said, “What’s the matter with you? It’s not Rona Leigh. It’s all of them. Anybody who didn’t get the fair shake they deserved. This is America, for Christ’s sake, with liberty and justice for all, blah, blah, blah. Does it not bother you when you arrest someone who turns out to be innocent?”
“’Course it does. But I get more riled when someone’s set free who’s guilty. Just because a body maybe got a little overzealous, well, hell—”
“Overzealous? Some charlatan gives false forensic testimony to a jury? Since when is a man who commits a felony merely overzealous?”
“But to let someone off the hook? A killer who axed people to death?”
“Again, Scraggs, we’re not letting anyone off the hook. You can’t be sure she axed anyone to death if she didn’t have a fair trial.”
“You can’t? I am.”
“The evidence against her came from a witness who was a charlatan.”
“But she admitted to the crime.”
Here I go again. But I wasn’t going to lecture someone who should know better. I said, “I kidnapped the Lindbergh baby. Arrest me. Then go and dig up that same charlatan and he’ll tell a jury that I left my odor on the Lindberghs’ front door. And while you’re chatting up that so-called doctor, find out what’s in it for him.” I put my hands out. “Where’s your cuffs?”
He rolled his eyes.
I said, “I’m overreacting because you’re a disgrace to your uniform.”
He pushed the wheelchair a little faster and didn’t say another word. I fell asleep in his car. When we reached the hotel he woke me up. He said, “I can’t tell you how glad I am you opened your eyes. You don’t deserve a concussion.”
The man was making nice because I’d injected a little guilt into his life.
He got me up to my room, sat me on the edge of my bed, got me two Tylenols and a glass of water. He took a couple himself. He said, “I don’t know what’s drivin’ you, Poppy, but you have overstepped the bounds of common sense. You are actin’ in an unprofessional manner. It’s just as bad as my actin’ in a cynical manner. So now I get to pass on some news to you. Gary Scott called us. Told us he wanted a restraining order against you. Said you threatened him with your weapon.”
“He’s nuts.”
“Yeah, well, we know that. What’re you about, Agent?”
This Scraggs was a stranger. That combined with a knock on the head is the reason, I suppose, I spilled to him rather than Joe. Rather than my shrink friend. I said, “I got a letter from the daughter of a man I prosecuted for rape in Florida. She was a kid then, and now she’s an intern at Yale New Haven Hospital. She saved a lock of her father’s hair. His DNA did not match the DNA of the sperm found in the victim’s body. Her father didn’t do it.”
Scraggs sat next to me on the bed. He put his arm around my shoulder. He said, “I’m real sorry. But it happens, you know that.”
“Shouldn’t.”
“Yeah.”
“Can I get you anything else?”
“Nope. I just need to have a rest.”
“If I can do anything—call me anytime.”
“You already made that offer. The day we met.”
“Today I mean it.” He wrote his home phone number on his business card, put it on the bedside table, told me to take it easy, and left.
What I didn’t tell him was that I knew the guy in Florida hadn’t done it while I was prosecuting him. And back then I’d used all the arguments to support myself that the governor had used on me yesterday. Basically, the guy was scum so what’s the great loss?
Maybe I was no different from those women Vernon described on death row. I’d been hit by a bolt of lightning, and now I was pressed to make restitution.
I could not avoid the conversation the next day with my director. He wanted me back. I lied and told him I couldn’t fly for a week, doctor’s orders. But I would stay in bed until the execution. When it was over, I’d be back. What could he say?
* * *
The most-used media word surrounding the upcoming execution of Rona Leigh Glueck was circus. From the Best Western, I watched the events unfold each night on the evening news, and circus was the right word. A tent went up, followed by several more, because Best Western, Holiday Inn, and the two other motels were not able to handle the hundreds of people arriving like ants attracted to a piece of cake at a picnic. Farmers rented out their harvested fields abutting the prison compound, and then, for small fortunes, they rented out their unharvested fields. Losing a crop to trampling proved cost-effective. About the time the flatbed truck carrying satellite dishes rolled in, the RVs descended, followed by little makeshift shacks manned by Mexicans selling food, drink, and souvenirs.
The anti-execution people were in the tents; the pro people were in the RVs; the day-trippers drove the pickups.
The biggest and sturdiest tent had been erected by CBS. Dan Rather, hailing from Texas, had warned his technicians to get a serious tent or they’d be sucking grit and so would their equipment.
The cardinal held an open-air mass in the public park in the middle of Gatesville. He brought his own security; the pickup trucks couldn’t get close enough to drown out his sermon in English, then in Spanish, condemning the death penalty.
I ran into the people from People the afternoon of the execution, and they invited me to dinner that night. They’d had the foresight to make a reservation at the only restaurant in Gatesville that didn’t seat people on stools at a counter. Turned out Rona Leigh had asked the warden if the photographer could take a picture of her after she was pronounced dead. She said she wanted everyone to know that dead was dead.
Frank said, “Shit, I couldn’t believe our luck. We were sure the warden would say no, but he told us that the anti-death-penalty folks will see that Texas means business. Figured maybe they’d give it a rest.”
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