The Sister

by R.J. Ellory

  “And then?”

  “I put my hand . . . I put my hand on her . . . you know, on her—”

  “Where did you put your hand?”

  “On her breast, sir?”

  Another stifled round of childish sniggers.

  “And was she resistant to this overture?”

  “No, sir, she was not.”

  “So she permitted you to kiss her, and in fact returned that demonstration of ardor, and then when you became more personal and direct in your advances, making it evident that you wished to engage in sexual congress—”

  “Objection!” the prosecuting counsel said. “The fact that the defendant placed his hand upon the clothed breast of the victim does not immediately imply that he wished to engage in sexual congress with the victim.”

  The judge, I believe, was quite weary with the back-and-forth of the cross-examination already, and he looked down at the prosecutor and said, “Mr. Thomas, this is the defendant. You are the prosecuting counsel. I would strongly advise you to think about what you are objecting to before you object.”

  It didn’t need saying, but there it was. The prosecutor was objecting to the killer admitting that he made a direct sexual advance to my sister. The prosecutor needed the killer to say he did that. That would help to undermine the defense’s argument that the killer was not in control of what he was thinking or what he was doing.

  “I am going to do you a favor here, counsel, and overrule that objection,” the judge said, and then he looked across at the PD and said, “Proceed.”

  “So when you became more direct in your advances, making it clear that you wished to engage in sexual congress, that’s when she resisted you?”

  “No, sir, she did not.”

  “She allowed you to touch her breast?”

  “Yes, sir, she did.”

  “And then?”

  “She allowed me to remove her jacket and unbutton her blouse . . . and then she untucked her blouse and removed it, and we continued to kiss.”

  “So she assisted you in beginning to undress her?”

  “Yes, sir, she did.”

  “And then what happened?”

  The killer looked down then, down at his own hands, and then he looked across at me as if he wanted me to know first.

  “I reached for the catch on her bra, and when I undid it she put her hand on my shoulder and pushed me away.”

  “And did she say anything as she pushed you away?”

  “Yes, sir. She said that she didn’t want to go any further. She said that it was our first date and we had only just met and that she wasn’t that kind of girl.”

  “And what did you think?”

  “I thought she was kidding me.”

  “Because she had made it obvious that she intended to become physically intimate with you?”

  “Objection!”

  “Well done, counsel,” the judge said. “That was bang on the money. Overruled. Keep your questions as to the defendant’s state of mind, not the victim’s, counsel.”

  “So, having invited you into her apartment, having made you a drink, having responded to your advances, having assisted you in undressing herself, at least to some degree, would you say that you were surprised when she resisted your further advances and told you that she did not want to sleep with you?”

  “Yes, sir, I was very surprised.”

  “And did it make you angry?”

  “No, sir, because I thought she was kidding.”

  “And what then told you she was not kidding?”

  “The fact that when I started to laugh and went to kiss her again she pushed me away once more.”

  “Did that make you angry?”

  “A little, yes.”

  “And then what did she do?”

  “She asked me to leave.”

  “She asked you to leave?”

  “Yes, sir, she asked me to leave. She said that it was a mistake, that it had gone too far, that she was sorry if she had given me the wrong impression, but now she wanted me to leave.”

  “But you didn’t want to leave, did you?”

  “No, sir.”

  “And why didn’t you want to leave?”

  “Because I wanted to stay with her . . . not just for sex. It wasn’t like that. I really liked her. She was pretty and funny and she was great to be around, and we’d had a really good day, and then when she told me to leave I thought I might have really upset her and that she wouldn’t want to see me again.”

  “So what did you do?”

  “I told her I was very sorry, and that I hadn’t meant to upset her, and I asked her if I could just stay for another drink, and then I would go.”

  “And what did she say?”

  “She seemed angry then, and almost frightened, and she told me that she wanted me to leave immediately. I told her it was very late to get a bus, and that I might have to walk all the way home and that it was a good four or five miles, and she said that she didn’t care, and that if I didn’t leave then she would go and knock on her neighbor’s door and there would be trouble.”

  “There would be trouble.”

  “Yes, sir, that’s what she said. That there would be trouble. She said that her neighbor was a boxing champion in the army, and there would be trouble if I didn’t leave right away.”

  “And how did you feel?”

  “Cheated. Deceived, maybe. I felt like she’d lied to me.”

  “And did you leave?”

  “No, sir, not right away.”

  “What did you do?”

  The killer looked down again, not at his hands but at his shoes. They were very shiny. I imagined he might have been able to see his own face in them.

  He stayed silent for about fifteen seconds, and then the judge said, “The defendant will answer the question.”

  And then the killer looked at me once again, and he said, “I put my hands around her neck and I strangled her.”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “Because she was shouting at me, telling me to leave, and I was worried that the boxing guy might hear her and come round and hurt me, and I just wanted to shut her up. I just wanted to stop her shouting at me.”

  The killer broke down then, like he was emotionally devastated by the whole experience, but to me it didn’t seem real. They call them crocodile tears. I don’t know why, but they do.

  “So you just wanted to stop her shouting at you, and you put your hands around her neck, and then what happened?”

  “She started fighting back, and she hit me in the chest, and that made me really angry, because now it seemed like I was the bad guy. Now it seemed like I was the one who had deceived her, but I felt that she had deceived me, and I was upset with her, and I just wanted her to be silent.”

  “And eventually she was.”

  “Yes, eventually.”

  And then the defense counsel asked the killer what he did after Carole was dead, and he said that everything was like a dream. He said he’d laid her down on the floor, and he’d tried to straighten her clothes, and that he kept telling himself that she wasn’t really dead, that she was just unconsciousness, or maybe that she had just fallen asleep from all the alcohol they’d been drinking, but inside he had known this was not the case. He had known she was dead.

  And all the while he was saying these things he kept glancing at me, and after a while I could see him standing over Carole’s dead body, and I wanted to tell him to stop looking at me, to damned well look someplace else, and I wanted to cry as well, because I knew I was hearing about the very last moments of my little sister’s life, and I had not been there to save her.

  Twenty-five seconds. I don’t know that I can do this. I don’t know that I can bear to wait any longer. I want to scream at someone. I want to tell them to do it now. Do whatever you have to do, but do it now! I want to see this through, but I cannot wait.

  I glance sideways at Patrick.

  “Okay?” he mouths.

  I nod. I lie.
I am not okay.

  And then the killer told the whole story about going to Milwaukee on the bus and the hot dogs, and then how he came back to Chicago and turned himself in to the wrong police precinct. And he said that that was where it all ended for him. That was where his own life had ended, because he had taken the life of another. The following day the detective who was leading the investigation came from the right precinct, and they transferred him over to the 14th. He said he made his statement about everything that had happened in a room at the 14th, and then they held him over for his arraignment, which was done the following day. The defense counsel then asked if he was coerced or threatened or bullied into making the statement, and he also asked if he was given enough to eat and drink, and if he was allowed to rest before he was questioned. The killer said, “Well, sir, I wrote what happened, just like I told you now, and then I signed it, and that was that. And I wasn’t tired, and they brought me sandwiches when I arrived, and later they brought me a fried pork chop and some red beans and rice, but I wasn’t hungry, and I didn’t really eat anything but some of the pork chop.”

  I don’t think this was what the defense counsel wanted to hear, and he paused for a while as if in thought. Perhaps he just did it for dramatic effect, because when he spoke again there was a graveness and depth to his voice that I hadn’t noticed before.

  “I have to ask a question now,” he said, “and I need you to give your answer the greatest consideration.”

  The killer looked at his defender, and he waited for the question.

  “During this time with Carole Shaw, this day you spent with her, did she, at any time and in any way, imply or suggest that she wished for more than a platonic relationship with you, that she wished to engage in a physical relationship with you beyond the simple matter of attending the museum exhibition and dinner?”

  The killer opened his mouth to speak.

  “Consider your answer carefully before speaking,” the PD reminded him.

  Here it was. If he said Yes, then he had some small fragment of defense. Granted, it would merely be hearsay, but—once again—the jury would not be able to disregard their own ears. Reasonable doubt, you see? It had to be beyond a reasonable doubt. If Carole had teased, seduced, tricked or deceived her killer, then there would be a reasonable doubt. Provocation. That was the word that was used. I heard that word several times. Provocation made all the difference. It was the difference between all his fault, and partly his fault. It was the difference between first-degree murder and second-degree murder. The difference between murder and manslaughter. The difference between what really happened, and some fabrication designed for no other purpose than to excuse a killer from full responsibility for his actions.

  And the killer closed his eyes for just a moment, and then he looked at me, and then he looked at his interrogator, and he said, “No.”

  The PD looked shocked, though he tried his utmost to hide it.

  “You are sure now,” the PD said. “You are there was nothing at all in her words, her manner—”

  And the killer said, “No, there was nothing at all.”

  And the PD, visibly shaken, said, “Thank you. No further questions.” And then he sat down.

  I think I switched off then, because I don’t remember what happened next. I just kept on seeing that man standing over Carole’s body in her kitchen, a kitchen I had sat in so many times. I could see him there, perhaps looking down at her as she lay motionless on the cream-colored linoleum, perhaps looking at his own hands, disbelieving, wondering if it wasn’t a dream, a nightmare he would suddenly wake from, and realize that the hands that had strangled her were just nightmare-hands, and experience such a sense of indescribable relief that he had not done this terrible thing. It was the kitchen where Carole and I had laughed and argued and made up again, where I’d asked so many questions about this boy or that boy, or whether she had finally slept with the one who taught eighth grade math and she had smiled and told me to stop being such a busybody, and the way she’d smiled had answered the question more clearly than any words she might have said.

  Twenty-three seconds. And now I feel as if I am the one behind that black cotton sacking. I am the one who is waiting to hear the sound of a telephone or the sound of a switch being thrown . . .

  It was a Friday when I heard all that, and I had been there all week, and I just wanted the weekend to come so I could breathe again. Every time I sat in that court I felt like I’d been wound up tighter than a watch-spring. Tighter than that, even. I wanted to ask questions, but I had to stay silent. There were a couple of times I really needed the bathroom, but I just could not bring myself to get up and leave. I wanted to hear every word. I needed to hear every word. Not for me, but for Carole, because I knew that the moment I stepped out of that courtroom, the killer would say something that would explain it all in a way I could understand and reconcile. I stayed there the whole time, every hour of every one of those twenty days, but he never did give an explanation that amounted to much more than a hill of beans.

  He was a killer, plain and simple.

  He strangled my sister. He put his hands around her neck to make her stop shouting at him, and he kept those hands around her neck until she died.

  And now he was going to die in return.

  An eye for an eye and all that, just like it says in the Bible.

  When my sister’s killer was sentenced, he merely nodded and then looked down. He knew he was going to be executed. He knew he was going to the electric chair. The judge sat there with his ruddy face and his strange hands, and he delivered the sentence, and then he granted an immediate stay pending automatic appeal. It was just protocol. It’s just the way things are done. The appeal went forward automatically, but the killer didn’t want to appeal. It seemed he just wanted to accept the consequences of the terrible thing he had done. He wanted to die. Carole didn’t, I’m sure, but he did.

  So the defense counsel was fighting a lost cause, and the killer was held in the Cook County Jail. They kept saying that they were going to transfer him to Pontiac, but they didn’t. At first it was because Pontiac was already overcapacity, and then it was because they were renovating a wing that had been damaged by fire. And so my sister’s killer waited in Chicago for three years and fifty-one weeks, and then they confirmed that whatever appeal might have been approved had not been approved, and that he was going to die.

  I looked up some things about the electric chair in the City Library. They have one at Sing Sing and they call it ‘Old Sparky’. It just looks like it’s made from old planks and parts of a table, but it’s got all these leather straps and ties to hold the person’s hands and legs down. They put some kind of cap on their head, and there’s electrodes and all sorts that put enough electricity through the body to stop the heart. That’s the idea, anyway. The first execution was at Auburn in August of 1890. They put an electric current through William Kemmler’s body for seventeen seconds, but all it did was make him unconscious. They had two doctors check him over and they said he was still alive, so they had to wait a while for the generator to get charged up again, and then they put another two thousand volts through him. Apparently all the blood vessels under his skin ruptured, his skin was all burned where the electrodes were attached, and the whole thing took eight minutes and made everyone feel just too awful for words.

  There was a man called Fred Van Wormer and he went to the chair in Sing Sing in 1903. The man was pronounced dead, but when he arrived at the autopsy room he started breathing again. The executioner had gone home, so they called him back to re-electrocute Van Wormer, but by the time he got there Van Wormer had actually died. Nevertheless, they strapped Mr. Van Wormer in the chair once more and gave him another one thousand seven hundred volts for half a minute. Just to be sure, you know.

  In Eddyville, Kentucky in July of 1928, seven men were executed consecutively in the electric chair. That was the record for one day. It was the 13th, and a Friday as well.

  That�
�s all beside the point, really, as all I wanted to know was what would happen to Carole’s killer when he went to the electric chair. I don’t know about electricity, just like I don’t know about cellulose acetate cigarette filters, but I learned enough to understand that they stick enough through you to cook you from the inside out.

  Nineteen seconds.

  Back to this morning. I try to do my lipstick again, but it’s just no good. I mean, who am I trying to look nice for? For her killer? For the journalists and police who’ll be there? They don’t matter. No, I am trying to look nice for myself, and for the memory of Carole. I go back to the kitchen and I look at the clock. It isn’t eight yet. I have time to make some coffee, and perhaps I will try and eat something before I leave. If I skip breakfast, I tend to get a headache.

  I scramble some eggs, and then I put them on a plate and set it on the kitchen table. I get a fork from the drawer, and it is right then, as I turn back towards the table, that I feel her in the room. I know it’s crazy, but Carole seems to be right there, just for a heartbeat, and she tells me it’s okay, that everything will be fine, and that I have to stop mourning and get out there again, and start living my own life instead of trying to finish living hers.

  And then the feeling passes, and I am starving hungry, and I eat those eggs right up pronto.

  I wonder if the killer will have a last meal. I’ve read that they do, you know. I’ve read that on the morning of their execution, they order a heap of fried eggs and scrapple and sausage gravy and all sorts of fanciness. Me? I don’t think I’d be able to eat a morsel. How could you possibly have an appetite on the day of your own execution? I mean, it’s not like you don’t know you’re going to die. You can look at the clock and count off the hours and minutes until they strap you in that big old chair and turn on the juice. And despite this, despite everything, you want chicken-fried steak and coleslaw and malted milk and Oreos?

  It boggles the mind.

  I sit there for a while, and I know that it was a good idea to eat the eggs. I feel a little better. I hold my hand out ahead of me and it’s still shaking a good deal, so I fetch a cigarette. I started smoking a year ago, and I know I shouldn’t have, and I really don’t smoke very much at all, but after everything I’ve been through, I think it’s understandable. It does calm my nerves, at least for a little while, and my hand stops shaking, and I manage to finish up my lipstick. I’ve even started wearing a brighter color, the sort of color Carole would wear, and I believe it suits me. I think I have grown more like Carole since her death, and though that might sound a bit creepy, I don’t think it is at all. We were always close. Close as sisters get, and—like I said—we even used to pretend we were twins.