Fogbound

by Joseph T. Klempner

  For nothing, that’s what.

  Boyd Davies might die a martyr, going down in history as the man who ended the death penalty. Then again, he might go down as nothing more than an obscure footnote to one more year’s execution statistics. How could the true believers know which it would be?

  But even as Jorgensen framed the question, he knew the answer: They would make it work. Not that he knew exactly how, or precisely when, or with the aid of what additional sacrifices. But somehow, they’d pull it off. They were television, after all; they could do anything. They’d make Boyd Davies a household name. They’d run his face in prime time. Kurt Meisner’s videotape would become more watched than Zapruder’s assassination film or O.J. Simpson’s low-speed car chase. States would fall over each other, rushing to declare moratoriums on executions, lest they run the risk of being the next to “pull a Virginia.” By the time the dust had finally settled, the death penalty would be a memory, a thing of the past. And that, August Jorgensen knew in his heart, would be a truly wonderful thing.

  So why was it, then, that he now found himself draped over an undersized mattress in some overpriced motel, listening to an endless convoy of eighteen-wheelers roaring by? Why would he climb out of bed at the crack of dawn, contort his aching body into a goddamned circus car, and drive for three hours, all the time heading precisely 180 degrees from the place he wanted to end up?

  Why? He wasn’t sure. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that Boyd Davies wasn’t just a dumb animal in a cage (though had he been, it is highly likely Jorgensen would have still thought he deserved the best). Whatever his limitations, Boyd was a living, breathing being. He had a disorder - an affliction, if you wanted to call it that - but he wasn’t some sort of imbecile. And who knew enough to say that he didn’t have the same kind of feelings other people do, and that he didn’t dream at night of a better place? In a way he was special, Boyd was. He had a talent, remember, a true artistic gift that, were he ever given the right kind of opportunity, might even enable him to flourish, to be happy.

  Was that such a crazy notion? Probably. He could imagine Jessica Woodruff and Brandon Davidson listening to his thoughts, and what their reactions might be. “Boyd Davies - flourishing, happy. Right!”

  Well, maybe they had a point there. When you stopped and really thought about it, it was hard to predict that Boyd would ever have much of a life, even under the very best of circumstances. Maybe they were right. Maybe it would be a good trade, Boyd Davies for the end of the death penalty. One miserable life in exchange for hundreds. Thousands, as they’d pointed out.

  If you chose to look at it that way.

  The way Jessica Woodruff chose to look at it, it was the drawings that would sell the story. Without them, Wesley Boyd Davies was nothing but a name, a nobody - a black man with no family, no celebrity, no constituency, no marketability.

  But as she sat on the floor of her living room, with half a dozen of Boyd’s drawings spread out on the carpet in front of her, she was able to imagine the full range of possibilities.

  With the Supreme Court argument now only weeks away, Trial TV had begun running spots about the case. The first two had featured August Jorgensen, and how he’d been lured out of retirement to argue the case. After that, there’d been a ninety-second autism tie-in. Autism wasn’t exactly a hot-button issue yet, but Dustin Hoffman’s Rain Man portrayal had at least put it on the map, and raised the level of public awareness just a bit. Now they were ready for the next step, the added angle of Boyd’s artistic talent. They’d talk about how the police had seized upon it to extract a confession of sorts from him, leading first to the discovery of Ilsa Meisner’s body, and eventually to Boyd’s conviction. There was even a touch of irony to it.

  Irony was always a good sell.

  She looked at the three drawings Boyd had made sixteen years ago for Detective Wyatt. They were copies, of course, made from the originals, which had been introduced as exhibits at the trial and were therefore still part of the official record. Maybe after the execution, they could substitute the copies for the originals, which would someday be worth a lot of money.

  Of the three, the drawing of the grave site was the obvious choice. It showed a patch of ground in front of a big tree, some ferns, and a stream in the background. And even as Boyd had made the drawing, beneath the ground lay the body of an eleven-year-old girl.

  The other two - of the shovel and the place it was recovered - Jessica would save for later, for the book. She looked around for another one she could use, simply to illustrate Boyd’s talent. The trick, of course, was going to be tweaking the public’s imagination, without going too far. If they over-did it - if they ended up making a cause célèbre out of him, it could backfire on them. After they lost the appeal, they’d have to go through the motions of filing a clemency petition with the governor. Virginia politics being what they were, that shouldn’t prove to be much of a hurdle. But just to make sure nothing went wrong, they’d tracked down Ilsa Meisner’s surviving brother and sister, and prepared letters for them, in which they stated their strong opposition to any commutation of Davies’s death sentence.

  She rejected several drawings Boyd had made of his mother and sisters. Those, she feared, might humanize him too much, might prompt people to regard him as someone who had connections to family, to loved ones. Better to save those for afterward.

  So, too, did she reject Boyd’s most recent effort, the drawing he’d made for Jorgensen of the mysterious three-fingered man - who, of course, had turned out to be none other than Kurt Meisner. Quick thinking by the Duke had enabled them to pry it away from Jorgensen, and although it was of poor quality (from Jorgensen’s having shown it to half the state of Virginia), some day it would be an important piece of the puzzle, the link explaining how, months after Boyd’s execution, his final drawing had led Trial TV to Meisner and the discovery of the truth.

  In the end, she settled on an innocuous drawing of a tobacco field in summer, with tall trees at the edge of it, and wispy clouds just above them. It was pretty, and like the rest of Boyd Davies’s drawings, it was strikingly photographic. That said, there seemed to be nothing about it likely to mobilize public opinion, or bring about some sort of movement to try to spare the artist’s life.

  There was no room for anything like that in the plan.

  Boyd Davies looked a bit thinner than he had before, and his gaze wandered around the room nervously, but with no discernable pattern. He never once made eye contact with Jorgensen and gave no indication that he remembered him from their previous visits.

  “How are you, Boyd?” Jorgensen tried. But there was no way to know if Boyd could even hear him. Once, back when he’d been a trial lawyer, before he’d become a judge, Jorgensen had represented a defendant accused of robbing a bank. The fellow had been fortunate enough to make bail (perhaps it hadn’t been the first bank he’d robbed), and on the eve of jury selection, he’d suddenly disappeared. The judge had ordered the trial to go forward without him, and Jorgensen had been left to represent the empty chair sitting beside him. He’d won the case, too, proving only that sometimes you could do better without a client to distract you.

  There were times when visiting Boyd Davies was like representing that empty chair. Like the absent bank robber, Boyd didn’t question your motives, second-guess your tactics, complain about his lot, or give you a hard time in any of the dozens of ways men who are locked up and unhappy about it are prone to do. Boyd simply walked into the visit room, sat down at the table, expected nothing, and asked for nothing. As soon as the visit was over, he’d be ready to stand up and leave, or do whatever else the guard might tell him to do.

  He was easy, easy to a fault.

  Jorgensen had brought paper and pencil with him, and now he took them and slid them across the table. Boyd picked up the pencil, but made no move to start drawing. It was almost as if he were some sort of a curiosity show, like a trained seal waiting patiently for someone to toss him a ball, or a ci
rcus bear taught to sit still until his bicycle was brought out.

  Like an animal in a cage.

  Maybe the folks at Trial TV were right. They’d said he had nothing to live for, that he’d be better off dead. Looking at him now, it was pretty hard to argue with them.

  “Draw me something,” said Jorgensen. “Draw me anything you’d like to.”

  There was no reaction from Boyd. Figuring out what he’d like to draw involved conceptualizing, self-examination. Things Boyd Davies wasn’t capable of.

  “Can you draw me your favorite thing?” Jorgensen asked.

  Nothing.

  “Can you draw me the place where you’d like to be right now?”

  Still nothing.

  “The best place you ever were?”

  Slowly, Boyd reached for the paper. There was a moment of hesitation, and then he began drawing. Jorgensen realized the difference, and his own failure to distinguish between what Boyd could and couldn’t do. Earlier, he’d asked Boyd to imagine something; this time, he’d instead asked him to remember something. That, Boyd could do.

  It happened as it had before - and it happened precisely the way in which Jorgensen thought of it. He remembered an old dog food commercial from years ago, back when he and Marge had owned a television set and used to watch the evening news together. “Just add water,” the announcer would say, “and gravy happens.”

  Beginning at the right edge of the paper (or the left, if you were sitting on Boyd’s side of the table), a drawing was happening now, materializing from the point of the pencil and gradually spreading out across the page. Looking at it upside down, it took Jorgensen a moment or two to see what the subject matter was, but soon enough he could tell it was water of some sort, water in a pond, surrounded by rocks and wildflowers, or maybe just weeds that had blossomed. He was doing something to the surface of the water now, stippling it in a way that prompted Jorgensen to wonder if Boyd wasn’t drawing bugs on it, or bubbles.

  When the drawing was finished - and it was finished as soon as Boyd reached the other edge of the page, something that took in the neighborhood of ten or fifteen minutes - Jorgensen reached for it and turned it around so that it faced him. It was raining, he could see then, and the raindrops, themselves all but invisible, were dimpling the pond’s surface. The whole thing was so breathtakingly real that looking at it, Jorgensen could all but feel the rain, all but reach down and scoop the water up into his hands. So taken by it, so moved by it was he, that - quite involuntarily - he clasped his chest with his hand.

  And to his astonishment, Boyd Davies mirrored his response, clasping his own chest with his own hand.

  “It’s wonderful,” said Jorgensen, smiling at Boyd to further demonstrate his approval.

  Boyd said nothing. Nor did he return the smile. Instead, his concentration seemed elsewhere. And as Jorgensen studied him, he noticed that even as Boyd kept his right hand pressed tightly against his T-shirt, he began keeping time with his left hand, moving it up and down, if ever so slightly, every second or so.

  “That,” said Jorgensen, “is your heart. It’s pumping. It means you’re alive.”

  And although an hour later he’d be unable to convince himself that it had been anything more than his own imagination, coupled with a good dose of wishful thinking, at the time, August Jorgensen would have bet his life that he saw Boyd Davies’s lips part, and his tongue - without ever making a sound - touch his upper palate and form a single word.

  Alive.

  It was late afternoon by the time he reached Roanoke. He found it impossible to make good time in the Ford; it had about as much power as Jorgensen’s truck - which meant barely enough to get it up and over the smallest of hills - and on top of that, it had an automatic transmission. Jorgensen kept forgetting, pressing his left foot down on the floorboard, and using his right hand to turn on the windshield wipers when accelerating. But it did get good mileage. They’d given him a full tank back in Charlotte, and for the first hour or so, he’d thought the needle on the gas gauge was stuck on F. He was accustomed to the one on his truck, which he could actually watch move to E.

  The drive from Brushy Mountain to Roanoke had been a short one, not much more than an hour. He’d spent the first half of it reflecting on why it was he needed to see Kurt Meisner again, and the remainder composing the pitch he intended to make, once he’d gotten in to see him. It went something like this: You’re helping the wrong people, Mr. Meisner. The people you’re helping don’t care about Boyd Davies. They’re willing to let him die. In fact, they want him to die; they need him to die - it’s part of their plan. I want to save Boyd. I’m the one you should be helping.

  And if Meisner refused to see him again, and they wouldn’t let him past the receptionist at the front desk, then he’d write it all out, and insist on waiting while they took it up to Meisner’s room and waited for his answer.

  But, hell, he’d get in. One way or another, he was going to get to Kurt Meisner, too. If need be, he’d play the age card. Sometimes it didn’t hurt to be an old man in his eighties. Folks never seemed to take much notice when you wandered off, acted lost or bewildered, or started poking your head into this door or that. It was kind of expected of you.

  “I’m here to see Kurt Meisner,” he told the woman at the desk.

  The woman looked up at him through thick glasses and pursed her lips. Jorgensen thought back to Boyd Davies, mouthing the word alive. It had only been an hour ago, an hour and half at most, yet already he couldn’t be sure it had really happened.

  “I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” she said.

  “My name is Brandon Davidson,” Jorgensen told her. “I’m the president of Trial TV.”

  “I’m sorry, Mr. Davidson. But it still won’t be possible.”

  “Why not?”

  “Mr. Meisner,” she said, “is no longer with us.”

  “He died?”

  “No, no, hardly. But just last night, his cousin called for him and picked him up. He explained that the family had decided to care for him at home. It happens.”

  Jorgensen felt suddenly lightheaded, had to reach out for the desk to steady himself. “Are you certain?” he asked.

  The woman smiled sweetly. “I’m quite certain,” she said. “I said goodbye to him myself.”

  “Did he leave a forwarding address, somewhere I can get in touch with him?”

  “I’m just a receptionist. But,” she added, lowering her voice conspiratorially, “I happen to know he didn’t. His cousin was quite insistent about that, even when I explained to him that we might need to reach them to settle up any outstanding charges. But he said he preferred to have us total things up right then and there, so he could take care of it. And that’s exactly what we did. It came to just over $600, and he paid every penny of it. In cash, too. What do you think of that?”

  Jorgensen didn’t know what to think. He thanked the woman and walked outside. As certain as he was that something truly sinister was going on, he could think of nothing to do about it. He wandered over to the Ford and gave the front left tire a good kick, serving only to hurt his foot badly enough to cry out. He opened the door, began the delicate process of squeezing himself in, and was halfway there, trying to find room for his left leg, when something stopped him.

  The day after Jorgensen unexpectedly walks in on the videotape of Kurt Meisner in New York, some cousin of Meisner’s just happens to show up in Roanoke. That very evening, he whisks him out of there, and when they ask for a forwarding address to send any charges, he avoids having to give them one by paying Meisner’s bill. In cash.

  August Jorgensen was a great believer in coincidence. To him, things that seemed to be connected, like prayers being answered by miracles, uncanny premonitions of disasters, and primordial life evolving over the ages into humanity - even when such things occurred under circumstances so otherwise confounding as to all but prove a cause-and-effect relationship - were more often than not attributable to simple, random happen
stance. There was always bound to be an inexplicable quirk or two in the data; otherwise, there’d have been no need for the word quirk in the first place.

  But as hard as he tried now, and as much as he would have liked to succeed, there was no way Jorgensen could look at the timing of the events, and convince himself that the confluence of his trip to New York and Meisner’s sudden departure was a mere coincidence, a simple statistical aberration. And if it wasn’t, there was something he needed to know.

  He backed his body out of the Ford, unfolded himself, and walked back into the building, limping painfully.

  “Excuse me,” he said.

  The woman looked up.

  “Mr. Meisner’s cousin,” he said, “the one who came to pick him up. Do you remember his name?”

  “Oh, I’m sure I wouldn’t.”

  “Or what he looked like?”

  She smiled. “He was a round little man,” she said, “kind of funny looking. With a big mustache, if I remember correctly.”

  “And was there anything unusual,” Jorgensen asked, “about the way he talked?”

  “You’ve met him, too, I see. I tell you, I could barely understand half of the things he said. He certainly did talk funny.”

  “Funny how?”

  “Oh, you know, funny like a Yankee. And as if that weren’t bad enough,” and here she dropped her voice to a whisper, “I think he may have been Jewish. Either that, or from the Mafia.”

  Under any other circumstances, Jorgensen might have laughed, might even have good-naturedly chided the woman for stereotyping the man because he spoke a dialect different from her own. But he didn’t laugh, nor did he chide her. Her description, as it turned out, had been so on-the-money that it not only failed to strike him as funny, it literally ran a shiver up his back.