Cut to the Bone

by Shane Gericke

  “Of course,” Marty said. “Covington’s a zealot because of his brother and sees disagreement as treason. But once Trent’s buried, he’ll be all smiles again.”

  “God save us from political manic-depressives,” Emily said, rolling her eyes.

  “Amen,” Marty said. “As long as you’re chatting up The Big Guy, ask for a thunderstorm. Intelligence predicts 10,000 protesters. Be nice to cut that in half.”

  “That’s your secret weapon?” she asked, amused. “A rain delay?”

  “Getter hail than lead.”

  Several weeks ago, Cross asked Branch to walk the grounds of the Justice Center and poke holes in the master security plan. He also asked his two other captains, Annie, the county bomb squad, and the sheriff. All quickly complied.

  Then he approached Marty.

  “Find something so obvious it’ll get my ass fired for negligence,” Cross explained between bites of orange beef at the Chinese Kitchen.

  “Hell, that’s no incentive,” Marty snorted. “You only got half an ass to fire.”

  “Said pot to kettle,” Cross said. Marty had a bullet scar on his own right cheek. “So, you going to help me? Or do I tell everyone you cried like a little girl when the paramedics swabbed you?”

  “I did not!”

  “Well, no. But everyone will believe it anyway because it’s funny.” He swallowed some tea, patted his lips. “Besides, Emily’s working the witness room Friday. You’ve got a vested interest in making sure no one gets past that fence.”

  “All right, all right,” Marty grumbled, spearing a pair of General Tso’s shrimp. “But only because you’re too damn dumb to do it yourself . . .”

  He’d been putting it off, though. Too busy before the shootings, then finding the cop-killer was more important. But today his thinking was muddy, his eyes sandblasted. He’d stayed up most of last night reviewing field notes and lab reports. It was slow, tedious slogging, made worse by the fact the baby kept intruding, its barely formed lips begging, “Save me!”

  The shower at six and triple espresso at seven didn’t help. By nine, he needed fresh air.

  “Got to do something for Ken,” he’d said to Emily. “Want to take a drive?”

  “Can we put the top down and sing Beach Boys songs?”

  “We can take my unmarked and listen to the police scanner.”

  “Sold,” she’d said.

  “You might be interested to know that Annie’s recommendations match yours,” he said, bringing his head to the present.

  “Of course they do,” Emily said. “Lieutenant Bates is a brilliant analyst and master tactician.”

  “And almost as big a pain in the butt as you,” Marty said.

  You have no idea, dear, she thought, sticking out her tongue. But you’re about to find out.

  Marty showed her the available personnel numbers. “They ain’t pretty,” he said, tapping the page. “Ken should whistle up the State Police right now.”

  Emily shook her head. “We can do this ourselves. We’re stretched thin, I know, but the double shifts and vacation cancelations should give us enough bodies.”

  “You just peeing a circle around your territory? Or do you honestly think you can pull this off with available manpower?”

  “Both.”

  Marty tugged at his chin, considering. Emily looked around, trying to spot the bird whose warble rose and fell with shifts in the humid breeze.

  “Then that’s what I’ll recommend,” he said, stowing the notebook. “How’s your calf?”

  “Still sore,” Emily admitted. “I guess I pulled it worse than I thought in the parking lot. Then Devlin Bloch fell on it.”

  Marty brightened. “Hey, we could charge him with that.”

  “What?”

  “Assault and battery on police gams.”

  “Gams,” Emily said, liking how that sounded. She’d never thought her legs slim or pretty enough to be a gam. “I always wanted those.”

  “You got ‘em, trust me,” Marty said. “Massage?”

  Emily gripped the fence and lifted her leg behind her. Marty snugged it between his thighs and kneaded the kinked muscle.

  “That feels great,” she moaned, electric shivering extending from foot to knee. “Thank you.”

  “All the thanks I need is not lifting that heel any higher,” Marty said. “Hear about Branch?”

  Follow the bouncing segue. “No. What?”

  “He needs a new hip.”

  Emily frowned, retrieved her leg. “So soon? Why?”

  “You know how much it’s been hurting him lately,” Marty said, sagging against the fence. “He told the doctors, and they ran some tests. Turns out the one they put in two years ago is detaching from the bone. They want to saw it out and put in a new model.”

  Emily groaned. “Meaning he starts from zero, rehab-wise.”

  “Yeah.” He bashed the fence with a knotted fist. The chain links rattled like spare change. “Or, he can leave it alone and hope it stabilizes. Entirely his choice, the doctors said.”

  “Some choice,” Emily said. “What’s he going to do?”

  Marty didn’t reply.

  She studied the terrain. This 200-acre closed landfill on Naperville’s Southeast Side was a good spot for Covington’s execution center. The grass-covered mountain of hot dogs, napkins, newspapers, party hats, burnt-out lightbulbs, junk mail, dead batteries, cough syrup, paint, diapers, tampons, and yellowing Da Vinci Codes wasn’t good for much else, anyway. The methane that belched from the rotting debris fueled a locomotive-sized generator that pumped out 1,500 kilowatts of electricity. Enough to fry a thousand Corey Trents without dimming a single light in the rest of the city. The tall chain-link fence encircled the mountain, which looked like a hairy green belly bulging into the sky. Its height - 190 feet above the surrounding plain - guaranteed nobody would reach the concrete death house at the peak without being noticed. The landfill fit comfortably inside the 1,700-acre Greene Valley Forest Preserve, providing a broad, leafy buffer from the rest of Naperville. Illinois 53, along the eastern edge of the property, ran straight to Stateville and its Death Row. Eleven miles from Death to Valley, Emily mused. Twenty minutes, depending on traffic . . .

  “He decided to take the knife,” Marty said finally. “Go through rehab again.”

  “Is he all right with that?”

  “Got no choice,” Marty said. “Lydia will rip him several new ones if he starts whining.”

  “I knew he married well,” Emily said, standing on tiptoes and brushing her lips against Marty’s sun-browned cheek. He tasted like man, salt, and Old Spice. “It goes without saying he has our support. Whatever Branch and Lydia need, we’ll do.”

  Marty didn’t reply. Just nodded absently, face clouding, attention drifting.

  It’s time, she decided. Just close your eyes and jump . . .

  “What’s really bothering you, hon?” she said. “It’s a lot more than Branch.”

  “Nothing.”

  “Come on, Marty,” Emily said. “I know something’s wrong. Something bad. I deserve to know what it is.”

  He grimaced, then picked up a chunk of concrete. Took a running start and heaved it at the death house. It arced back to earth a quarter way up. He sighed, shoved his hands in his pockets.

  “I should never have agreed,” he muttered.

  “To what?”

  He waved his arms. “To this. To come here. To participate in Covington’s stupid death dance. This execution shouldn’t happen.”

  “Why not?” Emily asked. “Do you think Trent’s innocent?”

  Marty made a noise that said, Get real. “The bastard’s guilty as hell. But that doesn’t matter,” he said. “Capital punishment is the crack cocaine of politics, and this so-called ‘Justice’ Center is obscene.”

  That stunned her. In their two years together, they’d never discussed the death penalty. Not even when Covington convinced the Supreme Court to overturn predecessor George Ryan’s 2003 clear
ance of Death Row. Not even when he brought back the electric chair, scorning lethal injection as “too humane a way to dispatch our monsters.” She’d just assumed Marty was as passionately in favor of it as she was.

  “Some people deserve to die,” she said, feeling the blood rush in her ears. “Some crimes are so inhuman that nothing less will do.”

  “That’s what they said about Jesus,” Marty said. “I rest my case.”

  “Charles Manson. Ted Bundy. Osama bin Laden,” she shot back. “I rest my case.”

  “Mass murderers are poster children for the chair, all right,” Marty agreed. “But you forgot someone equally important to the debate.”

  “Who?”

  “Manuel.”

  She cocked her head. She’d been studying the nation’s most bloodthirsty serial, mass, spree, and thrill killers, from the Boston Strangler to the Bind-Torture-Kill madman in Kansas, and hadn’t run across that name. “Manuel who?”

  “Just Manuel,” Marty said. “He was a slave, so he only had one name. He was executed on June 15, 1779. Right here in Illinois. The good citizens built a bonfire and burned him alive. Know what his crime was?”

  “Homicide,” she guessed. “Rape. Running away from his master.”

  “Witchcraft.”

  She blinked.

  “That’s right. The very first execution in the Land of Lincoln was a destitute black man we confused with the gal from Bewitched,” Marty said. “Just one of the thousands of people America’s whacked since the Mayflower.”

  “For murder. Or treason, or kidnapping,” Emily said, shaking her head. “Manuel notwithstanding, I can’t lose any sleep over that.”

  “You should,” Marty countered. “Seeing how we’ve also executed for adultery, burglary, forgery, counterfeiting, breaking into houses, stealing horses, gay sex, helping slaves escape, the aforementioned witchcraft, and my personal favorite, concealing the birth of an infant.” He swatted a mosquito, smiled faintly at the irony.

  Adultery, she thought. How appropriate.

  “That’s past tense, Marty. Ancient history,” Emily scoffed, temples pounding from anger. After all the death and destruction she’d suffered in her life, how could he possibly be one of those gutless, nothing-on-the-line Antis? “We’ve grown tremendously as a society. We execute only cold-blooded murderers now, not rustlers, not witches. And only if we’re sure they’re guilty as charged.”

  “Pretty sure, anyway-”

  “Absolutely sure,” she said, starting to pace. “It’s impossible to execute an innocent person anymore. We have media. Miranda rights. Probable cause. Dream teams. DNA. Videotaped interrogations. Juries. Judges. Appeals. Pardons. Internet. A thousand-and-one safeguards to make sure only the guilty are condemned.”

  “Yet, people are freed from Death Row every day for wrongful convictions,” Marty said. “That’s why capital punishment is unacceptable, Em - because we’re not perfect. We make mistakes. We screw up. And when we do, the Titanic sinks, the space shuttle explodes, and an innocent person burns.” Marty stared at the Justice Center. “With all the bread and circuses our ‘enlightened’ society can muster.”

  “Then why are you involved?” she said, pointing to the cold buff walls of the complex. “Why are you witnessing Trent’s execution if it’s so ‘wrong’?”

  “I was his arresting officer,” Marty said, going rigid. “I have to be there.”

  “No, you don’t,” she said. “Branch was your partner that night, and he’s not going to watch.”

  “Branch is in charge of security Friday. He can’t be there. I don’t have a choice-”

  “Yes, you do!” Emily said, spitting her righteousness like buckshot. “You’re a hypocrite, Marty. You could beg off from being a witness because of your precious convictions, and nobody would care. But you want to see Trent die. That makes you a lousy damn hypocrite.”

  “I don’t ‘want’ to see him die,” Marty snapped. “I need to see him die-”

  “And so do I,” she bore in. “So do the families of his victims. They’re entitled. I’m entitled!”

  Marty scowled, started walking away.

  “Oh no you don’t!” Emily said, grabbing his shirt and hauling him around. His lips were flat, his face scarlet. His jaws wiggled like bags of mice. “If I’d died two years ago, are you saying you’d put my killer in a cell instead of a coffin?”

  He waited a second too long to say no.

  “I can’t believe it!” she raged, stalking a circle around him. “I thought you loved me! But maybe you love Alice more. Is that it, Marty? Are you leaving me for Alice?”

  Marty’s voice strangled unintelligibly. His fingers massaging his ribs. “How do you-”

  “I came back in the house that night. I heard you talking to your pretty little lady in the kitchen. After you’d thought I’d left for the station.” She glared at him, slapped her hands on her hips. “Are you in love with her, Marty? Are you leaving me? Tell me everything, damn you.”

  “I . . . can’t . . .”

  “You don’t have a choice anymore!” Emily screeched, pushing up so close she smelled his coffee breath. Knowing was frightening. Not knowing was worse. “If you love me, tell me what’s eating you alive. Right here, right now, or swear to God our relationship is-”

  “I have a son,” Marty said. “Alice is his mother.”

  She froze.

  “That’s right, Emily, a son,” he said, crossing his arms. “That’s why I’m a witness Friday. That’s why I’m a hypocrite. And that’s why I’ll happily dance on Trent’s melted face. Because I couldn’t save that dead little boy that night.”

  She clutched herself, gasping for air. She could have handled an Alice. Even another man. Not this. Marty had beagles. Not daughters. Not sons. No one with his DNA. His chiseled face. His square white teeth. His thick fingers. His sunray smile. His thick black moustache, which turned up at the ends like a British grenadier’s. His uncanny ability to both reflect and absorb her, in conversation or complete silence-

  “You bastard,” she spat, turning on her heel.

  “Nobody knows, Em,” he said. “Only Branch-”

  “Oh, this gets better and better,” she snarled. “You spill to your buddy easy enough, but not the woman you love? The woman you supposedly want to spend the rest of your life with?”

  “This is exactly why I didn’t say anything about my son and Alice,” Marty said, bouncing off the fence and grabbing her arm. “Because it would hurt you so much. But you insisted. You demanded. You said tell me Marty or I’ll quit you forever-”

  “Leave me alone,” she said, shaking away and breaking into a sprint, barely able to see the ground through her tears. She bounced off a whippy tree, stumbled forward. It’d take an hour to run back to the station, but she couldn’t stand the thought of being in a car with him. Not after he’d lied so masterfully. Not after he’d broken her heart so-

  Oh, Jesus, now what?

  She snatched the cell phone off her belt. “Thompson.”

  Her eyes widened as she listened.

  “OK, Branch,” she managed to choke. “I’ll be right back.”

  She disconnected, feeling sick. She didn’t want to do this, but had no choice.

  “The police chief in Holbrook, Arizona, just called,” she said mechanically, looking at the fence instead of him. “He found burnt matches at a murder scene. I need to return ASAP.”

  Marty pulled his keys. “Then we’ll talk in the car. You need to hear the rest-”

  “I heard everything I need to know,” she said. “Daddy.”

  11:42 a.m.

  “Hundred and eight and climbing,” Gene Mason replied. “But it’s a dry heat.”

  Emily heard that fairy tale from every Arizonian she’d ever met. She would have kidded him about it, but at the moment, humor stuck in her throat like bad clams.

  “What’s this I hear about an electrocution?” Mason said.

  Emily described what Covington had in mind, and
how NPD intended to handle it.

  “Sounds like your chief’s got it covered,” he said. “What’s your role?”

  “Standing watch in the witness room,” Emily said.

  “Been there, done that.”

  “You’ve worked executions, Chief?”

  “Call me Gene. And yes, several. I started my career in Florida, where Old Sparky’s right up there with God and orange juice. Best of luck.”

  “Thanks,” she said. “So, I hear we’ve got a common thread.”

  “Matches,” Mason said. “A pair of which I found sixteen feet from a nice young man whose throat was slit by person or persons unknown. A barber named Frank Mahoney.”

  “I read up on the murder on my way to the station,” Emily said, having logged onto NCIC in the car as a way to avoid Marty. He kept trying to explain, but she kept shutting him down. “Tell me about the matches.”

  “Common kitchen type,” Mason said. “Two inches long, eighth-inch square. Lit, extinguished, and deposited in the room where Mahoney was killed.”

  “Same here,” Emily said, describing the mud spa’s lobby. “I found ours behind the front door, out of the normal traffic pattern.”

  “Mine were under a TV,” Mason said. “Deliberately placed, I believe, since the shop banned smoking.” He described the sickle of Mahoney’s throat. “When was your attack?”

  “Friday,” she said. “The shooter stabbed the receptionist, then broke her nose.”

  “Really?” Mason said. “Mahoney’s was broken, too. We assumed naturally, from the fall.”

  “So did we,” Emily said, perking up at the thought of another commonality. “But CSI proved otherwise. The killer stabbed Zabrina, then smashed her nose on the counter. A half hour later he gunned down a deputy sheriff who’d pulled him over for a traffic ticket.”

  The long silence told her he hadn’t heard that part.

  “Gene?” she prompted. “Are you there?”

  “Yes. Sorry,” Mason said, clearing his throat. “My niece was on the highway patrol. She got it during a traffic stop a couple years back. Left a partner and their two daughters. Lousy memory.”