Cut to the Bone

by Shane Gericke

  God, I’m good, the producer thought triumphantly.

  “Crowd’s changing all of a sudden,” Annie told Branch as she snapped off an alert to all commands. “Aggressive body language. Angry expressions. Recommend Condition Orange.”

  “What is this mysterious proof, you ask?” Danny continued, heart banging so hard it threatened to blow his chest. “Very simple - it’s me. I blew up twelve Naperville and county policemen in 1966. I blew up the witness they were guarding. Earl Monroe didn’t do it. He simply took the blame to keep me off Death Row. My name is Daniel Monroe. I’m Earl’s little brother. I’m here today to confess my sins and clear my brother’s name.”

  Branch stared at the television in the bunker.

  “I murdered them all!” Danny thundered, full-metal preacher. “I, myself, and no one else! I was the motel janitor! I threw those hand grenades! I killed thirteen innocent men! And Wayne Covington, the governor of Illinois, was my partner in crime!”

  “That’s our guy,” Branch radioed main-gate forces. “Get him out of there quick and quiet before the crowd decides to protect him.”

  He turned to the white-faced ACLU lawyer. “You have no idea how much I’m gonna enjoy telling everyone you personally vouched for this cockroach.”

  11:46 a.m.

  “Mr. Governor,” CBS interrupted, jumping to her feet. “A man at the base of the mountain has just accused you of murder. He says on June 29, 1966, you killed an innocent-”

  11:47 a.m.

  “Ohhhhh, man,” Catfish groaned. He’d sat here nearly an hour and still wasn’t done. But high noon loomed, and he was a professional.

  He emerged from the Porta-Potty, embarrassed to look at the next person in line. He unslung his M-4 and trotted toward the main gate, wondering what all the commotion was.

  11:48 a.m.

  “He said that?” Covington said, staring down the reporters. “How dare he! His brother committed that horrible crime and got exactly what he deserved. Just like Corey Trent will in twelve minutes.”

  11:49 a.m.

  The three official executioners marched into the anteroom, tugging black hoods to collarbones. In the death chamber, the electrician made sure the copper electrodes were welded tight to Trent’s head and left calf, then walked to the back and inserted a key in a wall plate. The center’s director inserted his own key on his side of the chamber. “Three, two, one . . .”

  Twist.

  The simultaneous move started both the generator and the fail-safe program that ensured the power wouldn’t stop even if the generator was subsequently destroyed.

  The electrician left. The director pushed a button. The blue velvet curtains whirred apart, exposing the viewing window. Trent spit eye-acid at the witnesses. They stirred uncomfortably, glad the window was bulletproof.

  The Executioner waited, each second exploding in his brain.

  11:50 a.m.

  “I’d like you at my side for this, Emily,” Covington said.

  The governor’s offer was as welcome as it was surprising - she ached to see Corey Trent up close. See if breathing the same air could make her understand his unspeakable evilness. But she shook her head. “I’m sorry, sir. My job is to guard the witnesses.”

  He nodded at his bodyguards. “They’ll take care of your folks,” he said. “I need you in there with me.” He moved closer, dropped his voice. “We’re two of a kind, you and me. We know what it’s like when family dies. How it feels to lose half your soul. You deserve to be there.”

  His bright eyes weren’t for show, she knew. He was thinking about his dead brother Andy. It made her think of those she’d lost. Of the murdered baby. Of Marty and his heartache.

  “Equally important,” Covington said, louder now, spell broken, “Mr. Hill here asks for your armed presence. He’s afraid of big bad Trent.”

  “Wayne’s the one who’s scared,” the Executioner parried. “I’m just his beard.”

  Covington gave him an affectionate arm-pummel. “We’ll make our exit immediately after Leonard reads the death warrant. Please, Emily, say yes. We’ll be out before you know it.”

  Emily glanced at her sergeant, who nodded.

  “Deal,” she said.

  11:51 a.m.

  “You heard right - Danny claims Wayne killed an innocent man,” Cross told the chief justice as he floored his cruiser up the mountain. He could barely hear over the wall of sound. “The extraction team’s nearly to him, but the damage is already done. The crowd’s turning fast. Shut this circus down, Your Honor. Before I have to start shooting.”

  11:52 a.m.

  Danny thrust the grenade over his head. The already riled crowd recoiled in fright.

  “This is one of the hand grenades I used to kill those innocent men,” he announced. “Don’t worry, this isn’t real. There’s no powder. It’s harmless as a tin can.” He pointed to his granddaughter, who stared up at him as if a deity. “I would never put this darling child, or my congregants, in harm’s way with something real. This is only a symbol.”

  The extraction team pounced.

  11:53 a.m.

  Catfish burst through the front line, adrenaline scouring his brain, eyes darting everywhere, ears blasted by the frightened roar. “Grenade!” he screamed, swinging the M-4 onto the terrorist’s chest. “Everybody down!”

  “Abort! Abort! Abort!” his sergeant yelled, charging like a fullback.

  Catfish caught a flash in his peripheral vision. Uniform. Sarge. Waving. Abort.

  He eased off the trigger as his cammies filled anew.

  “It’s the bad man!” Danny’s granddaughter shrieked. “I’ll save you, Grandpa!” She wriggled out of his grasp and plunged into Catfish. “Wah! Hyah!” she yelled, chopping the giant’s legs. It wasn’t falling so she threw an elbow into its kneecap.

  Catfish buckled, howling. The M-4 burped full auto.

  “Condition Red,” Annie spat. “All commands, all nets, Condition Red.”

  The Executioner unrolled the official document. Thanks to the eye-popping checks to the governor’s “Dreams of Justice” fund, Covington asked the man he knew as Leonard Hill to be the chief witness and read the death warrant to the condemned. “Mr. Hill” gratefully accepted. It gave him the entrée he needed into this holy of holies.

  “Corrigan Bowie Trent,” he intoned, nearly drunk with the thrill. So close now. So damn close. “Having been found guilty of murder and infanticide, we the people of the sovereign State of Illinois hereby sentence you to . . .”

  The M-4 burped twenty-six bullets before Catfish un-jammed his finger.

  “Reverend!” the choir director screamed.

  “Grandpa!” his granddaughter screeched.

  “Medic!” Catfish yelled. “Medic!”

  The crowd exploded like an anthill stomped.

  “Riot, riot, riot,” Annie said. “Launch gas, ready on water. Sharpshooters, lock and load. If they reach the moat” - a fence 100 yards off the castle walls that bristled with warnings of lethal force if breached - “you have a green light to open fire.”

  Tear gas vomited from the roof cannons. Twenty seconds later, the lower hill was covered with white chemical fog and screaming, retching protesters.

  “You’re accused of murder, Wayne,” Cross said, voice tinny through the intercom. “A riot’s under way. Twenty thousand people will hit this place when the fence fails. I’ll have to open fire, and a lot of them will die. Innocent people, Wayne, the kind you don’t want to kill.”

  “Forget it,” Covington snapped. “Trent’s dying on schedule.”

  Cross slammed his hand on the bulletproof glass. “Get on the goddamn loudspeaker and tell the crowd this is over. It’s the only way I can save them. And you.”

  “He’s right, Governor,” Emily said. “Time to end this.”

  “Yeah, Wayne-o,” Trent hooted. “End this.”

  Marty’s head was throbbing. But not enough to keep him from noticing that chief witness Leonard Hill was sliding behind E
mily as Covington argued with Cross. That was weird. Civilians in high-stress situations almost always froze in place. When they did move, it was jerky, hurried, panicked. This Hill fellow crept smooth as silk.

  He moved himself to the second row.

  Danny Monroe smiled up at the mountain as medics labored to stanch the flow from the bullet stitch. His granddaughter was right all along. This wasn’t Golgotha. It was Heaven.

  11:54 a.m.

  “Gas isn’t working fast enough. Fire water cannons,” Annie ordered the Fire Department.

  An ocean’s worth of high-pressure water blasted the protesters. Thousands flew like tenpins. The rest rammed the chain links en masse. Not to resist, but to escape. “Fence is starting to buckle,” Annie told Branch.

  11:55 a.m.

  The executioners hovered over the buttons. Trent cursed Covington’s wife, children, friends, and manhood, then started in on Emily. Cross cajoled and threatened from the other side. Covington threatened back. Marty started for the viewing window. Covington’s bodyguards escorted the witnesses back to the refreshment area. Hill kept creeping. The executioners said they were ready. Emily fidgeted, impatient to leave before the lightning hit.

  “It’s time to go, Governor,” she said, tapping her watch.

  “Not till Trent is dead,” he replied.

  “That wasn’t the deal.”

  “I changed it.”

  She walked to the door, pushed the handle. Locked.

  “Only the chief executioner can open it,” Covington said. “And he’s busy.”

  “This has gone on long enough,” Emily said, angry now. “We’re leaving.”

  “We’re staying, Detective. I’m going to spit in Trent’s face when it begins to smoke.”

  More cursing from the chair.

  11:57 a.m.

  “This is an official court order,” Cross said, waving the fresh fax from the Illinois Supreme Court. Hill moved past Emily. Marty relaxed a fraction. “Cancel this execution immediately, or I’ll do it for you.”

  “I won’t,” Covington snarled. “And you don’t have the authority to overrule.”

  “Watch me,” Cross replied. “Mr. Director, turn off the power.”

  “I can’t,” he said.

  Cross whirled on him. “What are you talking about?”

  “System’s in fail-safe,” the director said, chin divot quivering. “It won’t accept a shutdown order until 12:30. That’s to ensure the execution proceeds even if there’s a power failure. Or a terrorist attack.”

  Cross spotted the bright yellow hotline. “Suppose he’s in Springfield and calls you. How do you handle a stay then?”

  “Simple. We don’t push the buttons.”

  “Explain.”

  “The generator charges the burst-battery. But the executioners release it by pushing all three buttons at the same time.” He pointed at the anteroom. “They’re the fail-safe to the fail-safe.”

  “If they don’t push, nothing happens?”

  “Right. The power’s still there, but it doesn’t flow to the chair.”

  Cross went back to the intercom. “Executioners. Can you hear me?”

  “Loud and clear, Mr. Cross.”

  “The Illinois Supreme Court canceled this execution. As the chief law-enforcement officer of this city, I order you to step away from the buttons and leave the anteroom.”

  “Right away.”

  Get ready . . .

  “Belay that!” Covington roared. “I’m the governor, and I’m overriding the court! Stay at your posts and push those buttons!”

  Get set . . .

  “Detective Thompson,” Cross said.

  “Sir?”

  “Place the governor under arrest for failure to obey a lawful police order.”

  “Yes, sir,” Emily said, reaching for her handcuffs.

  Go.

  Hill snapped a kick into Emily’s left leg, spinning her to the floor howling. His arm snaked around Covington’s throat and cut off his air supply. As the governor choked and spittled, the polymer swallowing knife whipped from Hill’s pocket onto Covington’s neck.

  “What the hell are you doing?” Marty roared, banging on the glass.

  “Saying hello to my long-lost brother,” Hill said, pushing in the tip. Blood trickled from sliced capillaries. “How you been, Corey?”

  “Not bad, Jason, not bad,” Corey said. “I hear you’re friends with Wayne.”

  “Yup,” Jason said. “Having a lot of money does that. You want out of that chair?”

  “If you wouldn’t mind.”

  “Lieutenant Bates,” Cross radioed as he studied the surreal exchange.

  “Go ahead,” she sputtered as shifting winds whipped the roof with cannon water.

  “The governor is bowing to the wishes of the people and canceling this execution. Get it on the public address. Then bring your explosives team to the chamber. We have a situation.”

  “You said your family disowned you,” Covington gurgled as the chokehold loosened.

  “I lied,” Corey Trent said. “You of all people should know us filthy psycho killers do that.”

  The knife went a fraction deeper. More blood dribbled.

  “Let him go,” Emily ordered, drawing her Glock and aiming it at Jason.

  “You shoot,” Jason said, “Your precious governor dies, too.”

  Emily breathed and released, tightened her grip, steadied her aim. As soon as Jason’s head cleared Covington’s, she’d take him out-

  “Detective,” Cross said gently.

  “Sir?”

  “Ease off just a little, would you? Wayne will gripe forever if Jason’s brains land on his suit.”

  The light tone told her he had a plan and was playing for time. She hoofed out a breath, took her finger off the trigger.

  “So what do you want?” she asked Jason.

  “You,” he said.

  “So I assumed,” she said, recalling the firebombing and Riverwalk knifing. “But why?”

  Jason grinned, pointed at the enraged giant on the other side of the glass.

  “Him,” he said.

  Loudspeakers thundered. Nobody understood. Then one man caught on.

  “We won!” he shouted. “Pass the word, the execution’s canceled!”

  “I’m sorry, Grandpa,” his granddaughter bawled at the disappearing ambulance. “I let the bad man hurt you. I let him, I let him.”

  “No, you didn’t, baby,” the choir director said, hugging her close. “Grandpa’s going to be all right.” Danny was seriously injured but stable, thanks to the solid-tip bullets and quick action from the army combat medics. “You deflected all the other bullets. If it wasn’t for you, honey, he’d be dead. Your karate chops saved his life.”

  “Really?” she said, brightening.

  “Absolutely. We’ll go visit Grandpa as soon as the doctors fix him up.” She didn’t mention he’d probably be arrested for mass murder. One mountain at a time. “Your mama’s taking the next flight from Boise and will be here soon . . .”

  Catfish watched, stone silent, hardly breathing, till a water cannon swept him away.

  Annie led two explosive entry teams - NPD and army - toward the witness room. Tactical boots pounded the concrete. Cross met them outside, explained the situation.

  “The man with the knife is Jason Trent,” he explained, pointing him out on the closed-circuit monitor. “He goes by Leonard Hill.”

  “The chief witness is Corey’s brother?” Annie asked, stunned. “How’d he get inside?”

  “Trojan horse,” Cross said. “Hill wrote many a fat check to Wayne’s private electric-chair fund. As thanks, Wayne invited him as a witness today and asked him to read the death warrant. Essentially, he brought in his own executioner.”

  Annie’s lip twitch said, play with matches, you get burned.

  Cross didn’t disagree. “Like his sisters and parents, Jason publicly disowned Corey after the 1991 conviction, and broke off all contact. No visit
s, letters, calls. Nothing through Corey’s lawyer, either - we checked. Jason fell off everybody’s radar screen.”

  “But now he’s back. To save a man he hasn’t seen in nearly two decades,” Annie said, mulling and discarding rescue options. “In an action he knows may kill them both. Why?”

  “Brotherly love,” Cross said. “Madness. Ego. Revenge. Suicide by cop. Take your pick.”

  “All this to kill Covington,” she muttered. “Would have been easier to shoot him at a parade.”

  “I don’t think it’s about Wayne.”

  “Who, then?”

  “Marty. Jason hasn’t given details, but I’d bet my badge he’s here to avenge Marty’s putting Corey in the chair to die. I believe he’ll kill Emily and Wayne, and make Marty watch.”

  “Bastard.”

  “Jason wants Marty to suffer the rest of his life,” Cross said. “What better way than humiliating him with all those serial killings, then murdering Emily and the governor?”

  “Emily’s armed. Can she take him out?”

  “Had her finger on the trigger. I backed her off. Even with an eyeball shot there’s too much risk of Jason slitting Wayne’s throat. We have to dig them out another way.”

  “The chamber doors and windows are bullet- and bomb-proof,” Annie said. “The entire electrical system is triple armored against terrorist assault. The burst battery has even more armor. The air scrubbers in the chamber prevent using knockout gas.”

  “If this was easy, I wouldn’t need you.” Cross explained what he had in mind.

  Annie’s grin was wolfish. She snapped off a salute and rapid-fired orders.

  “You know what the worst part is?” she said as the troopers checked equipment and radios.

  “What?”

  “Devlin Bloch’s innocent. We have to turn him loose.”

  Cross snorted, and the teams moved out.

  “I’m really, really unhappy you did this to my brother,” Jason said.

  “Then he shouldn’t have killed that mother and child,” Covington snapped.

  Jason opened a half-dozen capillaries.

  “Keep in mind you’re alive only because he is,” Emily warned, releveling the Glock.

  “Dead bitch talking,” Corey sneered.