No Rest for the Dead

by Andrew F. Gulli; Lamia J. Gulli

  She turned away and stared at the tray on the edge of her bed, stains blooming through the napkin. Her last meal—a cheeseburger and fries—ordered when the sad, smiling guard said she could have anything she wanted.

  Anything? A new trial? Freedom? Her life?

  She’d returned the woman’s sad smile. “I don’t care,” she’d said. And when the cheeseburger had arrived oozing blood, with fat french fries lapping up the liquid like leeches, she’d covered it with a napkin, the thought of eating impossible.

  She hadn’t been able to eat in weeks, living on tea and crackers and last night a few cherries Belle had brought from her garden, which had stained her fingers like blood.

  A shadow fell across the bars and Rosemary looked up—the warden, three guards, and the prison chaplain.

  “It’s time,” said the guard, the one with the sad, kind face, a heavyset woman whom Rosemary had come to know during the time she’d spent behind bars. Images fluttered through her mind like a series of snapshots: standing beside her father, his stern face turned away from hers as it always was; an awkward debutante at her coming-out party, tall and gangly; and in white lace on her wedding day, Christopher Thomas beside her.

  Christopher, her beautiful shining knight.

  Christopher, who had betrayed her.

  “Are you ready?” the guard asked, unable to meet Rosemary’s eyes.

  An absurd question, thought Rosemary. What if I say, No, I’m not ready? What then? She imagined herself tearing down the hall, the guards running after her, inmates cheering and jeering. But she said, “Yes, I’m ready.”

  There were no handcuffs, no chains, just guards on either side of her, the prison chaplain carrying an open Bible, the warden leading the way.

  How odd, thought Rosemary, that I feel… nothing.

  The sad, kind guard held her arm, and the hallway stretched out in front of her. A fluorescent light flickered. The walk seemed to take forever.

  They led her through an oval-shaped door into an octagonal room, and Rosemary saw the gurney that filled half the space and a table with tourniquets and needles laid out and windows all around, and she realized it was a show and that she was the main attraction.

  She gasped, breath caught in her throat. She felt her legs go weak, sagged, and might have fallen if the guard did not have a firm grip on her arm.

  “Are you okay?” the woman asked.

  Rosemary said, “I’m… fine,” thinking, I will be dead soon.

  They were led, like mourners, through a side door that opened into a circular passageway that surrounded the execution chamber.

  Jon Nunn watched as the witnesses assumed positions, like sentries, at each of the five windows, curtains drawn. They stared at the glass, at faint, distorted reflections of themselves. He looked from one to another: the district attorney, for once quiet; the judge, a woman who’d played tough along with the DA, nervously wringing her hands; Rosemary’s brother, Peter, who had practically banged into him only moments earlier, booze on his breath; the reporter Hank Zacharius. There were other reporters too, guards and state officials, everyone somber and stony except for Belle McGuire, Rosemary’s friend, face flushed and crying, the only one seemingly overcome by emotion.

  Nunn thought of Rosemary the first time he’d met her, how tough she’d pretended to be, and hoped she could muster some of that toughness today, though his own reserve was empty.

  Earlier this evening, he and Sarah had argued, not for the first time, about the trial, the crime, Sarah saying that the case had become his obsession and he could no longer answer her accusations or deny them, and he had stormed out—as he had on so many other nights—leaving her behind, fuming. He’d hung out in a bar till it closed, then found another that stayed open all night. Peter Heusen was not the only one with booze on his breath.

  The “tie-down team” had strapped her to the gurney, five big men to tie down one small woman—a man at her head, one on each arm, one for each leg. Now there were straps across her chest, wrists, abdomen, the sound of Velcro restraints opening and closing still playing in Rosemary’s ears.

  “Rest your head on the pillow,” one said.

  Rest my head? Are they kidding? But she did, even said, “Thank you”—always the well-brought-up girl. She thought of her mother and for once was glad her parents were dead.

  She stared at the ceiling, the walls, counted gray tiles versus white ones, anything to keep her mind occupied, spotted the camera, and thought, They are recording my death, and prayed she would be dignified, that she would not scream and that her body would not betray her with spasms. She couldn’t bear the thought of that.

  “Okay,” said the man at her head, and the one at her leg touched her ankle so gently, so tenderly, she fought to control her tears.

  The tie-down crew was replaced by a medical team, technicians wrapping tubes around her arms, flicking at her flesh to find veins.

  She caught sight of the catheters and shivered.

  “Can you make a fist?” one asked, and she did, pretending they were just taking blood, and thought of the blood test she’d taken before she was married and how excited she’d been to become Mrs. Christopher Thomas: how much she’d hoped for and how little had come true. She thought of the nights she lay awake, humiliated, waiting for him, knowing he was in another woman’s bed, wishing him dead, wanting to kill him.

  One of the technicians missed the vein and Rosemary flinched, tears automatically springing to her eyes.

  No, don’t cry. She squeezed her eyes shut.

  Again and again the technicians tried and failed, until one of them finally said, “There, that’s one,” while the other continued to stab her arm over and over. “The veins have gone totally flat,” he said.

  Not her veins. The veins.

  She wanted to scream, I’m still alive.

  “Lemme help,” said the other one, the two of them poking at her arm, dark shadows looming over her, and an image came to her, in the vet’s office years ago, having her cocker spaniel put to sleep, the old dog riddled with cancer. How merciful it had seemed, the dog nestled peacefully in her arms while the vet got the IV going. “You’re just going to sleep,” she’d said, tears in her eyes, and had believed that until the creature let out a deep, guttural yelp, something she’d never heard before, and Rosemary had to steady his soft, old body, pet him, and whisper assurances, “There, there,” until the drug got into his bloodstream and he went limp. She came back to the moment, looked at the group of people in the chamber and wondered, Where are my assurances?

  “Okay,” said the technician, taping the second IV to her arm, “we finally got it.”

  Please, God, let it be over quickly, thought Rosemary.

  The technicians left and the warden and the chaplain came in.

  The warden raised his hand and the curtains opened and she saw them.

  Her heart pounding, Rosemary thought, My audience. Some are witnesses to my death, some are participants.

  Her brother, Peter Heusen. Drunk already, she could tell, from the bleary eyes. She’d refused to see Peter this morning. She knew he’d simply been trying to cleanse his conscience.

  There were other faces too, people she didn’t know. And there was Belle, crying, watching Rosemary through the glass.

  And Jon Nunn, who had tried to visit, but she’d refused him as she had every other time he’d requested. They locked eyes and he smoothed his shirt, then brushed absently at his stubble, as if suddenly upset at his rumpled appearance.

  Rosemary scanned the crowd and her eyes stopped on Hank Zacharius, the journalist … her friend. He’d argued in article after article that they were executing an innocent woman, a woman who had been railroaded by an avid prosecutor and judge. She could still remember his attempts to question the evidence.

  Hank Zacharius tried to convince himself that he’d come strictly as a witness and reporter—not as a friend—that he’d write one last piece detailing the horrors of capital punishment an
d that the writing would distance him from the event, but his heart was beating fast and his mouth had gone dry. He stared through the glass at Rosemary and took several deep breaths. He could not help but notice how thin she had grown, the once delicate bone structure of her face now skull-like, her bony arms bruised where the technicians had made their clumsy attempts to insert the fourteen-gauge catheters, the largest commercially available needles, that would deliver the mix of anesthetic and poison to stop Rosemary’s heart. He thought about how hard he’d tried to prevent this from happening. His mind kept going back to the articles he’d written about the case.

  Christopher Thomas’s body was found in an advanced state of decomposition due to its incarceration in a contraption known as an iron maiden, which acted as a kind of pressure cooker. The device also crushed the deceased’s teeth, though an identifiable fragment was discovered in the iron maiden itself.

  This reporter has argued that it would have been impossible for the accused, a 130-pound woman, to have lifted a man of more than six feet and 180 pounds into the iron maiden by herself. The state has put forth the idea that she had help from a known drug runner, who had been seen at the McFall Art Museum and who has subsequently and conveniently disappeared from sight.

  If Rosemary Thomas is executed on evidence that could have been planted, it will be the result of a witch hunt, of politicos saving their jobs, of trying to prove the wealthy can be treated as badly as the poor.

  But Zacharius’s writings were tainted by his having known Rosemary since college, by their having been friends, and their relationship was used to discredit him: He is partial. He is a friend. He is distorting the evidence. And it didn’t help that he’d written a series of anti-capital-punishment articles for Rolling Stone just a few months earlier, which made it look as if he were simply taking up his cause once again.

  Zacharius stared past Rosemary and through the glass opposite saw Peter Heusen, weaving slightly, as if he might fall.

  He’s drunk, thought Zacharius. Rosemary’s goddamn brother is drunk.

  Peter Heusen was having trouble keeping down his breakfast of eggs Benedict chased by two tumblers of bourbon. His stomach roiled and his head ached. He swallowed hard and worried he might be sick. He saw himself in the witness box, stating how his sister had, more than once, said she’d wanted her husband dead. Of course he’d added that he was certain it was just a figure of speech, “though one could hardly blame my sister if she did kill that philandering scoundrel; I mean, who wouldn’t?”

  Peter Heusen swallowed again. What he wouldn’t do for another glass of bourbon. He licked his lips and thought of Rosemary’s young children, Leila and Ben, at home with their nanny, and what he would say to them later… Oh, your poor dear mother. He glanced at his older sister and thought how she’d always taken care of him. Rosemary the Responsible, that’s what he’d called her, and he felt a tremor through his body. Even now she looked responsible, in control. Always the opposite of me, he thought, and swallowed again, and caught her eyes.

  The warden took up his position at Rosemary’s head.

  The chaplain by her side asked, “Do you have anything to say?”

  She looked again at the people on the other side of the windows and saw the district attorney and the judge… those who stopped at nothing to see that justice was done.

  Justice?…

  Oh, do I have some things to say. …

  And she must have nodded because a boom mike descended from the ceiling.

  But instead Rosemary shut her eyes and pictured her childhood bedroom, she and her mother kneeling beside her bed.

  “Now I lay me down to sleep…”

  She heard her words amplified through the mike and felt a hand on her arm, imagined it was her mother, though she knew it was the chaplain.

  “… if I should die before I—”

  But the words suddenly made no sense—there was no if.

  Rosemary tried to make her mind a blank, but images of her children bloomed like developing photographs, beautiful, innocent faces, and she could not stop herself from thinking that she would never see them again, never see them grow older, would miss their teenage years and college and marriages and grandchildren. And though she tried not to, a strangled sob burst out of her.

  Melissa Franklin Forrest heard the cry and flinched. She had been staring at a spot above Rosemary’s head—anything to avoid the woman’s eyes—but now, hearing that sound and seeing the tears on Rosemary’s face, she felt her own tears gathering.

  She’d spent more than half her life as a judge and was considered a fair one. She had fought for reelection more than once, but right now it felt as if all of the good work she’d done was behind her—that this was the one act she would be remembered for, the one that would haunt her for the remainder of her life.

  She had not wanted to be here, had not wanted to be a witness, but the state had insisted. She twisted a plain gold band around her finger, tried to breathe normally though her heart raced and her head felt light.

  Had she not been easy on that rapist; had she not set him free to rape again; had it not been the case that preceded this one…

  But she had let a rapist go free, and it had been the case just before Rosemary’s.

  Judge Forrest forced herself to look at Rosemary, at the straps that held her like a trapped animal, at the needles in her arms that would deliver the poison, and she thought, Now I am guilty of murder too.

  Rosemary felt the cool saline solution rushing into her veins.

  Then the warden removed his glasses, tilted his head toward a mirror, and Rosemary knew it was a signal, the signal, for the execution to begin.

  Behind the mirrored glass, the executioner started the process.

  First the sodium thiopental, a fast-acting barbiturate that was the anesthetic. Then fifty milligrams of Pavulon, a muscle relaxer that would paralyze the diaphragm and arrest the breathing. Last, the potassium chloride, which would stop the heart.

  The chaplain asked again if she had anything to say, and Rosemary shook her head no as words tumbled from her mouth: “… though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no—”

  Then she swallowed and tasted something bitter on the back of her tongue, and the words caught in her throat and the slight burning she’d felt in her arms became fire and her body was shaking, writhing, and she could not stop gasping and gagging.

  “My God! My God!” Belle McGuire covered her face with her hands. “What’s happening?”

  The curtains were quickly drawn. But Belle, the others, could hear moans and cries even through the glass.

  “It’s worse than being stoned to death,” Zacharius said, pale, glaring at Nunn.

  Jon Nunn squeezed his eyes shut. He had to control himself from pounding on the glass and smashing it.

  The medical team and the tie-down crew burst into the death chamber.

  “Shit!” A large black man tried to restrain Rosemary’s convulsing body.

  One of the technicians yelled, “It’s her arm! Look at the swelling. Jesus!”

  “The straps are too tight,” the warden said, “Only a fraction of the chemical is getting through. You’re killing her—slowly! Get it off—now!”

  One of the tie-down team tugged the strap off Rosemary’s arm so fast it snagged the IV and the needle whipped through the air like a snake spitting poison.

  “What is wrong with you people?” the warden bellowed, his face red. “There are state officials out there—and reporters—watching this! Jesus Christ!” He backed away to avoid a face full of paralyzing Pavulon.

  Rosemary’s heart was beating normally again and she watched all the drama around her as if it were some black comedy. Her joints ached and her muscles burned. But her mind was surprisingly clear.

  “You okay?” the technician asked, and she nodded.

  The chaplain was back, his hand on Rosemary’s forehead. “It’s okay, dear. It’s okay.” Then he started to pray as th
e technician got the catheters in place and Rosemary lay back against the pillow.

  Belle McGuire turned to Nunn. She was still crying. “Make them stop. Please make them stop!”

  “Not the first time I’ve seen something go wrong,” one of the reporters said, shaking his head. “It’ll get back on track in a few minutes.”

  Belle’s face twisted with pain.

  But Jon Nunn couldn’t wait a few minutes. He pounded his fist on the glass. “Stop this! Stop it now!”

  A guard was beside him in seconds. “Sir, you will have to leave if you don’t—”

  Nunn took one last half swing at the glass, then let his hand drop, and stared at the floor, taking fast, hard breaths.

  The curtains opened and once again Rosemary looked at the witnesses. She tried to smile at Belle, then, scanning the windows, she found Jon Nunn, who leaned forward and pressed his hands against the glass—something he was not supposed to do, but this time no one stopped him.

  It was not at all as she’d imagined—some drug-induced stupor followed by sleep. Instead, Rosemary Thomas had become hyperaware of her body, air going in and out of her lungs, bubbles of oxygen traveling along veins and arteries, heart pumping loud and clear, images sparking in her brain—her father laid up in bed; her mother smoking a cigarette at his funeral; her children, Ben and Leila, calling to her; the iron maiden; a blood-soaked blouse; Christopher’s face, his finger; words, colors, everything whirling and mixing. She saw the district attorney looking solemn and the pain on the judge’s face and the guards and the doctor and the reporters staring but not really looking.

  Now she knew what was happening. Her breathing had become labored and a sudden coldness surrounded her heart. Just before her eyes closed, she saw Belle McGuire crying and Jon Nunn’s face, his fingertips pressed against the glass like white, fluttering moths. It was as if his hand were on her arm.

  She wanted to call out, but it was impossible: she couldn’t speak. A noise, like air going out of a balloon, filled Rosemary’s ears, and she knew it was her last breath, and then her heart turned to ice and cracked and broke apart and the world went bright white and she was flying.