I thought of the victim, how the doctor must have felt when the hot lead punctured him. I'd been shot in Italy, and it was more than painful. In the hall, I looked at the lone member of the Waddell family who came to witness the execution, the doctor's eldest son. There was no look of satisfaction, no look of vengeance on his face. He kept his face from revealing anything.
I tried to do the same in the death chamber, a large conference room filled with hardwood folding chairs and a wooden podium where the electric chair was perched. Against the far wall stood a penitentiary guard next to a huge electric panel right out of Frankenstein.
There were nineteen people in the room. The warden of the House of D. sat up front with two assistant district attorneys. Frenchy Capdeville, the lone cop, sat behind with Dr. Waddell's son at the far end of the row. Evelyn came and sat next to me. The others were reporters, each with a pad in hand. James Woodard stood next to a black phone that was the direct line to the governor's office.
When they walked Judy out, I felt my jaw tighten. She was in dungarees, barefoot, a red bandanna on her head. She was manacled and moved with a shuffle and her eyes were locked on my eyes from the moment she came in. She shivered so much they had to hold her up. Her eyes were wet, but she kept her chin high.
They took off the bandanna. She was bald, looking much like a manikin. Two guards sat her in Gertie and quickly fastened her arms and legs, attaching electrodes. She kept looking at me, but with the tears in her eyes, I'm sure I was just a blur. Unfortunately, I saw clearly.
One of the guards read the sentence again in a deep voice, declaring Judith Cathleen Wells was condemned to death and how twenty-three thousand volts of electricity would be sent through her body until she was dead. He asked if she had any final words.
Her mouth quivered. She took in a breath and said, “I want . . . y'all . . . to watch."
She closed her eyes and they shoved a hood over her face, sticking a rubberized ball in her mouth and attaching an electrode to the top of her head. I felt my heart stammering and looked at the clock, as did most everyone else. I looked back quickly to keep watching Judy's final moments, knowing her eyes were trying to see, of all things, me.
Evelyn grabbed my hand and squeezed.
The guard next to the wall said something, and I felt the electricity in the air. Judy jerked twice, then a third time, stiffing straight up, and after long, heart-pounding seconds, the switch was turned off and her body fell limp in the chair.
She was gone.
Copyright © 2010 O'Neil De Noux
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Department: BOOKED & PRINTED by Robert C. Hahn
For many, summer reading is an opportunity to revisit favorite writers. This month we take a look at three best-selling authors who started off their careers with a prestigious bang. Jonathan Kellerman, Stuart Woods, and Thomas Perry all captured the Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and they have been consistent producers ever since. Together this trio has produced nearly one hundred books since the eighties. Each one has built a loyal audience. Each also has a new book coming out this spring.
Jonathan Kellerman's Alex Delaware series has been captivating readers for almost a quarter century. His debut novel, When the Bough Breaks (1985), introduced Los Angeles child psychologist Alex Delaware. In the decades since, the prolific Kellerman has teamed up twice with his wife Faye Kellerman to write Capital Crimes and Double Homicide. He also published a number of nonfiction books, drawing on his own expertise in dealing with the psychological problems of children. He rounded out his considerable library with a few standalone thrillers, including True Detectives.
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DECEPTION (Ballantine, $28), the twenty-fifth novel in the series, continues to pair Alex Delaware with LAPD Lieutenant Milo Sturgis to untangle criminal and psychological knots. The pair's deep friendship has endured a myriad of cases; they are as comfortable with one another now as an old married couple, making for an amiable, captivating chemistry. In Deception, Milo is handed a particularly sensitive case that plays to Alex's strengths. The body of Elise Freeman, a teacher at exclusive Windsor Preparatory Academy in Brentwood, is found packed in dry ice in her own bathtub. A homemade DVD found in her house accuses three fellow teachers at the academy of “repeated, unwarranted, aggressive, and distressing sexual harassment."
Plenty of powerful people would like the case resolved quickly and quietly, including the police chief whose son attends the school. Freeman's sleazy boyfriend, Sal Fidella, would be the most convenient solution since he's unconnected to the school. But Milo and Alex can't ignore the tape, or the teachers Freeman accused, or the students that Freeman taught and mentored.
As Alex and Milo question suspects and sift clues, the corruption beneath the exclusive school's facade of wealth and privilege begins to emerge, and the prospect of closing the case without stepping on important toes seems to vanish.
Chalk up another winner for Kellerman and his Odd Couple partners —the gruff cop Milo Sturgis and the sophisticated psychologist Alex Delaware are worth following for decades to come.
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Stuart Woods's 1981 debut, Chiefs, introduced novice police chief Will Lee. The book was later adapted into a television miniseries on CBS, starring Charlton Heston and Wayne Rogers. Will Lee has been featured in five subsequent novels, including 2009's Mounting Fears.
Woods has since developed a number of other popular series characters, including Ed Eagle (Santa Fe Dead), Holly Barker (Hothouse Orchid), Rick Barron (Beverly Hills Dead), and New York City attorney Stone Barrington. Barrington features in Woods's latest novel, LUCID INTERVALS (Putnam, $25.95), his eighteenth outing since he debuted in 1991's New York Dead.
Stone Barrington is as smooth and potent as the Knob Creek bourbon he favors. The former NYC cop-turned-lawyer lives a lifestyle James Bond might envy. His headaches, though, are legion and include his beautiful but disturbed ex-wife Dolce, the daughter of the powerful, and possibly mob-connected Eduardo Bianchi. Dolce has stalked Stone in the past and, despite meds and minders, is back for a repeat performance in this book.
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And there is also Herbie Fisher, a perennial loser who hits the lottery bigtime and wants to retain Stone to keep him out of trouble. It's a job Stone quickly declines, despite the million-dollar retainer Herbie offers him. Herbie, however, is as persistent as a rash and just as bothersome.
Stone is, naturally, a magnet for beautiful women, including Felicity Devonshire, a British intelligence agent who engages Stone physically, and also engages him to help locate traitorous agent Stanley Whitestone. After successfully disappearing for twelve years, Whitestone has recently been spotted in New York, but the search for Whitestone leads Stone into dangerous, ethically challenging territory.
Like Alex Delaware in Jonathan Kellerman's novels, Stone Barrington has a reliable police connection in his best friend Dino Bacchetti as well as a network of friends and former lovers he can call upon whenever necessary. Woods blends these ingredients into a pleasing concoction that tickles the funny bone one minute, fizzes with sexual encounters the next, and provides plenty of intoxicating action and suspense throughout.
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Thomas Perry made his big splash in 1982 with The Butcher's Boy, but the novel's sympathetic contract killer waited ten years for a reappearance in Sleeping Dogs. Perry is the author of a host of memorable characters, most of whom only appeared in a few outings. Only his popular series featuring Jane Whitefield (Vanishing Act), a Native American who helps people disappear into a new life, spans six novels.
STRIP (Harcourt, $26), Perry's ninth standalone, shows his mastery of the thriller novel too. Strip introduces Joe Carver, newly arrived in L.A. and about to become involved in a fight to be left alone that will grow into a fight to simply survive.
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Carver's mistake is to spend money a little too freely, whic
h causes him to be fingered, mistakenly, as the man who robbed a considerable amount of cash from strip club owner Manco Kapak. Kapak's mistake is to send his goons after Carver; Carver turns out to be far more resourceful than Kapak would ever expect.
With Kapak, an aging gangster determined to show that no one can rob him and get away with it, and Carver, a man who can only be pushed so far before he starts to push back much harder, Perry establishes a captivating dynamic sufficient to carry the story. But the author is just getting warmed up: a cast of beleaguered characters soon adds complications, and the results range from hysterically funny to tragically deadly.
There's Police Lieutenant Nick Slosser who investigates the results of Carver's first run-in with Kapak's goons. His problem is that he has two loving wives and children from both marriages about to reach college age. Juggling the two families has been difficult, but paying for the education of five children and facing retirement seem beyond any solution. And stirring the pot is Jefferson Davis Falkins, the man who robbed Kapak in the first place. He was content to be a small-time thief until he met Carrie Carr, an adrenaline junkie who prods him to take ever-greater risks. Eventually the couple begins to resemble Bonnie and Clyde. Elsewhere, Richard Spence, Kapak's irreplaceable aide, may be the only one who can match Carver's wits and daring.
This is a caper novel par excellence—one that can stand proudly with the best of Elmore Leonard or Donald Westlake, and there is no higher praise than that.
Copyright © 2010 Robert C. Hahn
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ALL POINTS BULLETIN: Several AHMM authors are seeing their work published by big and small presses this year. Steven Torres's most recent novel, BLACKOUT IN PRECINCT PUERTO RICO (St. Martin's Minotaur, $23.99), is the fifth in his Precinct Puerto Rico Series. In this installment, Sheriff Luis Gonzalo pursues the ruthless attacker of a brutalized sixteen-year-old girl. * Ron Goulart's new chapbook, PLAYING DETECTIVE, is out now from Gryphon Books ($10). It features two previously unpublished stories about a pair of forties-era Hollywood sleuths, Jack Branner and Connie Bowen. * Steven Gore's debut novel, FINAL TARGET, an original paperback from Harper, features beleaguered lawyer Jack Burch and his P.I. pal, Graham Gage. Together they face menacing gangsters, a fraud probe at a defense contracting company, and seemingly random shootings. * Just out from Oceanview Publishing is John F. Dobbyn's new legal thriller, FRAME UP ($25.95), while his first novel, Neon Dragon, is now out in paperback ($15). In the new novel, Boston attorneys Michael Knight and Lex Devlin, who have appeared in a number of the author's AHMM stories, deal with a mafia don and issues of art fraud when a law school classmate of Michael's dies violently. * Rhys Bowen has a new Molly Murphy book out from St. Martin's Minotaur, THE LAST ILLUSION ($24.99), in which the turn of the century intrepid female investigator gets drawn into the world of Houdini after she witnesses a murder at a magic show.
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Fiction: WHAT PEOPLE LEAVE BEHIND by Kristine Kathryn Rusch
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Art by Jorge Mascarenhas
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A development gone bad. Everyone was upside down and getting out.
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The house stood at the end of an upscale subdivision—or what had once been an upscale subdivision. Gracie Ansara drove the panel truck past house after house with rusted for sale signs on the yard. Some had an additional thin metal sign that said bank-owned.
Fifteen foreclosures in a four-block area. Gracie personally had cleaned out five. This one was the sixth.
She remembered the people who lived in the house. They had come out of the front door and stood on the manicured lawn, watching her and her partners toss furniture on the driveway of the house next door.
Gracie's face had burned as she had done the work. It had been her first house cleanout, and part of her still thought of the work as something to be ashamed of.
She had glanced at the woman neighbor, standing with her arms crossed, her hair a perfectly dyed shade of winter blonde, her gabardine pants and silk blouse something out of a Macy's ad. The woman's lips were pressed together, her eyes narrow. She seemed as if she were judging the crew, as if they weren't worthy of setting foot on this street.
Gracie wanted to say, I didn't ask for this. I got three kids to feed and a house of my own. But she didn't. She turned her back on that perfectly groomed woman with her tall, handsome, black-haired husband (also perfectly groomed) and went back into the foreclosed house.
She had never expected to be at the perfectly groomed woman's house six months later.
At least not then. Now nothing surprised her.
Not after she had seen what people left behind.
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Gracie herself had left behind a lot. Eighteen months ago, she'd been a happily married mother of three, a bank executive who made mid six figures and lived in an upscale subdivision not too different from this one.
One Friday night, a drunk going a hundred miles per hour had crossed the median, slammed into her husband's car, and shoved it under an eighteen-wheeler.
Gracie had collected half a million dollars of life insurance for life without the man she still adored. She put three hundred thousand into the kids’ college funds, and used the rest to pay off her own house.
Then, after twenty years of work for the same company, she was laid off. No apologies, no offers of advancement, no chance to move elsewhere in the company.
She felt grief stricken all over again. She had lost the man she had married at twenty-one, and then she had lost the company she had married at twenty-five. She clung to her children so tightly that they started to complain.
"Jeez, Mom,” said Hannah, her oldest. “Why don't you just pretend this is a midlife crisis and buy yourself a Porsche?"
Hannah was sixteen. She probably didn't suggest the Porsche to make her mother feel better; she probably had visions of driving it herself.
But the idea stuck.
Not the idea of the Porsche—Gracie had never been one for flashy cars—but the idea of a midlife crisis. What happened in midlife anyway? People often shook up their entire lives, tried out new identities, became someone else.
Gracie, who loved cleaning and painting and organizing, penciled out the price of panel trucks and labor, cleaning supplies and paint. She added in the occasional need for a plumber or an electrician, and she came to a price for starting a business.
A business that she could run out of her paid-for house. A business that would thrive in bad times, and survive in good.
A business that wouldn't merge and merge and merge again, but would stay alive as long as she wanted it to.
Something that was, for once, all hers.
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She thought of all of that as she pulled into the driveway of the well-dressed woman's house. Gracie's assistant, Micah Collingsworth, hadn't arrived yet. She was still a few minutes early, but she didn't get out of the truck.
She knew better than to go into foreclosures alone.
A battered Ford one-ton pulled in behind her. She let out a small sigh of relief. Micah wasn't late after all. He grinned as he got out of the truck.
Micah had been a godsend. He had been one of the first people to answer her ad for employees. He had worked for a rental services company in upstate New York years ago, cleaning, painting, repairing. He had placed that experience prominently on the resumé he had designed specifically for her, burying the fact that he had once been a corporate exec at one of the many high-tech firms that had fled Oregon in the last twelve months.
"Doesn't look much different than it did six months ago,” he said about the house.
"Except for the cobwebs.” Gracie nodded toward the windows. They were covered in white webs.
He stuck his hands in the pockets of his faded jeans and peered at the property as if he were a building inspector. “You think they would have done something when they saw us next door."
She remembered the couple's tight expressio
ns and crossed arms. “Maybe they didn't have a choice."
Micah ignored that. Instead he asked, “You ready?"
She nodded.
They both felt trepidation whenever they went into a foreclosure. Sometimes the families trashed the place before they left. More than one had broken back into the house and squatted, still believing they had rights to the property.
The bank had checked the place out before hiring her. So had the sheriff. Both had assured her that no one had returned. Even so, Gracie liked to be cautious.
The front door had a lockbox. She opened it with her special key and removed the key for the front door. It opened easily.
The house smelled faintly of pine airfreshener, which was a relief. Most places smelled of rotting food.
The entry was clean. The owners had left a throw rug behind and both Gracie and Micah automatically wiped their feet. Then they grinned at each other, feeling a little ridiculous. Still, Gracie was glad they did it because the granite tile in front of them gleamed.
It was one less thing to clean.
The vaulted living room was bare. The carpet still bore furniture marks, but someone had vacuumed.
"Lucked out,” Micah said.
They had. This place would be easy to prepare for any potential buyers.
Gracie nodded. “I think we can separate. Got your intercom?"
It wasn't really an intercom. It was an added feature on their cell phone plan. But they could talk to each other without dialing out, which she just loved.
"Got it,” he said, holding up the phone. She smiled at him. She continued through the living room into the formal dining area.
He went back to the entry and up the stairs to the right. She could hear him walk heavily above her. She found the sound somehow reassuring.
AHMM, July-August 2010 Page 11