He noted the signs of death dispassionately. Blue lips, cyanotic. The hemorrhaging in the sclera of the eyes, pinpoint pricks of crimson. The body seemed to cool immediately, though he knew it would take some time for the heat to fully dissipate. The vivacious yet shy eighteen-year-old was now nothing more than a piece of meat, soon to be consigned back to the earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Blowfly to maggot. The life cycle complete once again.
He shook off the reverie. It was time to get to work. Glancing around, he spied his tool kit. He didn’t remember kicking it over, perhaps his memory was failing him. Had the girl actually struggled? He didn’t think so, but confusion sets in at the most important moments. He would have to consider that later, when he could give it his undivided thought. Only the radiant glow of her eyes at the moment of expiration remained for him now. He palmed the handsaw and lifted her limp hand.
No, please don’t. Three little words, innocuous in their definitions. No great allegories, no ethical dilemmas. No, please don’t. The words echoed through his brain as he sawed, their rhythm spurring his own. No, please don’t. No, please don’t. Back and forth, back and forth.
No, please don’t. Hear these words, and dream of hell.
Two
Nashville was holding its collective breath on this warm summer night. After four stays of execution, the death watch had started again. Homicide lieutenant Taylor Jackson watched as the order was announced that the governor would not be issuing another stay, then snapped off the television and walked to the window of her tiny office in the Criminal Justice Center. The Nashville skyline spread before her in all its glory, continuously lit by blazing flashes of color. The high-end pyrotechnic delights were one of the largest displays in the nation. It was the Fourth of July. The quintessential American holiday. Hordes of people gathered in Riverfront Park to hear the Nashville Symphony Orchestra perform in concert with the brilliant flares of light. Things were drawing to a close now. Taylor could hear the strains of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture, a Russian theme to celebrate America’s independence. She jumped slightly with every cannon blast, perfectly coinciding with launched rockets.
The cheers depressed her. The whole holiday depressed her. As a child, she’d been wild for the fireworks, for the cotton-candy fun of youth and mindless celebration. As she grew older, she mourned that lost child, trying desperately to reach far within herself to recapture that innocence. She failed.
The sky was dark now. She could see the throngs of people heading back to whatever parking spots they had found, children skipping between tired parents, fluorescent bracelets and glow sticks arcing through the night. They would spirit these innocents home to bed with joy, soothed by the knowledge that they had satisfied their little ones, at least for the moment. Taylor wouldn’t be that lucky. Any minute now, she’d be answering the phone, getting the call. Chance told her somewhere in her city a shooter was escaping into the night. Fireworks were perfect cover for gunfire. That’s what she told herself, but there was another reason she’d stayed in her office this holiday night. Protecting her city was a mental ruse. She was waiting.
A memory rose, unbidden, unwanted. Trite in its way, yet the truth of the statement hit her to the core. “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.” Or became a woman. Her days of purity were behind her now.
Taking one last glance at the quickening night, she closed the blinds and sat heavily in her chair. Sighed. Ran her fingers through her long blond hair. Wondered why she was hanging out in the Homicide office when she could be enjoying the revelry. Why she was still committed to the job. Laid her head on her desk and waited for the phone to ring. Got back up and flipped the switch to the television.
The crowds were a pulsing mass at the Riverbend Maximum Security Prison. Police had cordoned off sections of the yard of the prison, one for the pro–death penalty activists, another comprised the usual peaceful subjects, a third penned in reporters. ACLU banners screamed injustice, the people holding them shouting obscenities at their fellow groupies. All the trappings necessary for an execution. No one was put to death without an attendant crowd, each jostling to have their opinion heard.
The young reporter from Channel Two was breathless, eyes flushed with excitement. There were no more options. The governor had denied the last stay two hours earlier. Tonight, at long last, Richard Curtis would pay the ultimate price for his crime.