Created, the Destroyer

CHAPTER TWO

It was a legend in the state prison that condemned men usually ate a heartier meal on the night of an execution than Warden Matthew Wesley Johnson did. Tonight was no exception.

The warden tried to concentrate on his evening paper. He propped it against the untouched dinner tray on his office desk. The air conditioner hummed. He would have to be at the electrocution. It was his job. Why the hell didn't the telephone ring?

Johnson looked to the window. Night boats moved slowly up the narrow black river toward the hundreds of piers and docks that dotted the nearby sea coast, their lights blinking codes and warnings to receivers who were rarely there.

He glanced at his watch. Only twenty-five minutes left. He went back to the Newark Evening News. The crime rate was rising, a front-page story warned. So what, he thought. It rises every year. Why keep putting it on the front page to get people worked up? Besides, we've got a solution to the crime problem now. We're going to execute all the cops. He thought of Remo Williams in the cell.

Long ago, he had decided it was the smell that bothered him. Not from his frozen roast beef dinner, untouched before him, but from the anticipation of the night. Maybe if it were cleaner. But there was the smell. Even with the exhaust fan, there was the smell. Flesh burning.

How many had it been in seventeen years? Seven men. Tonight would be eight. Johnson remembered every one of them. Why didn't the phone ring? Why didn't the governor call with a reprieve? Remo Williams was no thug. He was a cop, damn it, a cop.

Johnson turned to the inside pages of the paper, looking for crime news. Man charged with murder. He read through the story looking for details. Negro knifing in Jersey City. He would probably get the man. A bar fight. That would be dropped to manslaughter. No death sentence there. Good.

But here was Williams tonight. Johnson shook his head. What were the courts coming to? Were they panicked by these civil rights groups? Didn't they know that each sacrifice has to lead to a bigger sacrifice, until you have nothing left? Execute a cop for killing a punk? Was a decade of progress to be followed by a decade of vigilante law?

It had been three years since the last execution. He had thought things were changing. But the swiftness of Williams' indictment and trial, the quick rejection of his appeal, and now this poor man waiting in the death house.

Damn it. What did he need this job for? Johnson looked across his broad oak desk to a framed picture in the corner. Mary and the children. Where else could he get $24,000 a year? Served him right for backing political winners.

Why didn't the bastard phone with a pardon? How many men did they expect him to fry for $24,000?

The button lit up on his ivory telephone's private line. Relief spread across his broad Swedish features. He snatched the telephone to his ear. «Johnson here,» he said.

«Good to catch you there, Matt,» came the familiar voice over the phone.

Where the hell did you think I'd be, Johnson thought. He said: «Good to hear from you, Governor. You don't know how good.»

«I'm sorry, Matt. There isn't going to be a pardon. Not even a stay.»

«Oh,» Johnson said; his free hand crumpled the newspaper.

«I'm calling for a favor, Matt.»

«Sure, Governor, sure,» Johnson said. He pushed the newspaper from the edge of the desk toward the waste basket.

«In a few minutes, a Capuchin monk and his escort will be at the prison. He may be on his way to your office now. Let him talk to this what's-his-name, Williams, the one who's going to die. Let the other man witness the execution from the control panel.»

«But there's very little visibility from the control panel,» Johnson said.

«What the hell. Let him stay there anyhow.»

«It's against regulations to allow…»

«Matt. C'mon. We're not kids anymore. Let him stay there.» The Governor was no longer asking; he was telling. Johnson's eyes strayed toward the picture of his wife and children.

«And one more thing. This observer's from some kind of a private hospital. The State Department of Institutions has given them permission to have this Williams' body. Some kind of criminal-mind research, Doctor Frankenstein stuff. They'll have an ambulance there to pick it up. Leave word at the gate. They'll have written authorization from me.»

Weariness settled over Warden Johnson.

«Okay, Governor. I'll see that it's done.»

«Good, Matt. How're Mary and the kids?»

«Fine, Governor. Just fine.»

«Well, give them my best. I'll be stopping down one of these days.»

«Fine, Governor, fine.»

The Governor hung up. Johnson looked at the phone in his hand. «Go to hell,» he snarled and slammed it onto the cradle.

His profanity startled his secretary who had just slithered quietly into the office with the walk she usually reserved for walking past groups of prisoners.

«There's a priest and another man here,» she said. «Should I bring them in?»

«No,» Johnson said. «Have the priest taken down to see the prisoner, Williams. Have the other man escorted to the death house. I don't want to see them.»

«What about our chaplain, warden? Isn't it strange to…?»

Johnson interrupted. «This whole damn business of being the state's executioner is strange, Miss Scanlon. Just do what I say.»

He spun around in his chair to look at the air conditioner pumping cool, fresh, clean air into his office.