True Crime

2

You’ve got fifteen minutes, Mr. Everett,” said the guard in the Death-watch cell. “By order of Mr. Plunkitt. Fifteen minutes exactly.” I didn’t answer. I looked around me. At the cinderblock wall with the white paint smeared and congealed across its rough surface. At the guard’s long table and the typewriter there and the clock hanging above him, turning round. The cage and the dull glint of the bars under the fluorescents. The table within, covered with empty paper cups and a tinfoil ashtray overflowing. The rumpled bedding on the cot. The glaring nakedness of the metal toilet fastened to the back wall. And the man and the woman. Standing inside the cage. They had risen from the cot to greet me, his arm around her shoulders. My eyes rested finally on them.

This is it, I told myself. Deathwatch. But I really didn’t have to tell myself anymore. The sickly sadness, the sickly fear were like swamp gas in the bright room, like a miasma, you could breathe them in.

I studied Frank Beachum’s face through the bars. I would have to be able to describe him in my story-my human interest sidebar-so I studied his face. I saw weariness there mostly. Weariness, and a terror deadened by dazed incomprehension. But mostly weariness. That’s how I remember him anyway. Narrow, craggy, rugged features that used to be strong but were drained of everything now but that, but weariness. With his long body held nearly erect by an almost palpable effort of will, he looked like a cancer victim, like a hunger victim, like a sleepless pilgrim coming over one more rise of an endless, endless vale. Bone-weariness, soul-weariness, weariness past imagining. When I remember Frank Beachum I remember that-that first impression-more than the last one; more than the way he was that final time I saw him.

He stood still, with his arm around his wife, and she clasped her hands together before her. They might have been any thirtyish couple out for a Sunday constitutional after church. Until you noticed how white her knuckles were, how hard her hands clutched each other. Her small, sagging face-aged, like some false antique it seemed, as if by blows-was unnaturally lit by the fever in her eyes. A horrible brightness-of insane hope, I thought, and helplessness.

The guard-Benson-pulled a chair up and set it down for me in front of the cage. I came toward it slowly. Beachum stuck his hand through the bars. I shook it. His palm was dry and cold. I didn’t like touching him.

“Mr. Everett,” he said. “I’m Frank Beachum. Have …” The words came from him thickly, painfully. They dropped like lumps of clay. It was an effort for him even to speak, he was that worn down. He gestured to the chair.

“Yeah. Thanks,” I said.

I sat and pulled my notebook out, my pen. Beachum gently disengaged himself from his wife and lowered himself into the chair at the table in front of me. Mrs. Beachum sank back, sank down again onto the cot. Her bright eyes never left me.

I was fiddling with my cigarettes by this time. I jerked one halfway out of the pack and offered it to Beachum. He held up a hand. “I got em,” he said. He removed one from his shirt pocket. I could hear my heart thudding as we both lit up on opposite sides of the bars.

We lifted our eyes to each other and filled the white space between us with gray smoke. “How’s … that girl?” he said. I didn’t understand him. He forced out more. “That other. Michelle … something. She had some accident.”

“Oh. Oh, yeah,” I said. “She was in a car crash. It was pretty bad. The last I heard she was in a coma.” I realized I’d forgotten to ask Alan for the latest details. My mind had been too much on my own troubles.

“I’m sorry,” Frank Beachum said. “To hear it.”

I nodded, faintly ashamed. “Yeah,” I said. “Yeah, it was pretty bad.”

Then I was silent. So was he, and we both smoked. I could feel the movement of the clock on the wall behind me. It made the hairs on the back of my neck bristle. Jesus, I thought. The poor bastard. Jesus. It was a bad few seconds. The excitement, the need to piss, the pity and the infectious fear: It was hard to get my thoughts in order. What was it I’d wanted to ask him anyway? My assignment was to talk about his feelings, give the readers a sense of the place, some vicarious Death House thrill to enjoy over their raisin bran. Don’t get into the case too much. We’ve already covered that. That’s what Bob had told me. And as for the rest: my own suspicions felt suddenly confused and inarticulate. I crossed my legs, trying to quiet my bladder, trying to focus my mind.

The condemned man broke the deadlock for me. “The girl,” he said. “That … Michelle-she said she … I don’t know … she wanted to talk to me about how it felt. Here. In here.” The long, sad, tired face continued to push the words out at me, across the table, through the bars, through the smoke. I saw him blink wearily under the shock of his lank brown hair. I supposed I should’ve felt guilty for getting my thrills, my readers’ thrills, from his agony. So I did; I felt guilty. And I nodded.

“Yeah. Yeah, that’s it,” I said. “It’s a human interest story.”

Beachum took a deep drag of smoke. He went on, speaking carefully, as if he had prepared what he meant to say. “What I wanted … What I wanted to tell everyone that … was that … I believe in Jesus Christ. Our Lord and Savior.” I nodded again, licking my lips. Then, straightening in my chair, coming to myself, I realized I had to write down what he was saying. I scribbled it onto my pad. Believe in JC … Lord +Sav … Just fifteen minutes, I thought frantically. Just fifteen minutes for me. Just eight hours for him. With another breath for strength, Beachum continued. “And I believe … I believe that I’m being sent to a better place and that …” He paused because his wife had made a sound. A shuddering sob. I saw her clench her arms against herself, force herself into silence. Beachum didn’t turn around. He said, “… and that, uh, there’s a better justice there, and I’ll be judged innocent. I won’t say I’m not afraid cause I think … I think everyone’s afraid of dying pretty much-unless they’re crazy or something. You know. But I’m not afraid that the wrongs that are done here on earth won’t be made right. The crooked will be made straight, that’s, that’s what the Bible says and I believe that. And I wanted to testify to that to people before this happens. So … that’s how I feel about it.”

I went on nodding, went on writing it down. Wrongs made right … crooked made straight … I nodded and wrote. It was what he’d wanted to say, I guess. It was why he’d agreed to the interview. But with the clock on the wall, with the look in his eyes, with the anguish flaming out of his wife’s steady gaze, I found the scribbled words on the narrow page made me vaguely nauseous. That clock went on behind me, turning and turning. The poor bastard, I thought. The poor frightened bastard.

I finished writing, but I didn’t look up. I gripped the Bic hard. The point dug into the paper. I still didn’t look up. I didn’t want to meet Frank Beachum’s eyes just then. I felt embarrassed for him just then. Sitting there in his cage with his terrified wife. Talking about Jesus. It was embarrassing. The fact is: I always feel that way when someone talks about Jesus. Whenever someone even says the word-says “Jesus” as if they really meant it-it makes my skin crawl, as if they’d said “squid” or “intestine” instead. It makes me feel as if I’m talking to an invalid. A mental invalid who has to be protected from the shock of contradiction and harsh reality. Whenever I hear a man praise God, I know I am dealing with a crippled heart, a heart grown sick of grief and the plain truth, sick of a world in which the strong and the lucky thrive and the weak are driven under without recompense. Sick and afraid of dying; clinging to Jesus.

I was embarrassed for the man. And now, when I did look up, the sight of him pained me. This poor guy, this once-manly guy, waiting in his cage to be carted off to nowhere, reduced to cuddling his religious teddy bear, to sucking his christian thumb, to telling himself his biblical fairy tale so he could make it down the Death House hallway without screaming, so he could confront his final midnight without going insane. Maybe I’d have done the same in his position. There aren’t many atheists in a joint like this. Maybe that’s why it bothered me so much to see him. And it did bother me. I felt my stomach boil and churn.

To avoid his weary eyes, I glanced back over my shoulder at the clock. The duty officer, sitting at his long desk, was watching me. He lifted his chin by way of a challenge.

“You got nine more minutes,” he said.

I turned back to Beachum. I smiled an embarrassed smile. I boiled inside and churned.

The condemned man in his cage spread his hands a little, his lips working, his eyes uncertain. He’d made his speech. He was waiting for me now. “Is … is that all right, Mr. Everett?” he said softly. “Is … that what you wanted or …?”

A stream of smoke came out of my mouth on an unsteady breath. I leaned forward in my chair, toward the bars. I stared-I felt my eyes burning as I stared through the bars at the man. I felt I was gazing on a pounding, leaden depth, at the incalculable toil going on inside him, the work of living out his last hours. Is that all right, Mr. Everett? Is that what you wanted? I felt his wife’s bright gaze boring into my peripheral vision. I felt my lips drawing back until my teeth were bare.

“Mr. Beachum,” I said hoarsely. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about Jesus Christ. And I don’t care how you feel either. I don’t care about justice, not in this life or in the next. To be honest, I don’t even care very much about what’s right and wrong. I never have.” I dropped my cigarette to the floor. I crushed it under my shoe, watching my shoe turn this way and that. I could hardly believe what I was saying to him. And I couldn’t stop. I raised my eyes again. “All I care about, Mr. Beachum,” I said, “are the things that happen. The facts, the events. That’s my job, that’s my only job. The things that happen. Mr. Beachum-I have to know-did you kill that woman or not?”

Another sound escaped his wife, and she brought her hand up to cover her mouth.

“What?” said Beachum. He was staring back at me through the bars, his eyes dull, so weary, his mouth hanging open.

“What happened, damn it?” I swallowed hard. “What happened?”

“What …? What hap …?”

“In that store. On that day. When Amy Wilson was shot.”

His mouth closed and opened again. His gaze held mine and mine his. We were locked together. “I … I bought a bottle of A-1 Sauce.”

The breath hissed out of me. Jesus, I thought. A-1 Sauce. Jesus. And yet it was true. I was sure it was true.

“And you paid Amy for it at the counter,” I said.

“Yeah.”

My hand went automatically to my cigarettes again. I drew one out. “And she mentioned the money, didn’t she? The money she owed you. Did she mention that?”

At first, he seemed unable to answer, to speak. His mouth opened and he gestured but there were no words. Then: “She said she was … you know. Trying to get it together. The money. I told her … I told her not to worry about it. I knew they were struggling. That’s why I did the car for them. I only charged her for parts in the first place. I told them all this at the trial. They didn’t believe me. Even my lawyer …” His voice trailed away. He shook his head.

But I believed him. He had talked with Amy about the money. That was what Porterhouse heard before he went into the bathroom.

I put the fresh cigarette in my mouth. It bobbed up and down as I talked. “Well, somebody shot her, my friend. That’s true, that’s a fact. That girl is dead and someone shot her. So if it wasn’t you, it was someone else.”

“You got five minutes over there,” said Benson behind me. His tone was dark now, threatening. We paid no attention to him. We went right on as if he hadn’t spoken.

Frank nodded, dazed. “Yeah,” he said. “Sure.”

“Sure,” I said. I lifted my lighter. “Like who?”

“What?”

“Who could’ve done it?”

“I don’t … I don’t know.”

“Not Porterhouse,” I said. “He’s no shooter. I talked to him. He didn’t do anything. But I’ll tell you something else: he didn’t see anything either. And he’s their only witness.”

At that, Mrs. Beachum gasped. That’s the word for it. A short, wet, sobbing gasp. I didn’t look at her. I blocked out the heat of her gaze.

“I don’t know, I don’t know,” said Beachum wearily. He looked away sadly, defeated.

“Come on, man,” I whispered. “What about the woman? The woman in the car.”

The condemned man gave a quick shake of his head as if I were annoying him now. “No … No …”

“Why didn’t she hear the shot?”

“I don’t …”

“Why didn’t she see that you had no gun? It was the steak sauce in your hand, wasn’t it?”

“Oh God!” Mrs. Beachum cried.

I made myself ignore her. “It was the bottle, wasn’t it? In your hand? Tell me.”

Beachum seemed now like a man half-asleep, a man too suddenly awakened. “Yeah,” he said dully. “Yeah. The bottle. I told them that. It was in my right hand, so she couldn’t see it. She backed into the other side of me. The left side. She didn’t see, she didn’t have a clear view.”

“All right. So it wasn’t her. It wasn’t Porterhouse. It wasn’t you.” I heard Mrs. Beachum start to cry. I didn’t care. I am not a caring person. I am a reporter. This was my story. This was all I knew how to do. “Who else was there? That’s what I want to know. Who the hell else was there?”

But he was too tired. His shoulders slumped. He looked down at the table. Dropped the smoldering butt of his cigarette into the ashtray there. “No one.”

I plucked the unlit cigarette from my mouth. “Somebody. That’s a fact.”

“The place was empty cept for me. The accountant guy. Amy.”

I threw the cigarette down. I wanted to grab him by the shirt-front, shout in his face. “But it wasn’t empty,” I said. “She didn’t shoot herself, did she?”

He opened his mouth a little, looked miserably down at the table. He didn’t answer.

“Somebody,” I said again. “There must’ve been somebody. Somebody coming in as you left maybe. That would explain why she didn’t hear the shot. If it was right after you left. Didn’t you see anyone?”

“No, I … I don’t know. I didn’t see. I was just buying … steak sauce. I had to get home. For the picnic. We were having a picnic. Bonnie ran out of steak sauce. It was Independence Day.”

I heard a chair scrape behind me. “All right,” said Benson quickly. “That’s it.”

“No!” It was Mrs. Beachum. She was off the bed. She flung herself off it. She flung herself against the bars of the cage, gripping them until the knuckles whitened afresh on her small, red, dishwater hands. “No, please,” she said again. Tears streamed down her cheeks and her face was mottled and ugly. “You believe us. Don’t you? Do you believe us?”

I finally had to face her. But her grief, her desperation left me silent. Benson stepped up on my left side and put his hand on my arm. A man used to moving people around as he saw fit, was our Benson. He didn’t pull me up, but I felt the pressure and stood.

“All right, all right,” I said to him.

“Let’s go,” he said. “… upsetting people …”

“All right.”

Mrs. Beachum clung to the bars without restraint, without dignity. Her teeth were bared, as mine had been, as if she were some kind of animal. She growled the words out from deep in her throat. “Do … you … believe us?”

“Don’t, Bonnie,” Beachum murmured. “Don’t.”

“Come on, damn it,” Benson said.

I looked at that woman’s terrible face in the cage. She seemed to strain through the gaps toward me.

“Yes,” I said finally. “I believe you. For Christ’s sake. You only have to look at him.”

She closed her eyes-thank God for that; I couldn’t stand them anymore. She rested her forehead against the bars and her shoulders shook with crying.

“No one. Not even the lawyers,” she said. “No one else …”

Benson tugged me toward the door. I yanked my arm away from him. “All right,” I said. “Damn it.”

“Coming in here, upsetting people,” he said tightly. “Don’t you think these people have enough? What do you think this is?”

“All right,” I said. I walked to the door. Benson hurried around me to signal the guard outside. The door opened.

But I stopped on the threshold. I glanced back at the cage. Beachum sat as he had, his eyes lowered to the table, his mouth pulled down in a distant, almost dreamy frown. But his wife had now lifted her head again, the marks of the bars white on her brow. She was watching me through the steel, through her tears, the way you’d look at a child who had just done something incredibly thoughtless, thoughtlessly cruel.

“Where were you?” she said softly, her voice breaking. “It’s too late now.” She sniffled thickly. “Dear God, where were you? All this time.”

Benson put his hand on my arm again, but for another second or two I resisted the pressure toward the door.

“It wasn’t my story,” I told her. “There was an accident … Dead Man’s Curve … It wasn’t supposed to be my story.”

Then I was pushed out into the hall.