1

Suddenly, the Death House was full of life. Men hurried up and down the halls outside the prisoner’s cell. They walked in and out of the execution chamber. The chamber-where the gurney stood-was crowded with men. So was the storage room adjoining. In the storage room, Arnold McCardle-who could crowd a room single-handed-was testing the phones. There were four of them on a shelf against the room’s back wall. Each was a different color and each had a Dyma-tape label stuck to its base. The red phone was an outside line, the white phone went to the Corrections Department and the tan phone went to the communications room. The black phone was the open line to the governor’s office. At the end of the shelf was an intercom that would connect to a radio set in the death chamber.

Arnold briskly lifted the handset of each phone, puffing his fat cheeks as if playing a tuba and whispering a little tuba tune as well. The usual sparkle of humor was gone from his eyes, however. They were focused and clear, all his attention on the task at hand. He spoke into each phone for a few moments, checking the line, then hung up and moved on to the next.

Behind him, Reuben Skycock was at the delivery module of the lethal injection machine: a metal cabinet on the supply room wall. The door to the cabinet was open exposing the three syringes inside. Each syringe was wedged into a metal holder, each fed down into a tube that ran through a hole in the cinderblock wall and into the execution chamber. Reuben was testing the manual delivery system now: the third backup system in case both the electrical delivery and battery backup went down. That had never happened at Osage but Reuben went about his job with silent intensity nonetheless. He pulled out the metal pins that held the plungers in place. He glanced from the machine to a stopwatch as the plungers sank slowly into the syringes. Each time he pulled the metal pin, there was a loud sound: chunk. Each time the chunk came, Arnold glanced back at Reuben over his shoulder, holding a handset to his ear, puffing out a tuba tune on his fat cheeks.

Pat Flaherty was next to Reuben, standing at the one-way window. He was squirting Windex on the glass and wiping it off with a paper towel. He’d done that yesterday too. The glass was spotless and so was the mirror on the other side.

You could see clearly through the glass into the execution chamber. There, two members of the Strap-down Team were refastening the straps on the gurney. To their right, was the window of the witness room. The blinds here had been temporarily lifted and two other guards could be seen through it. They were setting out the plastic benches where the witnesses would sit. Two benches went on the floor just in front of the window, the other two went behind these on a raised wooden platform.

In front of the gurney, Luther Plunkitt was talking to Haggerty, who would be stationed outside the chamber door. Luther was gesturing calmly with one hand, keeping the other in his pocket. He was smiling blandly. “You want to double-check personally at the door,” he was saying. “Make sure the covering sheet is in place before he comes into the room so the witnesses won’t have to see the straps.” Luther’s eyes were marbly and expressionless. He was thinking about Frank Beachum, imagining his face looking up as he was strapped down onto the gurney. Innocent, he was thinking.

He gave the guard an encouraging slap on the shoulder and turned to other business.

Загрузка...