“For your crimes, John Doe, a.k.a. William Dance, you will live out the rest of your life behind bars. You will serve out six consecutive life sentences without possibility for parole.”
More clapping erupted. Reporters typed furiously on their laptops, sending the verdict through Wi-Fi to their editors, to the world.
“Quiet down. I’m not finished,” the judge ordered. Once the chamber had settled again into silence, the judge resumed. “However, as inconclusive as I consider the evidence to be in this case, I am convinced of one thing: You, John Doe, are not in your right mind. There will forever be arguments, I imagine, whether you are psychopathic or psychotic, whether you know right from wrong, or are incapable of knowing. Let the debates come.
“As for me, the critical evidence is the slaying of your cell mate, a man the other prisoners have testified to be your only friend. To slay your only friend while awaiting trial, and to do so with no apparent concern for your clear guilt in the matter, demonstrates a mind that – while cunning and ruthless – is out of touch with reality.
"I therefore remand you to the Wisconsin State Prison at Columbia, there to receive psychiatric assistance but also there to remain without the possibility of release for the remainder of your life. You will begin this sentence unless it is superseded by a harsher penalty from Illinois or Indiana, including the death penalty. And, whether you are human or angel or devil, may God have mercy on your soul.”
The crowd was suddenly, noisily on its feet. Amidst the cheers and applause and hoots of delight were groans. Reporters shouted questions to the seated murderer and his cop lover. Photographers snapped pictures of the roaring crowd, the impassive man, and the embattled woman. There were even rumors she bore his child. Judge Devlin rapped loudly, calling for order, but none came. The already heavy police presence had been doubled for the day’s announcement, but still the officers were spread thinly along the edges of the crowd and at the doors. One of Azra’s own guards went to hold back the crowd. The other walked up behind him, hand grasping his holstered pistol. Camera flashes went off all around the room.
All the while, Azra and Donna sat, unmoving and unmoved.
The judge rose ominously, and the harsh crack of her gavel was joined by an order: “Clear the court! Clear the court!”
The back doors were flung wide. The line of police pressed into the gathering. In places, blackjacks were raised to push back the people.
Azra’s other guard returned to help move the cuffed prisoner toward the holding cells. He turned to Donna, gave her a quick kiss, nodded sadly, and allowed himself to be led away. Azra did not resist, even thanking the blond-haired deputy who opened the door. Donna Leland was numb. Her fingers tingled with pins and needles. She tightly clutched the steering wheel. The sun had already set. It was hard to see through the cracked windshield of her Neon, hard to see with only a single skewed headlight wandering over the road and out along the black rile of hills that lay between her and home.
She drove west down Route 11 – dark and tree-encroached, narrow and fifty-five miles an hour, with curves and oncoming traffic. The once-familiar shoulders and swales of Wisconsin felt forbidding and alien tonight. The people – once her friends and neighbors and colleagues – seemed enemies. The People of Wisconsin versus John Doe. Versus Azra Michaels. Versus Donna Le- land. Versus their unborn child. The land glowered. Remember Azra’s place of bliss – our place of bliss. Soon I’ll be there. Soon I’ll be there and imagine him sitting beside me.
The memory of hurled rocks and shouted taunts was too strong, though. The picketers had called her whore and bitch. They had said she’d betrayed her badge. They had said she was as crazy as her lover. There is little bliss in cracked windshields and shattered headlights. Through it all, she had clung to him. She had saved him. Kerry had died of isolation, but not Azra. And he wouldn’t die. He would live. She would cling to him. They would be isolated together.
Thank God the trial was over. Donna couldn’t have hoped for a better outcome. After all, Azra was guilty of the murders. He was guilty and sick. He needed to live in an institution, needed therapy and protection. In the state penitentiary for the criminally insane, he would receive both. He would live – that’s what she had wanted most – and he would be cared for. And she would be able to visit him frequently. The furor of rocks and death threats would make it easy enough to leave Burlington. She’d transfer to a department near the penitentiary. There would be more trials, of course, in Illinois and Indiana, and perhaps they would supersede this sentence with a worse one, but for now, he would live.
But enough rumination. She’d been ruminating for months now. Her thoughts held only pain and turmoil. She turned on the radio. There was a catchy tune on the country-western station. She was tapping her toes before she had begun to puzzle out the words:
There was a man who said he was an angel.
He said that he went killing for the Lord.
Then one bright day he killed my nuisance neighbor,
And now I just believe his every word.
Oh, hail and hallelujah,
Just see what John does to yah.
He’ll help you keep your head, lend you a hand.
Hello and howdy-do-ya,
They call him a hy-e-na,
But as for me, I think he’s just a lamb.
There was a sheriff’s daughter who got horny
She knew the killer would do her no harm.
So she got herself a little tiny baby,
And he made quite a supper of her arm.
Oh hail, and hallelujah!
Just see what John does to yah…
It was the final assault. The music and the windshield and the cockeyed headlight conspired with hills and curves and haunting woods. She heard the tires squeal before she knew she was losing control, saw the world suck away beneath her as though in revulsion, and glimpsed the tree – massive kin of the tree that had almost slain her in her bedroom window. There was no Azra to save her this time, though, no angel to stand between fate and mortality.
“Mother of God, pray for us sinners-”
The impact broke through the outer shell of the tree trunk and into the hollow core, bringing the whole tree down atop her car.
This was not his cell. Azra was alone, yes, and the chamber was secure and about the size of the solitary confinement hole where he’d spent the last months. But this place was bright. He felt naked in it. He saw himself everywhere. His bright orange coveralls leant an umber cast to the yellow-gray walls. The stainless steel bunk and metal toilet reflected his human face back to him. There was even a dark sheet of bulletproof glass outside the holding cell, and it mirrored the whole tableaux of his pathetic incarceration. Beyond that glass wall was the squad room. The white shirted detectives were there, moving silently like kites in a dream. Heads, faces, hands, and pants blended into metal desks and gray walls. Only the shirts and the papers flitted in the darkness. The far wall held tacked bulletins, hanging diagonally. More kites, and more kites, receding into infinity.
Then, white roses came between the cell and the world of the kites – white roses on green-black stems held in the fist of a guard. The man was thin and getting old. He extended the fist of flowers through the bars of Azra’s cell and flung the dozen long-stemmed roses down on the floor. They struck and rolled apart like a faggot of kindling. Little balls of blood speckled the man’s palm where he had clutched the thorns.
“More flowers,” he sneered through large, uneven teeth.
Azra stared at him. “More?”
“There’re twelve other bouquets. They’re in the squad room, dying.”
“Flowers from whom?”
“You name it. Three different VFW branches, GALAW, the National Institute of Mental Health, a bunch of nut-jobs like yourself…”
“What about these?” asked Azra, rising to stare down at the scattered pile. “Who are they from?”