“Want some coffee and a donut?” he asked.
“No, thanks.”
“Donuts are fresh-made in the prison bakery.”
“No, thanks anyway. Who are all the chairs for?”
“Witnesses. Law says we have to have twelve. Four media: one from the local paper, one from a wire service, one from a radio station, and one from a TV network. They draw lots to see who gets to come in. Not to worry, though: no cameras or recording devices allowed. Four other seats are for the prosecutor who sent the condemned person here, the arresting officers, and the judge who did the sentencing. The last four are for the family or families of the victims. The condemned is entitled to four passes if requested, in which case we’d set up extra chairs for whoever he invited. In Kalb’s case, he didn’t ask for any passes.”
“Doesn’t he have any family?”
“Two grown daughters, according to our records. But they’ve never visited him. He did murder their mother, after all.”
Sure, Martin thought. After catching her in bed with another man. What the hell was it about women, he wondered, that they couldn’t be faithful?
“Are we on schedule?” Martin asked, looking at his watch. It was six-twenty.
“Should be,” said Lawson. “I’ll step outside and check with my people.”
Left alone, Martin removed a small spiral notebook from his inside coat pocket and checked some of his notes. Kalb’s final weight had been determined to be one hundred eighty-eight pounds. Add two meals yesterday and breakfast this morning should make him about one-ninety-one. A drop of five feet three inches with the eyelet of the noose under the left angle of the jaw, he had determined, should snap Kalb’s neck between the second and third cervical vertebrae. That, Martin knew, would result in instant deep unconsciousness and rapid death. Much better, in his opinion, than all the theatrics of a gurney, a man’s arms stretched out akimbo, needles inserted into both arms, tubes running through the walls for a path to the poisons. Barbaric. Welcome to American justice showtime.
Putting the notebook away, Martin climbed the thirteen widely spaced wooden steps to the gallows floor. There were three folding chairs near the back of the structure. One was for the warden, one for the chaplain, and one for Martin. He sat down in the chair nearest the trapdoor and the wooden lever behind it that would spring the trap.
Lying on the floor near the lever were two leather belts and a black, eyeless hood with a drawstring opening.
Martin thought about Barbara. He had given her specific instructions before leaving the lodge that morning. She was to get up no later than six-thirty, get dressed to travel, pack their bags and have them taken down to the lobby, and wait for him there.
He would be back to pick her up by about seven-thirty, and they would leave at once.
What about breakfast? she had wanted to know. She didn’t want to travel on an empty stomach or she might get carsick. Martin had rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. Give me strength, he begged some unknown god. We’ll stop somewhere on the road, he promised, someplace close. In the back of his mind was a picture of Jack Nicholson ditching some dame at the end of some movie. Just leaving her in a goddamned coffee shop and vanishing. Goodbye, Barbara, goodbye, Vivian, goodbye, Hazel. What, he wondered, would that feel like?
His reverie was interrupted by Warden Lawson coming up the steps. “We’re set to go,” he announced. “My boys are letting the witnesses in now.” Two dark-skinned men dressed in what looked to Martin to be expensive business suits and neckties had accompanied the warden as far as the stairs. They walked on past and sat on two folding chairs on the far side of the gallows, chairs that Martin had not noticed before. Martin was about to ask Lawson who the men were, but was distracted by the witnesses entering. He looked over and saw a group of people being ushered toward the chairs in the roped-off area.
Martin looked at his watch again. It was now six-fifty. He could not believe how fast the hour was passing. “Do we have a specific time or what?” he asked.
“No, hell no,” the warden scoffed. “That’s television stuff. The ticking clock and the telephone line to the governor’s office, all that bullshit. No, we’ll do Mr. Kalb as soon as we get him over here.” He looked around. “Dammit, I left my donuts over there. Oh, well, maybe some witness will be hungry.” He grinned at Martin. “A little snack for the victim’s parents.”
Presently, a prison van pulled up in front of the open metal doors of the building, and Martin, the warden, and all the witnesses looked out to see Roger Kalb being helped out of the vehicle by four death-watch guards. As before, he was bound in chains: ankle shackles, waist chain, his wrists now cuffed behind his back instead of in front. He was dressed in an orange jumpsuit, his feet in flip-flops. Clearly outlined under the groin and buttocks of the main garment were the bulges of a thick execution diaper.
Kalb was hurried along inside, past the witness area, and hustled up the stairs to the gallows floor. Following quickly along behind him was a prison chaplain who ironically, to Martin, looked oddly like Pat O’Brien. As the death-watch guards moved Kalb to the trapdoor, Warden Lawson nudged Martin with his elbow.
“You’re on, Dr. Death,” he said, with a wink.
Martin rose from his chair and walked over to the man standing on the trapdoor. He felt an old familiar sensation in his body, not like the buzzing he had felt in his hands, but more like something pleasant and thick, like warm butterscotch was flowing through his veins. His chest heaved slightly, but he did not think of Barbara and the way her chest heaved. Sex, at that moment, was far from his mind, subservient to death.
Kneeling, he secured Kalb’s legs together at the knees with one of the leather belts, then rose to slip the other one under his arms in back and strap his elbows as close together as possible. The warmth inside him increased, rising to his throat, spreading down to his groin. He slipped the black hood over Kalb’s head and pulled the drawstring snugly tight, then reached up to the noose he had fashioned the previous day and pulled it down over the condemned man’s head, fixing it properly to the left angle of the jaw. Finally he put his hand on the trapdoor release lever, gripping it firmly. A great bliss engulfed his entire being.
“God bless you, Mr. Kalb,” he whispered through the black hood, as he moved the lever and opened the trapdoor, sending Roger Kalb to whatever there was beyond the noose.
Martin was in his car speeding away from Barnaby Prison within fifteen minutes after the drop, hoping that scatterbrained Barbara had done as he instructed, packing the bags and all. The quicker he got away from there, the better. As soon as he had dropped Roger Kalb, the warm, gushing feeling of ecstasy had disappeared. He remembered now that in the old days it had been the same way. Floating on a cloud while he did the job, then dropped back to reality when it was finished. Odd, that feeling — but one that he somehow cherished.
At the lodge, he found his own luggage packed and ready to go — but no bags for Barbara. And no Barbara.
“Your wife left this for you, sir,” the bellman said, handing Martin a sealed envelope. “And that’s a great picture of you in USA Today.”
“What?” Martin’s mouth dropped open. “What picture?”