The jury deliberated for ten days.
Why did they need so long?
They finally declared him guilty.
And yet again the monster showed no reaction.
Nor did he react when the judge pronounced the maximum punishment Connecticut allowed: life in prison.
But Chad reacted. He shrieked, "Life in prison? Change the law! That son of a bitch deserves to be executed!"
Chad was removed from the courtroom. Outside, Putnam's lawyer make a speech about a miscarriage of justice, vowing to demand a new trial, to appeal to a higher court.
Thus began a different kind of horror, the complexities and loopholes in the legal system. Another year passed. The monster remained in prison, yes, but what if a judge decided that a further trial was necessary, that Putnam was obviously insane and should have pleaded accordingly? A year in prison for what he'd done to Stephanie? If he was released on a technicality or sent to a mental institution where he would pretend to respond to treatment and perhaps eventually be pronounced "cured"…
He'd kill again!
At three a.m., in Chad's gloomy New Haven apartment, he raised his haggard face from where he'd been dozing at the kitchen table. He smiled toward Stephanie's speck of light.
"Hi, dear. It's wonderful to see you. Where have you been? How I've missed you."
"You've got to stop doing this!"
"I'm getting even for you."
"You're making me scared!"
"For me. Of course. I understand. But as soon as I know that he's punished, I'll put my life in order. I promise I'll clean up my act."
"That's not what I mean! I don't have time to explain! I'm soaring so fast! So brilliantly! Stop what you're doing!"
"I can't. How can you rest in peace if he isn't – "
"I'm afraid!"
Putnam's appeal was denied. But that was another year later. In the meantime, Chad's former wife, Linda, had married someone else, and Chad's percentage of royalties from his past authors dwindled. He was forced to move to more shabby lodgings. He began to withdraw money – with tax penalties – from his pension. He now had a beard. Less trouble. No necessity to shave. So what if his unwashed hair drooped over his ears? There was no one to impress. No authors. No publishers. No one.
Except Stephanie.
Where in God's name was she?
She'd abandoned him. Why?
While Stephanie's murder had officially been solved, others attributed to the Biter had not. Putnam refused to admit that he'd killed anyone, and the authorities – furious about Putnam's stubbornness – decided to put pressure on him to close the books on those other crimes, to force him to confess. Before he'd been a book salesman in New England, he'd worked in Florida. A blonde, attractive co-ed had been murdered years before at Florida's state university. The killer had used a knife instead of his teeth to mutilate the victim. There wasn't any obvious reason to link the Biter with that killing. But a search of that Florida city's records revealed that Putnam had received a parking ticket near where the victim had disappeared as she left the university's library. Further, Putnam's rare blood type matched the type derived from the semen that the killer had left within the victim, just as the semen that the monster had left within Stephanie contained Putnam's blood type. Years ago, that evidence could not have been used in court because of limitations in forensic technology. But now…
Putnam was arrested for the co-ed's murder. His lawyer had insisted on another trial. Well, the monster would get one. In Florida. Where the maximum penalty wasn't life in prison. It was death.
Chad moved to the outskirts of Florida State University. His pension and his portion of royalties from contracts he'd negotiated increasingly declined. His clothes became more shabby, his appearance more unkempt, his frame more gaunt. At some hazy point in the intervening years, his former wife, Linda, died from breast cancer. He mourned for her but not as he mourned for Stephanie.
The Florida trial seemed to take forever. Again Chad came to stare at the monster. Again he endured the complexities of the legal system. Again the evidence presented at the trial made him shudder.
But finally Putnam was found guilty, and this time the judge – Chad cheered and had to be evicted from the courtroom again- sentenced the monster to death in the electric chair.
Anti-death-penalty groups raised a furor. They petitioned Florida's Supreme Court and the state's governor to reduce the sentence. For his part, Chad barraged the media and the parents of the Biter's victims with phone calls and letters, urging them to use all their influence to insist that the judge's sentence be obeyed.
Richard Putnam finally showed a reaction. Apparently now convinced that his life was in danger, he tried to make a deal. He hinted about other homicides he'd committed, offering to reveal specifics and solve murders in other states in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Detectives from numerous states came to question Putnam about unsolved disappearances of co-eds. In the end, after they listened in disgust to his explicit descriptions of torture and cannibalism, they refused to ask the judge to reduce the sentence. There were four stays of execution, but finally Putnam was shaved, placed in an electric chair, and exterminated with two thousand volts through his brain.
Chad was with the pro-death-sentence advocates in the darkness of a midnight rain outside the prison. Along with them, he held up a sign: BURN, PUTNAM, BURN. I HOPE OLD SPARKY MAKES YOU SUFFER AS MUCH AS STEPHANIE DID. The execution occurred on schedule. At last, after so many years, Chad felt triumphant. Vindicated. At peace.
But when he returned to his cockroach-infested, one-room apartment, when at three a.m. he drank cheap red wine in victory, he blinked in further triumph. Because Stephanie's light again appeared to him.
Chad's heart thundered. He hadn't seen or spoken to her in so many years. Despite his efforts on her behalf, he had thought that she had abandoned him. He had never understood why. After all, she had promised that she would be there whenever he needed to talk to her. At the same time, she had also demanded that he stop his efforts to punish the monster. He had never understood that, either.
But now, in horror, he did.
"I warned you, Dad! I tried to stop you! Why didn't you listen? I'm so afraid!"
"I got even for you! You can finally rest in peace!"
"No! Now it starts again!"
"What do you mean?"
"He's free! He's coming for me! Don't you remember? I told you he doesn't feel emotion except when he kills! And now that he's been released, he can't wait to do it again! He's coming for me!"
"But you said you're soaring so brilliantly! How can he catch up to you?"
"Two thousand volts! He's like a rocket! He's grinning! He's reaching out his arms! Help me, Daddy! You promised!"
Based on the note Chad left, his psychiatrist concluded that Chad's final act made perfect, irrational sense. Chad bled profusely as he struggled over the barbed-wire fence. His hands were mangled. That didn't matter. Nor did his fear of heights matter as he climbed the high tower while guards shouted for him to stop. All that mattered was that Stephanie was in danger. What choice did he have? Except to grasp the high-voltage lines.
To be struck by twenty thousand volts. Ten times the power that had launched the Biter toward Stephanie. Chad's body burst into flames, but his agony meant nothing. The impetus of his soul meant everything.
Keep speeding, sweetheart! As fast as you can!
But I'll speed faster! The monster won't catch you! Nothing will hurt you!