“In other words, he deliberately injected a myth into the proceedings, knowing she did not exist, knowing she could never be found, and perfectly content to have her not found, for only while she remains not found is his fractional alibi of any service to him.
“In conclusion, let me ask you, ladies and gentlemen, just one simple question. Is it natural, is it likely, when a man’s very life depends on his ability to remember certain details in the appearance of another, for him to be unable to recall a single, solitary one of them? Not one, mind you! He is unable to recall the color of her eyes, or the color of her hair, or the contour of her face, or her height, or her girth, or anything else about her. Put yourselves in his place. Would you be likely to forget so completely, so devastatingly, if your lives depended on it? Self-preservation can be a wonderful spur to the memory, you know. Is it at all plausible that he would forget her so totally, if he really wished her to be found? If she exists, or ever did, to be found? I leave you with that thought.
“I don’t think there’s much more I have to say to you, ladies and gentlemen of the jury. It’s a simple case. The issue is clear, without anything to confuse it.”
Pointing with dramatic prolongation. “The State accuses that man whom you see there, Scott Henderson, of murdering his wife.
“The State demands his life in return.
“The State rests its case.”
6
The Ninetieth Day Before the Execution
“Will the accused please rise and face the jury?
“Will the foreman of the jury please stand?
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”
“We have, Your Honor.”
“Do you find this defendant guilty or not guilty of the charge made against him?”
“Guilty, Your Honor.”
Strangled voice from the direction of the prisoner’s dock, “Oh, my God — no—!”
7
The Eighty-Seventh Day Before the Execution
“Prisoner at the bar, have you anything to say before this court passes sentence upon you?”
“What is there to say, when they tell you you have committed a crime, and you and you alone know you haven’t? Who is there to hear you, and who is there to believe you?
“You’re about to tell me that I must die, and if you tell me I must, I must. I’m no more afraid of dying than any other man. But I’m just as afraid of dying as any other man. It isn’t easy to die at all, but it’s even harder to die for a mistake. I’m not dying for something I’ve done, but for a mistake. And that’s the hardest way to die of all. When the time comes, I’ll meet it the best I can; that’s all I can do anyway.
“But I say to you now, all of you, who won’t listen and don’t believe: I didn’t do that. I didn’t do it. Not all the findings of all the juries, not all the trials in all the courts, not all the executions in all the electric chairs — in the whole world — can make what isn’t so, so.
“I’m ready to hear it now. Your Honor. Quite ready.”
Voice from the bench, in a sympathetic aside, “I’m sorry, Mr. Henderson. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more compelling, dignified, manly plea from anyone who has stood before me for sentence. But the verdict of the jury in this case gives me no alternative.”
Same voice, slightly louder, “Scott Henderson, having been tried and found guilty of murder in the first degree, I hereby sentence you to die in the electric chair, in the State Prison at—, during the week beginning October 20th, said sentence to be carried out by the warden of the prison, and may God have mercy on your soul.”
8
The Twenty-First Day Before the Execution
Low voice, just outside the cell in the Death House corridor, “Here he is, in this one.”
Louder, above a jangle of keys, “Somebody here to see you, Henderson.”
Henderson doesn’t speak or move. Gate is opened, then closed again. Long, awkward pause, while they look at one another.
“Guess you don’t remember me.”
“You remember the people that kill you.”
“I don’t kill people, Henderson. I turn people who commit crimes over to those whose job it is to try them.”
“Then you come around afterward to make sure they haven’t gotten away, to satisfy yourself they’re still there where you put them, getting it rubbed into them, day by day and minute by minute. It must worry you. Well, take a look. I’m here. I’m safe on ice. Now you can go away happy.”
“You’re bitter, Henderson.”
“It doesn’t sweeten you any to die at thirty-two.”
Burgess didn’t answer that. No one could have, adequately. He shuttered his eyes rapidly a couple of times to show that it had hit. He went over to the skinny canal of an opening and looked out.
“Small, isn’t it?” Henderson said, without turning his head to look.
Burgess promptly turned and came away from it, at that, as though it had closed up on him. He took something out of his pocket, stopped before the bunk the other was sitting crouched on. “Cigarette?”
Henderson looked up derisively. “What’s the matter with them?”
“Ah, don’t be like that,” the detective protested throatily. He continued to hold them out.
Henderson took one grudgingly at last, more as if by doing so to get him to move away from him than because he really wanted one. His eyes were still bitter. He wiped the small cylinder insultingly on his sleeve before putting it to his mouth.
Burgess gave him a light for it. Henderson looked his scorn at him even for that, holding his eyes steady, above the small flame, on the other’s face. “What’s this, the day of the execution already?”
“I know how you feel—” Burgess began in mild remonstrance.
Henderson reared up suddenly on the slab. “You know how I feel!” he flared. He snapped ashes down toward the detective’s feet, by way of indicating them. “They can go anywhere they feel like!” He jabbed his thumb toward his own. “But they can’t!” His mouth looped downward at one corner. “Get out of here. Get out. Go back and kill somebody else. Get fresh material. I’m second-hand, I’ve been worked over once already.”
He lay back again, blew a tracer of smoke out along the wall. It mushroomed when it hit the top of the bunk, came down toward him again.
They had quit looking at one another. But Burgess was standing still, hadn’t gone. He said finally, “I understand your appeal’s been turned down.”
“Yes, my appeal’s been turned down. Now there are no more hitches, no more impediments, nothing further to interfere with the ceremonial bonfire. Now I can skid straight down the chute without anything more to stop me. Now the cannibals won’t have to go hungry. Now they can make a nice, swift, clean-cut job of it. Stream-lined.” He turned and looked at his listener. “What’re you looking so mournful about? Sorry because the agony can’t be prolonged? Sorry because I can’t die twice over?”
Burgess made a wry face as though his cigarette tasted rotten. He stepped on it. “Don’t hit below the belt, Henderson. My dukes aren’t even up.”
Henderson looked at him intently for a while, as though noticing something in his manner for the first time through the red haze of anger that had hovered over his perceptions until now. “What’s on your mind?” he asked. “What brings you around here like this, anyway, months afterward?”