Finnigan didn’t move. He didn’t speak. Vernon looked at the man lying on the sofa with his hands clutching his belly and he felt a peace, all these years he had thought about this, he was finally there.
“But it wasn’t John who took your daughter’s life.”
As if he had hit him.
“The person who was executed yesterday, as a result of the death penalty that you so firmly believe in, was innocent.”
Finnigan tried to get up but fell back, as his arms lacked strength.
“You and Alice were seldom home before eight in the evening, Elizabeth usually had the house to herself until then. I saw John leaving, they held each other for a while at the front door over there, then he walked off.”
Vernon was still watching Finnigan, he wanted to see his face, how it changed when he found out.
“I slipped in ten minutes after he’d gone. He’d held her, they’d had sex, they usually did before you came home. Didn’t you know that? Fingerprints, sperm, he was all over her body. It only took a couple of minutes, no more, she was lying there on the floor when I shut the front door behind me.”
Vernon kept on speaking until Finnigan leapt at him in a fury and tried to hit his face with clenched fists. That was exactly what he wanted. The bright red man screamed and hit and bit and Vernon let him until he was sure that they had exchanged enough blood and skin cells.
Then one hard blow to the point on Finnigan’s chest that would hurl him into unconsciousness. He hurried out to the hall and the paper bag and took out a thin rag and a small bottle of ether.
He reckoned it was enough to make sure that Edward Finnigan would lie there unconscious for about an hour and a half, the time that he needed.
VERNON ERIKSEN HAD NEVER MET RICHARD HINES BEFORE. BUT HE HAD
read his articles about the American legal system in the
Cincinnati Post
over the last ten years. He didn’t always share the views of the reporter, but Vernon had appreciated his sharp wit, his choice of words, his precision; Hines’s research was always correct, his claims might not be comfortable, but they were always correct.
They had arranged to meet in a small café near the main road into Marcusville, ten minutes’ walk from the Finnigans’ house. Vernon knew that the place was usually more or less empty at this time of the morning. One waitress, a few truck drivers, otherwise just crumbs on the table and tired music piped out through cheap loudspeakers.
Richard Hines was already there, a beer and a sandwich with something that looked like roast beef. He was smaller than Vernon had imagined, a slim man of no more than a hundred and thirty pounds or so, but his eyes were alert and his smile as wide as his face was narrow.
“Eriksen?”
Vernon nodded, looked at the waitress and pointed at Hines’s beer bottle before sitting down opposite him.
“Thank you for coming.”
Hines gave a wave of his hand.
“I wasn’t going to at first. I have to admit that you did sound like just another nut. I get a lot of calls, litigious people who have read something and see me as their informal counsel. But I checked your employment details and I’d be an idiot if I didn’t listen to a senior corrections officer on Death Row in one of the state’s maximum security prisons when he calls and says he wants to meet twelve hours after a planned execution and claims that he has a scoop.”
The waitress was a young woman, more of a girl really, with a life that had just begun. She came over with the beer and Vernon wondered why she was satisfied with this, some squalid café in a dump of a town, when the world was waiting out there.
“I’ll give you some news, all right. I only have one condition. That it’s printed no later than tomorrow.”
Hines laughed, a hint of derision in his voice.
“
I’ ll
be the judge of that.”
“Tomorrow.”
“Let’s get one thing straight before we start.
I’ ll
be the judge of the newsworthiness. If your story’s good enough, I write it. If it’s not, well, then we’ve just had a beer together.”
“It’s good enough.”
The buzz of the background music was irritating. Vernon excused himself, went over to the waitress and asked her to turn down the volume, then sat down again at the compact pine table with four red plastic place mats.
“So now we can hear each other.”
He looked at Hines and started to talk.
“I’ve worked at Marcusville prison all my adult life. I guess I’ve almost lived there, with the inmates, for over thirty years. I’ve seen all there is to see of criminality. All sorts of criminals, the consequences of all sorts of crimes. I believe in punishment. A society that penalizes is a society with norms.”
A truck braked outside the window. A quick glance, they both saw the big man with a pigtail get out and head for the entrance.
“With one exception. The death penalty. A society with norms cannot have a state that takes life. It took me some years on Death Row to understand that. You see, every prison holds someone who is innocent or who has been convicted wrongly. I know that, anyone who works in a prison knows that. I’m sure that a couple of those I was responsible for fell into that category.”
The truck driver sat down at a table at the opposite end of the café, Vernon had lowered his voice when he came in, but now raised it again.
“All it takes is for one innocent person to be executed. Just one, and the system fails! If it’s discovered, afterward, it can never be undone. Can it?
No amount of damages can bring back life.”
He had been preparing what he was going to say for eighteen years.
Now . . . it was suddenly hard to find the words.
“The victim’s retribution . . . Hines, that’s nothing more than revenge.
All that stuff about justice. Rehabilitation. Do you believe it? It’s not about that anymore. If it ever was. I see it every day. Revenge . . . that’s the state’s real driving force.”
He finished his beer, glanced at Hines, who still looked interested.
“And sometimes . . . sometimes you have to take a life to save other lives. Did you know that, Hines? I chose Edward Finnigan. That’s what I did, I
chose
. Finnigan is the sort of person people listen to. An outspoken proponent of the death penalty with considerable power in the state. Perfect. He had a daughter who he would mourn. The daughter had a boyfriend who was a troublemaker, so it would be easy to get him convicted. Two lives. That was all, Hines. I’ve sacrificed two lives so that a nation can understand how wrong the death penalty is. If those two lives get us to question a system that could take many more lives, then it was worth it.”
Richard Hines sat completely still. He had stopped taking notes, unsure that he’d really understood what he’d just heard.
“I took Elizabeth Finnigan’s life. I knew that John Meyer Frey would be sentenced to death because she was a minor. When he had been executed, then I would do this, what I’m doing now, stand up and say what actually happened.”
Hines writhed in discomfort. A senior corrections officer was sitting opposite him and had just claimed that he was responsible for one of the state’s most sensational murders in recent times.
He was human and wanted to run away and report the madman. But he was also a journalist and wanted to know more.
“Frey escaped. What you’re saying . . . there’s something that’s not quite right.”
“Something happened. Suddenly . . . I couldn’t go through with what I’d planned so carefully. I . . . started to care about the boy. John was smart, vulnerable . . . I’d never gotten close to anyone like that before. The others, I don’t know, every time one of the people I was responsible for in there died, it was like a family member had stopped breathing. And John—like a son, I can’t explain it any better than that. I didn’t have the courage to let him die. Do you understand?”
“No. I don’t understand.”
“For many years I’ve been involved with various networks that oppose the death penalty. I started to work with the group that was campaigning for John. And I started to plan his escape with a handful of key people.”
He shrugged.
“And then . . . one mistake after six years of freedom! I knew immediately that everything would happen fast. It was a matter of prestige.
Finnigan’s position. So I’m doing it now instead. Completing what I started a long time ago.”
The last drops of beer had been warm for some time but he was thirsty and drank what he could of the foam at the bottom of the glass. He rummaged in his trouser pockets, found four one-dollar bills and left them beside the empty glass.
“Hines, I was the one who killed her. And John Meyer Frey was executed. A system based on the death penalty will never work. I know that you’re going to write about this. Before tomorrow even. It’s too good for you or anyone else not to. And when it becomes general knowledge, when people know . . . the system is done for.”
Vernon had stood up, buttoned his coat, he was already on his way out of the deserted café.
“Sit down.”
“I don’t have time.”
“We’re not done yet. Assuming that you still want it to be printed?”
Vernon looked at his watch. Fifty-five minutes left. He sat down.
“This is all a bit too simple. It’s a good story. But I need more. Things to
prove
that what you’re saying is true.”
“On your desk. When you get back. You’ll find a package.”
“A package?”
“The sort of thing that the person who killed Elizabeth Finnigan might have. Her bracelet, for example. The one she always had on. I haven’t seen it mentioned in the investigation. Her parents will confirm that it’s hers.”
“Anything else?”
“The sort of thing that only someone who was responsible for John’s escape would know. You’ve got an eight-page document which describes in detail how it was done. When you read it and compare it with the records about his . . . death, you’ll understand.”
“Or so you say.”
“Pictures. You’ll have pictures that only someone who was there could have taken. Of her body lying on the floor. Of John’s body in the morgue, in the body bag and boarding a plane in Toronto.”
Richard Hines turned his gaze to the window, wanted to get away, down the road that was behind the big truck.
“I’ve never heard anything like it. If you ask me . . . you’re fucking sick.”
“Sick? No. Anyone who thinks that a state can take life, that’s sick. Trying to do away with the death penalty, what can be healthier than that?”
Hines shook his head.
“Thankfully, I don’t need to be the judge of that. You’ll be charged for this. You’ll be convicted.”
Vernon Eriksen smiled for the first time since they’d met, it was as if the nervousness slipped away, he was almost done and he had plenty of time.
“You know that I won’t be. That would be as good as declaring the system was useless. The state of Ohio would never,
never
, admit to executing the wrong person. No prosecutor would take up the case again.”
Vernon got up to leave for the second time. He didn’t shake Hines’s hand, just gave a friendly nod to the reporter who would immediately jump in his car and drive back to Cincinnati and write the most extraordinary article he had ever written.
“Thank you for coming. I’m going to go and see Edward Finnigan now. And I’m sure that he’ll listen to me too.”
HE LOOKED AT HIS WATCH. FORTY-FIVE MINUTES LEFT
.
He’d manage it.
It was still cold, he did up the top button on his coat and pulled on his gloves. He walked toward Mern Riffe Drive, slowed down as he passed the Finnigans’ big, silent house, if anyone had happened to look out the window they would later say that Vernon Eriksen had been there around that time.
He kept on walking for another half mile or so, along the path through the woods that started where Mern Riffe Drive ended. His regular walk, several times a week he breathed in the air that was trees and moss, and at the end of the path, a small lake. As a child he had cycled here in summer, the water was cold but clean, the bottom covered in sludge and sharp stones, but as long as you didn’t put your feet down, the lake was a good place to swim, the only one in Marcusville.
Vernon stood still, looked at the mirrorlike surface of the water, at the trees that meant that no one could see, at the sky that was ice blue.
It was such a beautiful day.
He went over to the tree, the one that was biggest, about fifteen to twenty yards from the water. The rooks loved it. There were no leaves, just bare branches and bare twigs, but you couldn’t see that, as hundreds of rooks sat there, made it darker, alive, as if they were replacing the great greenness.
He had Finnigan’s gun in the paper bag. The ammunition, two bullets only, lay loose beside it. He loaded it and aimed in the air above the tree.
The birds lifted as they normally did when he fired, cawing and squawking in confusion. But not for long. They circled up, then descended cautiously, and were back sitting on the tree within minutes.
Vernon felt nothing, realized that he had never been so empty before.
It had taken nearly twenty years and now he was here, only a couple of minutes to go, no more.
It’s not God who decides over life and death
. It was this last bit that meant most.
I do
. He had always been convinced that two young people dying would be enough to get a state, perhaps even a whole nation, that championed the death penalty, to think again. That process would start tomorrow morning when the
Cincinnati Post
carried an account of what
actually
happened. But this, this would take the question even further into people’s homes, the discussions around the kitchen table would take on another dimension when the champion of the death penalty in Ohio, the father of the murdered girl himself, who had for all these years spoken about the victim’s right to retribution and said that it was obvious that any society with morals had to offer an eye for an eye . . . when he was the one who was in the dock.
A couple of birds in the tree cackling, a light wind that rustled the reeds, otherwise silence.