The executioner was warming up the chair, testing his equipment at 1800 volts to 500 to 1300 to 300.
Suddenly the moment was very real.
“How do you like Russell Lee?” the corridor pulsed. “Baked, crisped, or fried? How do you like Russell Lee? Baked, crisped, or fried?”
Russell Lee Holmes sat down quietly on the edge of the cot. He drew in his shoulders, thought of the nastiest things he could think of. Small, soft throats, big blue eyes, shrill little-girl screams.
I won't say a word, baby. I'll keep it to my grave. 'Cause once there was someone who at least pretended to love Trash.
Boston, Massachusetts
JOSH SANDERS TRUDGED down the brightly lit halls. A first-year resident, he was going on hour thirty-seven of a supposed twenty-four-hour ER shift and he functioned purely on autopilot. He wanted sleep. He must find an empty room. He must sleep.
He came to the door of room five. No lights were on. Dimly he recalled that the boards listed five as unoccupied. Slow night in the ER.
Josh entered the room and yanked back the curtain surrounding the bed, ready to collapse.
A whimper. A hoarse, strangled wheeze. A moan.
The freshman doctor caught himself and snapped on the overhead light. A fully clothed little girl lay magically sprawled on top of the bed.
And she was clutching her throat as her eyes rolled back into her head and her whole body went limp.
THE DEATH TEAM was well trained. Three guards snapped Russell Lee Holmes into leg irons and a belly chain. He informed the warden he could walk out on his own, and everyone fell into position.
The guards flanked Russell Lee. Warden Cluck led. They marched down the forty-five-foot corridor, where the green door that had greeted 361 men now held Russell Lee's number.
At five the barber had shaved his head, sculpting a perfectly bald crown for the electrode plate. Then there'd been one last shower before he'd donned the execution whites. White pants, white shirt, white belt, all made from cotton grown on the prison farms and cut, spun, and sewed by prison inmates. He was going to his death looking like a fucking painter and without a trace of the outside world upon him.
The door swung open. Old Sparky beckoned. Rich burnished wood, over fifty years old and gleaming. High back, solid arms and legs, wide leather straps. Looked almost like Grandma's favorite rocker except for the face mask and electrodes.
The executioner took over and everything happened in a blur. The guards were strapping Russell Lee to the golden oak frame. One thrust a bite stick between his teeth, the other swabbed his left leg, head, and chest with saline solution to help conduct the electricity. The executioner followed up with metal straps around his calves, metal straps around his wrists, two diodes on each side of his heart, and finally a silver bowl on top of his shaved head. In less than sixty seconds Russell Lee Holmes had been crowned king.
The executioner taped up his eye sockets so there would be less mess when his eyeballs melted, and stuck cotton balls up his nose to limit the bleeding.
Eleven-thirty P.M. The death squad left the room, and Russell Lee's “torture time” began. He sat, strapped to his death chair, surrounded by blackness and waited for the phone on the wall to ring, the phone connected directly with the governor's office.
In the three viewing rooms across from him, others also waited. In room one were the witnesses — Larry Digger and four relatives of Russell Lee's victims who could afford to attend. Patricia Stokes had lost her four-year-old daughter Meagan to this monster's handiwork. Her husband was on duty at his new job, so she'd brought along her fourteen-year-old son instead. Brian's young face was immobile, but Patricia was sobbing quietly, her thin arms wrapped tightly around her tall, gaunt frame.
In room two, the executioner stood ready. This room contained the second phone connected directly with the governor's office. It also boasted three large buttons, an inch and a half in diameter, which jutted out of the wall. One main inducer and two backups. The state of Texas always got the job done.
Room three was for family and friends of the inmate. Tonight its only occupant was Kelsey Jones, Russell Lee's beleaguered defense attorney, who was wearing his best suit — a mint-colored seersucker — for the occasion. Kelsey Jones had a special assignment. He was to watch. He was to report back, Russell Lee's last consideration to the woman who had loved him.
Then Kelsey Jones was to forget all about Russell Lee — a task he would gladly accept.
Eleven thirty-one P.M. The countdown began, and the many subterfuges and manipulations that had started more than five years before finally came to a head. All rooms were quiet. All occupants were tense.
The man who was responsible sat in the chair with tape over his eyeballs and ground his teeth into the bite stick.
I AM POWERFUL. I AM HUGE!
His bowels let loose. And he gripped the end of the armrests so hard his knuckles turned white.
Love you, baby. Love… you.
“CODE BLUE! CODE BLUE!” Josh simultaneously shouted orders and checked the little girl's pulse. “I need a cart, stat! We got a young female, looks to be eight or nine, barely breathing. Somebody call peds!”
Dr. Chen rushed into the room. “Where did she come from?”
“Don't know.”
Staff and crash cart arrived at the same time, and everyone fell into a fast, furious rhythm.
“She's not on the boards,” Nancy, the head nurse reported, grabbing a needle. The IV slipped in, followed by the catheter. Immediately they were drawing blood and urine.
“She's running a fever! Oh, we got hives!” Sherry, another nurse, had finished snipping away the cotton sweatshirt to attach the five-lead heart monitor and revealed the little girl's inflamed torso.
“STAND BACK!”
The chest X ray flashed, and they fell back on the patient, working furiously. The girl's body was covered with a sheen of sweat and she was completely nonresponsive. Then her breathing stopped altogether.
“Tube!” Josh shouted, and immediately went to work to intubate.
Shit, she was small. He was afraid he was hurting something as he bumbled his way around her tiny throat like a water buffalo. Then the tube found the opening and slithered down her windpipe. “I'm in!” he exclaimed at the same time Sherry whirled out of the room with vials of fluid for the CBC, chem 20, and urine drug screen.
“Pulse is thready,” Nancy said.
“Assessment, Josh?” Dr. Chen demanded.
“Anaphylaxis reaction,” Josh said immediately. “We need one amp of epi.”
“Point-oh-one milli,” Dr. Chen corrected him. “Peds dosage.”
“I don't see any sign of a bee sting,” Nancy reported, handing over the epinephrine and watching the doctor administer it through the breathing tube.
“It could be a reaction to anything,” Dr. Chen murmured, and waited to see what the epi would do.
For a moment they were all still.
The little girl looked so unprotected sprawled on the white hospital bed with five wires, an IV, and a bulky breathing tube sprouting from her small figure. Long blond hair spilled onto the bed and smelled faintly of No More Tears baby shampoo. Her eye-lashes were thick and her face splotchy — smudges under the eyes, bright red spots staining her plump cheeks. No matter how many years he worked, Josh would never get used to the sight of a child in a hospital.
“Muscles are relaxing,” Josh reported. “Breathing's easier.” Epinephrine acted fast. The little girl's eyes fluttered open but didn't focus.
“Hello?” Dr. Chen tried. “Can you hear me?”
No response. He moved from verbal to tactile, shaking her lightly. She still did not respond. Nancy tried the sternal rub, pressing her knuckles against the tiny sternum hard enough to induce pain. The little girl's body arched helplessly, but her eyes remained glazed.
“Hard to arouse,” Nancy reported. “The patient remains nonresponsive.” Now they were all frowning.
The door burst open.
“What's all the ruckus about?” Dr. Harper Stokes strode into the room, wearing green scrubs as if they were tennis whites and looking almost unreal with his deep tan, vivid blue eyes, and movie-poster face. He had just joined City General Hospital as a hotshot cardiothoracic surgeon and had already taken to striding the halls like Jesus in search of lepers. Josh had heard he was very good but also seemed to know it. You know what the difference between a cardiac surgeon and God is? God doesn't think he's a cardiac surgeon.
“We got it,” Dr. Chen said a bit testily.
“Uh-huh.” Dr. Harper sauntered over to the bed. Then he spotted the little girl sprouting tubes and drew up cold, looking honestly shocked. “My God, what
happened
?”
“Anaphylaxis reaction to unknown agent.”
“Epi?”
“Of course.”
“Give me the chest X ray.” Dr. Stokes held out a hand, peering at the girl intently and checking her heartbeat.
“We got it under control!”
Dr. Stokes raised his head just long enough to look the younger M.D. in the eye. “Then, why, Dr. Chen,” he said somberly, “is she lying there like a rag doll?”
Dr. Chen gritted his teeth. “I don't know.”
MIDNIGHT. THE DOCTOR entered the executioner's room and took up position against the back wall, his hands clasped behind him. The executioner picked up the phone connected to the governor's office.
He heard dial tone.
He recradled the receiver. He counted off sixty seconds.
He stared at Russell Lee Holmes, who sat in the middle of the death chamber with his lips peeled back from his scarecrow teeth in an idiot's grin.
“He's too dumb to know what's going on,” the doctor said.
“Don't matter now,” the executioner said.
His watch hit 12:01. He picked up the phone. He still heard the dial tone.
He hit the main inducer button and 440 volts/10 ohms of electricity surged through Russell Lee Holmes's body.
The lights dimmed in the Death House. Three inmates roared and clapped while one curled beneath his cot and rocked back and forth like a frightened child. The relatives of the victims watched stoically at first, but when Russell Lee's skin turned bright red and began to smoke, they turned away. Except for Brian Stokes. He remained watching, as if transfixed, while Russell Lee Holmes's body convulsed. Abruptly his feet blew off. Then his hands. Behind Brian, his mother screamed. He still didn't look away.
And then it was simply over.
The doctor entered the death chamber. He'd wiped Vicks VapoRub beneath his nose to block out the smell. It wasn't enough, and his nose crinkled as he inspected the body.
He looked at the middle window, into the executioner's room. “Time of death is twelve-oh-five.”
“I GOT DRUG screen results!” Sherry plowed through the door, and Josh grabbed the reports, just beating out Dr. Harper Stokes.
“She's positive for opiates,” Josh called.
“Morphine,” Dr. Stokes said.
“Narcan,” Dr. Chen ordered. “Point-oh-oh-five milli per kilo. Bring extra!”
Sherry rushed away for the reversing agent.
“Could she be allergic to morphine?” Josh quizzed Dr. Chen. “Could that be what caused the anaphylaxis reaction?”
“It happens.”
Sherry returned with the narcan and Dr. Chen quickly injected it. They removed the breathing tube and waited, a second dose already in hand. Narcan could be repeated every two to three minutes if necessary. Dr. Stokes checked the young girl's pulse again, then her heart.
“Better,” he announced. “Steadying. Oh, hang on. Here we go…”
The little girl was moving her head from side to side. Nancy drew a sheet over her and they all held their breath. The little girl blinked and her large eyes, a striking mix of blue and gray, focused.
“Can you hear me, honey?” Dr. Stokes whispered, his voice curiously thick as he smoothed back her limp hair from her sweaty forehead. “Can you tell us your name?”
She didn't answer. She took in the strangers hovering above her, the white, white room, the lines and wires sticking out of her body. Plump and awkward-looking, she was not a pretty child, Josh thought, but at that moment she was completely endearing. He took her hand and her gaze rested on him immediately, tearing him up a little. Who in hell drugged and abandoned a little girl? The world was sick.
After a moment her fingers gripped his. A nice, strong grip considering her condition.
“It's okay,” he whispered. “You're safe. Tell us your name, honey. We need to know your name.”
Her mouth opened, her parched throat working, but no sound emerged. She looked a little more panicked.
“Relax,” he soothed. “Take a deep breath. Everything is okay. Everything is fine. Now try it again.”
She looked at him trustingly.
This time she whispered, “Daddy's Girl.”
Twenty years later
SHE WAS LATE, she was late, oh, God, she was
so
late!
Melanie Stokes came bounding up the stairs, then made the hard left turn down the hall, her long blond hair whipping around her face. Twenty minutes and counting. She hadn't even thought about what she was going to wear. Damn.
She tore into her room with her sweatshirt half pulled over her head. A strategic kick sent the heavy mahogany door slamming shut behind her as she shed the first layer of clothes. She toed off her tennis shoes and sent them sailing beneath the pine bureau that swallowed nearly a quarter of her bedroom. A lot of things came to rest beneath the battered dresser. One of these days she meant to clean it out. But not tonight.
Melanie hastily shimmied out of her ripped-up jeans, tossed her T-shirt onto the sleigh bed, and hurried to the closet. The wide plank floorboards felt cool against her toes, making her do a little
cha-cha-cha
along the way.
“Come on,” she muttered, ripping back the silk curtain. “Ten years of compulsive shopping crammed into one five-by-five space. How hard can it be to locate a cocktail dress?”