Authors: Chris Stevenson
She stepped up to the cell threshold. Two more guards, the prison physician, and a chaplain appeared. The prison physician, Doctor King, a silver-haired man, had been appointed to guard against botched execution procedures. One person of note who had not shown up was the warden. But why had the regular chaplain appeared now? Hadn’t he been called away for an emergency?
The detail formed a half ring around her. Father Mathews stepped forward to offer his hand for the purpose of escort. She took it with a fierce grip. “I thought you were off the schedule tonight,” she said. “How’s the family member?”
Father Mathews gave her a curious glance. “Family member?”
“Yeah, the one who got in an accident. I hope everything is okay. By the way, you shouldn’t have sent a quack for a replacement. I could have done without the prank.”
“There’s been no accident, Avalon. I can assure you, I have not been replaced. In fact, I’ve been in the chapel praying for you.”
She tossed the hand away like a gum wrapper. “What in the hell has gotten into everyone around here? Are you all in on this? The priest that was here fifteen minutes ago, jibber jabbering about new beginnings, gates, and correcting things.” She backpedaled a few steps, raising an accusing finger.
“Now don’t tell me that Gemini character just walked right in here without a pass, fed me some horrendous pile, then put his hands on me without anyone knowing about it.” She glared at her friend. “Chubs, you checked your roster. That priest wasn’t even cleared to enter.”
The staff exchanged glances. The doctor gave a breathy sigh. Chubby froze like a stone pillar The other two guards bowed their legs, postured for trouble. One of the guard’s hands stole to the butt of a taser gun.
Father Mathews took a cautious step forward. “It’s no good to get worked up over this, Avalon. I’ll be with you every step of the way. We can do this together.”
Chubby clenched a fist. “Can’t you see she’s frightened? She’s sick and needs treatment. This is inhumane!”
The sergeant turned on him. “I’ll remind you of your detail, Officer Hammersmith. Would you like to be relieved of duty?”
Chubby shook his head. “No. Right now she needs someone she can trust. I’m staying.”
Avalon remained obstinate. “If you don’t believe me, check my bag. That fake priest gave me a big gold book with my name on it. At least check your surveillance tapes. Nobody can get in or out of here without the video system picking them up.”
The sergeant blew out an exasperated breath. He spoke urgent words into his hand-held radio. “Surveillance, back up your tapes thirty minutes, then fast-forward. See if you can pick up any unauthorized entry into death row dayroom for D block. Report back ASAP.” The sergeant looked at his watch. “Let’s head out. We’re falling behind.”
Chubby extended a hand, offering a soft, sympathetic look. On the verge of panic once again, Avalon collared her emotions. She reached out to take her friend’s gentle grasp. She tried to imagine a logical scenario for what had just happened. Her mind had conjured up sights and sounds that no one believed. There seemed a single explanation for it. The devil had come in the last hour to rattle her cage. Break her faith. Well, she wouldn’t have any part of his dealings. She shook a fist at the ceiling. “Be gone!” she commanded the air. “Get behind me.” Then to her escorts, “I’m ready now. Let’s get this over with.”
She walked hand in hand with Chubby across the dayroom floor. Her thong slippers made little clacks. She heard the sound of fists hitting the cell walls, knowing that her fellow inmates were in the throes of protest. Her legs felt unusually heavy. There was a persistent ache in her lower back that hadn’t been there before.
Father Mathews began reciting scripture when she passed through the dayroom vault into the long corridor. She concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other, carefully distributing her weight lest she stumble and fall to the floor in an undignified belly flop. She gave a halfhearted salute to one of the surveillance cameras above. A door at the end of the hall opened when they approached. She filed through with her escorts into the octagonal room.
The huge observation windows of the execution chamber were cranked wide open for optimum view. Several reporters, along with a few city officials, sat in a long row of frontline chairs. A number of friends and past employees of her husband, who also happened to be her friends, were in attendance. Most of them did not make eye contact with her.
How awkward, how morose it all seemed. Her face flushed hot from embarrassment.
The sergeant spoke for the benefit of the staff after having listened to his radio. “Surveillance reports from all stations that there was no intruder on the prison property at any time tonight. All cellblocks are clear.”
Avalon ignored the report. It was the devil. Case closed. Her bucket of give a damn was empty.
Refusing assistance, she mounted the gurney to splay herself out. Father Mathews droned on, reciting passages until he settled on Psalm twenty-three. He raised his voice, accentuating every word for all ears to hear. Two guards began buckling the straps while another readied two intravenous drip lines that were routed from behind a curtained station. The doctor applied a heart pickup, then adjusted the controls on a nearby monitor.
A face appeared over Avalon that she had seen just twice before. It was Warden Remy, a man with too much hair gel, a ruddy complexion, and too little time. He held a small microphone at her chin while addressing her in a calm, measured tone. “Do you have any final words you’d like to express, Avalon?”
She nodded, turning her head toward Chubby who stood to her right. He looked off balance, but his eyes remained fixed on her, soulful and unblinking.
“I would like Raymond Hammersmith to know, in answer to a question he asked me eleven years ago, that, yes, I would have been very proud to have accompanied him on a real date. He should always remember that beauty is in the heart, and resides in the eye of the beholder. That’s all. Oh yeah, I’m innocent. But I suppose that doesn’t matter anymore.”
Chubby blinked several times. A fat tear rolled off his cheek to plop on floor. Avalon winked at him. He tried to return the gesture but both his eyelids fluttered, his eyes beginning to fill with a wash of emotion.
When the abdominal strap was cinched over her, there came with it an indescribable pain that radiated all the way to her heels. Her breath caught in her throat. She clamped her teeth with all the strength in her jaw, determined that she would not cry out. But after holding her breath, a loud exclamatory bark escaped her throat. The contents of her stomach threatened to blow like a fountain.
“Hold off,” said the doctor, nudging the catheter-wielding guard to the side. He placed a stethoscope over her chest. “Where is the pain, dear?”
Avalon spoke through clenched teeth. “Oh, God. Down low in my stomach.”
The doctor put his hand to her abdomen while he slid the scope down. He gasped, looked at the monitor across the room, then whipped his hand down hard in chopping motions, the signal to drop the blinds. A guard released a cord, letting them fall with a clatter.
“What’s the problem, Doc?” The warden stepped over his own feet, trying to get closer.
“Quiet, please,” the doctor ordered. He moved the stethoscope pad across Avalon’s lower abdomen again. He collared the stethoscope, then glared at the warden. “You better get the attorney general and the governor on the line. Tell them we’ll need a stay of execution.”
“What’s going on, Doc?” asked the warden, now more agitated than ever.
Doctor King’s jaw tensed. “We can’t execute two people. I have a strong fetal heartbeat. She also has a nasty case of morning sickness. This woman is now a patient until further notice.”
The warden stiffened. “She’s pregnant? How is that even possible?” He ran a hand through his oily hair, and turned on Chubby, pegging him with a hardened stare. The other staff members joined in, leveling accusing eyes at the portly guard.
Chubby froze, wide-eyed. Avalon assumed by the look on his face that any words he might have were jammed in his throat.
The doctor threw his hands up in the air. “None of this makes sense. I examined her two days ago. There was no evidence of a pregnancy.” He closed his eyes. “In all my years of practice I have never had anything like this happen.” He turned on the others, making eye contact with each. “This information will not leave these prison walls. Is that understood? I don’t have to tell you that the media would grind us into ground-round if this ever got out.”
The warden stepped up close to the gurney, massaging his temples. He looked on the verge of passing out at any moment. How ironic it all seemed.
Chubby stepped forward, his mouth cracking into a wide smile. “That’s one for the record books, Avalon. Happy New Year, honey. Way to go, babe! Yeah, way to go!”
The digital wall clock cycled. It read a minute after midnight. The New Year had arrived.
The sun dawned bright and beautiful the following day, chasing the storm clouds across the horizon.
Chapter 3
Avalon was now full term, expecting delivery. The amniocentesis had been performed immediately upon discovery. The result had come back in seven days. Avalon had to sign a release form in triplicate, clearing the prison hospital staff of all culpability prior to the test. Although the procedure held some risk to the fetus, it was still forced. Avalon suspected that her rights had been violated, but had agreed under duress, rather than face persecution and the removal of her most basic privileges.
The North Carolina prison system had capped such a heavy lid on the incident that for a while, both the news and Avalon had been kept in solitary confinement. After the postponement of the execution, the male staff of the Women’s Correctional Facility were rounded up for DNA tests, accompanied by lengthy interrogations. The staff scrutinized her visitor roster for any potential “donors,” even though such contact would have been impossible in the first place. The warden felt convinced that one of their oversexed male staff members had slipped through the cracks to perform the deed. Yet, with the conclusion of the blood type analysis, no one, including the general workforce staff, matched the profile. Raymond Hammersmith had been eliminated from the donor list.
The news had leaked within the walls of the prison in spite of the security blanket. The inmates found out through a slip-of-the-tongue. Wild rumors of a “ghost lover” were awash in the Women’s Correctional Facility. At least a dozen females claimed contact with a strange night visitor who came in their dreams to perform unspeakable acts of passionate fantasy rape. The prison psychologists worked double shifts recording mysterious claims that led to wild accusations. It was all a ruse by most of the inmates, one designed to throw the staff into complete turmoil. Others were convinced that a real ghost walked the cellblocks. From the day the first rumors appeared, all personal mail had been censored for any references dealing with the mysterious inmate pregnancy.
Doctor King had taken the full brunt of blame at the Central Prison. The staff physician at the Women’s facility had also been interrogated. Neither had suspected or recorded evidence of a pregnancy. Both had given Avalon full exams more than once just prior to the execution date. King blamed his incompetence on a faulty stethoscope. The other physician claimed that had she been looking for a pregnancy she would have found one. Both accused the other of gross negligence. King avoided swinging in the breeze by the act of his discovery in the last hour. He had saved the prison system from executing a pregnant woman, which would have rained hell fire’s damnation upon them from all compass directions, notwithstanding, the governor’s office.
Avalon hadn’t been spared the investigation. She
was
the investigation. She’d written out a fifty-page affidavit that included her schedule, visitations, contacts, and other general lifestyle activities for the past year. She passed three polygraph tests. Her story never changed. She denied physical contact with any male staff member at the Women’s Branch or Central Prison. Except for one. But now she couldn’t even be sure that such a thing had happened. Warden Remy did not believe that a long-haired priest had infiltrated the Central Prison under the surveillance net to impregnate a female death row inmate. He was convinced that Avalon was covering for the real guilty party, and it was just a matter of time before that name surfaced.
Warden Remy ordered the end of the investigation a week before the expected delivery date. Not a word more would ever be said about the mysterious pregnancy or the upcoming delivery. Any inmate found guilty of spreading the tale would face solitary confinement. Any staff member belonging to either institution who was heard spreading the rumors, faced dismissal or prosecution. Careers were on the line. Worse, it had all derived from some insane mystery that had made laughing stocks out of some of the most brilliant correctional professionals in the state of North Carolina.
The adoption proceedings ended up a hideous travesty. Avalon broke down in tears after being notified that her mother, Emily Chambers, had refused to adopt her child. Since the prison authorities could not name the father, the result was a bastard child that Emily wanted no part in raising. Emily was also convinced of her daughter’s guilt connected with her husband’s murder.
Tom’s parents did not attend the proceedings, wanting nothing to do with the adoption. The next in line was Drake Labrador, the victim’s brother. He’d testified to Avalon’s character during the trial, stating that she might have been innocent of the crime, although he had no concrete proof. He also claimed that she’d exhibited stellar behavior, with above average morals while in his company. Drake had been written into his brother’s will as the major recipient of the family business, given seventy percent of the company while the rest of the stock had been divided between both sets of parents. There had also been a rumor that Drake had formed a new software division that had become an instant drain on the company assets.