The Chamber (Page 106)

He paced around the table in his office and listened for the phone. He was tired of pacing and sick of the phone. The office was littered with the debris of a dozen briefs. The table was blanketed with disheveled piles of paper. Pink and yellow phone messages were stuck along one bookshelf.

Adam suddenly hated the place. He needed fresh air. He told Darlene he was going for a walk, and left the building. It was almost five, still bright and very warm. He walked to the Peabody Hotel on Union, and had a drink in a corner of the lobby near the piano. It was his first drink since Friday in New Orleans, and although he enjoyed it he worried about Lee. He looked for her in the crowd of conventioneers flocking around the registration desk. He watched the tables in the lobby fill up with well-dressed people, hoping that for some reason she would appear. Where do you hide when you’re fifty years old and running from life?

A man with a ponytail and hiking boots stopped and stared, then walked over. "Excuse me, sir. Are you Adam Hall, the lawyer for Sam Cayhall?"

Adam nodded.

The man smiled, obviously pleased that he’d recognized Adam, and walked to his table. "I’m Kirk Kleckner with the New York Times." He laid a business card in front of Adam. "I’m here covering the Cayhall execution. Just arrived, actually. May I sit down?"

Adam waved at the empty seat across the small round table. Kleckner sat down. "Lucky to find you here," he said, all smiles. He was in his early forties with a rugged, globe-trotting journalist look – scruffy beard, sleeveless cotton vest over a denim shirt, jeans. "Recognized you from some pictures I studied on the flight down."

"Nice to meet you," Adam said dryly.

"Can we talk?"

"About what?"

"Oh, lots of things. I understand your client will not give interviews."

"That’s correct."

"What about you?"

"The same. We can chat, but nothing for the record."

"That makes it difficult."

"I honestly don’t care. I’m not concerned with how difficult your job may be."

"Fair enough." A pliant young waitress in a short skirt stopped by long enough to take his order. Black coffee. "When did you last see your grandfather?"

"Tuesday."

"When will you see him again?"

"Tomorrow."

"How is he holding up?"

"He’s surviving. The pressure is building, but he’s taking it well, so far."

"What about you?"

"Just having a ball."

"Seriously. Are you losing sleep, you know, things like that?"

"I’m tired. Yeah, I’m losing sleep. I’m working lots of hours, running back and forth to the prison. It’ll go down to the wire, so the next few days will be hectic."

"I covered the Bundy execution in Florida. Quite a circus. His lawyers went days without sleep."

"It’s difficult to relax."

"Will you do it again? I know this is not your specialty, but will you consider another death case?"

"Only if I find another relative on death row. Why do you cover these things?"

"I’ve written for years on the death penalty. It’s fascinating. I’d like to interview Mr. Cayhall."

Adam shook his head and finished his drink. "No. There’s no way. He’s not talking to anyone."

"Will you ask him for me?"

"No."

The coffee arrived. Kleckner stirred it with a spoon. Adam watched the crowd. "I interviewed Benjamin Keyes yesterday in Washington," Kleckner said. "He said he wasn’t surprised that you’re now saying he made mistakes at trial. He said he figured it was coming."

At the moment, Adam didn’t care about Benjamin Keyes or any of his opinions. "It’s standard. I need to run. Nice to meet you."

"But I wanted to talk about – "

"Listen, you’re lucky you caught me," Adam said, standing abruptly.

"Just a couple of things," Kleckner said as Adam walked away.

Adam left the Peabody, and strolled to Front Street near the river, passing along the way scores of well-dressed young people very much like himself, all in a hurry to go home. He envied them; whatever their vocations or careers, whatever their pressures at the moment, they weren’t carrying burdens as heavy as his.

He ate a sandwich at a delicatessen, and by seven was back in his office.

The rabbit had been trapped in the woods at Parchman by two of the guards, who named him Sam for the occasion. He was a brown cottontail, the largest of the four captured. The other three had already been eaten.

Late Thursday night, Sam the rabbit and his handlers, along with Colonel Nugent and the execution team, entered the Maximum Security Unit in prison vans and pickups. They drove slowly by the front and around the bullpens on the west end. They parked by a square, red-brick building attached to the southwest corner of MSU.

Two white, metal doors without windows led to the interior of the square building. One, facing south, opened to a narrow room, eight feet by fifteen, where the witnesses sat during the execution. They faced a series of black drapes which, when opened, revealed the rear of the chamber itself, just inches away.

The other door opened into the Chamber Room, a fifteen-by-twelve room with a painted concrete floor. The octagonalshaped gas chamber sat squarely in the middle, glowing smartly from a fresh coat of silver enamel varnish and smelling like the same. Nugent had inspected it a week earlier and ordered a new paint job. The death room, as it was also known, was spotless and sanitized. The black drapes over the windows behind the chamber were pulled.

Sam the rabbit was left in the bed of a pickup while a small guard, about the same height and weight as Sam Cayhall, was led by two of his larger colleagues into the Chamber Room. Nugent strutted and inspected like General Patton – pointing and nodding and frowning. The small guard was pushed gently into the chamber first, then joined by the two guards who turned him around and eased him into the wooden chair. Without a word or a smile, neither a grin nor a joke, they strapped his wrists first with leather bands to the arms of the chair. Then his knees, then his ankles. Then one lifted his head up an inch or two and held it in place while the other managed to buckle the leather head strap.

The two guards stepped carefully from the chamber, and Nugent pointed to another member of the team who stepped forward as if to say something to the condemned.

"At this point, Lucas Mann will read the death warrant to Mr. Cayhall," Nugent explained like an amateur movie director. "Then I will ask if he has any last words." He pointed again, and a designated guard closed the heavy door to the chamber and sealed it.

"Open it," Nugent barked, and the door came open. The small guard was set Tree.

"Get the rabbit," Nugent ordered. One of the handlers retrieved Sam the rabbit from the pickup. He sat innocently in a wire cage which was handed to the same two guards who’d just left the chamber. They carefully placed him in the wooden chair, then went about their task of strapping in an imaginary man. Wrists, knees, ankles, head, and the rabbit was ready for the gas. The two guards left the chamber.

The door was shut and sealed, and Nugent signaled for the executioner, who placed a canister of sulfuric acid into a tube which ran into the bottom of the chamber. He pulled a lever, a clicking sound occurred, and the canister made its way to the bowl under the chair.

Nugent stepped to one of the windows and watched intently. The other members of the team did likewise. Petroleum jelly had been smeared around the edges of the windows to prevent seepage.