By Reason of Insanity (8 page)

One such topic of the moment was capital punishment and Lavery, who was very good at his job, could feel the interest building up. He was determined to get in on the ground floor. What he needed was a kickoff story, and he believed he had found the angle.

Adam Kenton was the first to arrive for the ten o’clock meeting. He paid the cab driver and hurried into the six-story building.

“Is he in yet?” he asked the elevator man, gesturing upward with his thumb.

“Ten o’clock? Are you kidding?” The operator closed the doors. “He gets in before I do.”

At the sixth floor Kenton turned left and marched down the hall, passing blowups of magazine covers hanging on the walls, each encased in glass with a small lamp above. The cumulative effect of the covers was obvious to him: nothing is as it seems. To which he often added the thought: Shoot the bastards who did it to us. At the end of the hall he opened the wood-paneled door.

“You’re late,” said the female voice behind the desk. But the face smiled pleasantly enough. She reached for the phone. “Adam Kenton is here,” she said after a moment. Replacing the receiver, she indicated a door on her right. “He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

Inside Lavery’s office he stopped. Sunlight flooded his eyes. The room was immense, almost the entire east side of the top floor. At one end was a huge living and dining area, carpeted and furnished with expensive sofas and easy chairs and tables, and a tiny kitchen set in an alcove along one side. At the other end, up several steps, was a large work area equipped with two long layout tables, design boards and rows of files stacked against the far wall. Louvered windows ran the entire length of the office and around one side of the living space. In the middle of the room stood a massive oak desk, behind which sat Derek Lavery. He motioned Kenton to a chair.

“What do you know about capital punishment?” he suddenly asked, his eyes fixed on the younger man.

Kenton crossed his legs. “Just what anyone knows,” he observed smoothly. “Either it works or it doesn’t work. Either it’s justice or just plain revenge.”

“Exactly,” replied Lavery. “Nobody knows for sure so everybody has strong feelings about it. And where there’s strong feeling there’s plenty of steam.”

“And a lot of hot air.”

“That too.” He gestured toward the papers on his desk. “I’ve been reading up on it. From what I can see this is only the beginning; it’ll get a lot hotter. What we should do,” he lowered his voice, “we should get in on it now.”

“You got an angle?”

“Might be.” His face creased but he broke it in mid-smile to scowl. “Let’s wait for Ding. The son of a bitch was never on time in his life.” He pushed his chair back and lit a fresh cigar from the humidor on his desk.

Kenton sat in thought. It was a good subject if handled right. After years of silent approval and thousands of executions, people were thinking seriously about capital punishment. States were stopping it, even the Supreme Court was calling it cruel and unusual. And people were separating into two warring camps.

The phone buzzed and Lavery picked it up. Another moment and the door opened to a booming voice.

“Derek, sorry I’m late.”

Lascelles Dingbar crossed the room hurriedly and stuffed himself into a chair, his overweight body squealing in delight. He nodded to Kenton, at the same time pulling out an enormous handkerchief and mopping his huge brow. “The weather, you know.”

“Glad you could make it,” murmured Lavery in mock sarcasm. The two men were good friends, having put in almost twenty years together. Lavery knew Dingbar—Ding to everyone—to be a good legman and tenacious with facts. But he would never trust him to be on time anywhere.

Ding ignored the remark, squeezing himself further into the chair. Roughly the same age as Lavery, of average height and many pounds overweight, he had a shade of sandy hair left atop a large oval face, usually florid. His hands were soft and flabby, his legs mere pipestems, and he suffered from innumerable disorders to which he paid absolutely no attention. He could move fast if he had to, and he had the knack of putting people at ease, a valuable asset in his work. He was also a very good listener.

“We were talking about capital punishment.” Derek Lavery placed his cigar carefully in the heart-shaped ashtray and looked at the two men in front of him. Neither spoke.

Swiftly and expertly he outlined the controversy on the subject in the 1950s and sixties, from the Rosenberg aftermath to Barbara Graham to the civil rights movement and the disproportionate number of black men executed. He was interrupted only by his puffings on the cigar.

“For twenty years capital punishment has been dying on its own, through disuse. But it was slow and didn’t attract the headlines or the sustained passion.” Puff, puff “And without passion we have no news.” He smiled briefly.

“In 1952 there were eighty-three executions in this country; in 1965 there were seven. But for the past six years—none. Not one, nothing. Two years ago fifteen states had abolished it. Now the Supreme Court has finished the job.” He clamped the cigar between his teeth. “Only they ain’t.”

Kenton shifted in his chair, unbuttoned his jacket.

“I said they haven’t finished the job. All they really did was draw the battle lines. From now on the shit’s going to be flying.”

“I don’t see it that way,” said Ding, still mopping his brow. “When the Court ruled 5—4 against it last year, seems to me that was the end of capital punishment.”

“The hell it was.” Lavery shook his head. “A lot of the states will vote to restore the death penalty, some will call for a constitutional amendment. But all that doesn’t interest me. What I’m talking about is the public reaction, that’s where the news will come from.” He put the cigar down. “Look at it this way. The do-gooders think they won and the hard-liners are watching for the first wrong move. There’s maybe a thousand men in jail right now that a lot of people want dead. Meanwhile the killings on the outside go on as they always do. People are afraid to go out at night, they’re afraid to leave their houses. They’re buying dogs and gates and locks, and they’re buying guns too. Every time somebody gets raped or killed, they scream for capital punishment.” He tapped the desk. “The next time some punk knocks off a half dozen people there’ll be holy hell to pay. That’s where the action is, not in some court. And that’s where we should be.”

Kenton and Ding exchanged glances. Both were certain now that he had something specific in mind.

“If what I say is right,” continued Lavery, “we should be doing stories on the issue, because it’s timely and it’s passionate.” He blew his nose into a silk handkerchief, which he neatly tucked back in his breast pocket. “What I want for a kickoff is a lead piece on the man who was the big symbol in the sixties.”

“And who might that be?” asked Ding.

“Without him,” said Lavery, ignoring the question, “we might still have the death penalty. He pulled all the do-gooders together, he started the whole idea of cruel and unusual punishment. Before he came along there was just an automatic appeal and a call to the governor. He polished the technique of appeals right to the top. He was granted more stays of execution than anybody, and he lived in the death house longer than anybody.”

No one spoke for a long moment. Finally Kenton was unable to contain his curiosity. “What happened to him?” he blurted out.

“He was executed.” Ding sighed, looked at Lavery. “Chessman?”

“Caryl Chessman,” Lavery said softly.

The room darkened as passing clouds hid the sun. After a while Ding sighed again, a long low moan of resignation. “It was a long time ago,” he whispered.

“Thirteen years,” replied Lavery. “And twelve years before that on death row. But I don’t want a rehash, I want a fresh look at the crime and those twelve years. The angle is capital punishment. You know what I mean,” he said, glancing at Ding. “‘Was Caryl Chessman a Victim of Capital Punishment?’ Something like that.”

“I just remember the name. Who did he kill?” asked Kenton.

Lavery turned to him. “That’s just the point. He didn’t kill anybody. That’s why it’s a good lead story. His death got a lot of people mad and paved the way for abolishing the death penalty. That’s the angle you use: he died for nothing but his death helped others to live.”

“I don’t understand. If he didn’t kill anybody—”

“He was convicted,” interrupted Ding, “of robbery, rape and kidnapping with intent to commit bodily harm. In those days, after the Lindbergh thing, that was worth execution. But his kidnapping, if I remember right,” he turned back to Lavery, “was just moving the woman someplace else to rape her.”

“That’s right.” Lavery tapped the desk with his finger. “He killed nobody. His crime wasn’t worth execution. And he faced death for twelve long years.”

Another silence filled the room. At length Lavery spoke. “There’s another thing you should know. Right up to the end Chessman claimed he was innocent. Now, I don’t give a damn if he was guilty or not, but”—he stopped to emphasize the word—”if we could cast doubt on his guilt, any doubt at all, we’d have not only the fact that the crime wasn’t worth death but maybe he didn’t even do it. Just remember that,” he added calmly, “when you write it up.”

“What’s the time on it?”

“None,” snapped Lavery. “I want it running in four weeks. You got one, that’s all.”

Kenton sucked in his breath, looked over at Ding who nodded back. They had worked together on several stories and had attended many of Lavery’s briefings. When he wanted something that quickly it usually meant he was determined to go all the way with it, no matter what. They were visibly impressed.

“Actually,” continued Lavery, “the idea came to me last month when I heard a radio show about capital punishment. They mentioned Chessman. Since then I’ve been trying to find the right lead, and yesterday it hit me. Chessman was perfect.” He shoved a folder toward Kenton. “There’s a transcript of the trial and a few other things the research people dug up. Like Ding says, it was a long time ago.”

“That’s all we got?”

“That’s all we got now,” said Lavery. “You get more.” He leaned back in the Barclay Lounger, cigar in hand.

“Ding, I want you to backtrack some of the people on the crime and the trial. Talk to a few, get some direct quotes. You know the game. Adam, you handle the twelve years in the death house and the execution.”

“What about our other work?”

“Finish what you can today and drop the rest back a week. I’ll talk to Daniels in Assignment. Any other questions?”

Ding ponderously struggled forward in his chair. “Just one,” he said softly.

Lavery, knowing the man, waited expectantly.

“This Chessman story will come down pretty hard on capital punishment. He didn’t kill, he didn’t kidnap as we know it today, and he spent a short lifetime dying a little every day.”

“So?”

“So what do we do for the other side?”

Lavery allowed himself a big smile. “That’s easy,” he said quickly. “When the next real nut comes along, we’ll scream bloody murder for fast execution. Society must be protected.”

He stood up. “Anything else?”

At about the same time as the briefing in Los Angeles, another meeting dealing with life and death was taking place in a California town some six hundred miles north of the movie capital. Hillside had grown rapidly after World War II, going from a sleepy hamlet of a few thousand peaceful souls to a full-fledged city of 35,000 lawful and scheming individuals. With it came industry, unemployment, delinquency and crime. Where once fertile fields at the town’s southern edge gave an unobstructed view of the far horizon, now rows of claptrap housing and murky warehouses framed the area in commercial squalor. Like many such towns newly sprung from old traditions, Hillside had its tensions between early settlers and latecomers, between the north side and the south side, between well-to-do and destitute and, as anywhere, between young and old.

Over the years the city fathers had tried their best to cope with the growth pains, and while nobody accepted all the solutions, almost everybody agreed on the problems. On a sun-drenched June morning Lieutenant John Spanner of the Hillside Police Department discussed some of the more recent problems with his men.

Spanner, newly back from a fishing vacation that had given him renewed interest in life, was still a small-town cop at heart. Coming out of the army after the war, he returned to his hometown and joined the police force when it was just a five-man operation. With trepidation and some alarm he watched the town grow until now, as the number two man in the department, he rode in the cars with flashing lights and sophisticated communications, and routinely sent fingerprints to Washington and blood samples to laboratories and computer printouts to metropolitan centers.

Yet he still believed in the personal approach to police work, the individual touch, the friendly hand and the stern lecture, the slow, steady gathering of evidence from many sources until an assumption became a conclusion. At fifty-five, with too many years on the job and a lifetime of watching people, Spanner knew that they usually operated from hidden motives not easily seen, often not even by themselves. What was needed for good police work was patience and imagination and the steady buildup of seemingly inconsequential facts.

He constantly tried to get his men to see the truth, and on this particular morning he pointed out that the shooting on Redwood Road might be the result of a love triangle, since the husband was frequently away on business; that the series of amateurish house burglaries on the south side could be the work of an addict desperately seeking drug money; that the recent wave of muggings might come from a juvenile gang forming in the area. All would require patient checking, he told them, and a lot of legwork. Two of the younger cops, aware of his fine record of convictions but still addicted to the idea of guns and forced confessions, looked at each other in mock dismay. The lieutenant was at it again.

Seven miles south of Hillside but still in the town’s jurisdiction, in a state hospital for the criminally insane referred to by townspeople simply as the Willows, two young men went about their normal routine. For one of them, however, there was an addition to the routine, a visit to a clump of bushes on the east lawn behind the main building. His hands hurriedly dug into the soft ground, soon unearthing a rusted tool. Two months earlier he had found it in almost the same spot, left by some forgetful gardener. Relieved, he slipped the tool inside the laundry he carried and returned to his ward, where he put it in the lockbox under his bed. Then he went back to waiting.