Not in the Heart (24 page)

C
HAPTER
38

8 DAYS BEFORE EXECUTION

Suffice it to say the next few days did not go well with Abigail and Ellen because they somehow noticed that I didn't come home until early in the morning that next day and that I had left Aiden's opened credit card envelope on top of the trash in the kitchen. It's tough having bloodhounds as your relatives but I suppose it's in the gene pool. My daughter cried and Ellen didn't run her thumb across the scar on my face or sit on her bed in a towel. I said I was sorry, that I needed help, and that I would be out of their lives soon. They didn't protest.

The missing journal or journals didn't turn up, and neither did my dignity. Abby called in sick when Tompkins put the pressure on for a return engagement at his club. Diana's mother turned sour to our search for the final journal and neither Chandler nor Sawyer had any independent or dependent recollection of a journal Diana had left behind in her purse or in Terrelle Conley's car.

I banished myself to the bedroom, threw myself back into Terrelle's story, and came up with a few last questions, holes in the narrative I needed to wrap up. Oleta arranged my final meeting with him, but the day before, I met with the doctor who would coordinate the execution medical staff.

Dr. Lyle Granger was a short man with perfect posture, mainly because of a childhood bout with scoliosis, who was very good at cutting directly to the main artery of my questions.

He explained how the procedure would work, the difficulty in fulfilling the demands of the state to have Terrelle pronounced dead at the prison and still have a viable heart to transport and transplant.

“We'll use the governor's helicopter for transport of the heart. We have a window of four hours, and our estimates are that from the severing of the aorta to the time of transplant will be between fifty-two and fifty-six minutes. We've already timed the flight.”

Something in his voice sent a tingle down my spine. When your son's life is on the line, you want someone who knows within four minutes how long it will take to transport a human heart from point A to point B.

“So you'll be doing the actual procedure . . .”

“The harvesting,” he said. “Yes.”

“How will that work?”

“Like any execution, we have to go on the state's timetable. We'll prep him for the surgery. He'll have the opportunity to speak his last words to his family and the witnesses in attendance. We'll take him to the surgical room and keep him alive until after the harvest. Then he'll be taken off artificial support.”

“Not a usual amount of time for the witnesses to wait.”

“No, but these are not usual circumstances. If we didn't have Terrelle's full cooperation in this, there would be no way we could do it.”

With military precision he told me how long the procedure would take. He must have sensed some hesitation on my part, which was my growing concern that Terrelle might be innocent.

“Mr. Wiley, I've practiced on nearly seven thousand patients in the last thirty years. I'll bring all that experience into that sterile room at the prison. Terrelle's life will be treated with the dignity he deserves. And I promise you, when his heart gets to the doctors who are treating your son, they'll have everything they need to give him a new shot at life.”

“I don't doubt your abilities. Will this environment pose a challenge?”

“I was a trauma surgeon in one of Chicago's biggest hospitals, where kids were coming in with gunshot wounds, bleeding like stuck pigs. I operated on soldiers coming off the battlefield. I will guarantee you Terrelle Conley's heart will make it to your son.”

Terrelle seemed tired and listless during our final interview. His eyes were more vacant than I had ever seen them. I had sent him the first few pages of the book and he thanked me for what I had done.

“It almost sounds like me talking on those pages. You did a real good job.”

“That's my goal—to capture your voice and let it come through. I have to get out the way.”

“Well, for what it's worth, I'm glad we chose you.”

I stared at him, trying to figure out how to say what I wanted. “The confession you gave . . . I know that was difficult. Thank you.”

He dipped his head to one side and gave a wry smile. “I warmed up to it after a while. I realized it's not really about me. The point is to give your boy a shot at life. I'm going to die one way or another. But people will know the truth because of what you're writing. That's what keeps me going.”

I began asking the questions to fill in the holes of his story, some about his earlier life, a few about the descent into alcohol and days on the street.

“I have one source who says something a little different from your view. He claims that you were like clockwork on that street outside the salon. You were there just about every day, same time, same place.”

Terrelle squinted and the lines on his forehead were deep furrows. “It's hard to say for sure because by the end I was pretty far down into the bottle. Or maybe it was far down into me. I wouldn't deny showing up at the same places because that's where I got the money to head back to my trailer. You know?”

Just like finding a new credit card in the mail.

“Do you remember . . . ?” I changed my mind midquestion because it was too far-fetched.

“What were you going to ask?”

“The woman who was killed kept a journal. You don't remember anything about it, do you?”

“If I had killed her, maybe I would. You're talking about a diary?”

I nodded.

“I don't recall anything. They found her purse in my car, so if it was in there, the police got it. And they never brought it up at the trial. Did she carry it around?”

“I've heard she wrote in it all the time.”

“Look at the surveillance video. They played it at the trial and magnified it. Made it real clear so they could show me yelling at her.”

“It's not important,” I said, regretting I had gone down that rabbit trail. The question seemed to upset him and that's not what I wanted with time ticking down and the big question ahead of me. “Have you thought about your last meal?”

“I was thinking about one of those big charbroiled burgers they serve at expensive restaurants. And maybe a whole pound of boiled shrimp. I don't want to do anything to hurt my ticker, of course. How's your son doing, by the way?”

“Not too well, to be honest. This last hospitalization has really done a number on him.”

“Do they need to move the transplant up?”

Interesting that he would call it a transplant and not an execution. Even in Terrelle's mind, this was about life for Aiden.

“I doubt that'll happen, no matter what condition he's in. But I appreciate you asking.”

“I'll do whatever it takes.”

“Thanks, Terrelle,” I said, and the emotion in my voice caught me off guard. He smiled sadly at me.

“Any thoughts about your last words?” I said quickly, looking away. This was the big question. I wanted his thought process about what he was going to say. Ronnie Lawson had memorized his speech meticulously. I wanted to know if Terrelle was doing the same thing, spending all his waking moments thinking about what he would leave the earth saying.

He thought a minute. “I got a speech I been working on. I was hoping you'd be there to hear it.”

“I will be. But how about a preview?”

He nodded. “I figure I'll thank the people who are there, the doctors and whatnot, friends of the family. Press guy. I'll pay tribute to Oleta. She was the best thing in my life. Period. And then my kids. I missed my chance with them and I'll go to my grave regretting that. But I want to tell them not to let what happened to me get them down. I'll thank the warden and the governor for letting me have something good come out of the bad. And of course I'll thank God for constantly being there with me through all these years.”

“Nothing about being innocent?”

He chuckled and coughed. “I'll probably tell them to look for a new book coming out about that.”

“I don't think they allow you to plug books with your last words.”

“Don't see how they can stop me. You got a title yet?”

I still had several floating around. Sometimes titles appear in a flash of creativity before the writing starts. Most of the time they come after the writing ends. “I was hoping you would think of the perfect one.”

He smiled and sat for a moment. The guard behind him looked at his watch. Almost time to go.

“There's a verse in one of the Gospels,” Terrelle said. “Jesus says it, so it's in red. It's about a man laying down his life for his friends. That's what I want to start with, you know, before chapter 1 or wherever. If you could look that up and put it in there, I'd appreciate it.”

“Be glad to.”

I started to get up, but Terrelle wasn't finished. “There's one thing before you go,” he said. “One thing I have to ask you.”

“Shoot.”

Bad choice of words.

“When the blood stops flowing to my brain, when they've cut the main artery that keeps me alive, I know what's going to happen. I will be in the presence of my Savior. I don't have any doubt of that. But I wonder about you. What hope do you have in eternity?”

“I'm good, Terrelle. I've grown closer to my family in these last few weeks. And whatever happens down the road, I think I'll be okay.”

He shook his head. “That's not good enough. When you stand before God to give account, you have to have more than a good feeling. You have to know where you're headed.”

“When I'm there, I don't know that I'll be able to say anything.”

“That's true.”

“But if I can talk, I'll say I did my best. I messed up my life big-time, but I tried hard. Tried to kick a few habits. Tried to overcome some stuff from my past.”

Terrelle launched into the short version of the Conley catechism. With all the verses and the blood and sin and atonement. It wasn't easy not paying attention to a dying man's last words, but I somehow managed. Just shut him right out with glazed-over eyes. I just wanted to get out of there.

“Ask him to forgive you,” Terrelle said. “He'll show you what to do.”

I told Terrelle I would seriously consider what he had said.

“Please, Truman. Jesus is the only way.”

The guard moved in and touched him on the shoulder. I told him I'd try to get back and see him one more time before the big day but we both knew this was it.

“Whatever happens from here on out, I appreciate what you've done, Mr. Truman.”

I nodded and tried to say something but the words wouldn't come.

When I returned home, I searched for the DVD in the Piggly Wiggly bag. While I waited for it to load, I typed
Jesus laying down his life
in my search engine and up popped John 15:12-13.

“This is my commandment: Love each other in the same way I have loved you. There is no greater love than to lay down one's life for one's friends.”

I'm not a student of Jesus. From what I understand, he was a good teacher and promoted peace and love. My problem is his followers. Most think they know how everybody else ought to live. They whip the truth around like a scalpel and wave it at homosexuals and adulterers, until a pastor is caught with a prostitute. Then they talk about forgiveness and restoration. Either that or they hang their own guy and hire another.

I know that's being hard on Jesus, because there are some of his people who aren't jerks, like Ellen. She tries to love people as they are and not who she wants them to be. Take me, for instance. I'm hard to love. I admire her Herculean efforts.

To be honest, I can't buy into the whole church/Jesus thing. Maybe it would change my life if I tried it, which is why I haven't tried it. I think God, if he is really up there, accepts us the way we are and doesn't have a problem with people who are just trying to get by. Of course, I could be wrong about that and if I am, I'll be disappointed when I hit the shores of eternity. I prefer to think of it that way rather than me coming back as an ant or a caterpillar. Stepping onto a shoreline somewhere with the water lapping against golden sand. It's either that or just nothing—you live, you die, and that's it. Unless . . .

Unless Terrelle and my wife are right and there's a God who really does care enough to make a way back to him. I guess out of all the possibilities in the world, that's an alternative. And if that's true, Abby and I are on the outside looking in, and I won't get to walk the shoreline.

I had watched the surveillance footage early on, but it was more of a cursory viewing to get me into the story. I had skipped the longer version that showed the before and after of the verbal attack. The DVD showed a time stamp in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. Since there was no audio, a lip-reading expert had been called in to interpret what had been said. The defense objected, but the woman who testified corroborated what was said by eyewitnesses who were on the street. Terrelle's profanity-laced statement at the end and his two fiery-looking eyes were grim reminders of his previous life.

He approached Diana as soon as she came out of the salon and followed her. Terrelle looked like a different person, wild-eyed, with darker and longer hair that had a mind of its own. In a word, he looked scary, and when he called to Diana from the street, it sent my stomach to the floor. As he approached her, I wanted to stop the video. Even I could read his lips when he threatened her. She kept shaking her head and trying to get away but he wouldn't stop.

“I'm going to kill you!” he shouted, the veins on his neck sticking out.

The first angle caught Diana from the front as she exited the salon and Terrelle confronted her. The second view was from the top, so the viewer mostly saw everything from above as Diana hurried away down the sidewalk. There were others on the street that day. A woman carrying a grocery bag. A young mom with a child in a stroller. Why had Terrelle picked out Diana? Why not anyone else?