The Executioner's Song (112 page)

                And I went over to the gas station and told Jensen to give me the money, and he did, and I told him, well, come on in the bathroom and get down on the floor, and it was pretty quick. I didn't let him know it was coming or anything. It was just a .22, so I shot him twice in rapid succession, to make sure that he was not in any pain or that he wasn't left half alive or anything. And, and, I left there and I drove to, uh, I don't know just where that Sinclair station was, but I drove back to the main drag. State Street, I guess it is, and I went into Albertson's and bought some potato chips and different things to take to a movie and half a case of beer and some things that April wanted to eat.

Finally, one of the lawyers asked a question. Farrell couldn't help but note that it produced better results. It was obvious Gilmore had to be pushed out of the psychopathic flats.

INTERVIEWER   Now, one thing. When you stopped at the gas station, did you have any intention of either robbing Jensen or killing him?

GILMORE            I had the intention of killing him.

INTERVIEWER   When did that concept form in your mind? To kill somebody—

GILMORE            I can't say. It had been building all week. That night I knew I had to open a valve and let something out and I didn't know exactly what it would be and I wasn't thinking I'll do this or I'll do that, or that'll make me feel better. I just knew something was happening in me and that I'd let some of the steam off and, uh, I guess all this sounds pretty vicious.

INTERVIEWER   No. No. Did Jensen say anything to annoy you?

GILMORE            No, not at all.

INTERVIEWER   What prompted you to leave the truck and go into the office where Jensen was?

GILMORE            I don't really know.

INTERVIEWER   What do you mean by that?

GILMORE            I mean, I don't really know. I said the place looked deserted. It just seemed appropriate.

INTERVIEWER   Apparently, killing Jensen didn't do anything to take the pressure off. Why did you go out the next night and kill Bushnell?

GILMORE            I don't know, man. I'm impulsive. I don't think.

INTERVIEWER   You killed him the same way you'd killed Jensen the night before—ordering him to lie down on the floor, then firing point-blank into his head. Did you think killing Bushnell would give you some kind of relief you didn't get with Jensen?

GILMORE            I told you, I wasn't thinking. What I do remember is an absence of thought. Just movements, actions. I shot Bushnell, and then the gun jammed—them fucking Automatics! And I thought, man, this guy's not dead. I wanted to shoot him a second time, cause I didn't want him to lie there half dead. I didn't want him in pain. I tried to jack the mechanism and get the gun working and shoot him again, but it was jammed, and I had to get my ass out of there. I jacked the gun into shape again but too late to do anything for Mr. Bushnell. I'm afraid he didn't die immediately. When I ordered him to lie down, I wanted it to be quick for him. There was no chance, no choice for him. That sounds cold. But you asked.

INTERVIEWER   Was there any difference in the way you approached the two killings?

GILMORE            No, not really. You could say it was a little more certain that Mr. Bushnell was going to die.

INTERVIEWER   Why?

GILMORE            Because it was already a fact that Mr. Jensen had died and so the next one was more certain.

ITERVIEWER       Was the second killing easier than the first?

GILMORE            Neither one of 'em were hard or easy.

INTERVIEWER   Had you ever had any dealings of any kind with either of those men?

GILMORE            No.

INTERVIEWER   Well, what led you to the City Center Motel, where Bushnell worked? We're just trying to understand the quality of this rage you speak of. It wasn't a rage that might have been vented in sex?

GILMORE            I don't want to mess with questions that pertain to sex. I think they're cheap.

INTERVIEWER   But if, on the night you killed Bushnell, you had wound up with a friendly girl who could offer you beer and company and a relaxing time, wouldn't that have helped you feel better?

GILMORE            I don't want to answer that question.

INTERVIEWER   You seem to find it easier talking about murder than sex.

GILMORE            That's your judgment.

Good stuff, thought Farrell. A good beginning.

                All through Christmas week, however, there was a pall. No more interviews of merit. Farrell began to wonder if he had scared Gilmore off. Or was Gary disabled from the holidays? Looking over his bitter responses about Christmas in prison, it was not hard to read between the lines: my last New Year's on earth.

                Barry also began to worry that the lawyers might be the cause.

                Day after day, in that last week of the year, they went out and bantered with Gary, skipped around key points, ignored any reasonable follow-up to good responses, and read Farrell's more elaborate questions as if they were too literary for real men to get their mouth around.

Barry would call up Stanger's office and, with great difficulty, dictate new questions. A day or two later, the tape would come back so empty of content that Farrell would wonder whether the lawyers wanted to show they could not only produce, but hold back. He figured they must still be mad over Schiller's trip to Hawaii. Maybe there was something unholy in interrogating a man on the way to his death, but virtually nothing came back.

STANGER            Have you ever been any good as a prison politician?

GILMORE            In the last period when I was in Oregon I got off into a revolutionary bag a little bit, and then I just seen them revolutionaries ain't gonna revolution shit, so I fell out of that. (laughing)

STANGER            Okay. You spent more than four years in the hole. Is this because you choose to do it the hard way? Or, because your acts are beyond your control?

GILMORE            (laughing).. I gotta pick A, or B now, huh? (laughing)

STANGER            Multiple choice . . . (laughing)

GILMORE            Man, I'm just a fuck-up.

Moody and Stanger might not have been overworking the mine, but they were sure curious about sales. As soon as Schiller came back from Hawaii they began to question him about the overseas sales.

                Schiller had to give them details on deals before they were even discussed.

                His remark at lunch that he could sell the letters, and they would never know, had come home to him. They paid a lot of attention to the prospect of money coming in. He hoped it might fire them up to do better interviews, but it only made them feel that they were doing the work for everybody else. They even started to claim that the interviews were not part of their original arrangement, and they should get additional compensation. He could tell it would be an ongoing discussion.

About the way it went. Certain exchanges drove Farrell up the wall In the interview on December 20, there had been a clue in the back-and-forth:

INTERVIEWER   Your sense of the inevitability and the rightness of your fate suggests that the killings were a long time coming. Had you fantasized yourself in the killer's role long before it became a reality? (pause) It's a good heady question, isn't it? (laughter)

GILMORE            Yeah, it is. I wonder if I could go take a hit 'n' miss? (laughter) That's rhyme in Cockney for "piss."

INTERVIEWER   Sounds good. Let's do it.

GILMORE            And come back and answer that one. I'll give that some thought.

INTERVIEWER   Okay.

GILMORE            It's rather religious.

Then Gary had come back with his long and half-satisfactory account of killing Jensen. That was last week. It proved what Farrell had expected.

                Secretly, Gilmore did like literary questions and highly formulated approaches. It dignified his situation. Here, despite the lawyer's mockery of the question, he had still worked to find some kind of answer. But such willingness to reply would not bear up if the lawyer kept responding with nothing but jokes. It was like people making quips around the bed of a man dying of cancer.

                The problem, Schiller decided, was that vis-a-vis Gary, the lawyers were feeling stronger all the time. They had made a point of letting him know that while he was sunning in Hawaii, they had been out at the jail on Christmas Day. They had also been out New Year's Day. And every day in between. That Gary had sure been lonely. The lawyers informed Schiller as if he had been absent for years. There was no question Gary looked forward to the visits they would make. It enabled him to leave his cell and go to the booth just off the visitors' room. Even after a couple of hours of conversation, they had no more than to hang up the phone and start to leave, when they would hear a tap on the window. Gilmore was pulling them back. He wanted to inquire about their children. He would give advice. When they do something wrong, punish them. But keep telling them you love them.

Those daily sessions had given the lawyers such concern for Gary's daily situation, Schiller decided, that they were not seeing the big job. It had become natural for them to downgrade it.

Schiller's most worrisome problem on returning, however, was with Gary. First, he had to tell him about the National Enquirer.

                That piece would be out in a few days. From Hawaii, he instructed the lawyers to explain to Gilmore that he had sold a few rights to the Enquirer because they were going to do a story on Gilmore anyway, and he thought they should pick up some money. That worked. Gilmore agreed. But then, in another telegram, Schiller made the mistake of using a code name for Nicole. Not wanting the prison to know what he was talking about, he sent in some questions referring to her as Freckles.

                Too late, he realized that Gary sometimes called her that in his letters. What a prize goof! He must have wanted to confess to Gary that he had read the letters. If Gilmore would only agree that reading those letters was no crime, it might encourage more intimacy in the questioning. No chance. While Schiller was still in Hawaii, Moody read him a note from Gary.

Dear Larry,

                Freckles?

                Her name is Nicole.

                Dig?

                You've read the letters—I don't like that.

                I've got about a hundred letters right here in my cell that Nicole wrote to me.

                You aint reading them.

                DEC. 30, 3:43 P.M.

                GARY GILMORE

                UTAH STATE PRISON

                PO BOX 250

                DRAPER UT 84020

                I UNDERSTAND YOUR POINT AND IT WAS WELL MADE STOP I WAS NOT TRYING TO HIDE THE FACT STOP REGARDS

                LARRY

                When there was no answer, Schiller sent another telegram.

                JAN 2, I:42 P.M.

                GARY GILMORE

                UTAH STATE PRISON BOX 250

                DRAPER UT 84020

                NICOLE'S PRIDE IN YOUR LETTERS ALLOWED HER TO SHARE THEM WITH SEVERAL PEOPLE INCLUDING MYSELF STOP SIDE BY SIDE BOTH SETS OF LETTERS COULD ONLY LEAVE A TRUER AND MORE COMPLETE RECORD OF YOUR LOVE THAN EITHER OF THEM ALONE STOP I WANT TO DEFEAT THE IDEA THAT YOU HAVE A POWER OVER HER STOP THAT IS THE EFFECT THAT IS BEING DRAWN WHEN ONE READS ONLY YOUR SIDE STOP HER LETTERS IN MY OPINION WOULD BE THE STRONGEST WAY OF GIVING THE TRUE PICTURE OF YOUR RELATIONSHIP STOP THIS IS NO WAY TO COMMUNICATE BUT IT'S THE BEST THAT WE GOT.

                LARRY

"I will before it's over," thought Schiller.

                The answer came back on tape via Moody and Stanger:

                I don't question your motives. I know you need to know all you can.

                But some of your methods . . .

                Its a matter of how you approach me Larry—

                You can offend me.

                I would rather you didn't

                May I suggest—that you be utterly straightforward with me.

                Because I'm a literal man.

                When I asked you not to read those letters you didn't argue with me or try to persuade me.

                The next time you offend me it will be forever Larry.

                But, for the nonce, this one time, I will let it ride.