The Executioner's Song (142 page)

                From Munich, Germany, one woman called 17 times.

                "My husband died in a concentration camp," she said. "The same thing is happening there. America's no better than that," was her repeated contention. Another woman caller cried, saying she had a dream three weeks ago that Gary should not die.

Schiller had reassigned Jerry Scott from watching over the office to meeting up with Gary's body in Salt Lake. Jerry was to make certain no kooks tried something while the autopsy took place.

                On the drive from Orem to the hospital, Jerry Scott was mulling over how he had been the one to take Gary to Utah State Prison from the County Jail right after his trial, and now, he'd probably be the last one to view the remains. That was a large enough coincidence to occupy your mind.

                The autopsy room on the fifth floor at the University of Utah Hospital was good sized with two slabs and Jerry, by way of his police work, was familiar with it. Postmortems for the State were held there.

                This morning, they had just brought in the body of a woman who had drowned in a river north of Salt Lake, and they had her beside Gary, the two tables about ten feet apart.

                At first, it was hard to tell who were the doctors what with three males and three females all around the tables, and a couple of them busy removing Gilmore's eyes, and then another team on the organs for the transplants. They all seemed to be working in a great rush, and obviously had to get everything out pretty quickly. All the same, another doctor, watching, kept saying, "Can you hurry? I have a lot of work to do," and just a little later, "Aren't you done with him yet?"

                Finally, the last of the special doctors said, "Yes, he's yours," and the regular autopsy crew took over.

                Jerry Scott stood only three or four feet away. He was curious to see what was going on, and the medical examiner told him he could be a witness to the postmortem, and took his name, plus the name of Cordell Jones, a Deputy Sheriff whom Jerry Scott was glad to see there, because Jerry expected trouble later with the people outside when Gary's body would be transported from the hospital to the crematorium. In fact, he asked Cordell Jones to help on crowd control.

                Jerry had counted at least twenty people down below at the hospital door of which only a couple were bona fide newsmen, and, more than a good dozen, oddballs and thrill-seekers. So, at the least, Jerry was expecting problems and a confrontation, possibly with agitators.

                The doctor who had been getting the transplants had left Gary open from above the pubic hair to his breastbone. Now, the autopsy crew washed him down and the examiner took a scalpel, and continued the incision up the breastbone to the neck, and continued the cut on out to the shoulder on each side. Then, he started pulling up.

                He skinned Gilmore right up over his shoulders like taking a shirt half off, and with a saw cut right up the breastbone to the throat, and removed the breastplate and set it in a big, open sink with running water. Then, he took out what was left of Gilmore's heart.

                Jerry Scott couldn't believe what he saw. The thing was pulverized.

                Not even half left. Jerry didn't recognize it as the heart. Had to ask the doctor. "Excuse me," he said, "is that it?" The doctor said, "Yup."

                "Well, he didn't feel anything, did he?" asked Jerry Scott. The doctor said, "No." Jerry had been looking at the bullet pattern earlier, and there had been four neat little holes you could have covered with a water glass, all within a haft inch of each other. The doctors had been careful to take quite a few pictures. They numbered every hole with a Magic Marker, and turned Gary over to photograph where each bullet exited from his back. Looking at those marks, Jerry could see the guys on the firing squad hadn't been shaky at all. You could tell they'd all squeezed off a good shot.

                Of course, Jerry was always thinking about getting shot himself. It could happen any time on duty. He had to keep wondering what it would be like. Now, looking at the heart, he repeated, "He didn't feel anything, did he?" The doctor said, "No, nothing." Jerry said, "Well, did he move around after he was shot?" The doctor said, "Yes, about two minutes." "Was that just nerves?" Jerry asked. The fellow said, "Yes," and added, "He was dead, but we had to officially wait until he quit moving. That was about two minutes later."

                After this, it got really gruesome. Jerry had to admit it. They started removing different parts of Gilmore's body. Took his plumbing out, stomach, entrails and everything, then cut little pieces out of each organ. One guy was up at the head just working away. Next thing you knew, he had Gilmore's tongue in his hand. "Why take that?" asked Jerry Scott. He didn't know whether his questions bothered the doctors or not, but since he had to witness, he thought he might as well find out what was going on. The dissectionist answered, "We're going to take a sample of it." Put the tongue down on the slab, cut it in half and sliced out a piece. Put it in a bottle of solution.

                Jerry Scott had seen a lot of bodies, and gone to a lot of plane wrecks, and he knew what a person dismembered could look like, but just sitting there, watching them cut away, got to him. These fellows were really good at it, and kept talking back and forth, but they couldn't have been less excited if they were in a meat stall doing a job on a quarter of beef Once in a while they'd call across to some other medics working on that woman who had drowned. She was so fat, that when they cut her open, her stomach hung over her thigh. Kept working like it was nothing.

                Now, the fellow who was at the head of Jerry's table made an incision from behind Gary's left ear all the way up across the top of his head and then down below to the other ear, after which he grabbed the scalp on both sides of the cut, and pulled it right open, just pulled the whole face down below his chin until it was inside out like the back of a rubber mask. Then he took a saw and cut around the skull.

                Picked up something like a putty knife, and pried the bone open, popped the top of the head off. Then, he stuck his hand inside the cavity and pulled the brain out, weighed it. Pound and a half, it looked like to Jerry Scott. Then they removed the pituitary, put it aside, and sliced the brain like meat loaf. "Why are you doing that?" asked Jerry Scott. "Well," said one of the doctors, "we're looking for tumors." They started explaining to him about the different areas of the brain, and how they were looking to see if there were any problems in Gary Gilmore's motor system. Everything however, looked to be just fine.

                Then they took pictures of his tattoos. "Mom" had been written on his left shoulder, and "Nicole" on his left forearm. They took his fingerprints, and then they took all the organs they did not need for dissection and put them back into the body and head cavities, and drew his face up, pulled it right back taut over the bones and muscles, like putting on the mask again, fit the sawed-off bone-cap back on the skull, and sewed the scalp, and body cavity. When they were all finished, it looked like Gary Gilmore again.

                During all of this, Jerry Scott noticed that Gilmore only had two teeth on his bottom gums and none on the top. Then they put his false teeth back. Looking at him now, reconstituted, Jerry Scott was amazed to see he had quite a layer of body fat for a fellow as skinny as he was. Still, he looked in pretty good shape, practically the build of an athlete, but for that belly fat.

                Jerry looked at his watch then. It was one-thirty in the afternoon.

                He had been there four hours. Then the fellow from Walker Mortuary came over, and they put Gilmore on a rollaway-type bed with sheets covering him and a nice blanket over the top, and scooted him out to the street and loaded him in a hearse where they took him over to the Shriner Crematorium in Salt Lake. Maybe because of the four hours it took, there was no crowd waiting outside the hospital, and although they had two other police to meet them when they arrived, no crowd was at the crematorium either.

                Since the coffin would be incinerated with the body, they had only a welfare-type casket waiting. It was made of plywood, although covered in maroon velvet, and it had silver rails on the side, and nice white satin on the inside, plus a real nice satin pillow. It was better than just a plain wood box, although nowhere near one of the fancy metal jobs.

                Among Jerry Scott's orders this day was to make sure the right guy was being burned. So, just before they put the casket into the furnace, he lifted the sheet to verify Gary's face. Then they lifted the big oven door they had slammed down earlier to protect against the four-foot flame that shot out during the preheating, and inserted the box and body. Once it was in the kiln, and burning for a few minutes, they opened the door another time for Jerry, and the guy who ran the place took a long poker and knocked off the head of the casket. Then they stared through a furnace hole about fourteen inches by fourteen through which Jerry Scott could see Gary's head. Already the scalp was burning and the skin was falling off to the side.

                Scott could see Gary's face going, and the top flesh blacken and disappear. Then the muscle began to bum, and Gilmore's arms which had been folded on his chest came up from the tightening, and lifted until the fingers of both hands were pointing at the sky.

                That was the very last recognition Jerry Scott had of him. He kept this picture in his head all the while the body was burning, and that was plenty of time, for he had gone to the furnace at two-thirty, and the work wasn't done until five when there was nothing left but a bit of ash and the char of the bones.

A couple of waitresses, friends of Toni Gurney, who worked at The Stirrup, came over to the place before the evening shift to sit at the bar. It was a large, dark cocktail lounge with a dance floor and, of course, being Utah, you had to buy a membership in the club to get your drink, but that was not too difficult. The Stirrup was lively in the evenings, and one of the few nice places between Provo and Salt Lake where you could drink and dance. Now, however, being afternoon, it was quiet, and only a couple of people were there in the half dark.

                One of these friends, named Wiila Brant, asked Alice Anders, the hostess, who the three guys were sitting in the lounge, for they were certainly new. Alice replied they were some of Gary's executioners.

                "How do you know?" asked Willa. The hostess replied, "Well, I signed them in. They're members of the Pronghorn Club in Salt Lake, and we honor that membership." Willa went to get a pack of cigarettes, and made a point of passing their table. One of the men said, "Why don't you sit down and talk to us?"

                They were sitting there drinking and playing liar's poker with dollar bills. After Willa took a seat they played only a little while before one of the men said, "I bet you think we are bloodthirsty bastards, don't you?"

                "Well," said Willa, "it had to be done. That was what Gary wanted." She left it at that. Didn't say she knew Toni Gurney and the rest of the family. Then the executioner said, "Want to see something sadistic?" He showed her a strap of webbing, and the slug of a bullet, and he said, "This is one of the bullets that killed Gary, and this is one of the nylon straps that was holding his arm." Asked if she wanted to touch them, Willa said, "No," but couldn't help herself. She did it with a slight smirk on her face. Then he put them back in his pocket.

                Another one at the table now said he had the hood out in the car. He didn't talk much about it. Merely said 'he had it. They were certainly drinking.

                One of these men was short and stocky and in his mid-thirties, bald on top, and another was also in his mid-thirties with light brown hair, around six feet tall, average weight, only he had a real potbelly and wore glasses. Those were the two talking the most. The third one who didn't talk had dark hair and an average build, but he had a real full beard and a mustache that was graying and he had tears in his eyes. Finally, he said if he had known what he was getting in for, he would never have done it. Then, a young married woman named Rene Wales, whom Willa knew slightly, sat down with them, and they all played a lot more liar's poker.

                After a while, the executioners began to talk about their CBs. All three were equipped, but one began to brag about the distance he could get on his. Before you knew it, Rene Wales left with him to go check out the CB in his pickup. Before she got back, forty-five minutes had passed. Rene came in with the fellow, and both had a look on their faces like they'd been sopping up some of the gravy.

Chapter 41

Burial

Next morning, Tuesday, January 18, Schiller had a meeting with Debbie, Lucinda and Barry Farrell about cleaning up the office and returning the rented equipment. Right in the middle of such housekeeping, a phone call came from Stanger. There was going to be a memorial service in Spanish Fork that afternoon for Gary. Everybody wanted Larry and Barry to be there.

                When Schiller told the girls, they wanted to go, too. Debbie even began to cry. So, of course, that took care of it. They were also invited. Then the service had to be moved a couple of times to elude the press and was finally held not in a church, but at a mortuary in Spanish Fork.