The Executioner's Song (41 page)

                Gary replied, "I don't know how much I got. What was there?"

                Nielsen said, "It was $125, and in Provo, approximately the same amount." Gary began to cry. He didn't weep with any noise but there were tears in his eyes. He said, "I hope they execute me for it. I ought to die for what I did."

                "Gary, are you ready to?" Nielsen asked. "It doesn't scare you?"

                "Would you like to die?"

                "Criminy," said Nielsen, "no."

                "Me, neither," said Gilmore, "but I ought to be executed." "I don't know," said Nielsen, "there's got to be forgiveness somewhere along the line."

A little later, Gary made a private call to Brenda.

                "How," he asked her, "did the cops know I was at Craig Taylor's house?"

                "Gary, you might as well know, I don't want you hearing it from somebody else. I called the police."

                "I see."

                Brenda said, "You're probably going to be bent real out of shape with me. But, Gary, it had to stop. You commit a murder Monday, and commit a murder Tuesday. I wasn't waiting for Wednesday to roll around."

                "Hey, cousin," said Gary, "don't worry about it."

                Brenda said, "Gary, you're going to go down hard this time. You're going to ride this one clear to the bottom."

                He said, "Man, how do you know I'm not innocent?"

                "Gary, what's the matter with your head?"

                "I don't know," Gary said, "I must have been insane."

                Brenda asked, "What about your mother? What do you want me to tell her?"

                He was quiet for a while. Then he said, "Tell her it's true."

                Brenda said, "Okay. Anything else?"

                "Just tell her I love her."

Craig Snyder, Gary's other lawyer, was shorter than Esplin, about five-seven, with broad shoulders, blond hair, and pale eyes. He had eye-glasses with pale frames. Today, he was wearing a blond-colored suit with a tie that had several shades of yellow, green, and orange, and a yellow shirt.

                On this morning in Orem, Snyder and Esplin didn't even know Gary was being interviewed by Gerald Nielsen until he was brought up to be arraigned. Afterward, they sat down with him, and he said he had committed both murders, and had told Nielsen.

                They were certainly upset. Gilmore had been informed of his Miranda rights when arrested, but he had not been given full Miranda down at the jail. Any confession Gilmore offered had to be worthless, the lawyers decided. It was infuriating. They had been kept waiting forty-five minutes while a Lieutenant of Detectives was grilling him.

                In reply, Gary seemed more interested in the fact that Nielsen had promised he could see Nicole at the jail. He wanted his lawyers to make sure Nielsen kept his word.

Nicole was in Springville with Barrett when the police came. They didn't phone or anything. Just a cop to ask her to get ready. A little later, Lieutenant Nielsen was there in a car. He would drive her over to see Gary.

                She didn't know how she felt, and she didn't know if she cared how she felt. It had been a real hang-up listening to Barrett. The last couple of days he had been coming on as the wise man. Her judgment, he kept saying, was so goofy. Like she had picked a middle-aged murderer for herself.

On the way, Lieutenant Nielsen was nice and polite, and he laid it out. They were going to let Nicole talk to Gary, but she had to ask if he had done the murders. Nicole was about to get mad at the suggestion, except she figured out Nielsen needed a reason to justify bringing her over. She was sure he wasn't so dumb as to think Gary was going to answer her question while a bunch of cops was listening.

                That was how it turned out. Nicole walked into this funky one-story jail, went down a couple of short corridors, passed a bunch of inmates who looked like beer bums, then a couple of dudes who whistled as she went by, twirled their mustaches, showed a bicep, generally acted like the cat's ass. Two cops and Detective Nielsen were right behind her, and she came to a big cell with a table in the middle of it, four bunks she could see, and thick prison bars in front of her.

                Then she saw Gary come toward her from the back of the cell. His left hand was in a cast. It was only three days from the night she had seen him arrested and lying on the ground, but she could feel the difference. He said, "Hello, baby," and, at first, she didn't even want to look at him.

                With her head down, she muttered, "Did you do this?"

                She was really whispering as if, should he say yes, maybe the cops wouldn't hear the question. He said, "Nicole, don't ask me that."

                Now, she looked up. She couldn't get over how clear his eyes were. There was a minute where they didn't say any more. Then he put one arm through the bars. She wanted to touch him, but didn't. However, she kept feeling the impulse. More and more she had this desire to touch him.

                It was close to a spooky experience. Nicole didn't know what she was feeling. She certainly wasn't feeling sorry for him. She wasn't feeling sorry for herself. Rather, she couldn't breathe. She could hardly believe it, but she was ready to faint. That was the moment when she knew that it didn't matter what she had said about him these last couple of weeks. She had been in love with him from the moment she met him and she would love him forever.

                It wasn't an emotion so much as a physical sensation. A magnet could have been pulling her to the bars. She reached out to put a hand on the arm he extended through, and one of the officers stepped forward and said, "No physical contact."

                She stepped back, and Gary looked good. He looked surprisingly good. His eyes were more blue than they had ever been. All that fog from the Fiorinal was gone. His eyes looked into her as if he was returning from all the way back and something ugly had passed through completely and was gone. All through these last couple of bad weeks, it was like he had been looking a year older every day. Now he looked fine. "I love you," he said as they said good-bye. "I love you," she said.

In the same hour that Nicole was going to and from the jail, April went berserk. She began to scream that someone was trying to blow her head off. Kathryne could do nothing. First she had to call the police and then she decided to commit her to the hospital. It was horrible. April had flipped out completely. Kathryne even had to keep the children out of the house all those hours while it was being decided.

The Sheriff, Ken Cahoon, was a tall man with an easy-going manner and white hair. He wore metal-rimmed glasses, had a large nose, a small mouth, a small chin, and a little potbelly. He liked to believe he ran a reasonably good jail. His main tank had bunks for thirty men but he never went over twenty if he could help it. That kept the fights down. The trustees who worked in the kitchen were given a cell to themselves, and there was also Maximum Detention, with room for six. That was the tank where Gary now sat by himself. Plus another cell for six down the same hall to hold prisoners on work release. Altogether, Cahoon's jail could carry forty people without busting the seams of anyone's patience.

A while after Nicole left, Cahoon decided to look back in on Gilmore.

                "I have blisters on my feet," Gilmore told him.

                "From doing what?" asked Cahoon.

                "Why," said Gilmore, "I've been jogging in place."

                "Well, dummy, quit jogging in place."

                "No," said Gilmore, "give me some Band-Aids. I'll put them on and I can jog some more."

                Next day, he asked the same thing. Said he wanted them because his feet were sore. "Why, let's see," said Cahoon, "if you've got an infection."

                Gilmore said, "Just give me some Band-Aids. It's not that bad."

       "No," said Cahoon, "if you got blisters, I want to see them."

                "Oh, hell," said Gilmore, "forget it."

                Cahoon decided he was pulling a bluff. There was no telling what he might use the Band-Aids for, unless it was to tape contraband to the bottom of the bedsprings or something.

Next morning, Gilmore said to a guard, "I want out of here today. I've got a Writ of Habeas Corpus. Let me see the head man of the jail."

                Cahoon decided Gilmore must have the opinion they were back-woodsy in this little old humble place. Now Gary said to Cahoon in a nice confidential voice, "Look, I'm in for five days. I'm not being held for nothing but a traffic violation. So I would like out of here right now. You see," he said, "I've got to be under a doctor's care. As you may know, I came in with this cast on, and things of this nature want attention. I'd like to be taken to the hospital. The hand has to have its medication, and if you can't get me out, you see, there could be complications."

                Cahoon thought Gilmore was a pretty good con man, considering the odds, and he didn't exactly laugh at the idea that Gilmore might get loose in some simple but crazy way. A while back, they'd had a man in the tank named Dennis Howell, and another prisoner happened to come in also named Dennis Howell. The same day, word came to release the first Dennis. So the jailer on duty who was new on the job went down the list, went back and said to the new arrival, "Howell, your wife is outside, you can go now." The wrong Dennis walked out the door, trotted right past the woman, took off like a whistle.

                Gilmore sure kept trying. A little later, he wanted to get ahold of his attorney. Said he was going to sue the jail for not giving attention to his hand. He was really in sympathy with himself over that hand.

                After it all failed, Gary said, "I know Utah County is poor in spirit, and full of hard feelings toward me, but Sheriff, you can let me go home now. I'm not mad anymore."

                That was a pretty good sense of humor, Cahoon decided.

                It made it easier for him to put up with Gilmore decorating the walls. Cahoon liked to eliminate any drawing of obscenity pictures but Gary was not doing that. Pictures he drew were nice pictures.

                They were also something you could erase. One day he'd do a drawing, and next day wipe it out, do another, so Cahoon never made an issue of it.

                They really got along all right until Gilmore learned that they wouldn't allow him to see Nicole on visits. It seemed she wasn't family. That left Gary not speaking to anybody.

About the second time that Brenda went down to the jail, which was on Sunday, a week and a half after his arrest, Nicole had also shown up. When Gary heard she was outside, the expression on his face, Brenda had to admit, was beautiful. "Oh, God," he said, "she promised to come back and she did."

                However, he explained, it didn't mean he could visit with her. She wasn't allowed on his list just yet. Brenda said, "Let me see what I can do." She went up to a big tough Indian guard at the door, a confident-looking fellow, and said, "Alex, could you put Nicole Barrett in for the last five minutes of my time?" "Well, now," he said, "we really shouldn't break the rules." "Bullshit," said Brenda, "what's the difference if it's me or Nicole? He ain't going to go nowhere! Why, Alex Hunt, you mean to tell me," she asked, "you can't take care of this poor man with a busted-up hand? What's he going to do with one hand? Tear you apart?" "Well," said Alex, "I think we can handle Gilmore."

                While Nicole was visiting, Brenda walked over to Nicole's sister-in-law, who had also come. It was hot that day, and Sue Baker was holding her newborn baby and perspiring in volumes, "How is Nicole doing?" asked Brenda.

                The sun didn't stir on the black cinder gravel back of the jail.

                "She's pretty broke up," said Sue.

                Brenda said, "Gary's not going to get out of this one. If Nicole gets all hung up, it's going to ruin her."

                "She won't quit," said Sue, "we already tried."

                "Well," said Brenda, "she's in for a lot of hurt."

                When Nicole came out, she was weeping. Brenda put her arms around her and said, "Nicole, we both love him."

                Then Brenda said, "Nicole, why don't you think a little about giving up the ship? Gary is never going to get out. You'll spend the rest of your life visiting this guy. That's all the future you're going to have." Now Brenda began to cry. "Tuck those beautiful memories in your heart," she said, "tuck them away."

                Nicole muttered, "I'll stick."

                She was feeling an animosity toward Brenda she didn't even understand. Nicole heard herself thinking, "As if I owe her a million dollars for giving me five minutes of her visiting time."