The Executioner's Song (42 page)

There was a Preliminary Hearing on August 3 in Provo and Noah Wootton was determined to ram it through as hard and fast as he could. He had a lot of witnesses so his problem was to keep the case intact. When the defense asked for delay, Wootton objected.

                He was reasonably confident of the conviction, or to put it more precisely, he was confident that if he did not get a conviction, it would be his own fault. He was, however, not at all sure of getting the death penalty. So he was feeling the usual tension he had before a case began. His stomach was right with him that morning.

                At the Preliminary Hearing, Gilmore didn't take the stand, but Wootton did talk face to face with him in the recess. They got on well. They even joked. Wootton was impressed with his intelligence. Gilmore told Wootton that the prison system was not doing what it was designed to achieve, that is, rehabilitate. In his opinion, it was a complete failure.

                Of course, they avoided talking about the crimes themselves, but Noall did detect that Gilmore was doing his best to soften him up.

                Gary certainly kept flattering him about what a fair and efficient prosecutor he was, what a basic sense of fairness he had. Said he'd never seen another prosecutor with that kind of fairness.

                Not every con knew enough to run that line. Wootton expected Gilmore was working up to a deal. He must have heard they were going for the death penalty, and thought if he was nice enough, Wootton might feel encouraged to return from so far out a stand, far out at least from the defendant's point of view.

                Sure enough, Gilmore got around to asking what Wootton thought would happen, Noah looked him in the eye and said, "They might come back with the death penalty." Gilmore said, "I know, but what are they really going to do?" Wootton repeated, "They might execute you." He had the impression that took Gilmore aback.             

                Snyder also approached Noall, and suggested they plead guilty to Murder One, and accept a life top. Wootton kind of dismissed it. "No way," he said.

                He had made up his mind to go for Death after looking at Gilmore's record. It showed violence in prison, a history of escape, and unsuccessful efforts made at rehabilitation. Wootton could only conclude that, one: Gilmore would be looking to escape; two: he would be a hazard to other inmates and guards; and, three: rehabilitation was hopeless. Couple this to a damned cold-blooded set of crimes.

Nicole drove down to the Preliminary Hearing in Provo on August 3, but they let her visit with Gary for only a moment. It made her dizzy to see him in leg shackles. Then they only gave her time for one hug and a tremendous kiss before pulling him away. She was left in the hall of the court with the world rocketing around her. Outside, in the summer light, the horseflies were mean as insanity itself.

                On the drive back to Springville, she was dreaming away and got in a wreck. Nobody was hurt but the car. After that, all the way home, her Mustang sounded like it was breaking up in pain. She couldn't shift out of second.

                It became a crazy trip. She kept having an urge to cross the divider, and bang into oncoming traffic. Next day, when the mail came, there was a very long letter from Gary that he had begun to write as soon as they took him back to jail from the hearing. So she realized he had been saying these words to her at the same time she had been driving along with the urge to smash into every car going the other way.

                Now she read Gary's letter over and over. She must have read it five times and the words went in and out of her head like a wind blowing off the top of the world.

August 3

                Nothing in my experience, prepared me for the kind of honest open love you gave me. I'm so used to bullshit and hostility, deceit and pettiness, evil and hatred. Those things are my natural habitat.

                They have shaped me. I look at the world through eyes that suspect, doubt, fear, hate, cheat, mock, are selfish and vain. All things unacceptable, I see them as natural and have even come to accept them as such. I look around the ugly vile cell and know that I truly belong in a place this dank and dirty, for where else should I be? There's water all over the floor from the fucking toilet that don't flush right. The shower is filthy and the thin mattress they gave me is almost black, it's so old. I have no pillow. There are dead cockroaches in the corners.

                At nite there are mosquitoes and the lite is very dim. I'm alone here with my thoughts and I can feel the oldness. Remember I told you about The Oldness? and you told me how ugly it was—the oldness, the oldness. I can hear the tumbrel wheels creek. So fucking ugly and coming so close to me. When I was a child . . . I had a nightmare about being beheaded. But it was more than just a dream.

                More like a memory. It brought me right out of the bed. And it was sort of a turning point in my life . . . Recently it has begun to make a little sense. I owe a debt, from a long time ago. Nicole, this must depress you. I've never told anybody of this thing, except my mother the nite I had that nitemare and she came in to comfort me but we never spoke of it after that. And I started to tell you one nite and I told you quite a bit of it before it became plain to me that you didn't want to hear it. There have been years when I haven't even thought much of it at all and then something (a picture of a guillotine, a headmans block, or a broad ax, or even a rope) will bring it all back and for days it will seem I'm on the verge of knowing something very personal, something about myself. Something that somehow wasn't completed and makes me different. Something I owe, I guess. Wish I knew.

                Once you asked me if I was the devil, remember? I'm not. The devil would be far more clever than I, would operate on a much larger scale and of course would feel no remorse. So I'm not Beelzebub. And I know the devil can't feel love. But I might be further from God than I am from the devil. Which is not a good thing. It seems that I know evil more intimately than I know goodness and that's not a good thing either. I want to get even, to be made even, whole, my debts paid (whatever it may take!) to have no blemish, no reason to feel guilt or fear. I hope this ain't corny, but I'd like to stand in the sight of God. To know that I'm just and right and clean. When you're this way you know it. And when you're not, you know that too. It's all inside of us, each of us—but I guess I ran from it and when I did try to approach it, I went about it wrong, became discouraged, bored, lazy, and finally unacceptable. But what do I do now? I don't know. Hang myself?

                I've thought about that for years, I may do that. Hope that the state executes me? That's more acceptable and easier than suicide. But they haven't executed anybody here since 1963 (just about the last year for legal executions anywhere). What do I do, rot in prison? growing old and bitter and eventually work this around in my mind to where it reads that I'm the one who's getting fucked around, that I'm just an innocent victim of society's bullshit? What do I do? Spend a life in prison searching for the God I've wanted to know for such a long time? Resume my painting? Write poetry? Play handball? Eat my heart out for the wondrous love you gave me that I threw away Monday nite because I was so spoiled and couldn't immediately have a white pickup truck I wanted? What do I do? We always have a choice, don't we?

                I'm not asking you to answer these questions for me, Angel, please don't think that I am. I have to make my own choice. But anything you want to comment on or suggest, or say, is always welcome. God, I love you, Nicole.

PART FIVE

The Shadows of the Dream

Chapter 19

KIN TO THE MAGICIAN

Shortly after Gary got out of Marion, and was living in Provo with Vern and Ida, he sent Bessie an eleven-pound box of chocolates for Mother's Day. Then, a letter arrived. "I didn't know I could be this happy. I have the most beautiful girl in Utah. Mom, I'm making more money than I could take in stealing."

                Bessie wrote back, "This is what I always wanted for you. I'm glad you have this girl. I hope someday to meet your beautiful Nicole."

                Then she didn't hear any more, and phoned Ida, who told her Gary had gotten in a little trouble by walking out of a store with a few things. Bessie asked Ida to tell him to call, and began to worry. Gary never got in touch when he was in trouble.

                The day she found out about the murders, she had been out on the porch of her trailer taking the sun. Her phone rang and it was a woman. Quick as she heard the tone of voice, Bess said, "It's you, Brenda. Something's happened to Gary." She thought he had robbed a bank.

                Brenda told her they were holding Gary on Murder One. "I don't believe that, Brenda. Gary wouldn't kill anybody." "Oh, yes," said Brenda, "he killed two people and shot one of his thumbs off." That was how Bessie got it.

                She said, "Well, there has to be a mistake. Gary did not do this. No matter what else, he is not a killer." She hung up, and the phone rang again, and it was Ida to tell her that the blood kept spurting out of Mr. Bushnell and she and Vern had seen it. Bess felt she would never get over that description. Then Vern got on the phone and said, "They have a death penalty here. They're going to kill Gary." It was all Bess could take. Execution had always been a phobia to her. She couldn't go near the thought. When she was a little girl growing up in Utah, she would hide if she heard they were having an execution.

                After Vern's message, she kept the news to herself. She told Frank Jr., when he came into town, but not Mikal, her youngest son. One morning he called, and said, You sound like you've been crying, and Bess said, I have a cold. He said, I'm going to come out and spend the day with you. She said, You read about Gary, and he said, Yes, he had heard about it.

She kept thinking of the time in the fall of '72 when they let Gary out of OSP to study in art school. He was going to live in a halfway house up at Eugene, and be given furloughs. The first day, right out, Gary dropped in on Bess for the afternoon, and spent the evening. The next morning he went to the store to get eggs for breakfast, and asked her if it was all right to bring back a six-pack. She said sure. So he sat there and talked through the morning while drinking the beer. They felt very close. She fixed his breakfast and said, "That's the first time we spent the night under the same roof for a long time, Gary." He said, "Sure is." In fact, it was close to ten years. He drank his beer and said he had to leave. Had to get to the art school in Eugene.

                After he was gone, she remembered that last time ten years ago in 1962 when they had been alone together. She and Gary were Johnny Cash fans, and so he brought all his records down from upstairs and they listened all day long. Now the records made her too sad, and she would turn off the radio when a song by Johnny Cash came on.

A few nights later in that same fall of '72, Gary pulled in with a car, and said he'd like to take her to dinner. She told him she was not dressed and it was pretty late, so he stayed and talked a long time. A couple of nights later, she noticed the police were sitting outside her trailer, and wouldn't say anything to her. That was when she knew a lot had gone wrong.

                Next morning, a neighbor gave a buzz and asked, "Was that your son they picked up for armed robbery?" "No," Bessie replied, "but what paper was it in?" The woman told her and Bess said, "I'll look it up." When she found the story, she cried till she was sick. One more river in the million tears she had cried over Gary.

Now, in the summer of '76, it was a nightmare. She kept thinking that if she had been able to get to Provo, Gary would never have killed those men. That first night in April when he called from Ida's house he had said, "I'm going to get a car, Mom, and get up to Portland, and bring you back." Bess had laughed, "Oh, Gary," she had said, "by now, I'm such a decrepit piece of work that they play the band when I get out to the street."

                A few months before, while Gary was still in Marion, she had been sitting one night with her son Frank Jr., and started to cough up blood. They came for her in an ambulance and took her to surgery. Half of her stomach was removed. The aspirin she took to relieve her arthritis had perforated her ulcer. "The faster I fixed one end," she told a friend, "the more I was scraping on the other." Now she never passed through her door unless it was to walk the few steps to her landlady's trailer and pick up the mail. Still, she let Gary speak of how nice it would be to keep house in Provo, and she dreamed of it, until he wrote her about living with Nicole.

                It had all been, she decided, part of the pleasures of thought, no more. She couldn't even keep the trailer in order. It looked as old and moldering as herself.

Just a week ahead of the murders, she had written a letter to Gary He must have received it just a day or two before those Mormon boys were killed. She had mentioned the house on Crystal Springs Boulevard that he liked living in when he was nine years old. That was the year he kept saying he wanted to be a priest. In the letter, she told him that they had torn down the house and put up an apartment building. One more memory you would not find.