Riven (59 page)

“As long as we’re clear,” Ravinia said. “Mr. Darby would like to inform you officially of his decision.”

“That’s unnecessary, but fine! Fine! Tell me, please!”

68

Brady leaned toward the glass. “I want to be crucified. Hung on a cross, spikes through the wrists and feet, thorns piercing my skull, side riven with a spear after I’m dead.”

Frank LeRoy sat blinking. “You want your execution to be by crucifixion.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Yeah, no. That’s pure megalomania. You’ve gone past identifying with Jesus to where you think you’re Him now. That’s insane.”

“No, not at all. I—”

“C’mon, this is nuts. Now, see, what you’ve got to do is choose between our four options.”

“Where does it say that, sir?” Ravinia said. “I’ve read and reread this, and not only does it not say that here, but this is also the first time you’ve said it.”

“Yeah, but—”

“Yeah, but nothing, Warden. All due respect, but is it not true that one of the first executions conducted at this facility was not carried out by any of these four methods?”

The warden pressed his lips together, leaned back, and looked at the ceiling. “We did have a guy who wanted the firing squad,” he said. “So we put him in the electric chair, set up bullet catchers behind him, and that was that.”

“So despite that precedent, you’re planning to discriminate against my client’s final wish, violating his last remaining civil right? What do you care how he dies?”

“Oh, man, ma’am! Can you imagine the media circus? And think of the logistics! Whoever does the actual killing would have to be a bonded and registered and licensed executioner.”

“I guess so,” Ravinia said.

“Yeah, no.”

“So this is
not
your call? You’re worried the federal government will step in and put a stop to it as soon as the plan leaks to the press?”

“I’d like to see ’em try.”

“Me too. Nobody tells you what to do.”

“This is crazy,” Yanno said. “You know that.”

“Of course we know that,” Ravinia said. “But I intend to vigorously defend my client’s rights, and I believe that your own words—and your own publication—grant him the opportunity to choose his method of death, provided it is guaranteed successful and carried out no later than the date of his execution as prescribed by the court. Further, I find nothing to preclude this in the laws of the state, no precedent that would countermand your judgment, should you choose to comply with my client’s legal wishes.”

Thomas had seen Ravinia get her back up, but never like this. She had gone from doing her father a favor by looking out for Brady Darby to now seeming to own this fight.

“Sir,” she said, “you don’t want to face a legal challenge that might come from Mr. Darby if his wish, far-fetched as it is, is denied.”

Frank LeRoy seemed to freeze. “You come to me with this craziness and now you’re threatening me?”

“No, sir. I’m trying to help you. All we’re asking for is permission, and to my eyes, you just have to decide whether you want to face a lawsuit on this.”

“From Darby, you mean.”

“Of course. I’m not worried about outside agitators, because you’ve already proven you know how to deal with them and are on record that this is not their decision.”

LeRoy heaved a huge sigh. “I got to ask you a question, Darby. Why do you want to do this—this way, I mean? What’s the point? You think you’re dying for your crime, makin’ some kinda atonement?”

“That’s a really good question,” Brady said.

“Thanks. I’ve been known to come up with one every once in a while.”

“No. I can’t atone for my own sin. That’s already been done. I have just one reason, and that’s so people can see what crucifixion really was. It was one of the worst ways a person could die, but I don’t think we understand that anymore. If just one person finally gets what it meant for Jesus to be humiliated like that, beaten and broken and bleeding for them, it will be worth it. I’m going to die anyway, sir. Let me do it this way.”

“And how are people supposed to see this? I’m not letting the press in here for that.”

“Just one camera,” Ravinia said.

LeRoy stood slowly and thrust his hands deep into his pockets. “Never a dull moment with you, is there, Darby? If it’s not one thing, it’s another. Well, no promises, because as much as your attorney wants to badger me into making this decision on my own by accusing me of kowtowing to the feds, truth is, I can’t do this without Andreason and the governor. So all I can say right now is, I’ll let you know. If someone with a camera wants to pursue this, given all the restrictions I’m gonna put on ’em, they’ll have to sell me on how it would work. Bringing equipment onto this property and keeping it from being a distraction or threatening our security? I can’t imagine.”

“Thank you, sir,” Ravinia said.

Thomas nodded his thanks.

“Humph. You’re all nuts. And believe it or not, I’m not big on watching people die, even if I am a proponent of capital punishment.”

“I would want you to watch, Warden,” Brady said. “I want everybody to see it, not because of me, but like I said, so they know what it was really like.”

“An awful lot of stuff is going to have to come together before this gets that far, son. I may need a pit bull like your attorney here in
my
corner before it’s all said and done.”

“You want my card?” Ravinia said.

Thomas and Ravinia went all the way back to the administrative wing with the warden without saying a word until they stopped before Yanno’s office.

“Got to tell you,” the warden said, “I’ve been through all kinds of stuff on this job, but this is a first. Has to be the craziest mixed-up deal I’ve ever heard. Ma’am, I expect we’ll be seeing a lot of each other for a while. You realize this thing is just insane enough to happen.”

It was all Thomas could do to keep from shaking his head until Ravinia had followed him into his office and the door was shut.

“I can’t believe what I just heard, Rav. You played him like a fiddle.”

Ravinia kicked off her heels and propped her feet on the edge of his desk. “I’ve never even considered writing a memoir,” she said. “But this would be chapter one.”

Thomas studied her. “This whole idea has captured you, hasn’t it?”

Ravinia lowered her feet to the floor and looked away.

“What is it, sweetheart?” Thomas said.

She shook her head. “I told Brady it would take a miracle to make this happen.”

69

Adamsville

Gladys’s husband, Xavier, was a tall, knuckly man whose arms glistened black in the autumn Saturday sun. He labored over the charcoal grill in Thomas’s backyard as Dirk cavorted with Summer. Ravinia sat with her mother, who—despite the Indian summer day—sat in a chaise longue bundled in a blanket to her neck.

Grace would tell Thomas later that the highlight of the day for her was discovering that Gladys shared her love of the old hymns and getting the chance to sing the melody on some of her favorites, countered by Gladys’s bluesy alto.

After the little impromptu concert, Thomas and Gladys watched Xavier work from a respectable distance. “I’m glad you let him do this,” Gladys whispered. “He won’t admit it, but I think you offended him by implying he cooks for a living. You know he owns the place and just supervises now, only cooks in a pinch. He’s loving this.”

Thomas worried where everyone would sit at the picnic table, what with Dirk and Ravinia still living apart and enduring this only for the sake of their daughter. He decided to just sit next to Grace and let the others sit where they wanted.

“C’mere a minute, Rev,” Gladys said, moving into the shade. “You got to tell me what’s going on at work. I promise not to say a word, but what in the world is it with all the meetings with Andreason and even the governor? They gonna shut us down?”

“Shut us down? Really, Gladys. What would they do with all the inmates?”

“I don’t know, but it has to be about money. It always is. I mean, this state is proud of all of its prisons, but the budget is in deep trouble.”

“That’s nothing new,” Thomas said. “You think it’s worse than it’s been?”

“I’m not blind,” Gladys said. “Something is going on.”

Thomas was debating how much to tell her when Summer squealed that she wanted to see Grandpa, and his son-in-law brought her over. “Anything new with Darby’s scheme?” Dirk said as Summer climbed onto Thomas’s back.

“Darby’s what?” Gladys said.

“Nothing,” Dirk said, looking sheepish. “You heard nothing from me.”

“Me either,” Thomas said.

“All right,” Gladys said. “I told you about the budget; you tell me what else is going on.”

Dirk looked stricken and apologetic. “Goodness, Dad, I thought sure
she’d
know.”

By the time they sat to eat Xavier’s award-winning barbecue spare ribs and chicken, everyone was talking about Brady Darby’s bizarre idea.

“No specifics in front of little ears,” Ravinia said, dabbing her mouth. “And needless to say, none of this can go farther than this yard.”

Two weeks later, the incendiary news engulfed the world. No one knew how the information had leaked from the prison to the International Cable Network (ICN), and it didn’t matter anymore. Somehow the whole freakish plan had reached just the right person. All that mattered now was that the prison’s money woes were over, and Brady Wayne Darby was the most famous man in the world for reasons far beyond his having been the Heiress Murderer.

Chaplain Thomas Carey was slowly coming to think Brady’s idea might have some merit after all. The way things were coming together, maybe God was behind it.

The press credited the almighty dollar.

The news bombshell hit the planet simultaneously, as choreographed by ICN. Moments after dawn in every time zone, everybody everywhere was aware of the facts and began spouting their opinions.

The International Cable Network had, for an undisclosed sum that most estimated in the high eight figures, secured all media rights—including Web, radio, TV, motion picture, book, and any subsidiary right anyone could imagine—to a singular event. They would film, with one stationary camera, the execution of Brady Wayne Darby by crucifixion.

ICN reserved the right to show the footage live on international television, and naturally that announcement alone resulted in unending public debate over the next two years.

Besides its enormous payment to the state, and specifically to the Department of Corrections and its crown-jewel supermax, Adamsville State Penitentiary, ICN committed itself to a laundry list of obligations.

These included guaranteeing the security of the facility and its inmates, covering all related costs, and scheduling a separate extensive documentary that would put ASP in the best light.

Of primary importance to the Department of Corrections was that Darby not have personal access to the media. He could not be interviewed. It was, Warden Frank LeRoy said, a policy for which he could not finagle an exception. Neither was Darby, nor anyone associated with him, to benefit financially from the project.

The only further concession to Brady was that ICN agreed to pay for a simple headstone and a tiny section of the prison grounds where he would be buried four days after his death.

The firestorm of vitriol that resulted included dire predictions from pundits that all manner of public agencies would begin parlaying their capital cases and, in essence, selling condemned inmates to the media to show public executions.

Cooler heads pointed out that this spectacle was Darby’s own idea and that no man or woman without a specific agenda like his was likely to allow the broadcast rights to his or her execution to be sold for the benefit of the state.

Virtually every municipality in the world immediately acted to prevent similar eccentric displays, and the federal government filed suit against the state to preclude what it called “a fiasco with the potential for irreparable harm to the common good.”

While the case dragged on—Governor Allard guaranteeing he would defend states’ rights to the end—a cross was donated from a research facility in Israel that claimed the item was as close to the first-century Roman death contraption as it could be.

Adamsville State Penitentiary

Meanwhile, Brady devoted himself to becoming more than a curiosity. With the exuberant support of his aunt Lois (and, she assured him, her entire church), he was determined to get to know Jesus as well as he could in his time left on earth. He requested books from the chaplain’s library and began memorizing Scripture and reciting it aloud in his cell, despite a constant barrage of abuse from every con within earshot.

The at-long-last meeting with his aunt had been a curious affair, the two of them with both hands pressed against the Plexiglas as they wept and talked and prayed and sang.

“Somehow I always knew God had something in mind for you, Brady,” she said.

He had to smile. “You coulda fooled me. Thanks for never giving up on me.”

Brady spent most of his time pacing, memorizing, and quietly reciting line after line of Jesus’ words from the Bible. He spoke just above a whisper, but no one could have heard him if he had shouted, such was the clamor from within death row.

“Think you’re Jesus now, Heiress Boy?”

“Whatcha think Katie North thinks of you now?”

“You gonna burn in hell no matter how you die!”

And on and on it went.

Ravinia finally secured permission for Brady to listen to tapes and CDs in his cell, and besides recordings of the Gospels, he got to enjoy Grace Carey’s a cappella hymns, humming along and sometimes singing with her while glancing at her photograph on the wall.

He had finally got Thomas to tell him all about her and not just her illness. Brady felt he really knew her, at least from Thomas’s perspective. He enjoyed their love story and the adventure of their early married life as they ventured out for God.

All Brady’s studying and thinking had made him more introspective and curious, and his sensitive questions seemed to open the chaplain to revealing more of his own life. Brady suffered with him through the tales of disappointment, especially Grace’s leukemia.