Behind him, Bethel said, “You’ll make the man nervous, Sarge. It’s not the hot seat, Mr. Ainslie.”
“No, not that one,” the sergeant agreed. “That’s reserved for Doil, but he said to give you a good view.” He regarded Ainslie curiously. “Also said you are God’s avenging angel. That true?”
“I helped get him convicted, so maybe that’s the way he sees it.” Ainslie did not enjoy the conversation, but he supposed that if you worked in this grim place, a light touch now and then was needed.
The sergeant opened the door; Ainslie followed him inside. The scene ahead, with only minor variations, was as it had been three years earlier. They were at the rear of the witness booth, and immediately in front of them were five rows of metal folding chairs, most already filled. There would, Ainslie knew, be the twelve official witnesses whom he observed soon after his own arrival today, about the same number from the news media, and perhaps a few special visitors approved by the state governor.
Surrounding the witness booth on three sides was an expanse of reinforced and soundproof glass. Visible through the glass and directly ahead was the execution chamber, its central feature the electric chair—made of solid oak, with only three legs, and once described as “rearing back like a bucking horse.” The chair, built by convicts in 1924 after Florida’s legal form of execution changed from hanging to electrocution, was bolted to the floor. It had a high back and a broad seat covered with thick black rubber. Two vertical wooden posts formed a headrest. Six wide leather straps were designed to secure a condemned prisoner so tightly that any movement was impossible.
Five feet from the chair, and also visible through the glass, was the executioner’s booth, a walled enclosure with a rectangular slit for the executioner to peer through. By this time the executioner would already be in place—hooded and robed, his identity a guarded secret. At the exact moment he received a signal from outside, the executioner would turn a red switch inside the booth, sending two thousand volts of electricity into the electric chair and its occupant.
In the execution chamber a few figures were milling around. A prison officer studied his watch, comparing it with a large wall clock with a sweep second hand. The clock showed the time as 6:53.
Within the witness booth a faint hum of conversation ceased, most of the assembled people watching curiously as the guard sergeant led Ainslie to the front row and pointed to an empty central chair. “That’s for you.”
Ainslie had already noticed that Cynthia Ernst was in the seat immediately to his left, though she neither acknowledged him nor looked at him, keeping her eyes directed forward. Glancing beyond, Ainslie was startled to see Patrick Jensen, who did look over and gave the slightest smile.
2
Abruptly, the execution chamber came alive. Five of the men who had been waiting in the chamber formed a line. A prison lieutenant in charge stood in front; behind him were two guards, a doctor carrying a small leather medical bag, and a lawyer from the state attorney’s office. The prison electrician, surrounded by thick, heavy cables that he would shortly connect, was behind the electric chair.
In the witness booth a guard called out, “Silence, please! No talking.” What little conversation there had been ceased entirely.
Seconds later a side door in the execution chamber opened and a tall man with stern features and close-cropped, graying hair entered. Ainslie recognized him as the prison warden, Stuart Foxx.
Immediately behind the warden was Elroy Doil, staring fixedly at the ground as if unwilling to face what he knew must lie ahead.
Ainslie noticed that Patrick Jensen had reached out and was holding Cynthia’s hand. Presumably consoling her, he thought, for the murders of her parents.
His eyes went back to Doil, and Ainslie was reminded again of the difference between the once robust, powerful figure of the past, and the pathetic, tremulous creature he had since become.
Doil was still restricted by leg irons, which allowed him to take only small, awkward steps. A prison guard was on each side of him, a third guard in the rear. Each of Doil’s hands was secured to one of the guards alongside by an “iron claw” manacle device—a single handcuff with a horizontal metal bar that enabled each guard to totally control one hand, so that any kind of resistance was impossible.
Doil was wearing a clean white shirt and black trousers. A jacket matching the trousers would be placed on him for burial. His shaved head shone where electrically conductive gel had been applied moments earlier.
The small procession had come down what was known as the “death watch corridor,” passing through two armored doors, and Doil, when he chose to look up, would see for the first time the electric chair and the audience that had come to watch him die.
Finally he did, and at the sight of the chair, his eyes widened and his face froze with terror. He halted impulsively, averting his head and body as if to bolt away, but it was a split-second gesture only. The guards on both sides instantly twisted the iron claws, causing Doil to yelp with pain. All three guards then closed in on him, propelling him to the chair, and while he struggled in vain, they lifted him into it.
In his helplessness, Doil looked intensely at the red telephone on a wall to the right of the electric chair. As every condemned prisoner knew, it represented the only chance of a last-minute reprieve from the state governor. Doil stared at the phone, as if pleading for it to ring.
Suddenly he turned toward the glass separating him from the witness booth and began shouting hysterically. But because the glass was soundproof, Ainslie and the others could hear nothing. They simply watched Doil’s face contort with rage.
He’s probably ranting about Revelation, Ainslie thought grimly.
In earlier days the sounds within the execution chamber were transmitted to witnesses through microphones and speakers. Now, all that witnesses heard was the warden’s reading of the death warrant, his prompting of the condemned for any last words, and whatever brief statement followed.
Then for a moment Doil stopped and scanned the faces in the witness booth, causing several to fidget uncomfortably. When his eyes fell on Ainslie, Doil’s expression changed to pleading, his lips framing words that Ainslie understood. “Help me! Help me!”
Ainslie felt beads of sweat break out on his forehead. What am I doing here? he asked himself. I don’t want to be involved in this. Whatever he’s done, it’s wrong to kill anyone this way. But there was no means of moving. In a bizarre fashion, within this prison Ainslie and the others with him were prisoners, too, until Doil’s execution was concluded. Then, when a guard on the execution floor moved, blocking Doil’s view, Ainslie felt a flood of relief, while reminding himself that Doil had just confessed to fourteen vicious murders and dismemberments.
For a moment, he realized, he had fallen into the same warped trap as the mawkish protesters outside the prison—caring about the murderer while forgetting his dead, savaged victims. Still, if cruelty was an issue, Ainslie thought, these last few minutes were probably the cruelest of all. No matter how fast the prison staff worked, the final procedures all took time. First, Doil was pulled back into the chair by the guards on either side and held there while a wide chest strap was cinched and secured; now, whatever else he did, he could no longer move his body. Next his feet were seized and pulled down into T-shaped wooden stocks, then secured by ankle straps so that neither foot could shift at all. More conductive gel was applied—this time to his previously shaved right leg; after that a lead-lined leather ground pad was put around the leg four inches above the ankle and laced tightly. Meanwhile the remaining straps had been cinched and tightened, including a chin-strap that held Doil’s head immovably against the two upright wooden posts at the back of the chair. The brown leather death cap, resembling an ancient Viking helmet, which held a copper conductive plate inside, was poised above the chair like a Damoclean sword about to be lowered …
Ainslie wondered if electrical execution really was as savage and barbaric as so many claimed. What h
e was now seeing certainly seemed so, and there were other instances to support that belief. He knew of one—a case nearly a decade ago …
On May 4, 1990, in Florida State Prison, a condemned prisoner named Joseph Tafero, convicted of killing two police officers, received an initial two thousand volts. Flames and smoke erupted at once as his head and a supposedly wet sponge beneath the death cap caught fire. The executioner immediately turned the current off. Then, for four minutes, the current was repeatedly turned on and off again, and each time more flames shot out and smoke poured from under a black mask covering Tafero’s face. Through it all, Tafero continued to breathe and slowly nod his head until, after three voltage surges, he was finally declared dead. Witnesses were sickened; one fainted. Later an official statement admitted “there was a fault in the headpiece.” Another claimed Tafero “was unconscious the minute the current hit him,” though few witnesses believed it.
Some people, Ainslie was reminded, argued that execution should be barbaric, given the nature of the crime preceding it. The gas chamber, still used in the United States, killed a prisoner by suffocation with cyanide gas, and witnesses said it was a terrible, frequently slow death. There seemed a consensus that death by lethal injection was more humane—though not in the case of former drug users with collapsed veins; finding a vein to administer the dose could take an hour. A bullet to the head, used in China, was probably swiftest of all, but the prior torture and degradation was undoubtedly the world’s most bestial.
Would Florida adopt some other form of execution, perhaps lethal injection? Ainslie speculated. It seemed unlikely, given the public mood about crime, and widespread anger that criminals had brought the Sunshine State into international disrepute, thereby frightening away tourists, so vital to Florida’s livelihood.
As to his own feelings about capital punishment, he had been opposed to it as a priest and was against it now, though for different reasons.
Once upon a time he had believed all human life to be divinely inspired. But not anymore. Nowadays he simply believed that judicial death morally demeaned those who administered it, including the public in whose name executions were carried out. Also, whatever the method, death was a release; a lifetime in prison without parole was a greater punishment by far …
The warden’s voice interrupted Ainslie’s thoughts, this time transmitted to the witness booth, as he read aloud the black-bordered death warrant, signed by the state governor.
“‘Whereas … Elroy Selby Doil was convicted of the crime of murder in the first degree, and thereupon … sentenced for said crime to suffer the pains of death by being electrocuted by the passing through his body of a current of electricity … until he be dead …
“‘You the said Warden of our State Maximum Security Prison, or some deputy by you to be designated, shall be present at such execution … in the presence of a jury of twelve respectable citizens who shall be requested to be present, and witness the same; and you shall require the presence of a competent practicing physician …
“‘Wherefore fail not at your peril …’”
The document was lengthy, burdened by pompous legalisms, and the warden’s words droned on.
When he was finished, a prison guard held a microphone before Doil, and the warden asked, “Do you have any last words?”
Doil tried to wriggle but was too tightly secured. When he spoke, his voice was choked. “I never …” Then he spluttered, trying vainly to move his head while managing only a feeble “Fuck you!”
The microphone was removed. Immediately the pre-execution procedures resumed, and again Ainslie wished he were not watching, but the process was hypnotic; none of the witnesses turned their eyes away.
A tongue pad was forced between Doil’s teeth, so he could no longer speak. Beside the chair, the prison electrician dipped his hand into a five-gallon bucket containing a strong salt solution and retrieved the copper contact plate and a natural sponge. He inserted both in the death cap poised above Doil’s shaven head. The contact plate was a perfect conductor of electricity; the salt-soaked sponge, also a good conductor, was intended to prevent the burning of Doil’s scalp and the resulting sickly stench of seared flesh that had offended witnesses in the past. Mostly the sponge worked; occasionally, as in the Tafero execution, it didn’t.
The death cap was lowered onto Doil’s head and secured in place. At the front a black leather strip served as a mask, so that Doil’s face could no longer be seen.
Ainslie sensed a collective sigh of relief from the witnesses around him. Had it, he wondered, become easier to watch now that the victim had, in a sense, become anonymous?
Not anonymous, though, to Cynthia in the seat beside him. Ainslie saw now that Cynthia and Patrick Jensen had their hands entwined so tightly that Cynthia’s knuckles were white. She must hate Doil fiercely, he thought, and in a way he could understand why she was here, though he doubted that watching Doil die would ease her grief. And should he tell her, he wondered, that while Doil had confessed to fourteen murders, he had denied killing Gustav and Eleanor Ernst—something Ainslie himself considered might be true? Perhaps he owed that information to Cynthia, if only because she was a former police officer and colleague. He wasn’t sure.
On the execution floor, all that remained was the connection of two heavy electric feed lines, one to the top of the death cap, the other to the lead-lined ground pad around Doil’s right leg. Both were attached quickly and locked down with heavy wing nuts.
At once the guards and electrician stepped back, well clear of the chair, though making sure not to block the warden’s view.
In the witness booth, some of the media people were scribbling notes. One woman witness had grown pale and held a hand to her mouth as if she might be sick. A man was shaking his head, clearly dismayed by what he saw. Knowing the intense competition for seats, Ainslie wondered what motivated people to come. He supposed it was a universal fascination with death in all its forms.
Ainslie returned his attention to the warden, who had rolled up the death warrant and now held it, poised like a baton, in his right hand. He looked toward the executioner’s booth, from where, through the rectangular eye slit, a pair of eyes peered out. In a single gesture the warden lowered the rolled warrant and nodded his head.
The eyes disappeared. An instant later a heavy thunk reverberated throughout the execution chamber as the red death switch was turned on and heavy circuit breakers engaged. Even in the witness booth, where microphones and speakers were again cut off, a softer thud was audible. Simultaneously the lights all dimmed.
Doil’s body convulsed, though the initial effect of two thousand volts surging through him was largely suppressed because, as a reporter wrote for the next day’s edition, Doil was “strapped in tighter than a fighter pilot.” The same effect, however, was repeated during a two-minute automatic killing cycle, the voltage falling to five hundred, then rising back again to two thousand, eight times in all. At some executions the warden would signal the executioner to override the automatic control and switch off if he believed the first cycle had done the job. This time he let the full cycle run, and Ainslie suddenly smelled the rancid odor of burning flesh, which had seeped into the witness booth through the air conditioning. Others nearby wrinkled their faces in disgust.
When safety clearance had been given, the doctor moved to the chair, opened Doil’s shirt, applied a stethoscope, and listened for a heartbeat. After about a minute he nodded to the warden. Doil was dead.
The rest was routine. Electric lines, belts, and other fastenings were quickly undone. Doil’s released body slumped forward into the arms of the waiting guards, who swiftly transferred it to a black rubber body bag. The bag was zipped up so quickly that it was impossible to see from the witness booth if the body was burned. Then, on a gurney, the remains of Elroy Doil disappeared through the same doorway that only minutes earlier he had entered alive.
By this time most witnesses were on their feet, preparing to leave. Without w
aiting, Ainslie turned toward Cynthia and said quietly, “Commissioner, I feel I should tell you that shortly before his execution, I talked to Doil about your parents. He claimed—”
Instantly she swung toward him, her expression blank. “Please, there is nothing I want to hear. I came to watch him suffer. I hope he did.”
“He did,” Ainslie said.
“Then I’m satisfied, Sergeant.”
“I hear you, Commissioner.”
But what did he hear? Following the others, Ainslie left the witness booth wondering.
Immediately outside, where witnesses were gathered, waiting to be escorted from the prison, Jensen broke away and approached Ainslie.
“Just thought I’d introduce myself. I’m—”
“I know who you are,” Ainslie said coolly. “I wondered why you were here.”
The novelist smiled. “I have a scene in a new novel about an execution and wanted to see one firsthand. Commissioner Ernst arranged to get me in.”
At that moment Hambrick appeared. “You don’t have to wait here,” the lieutenant told Ainslie. “If you’ll follow me, we’ll get your gun, then I’ll take you to your car.”
With a cursory nod to Jensen, Ainslie left.
3
“I saw the lights dim,” Jorge said. “I figured Animal was getting the juice.”
Ainslie said quietly, “He was.”
It was their first exchange since leaving the prison ten minutes earlier. Jorge was driving the Miami Police blue-and-white and handled outward clearance through the prison checkpoints. They passed the inevitable demonstrators on the way; a few still held lighted candles, but most were dispersing. Ainslie had been silent.
He had been deeply affected by the grim process by which Doil had died. On the other hand, there was no denying Doil got what he deserved, though of course that took into account Ainslie’s knowledge that Doil was guilty not only of the two killings for which he had been charged and sentenced, but for at least twelve others.