The prisoner listened as the alarm beeped and the door rumbled and clanged shut behind him. Something hard and twisted in his gut loosened just a bit. The smell of death row was still in his nostrils, but it was fading. He realized he was holding his breath and took a tiny gulp of air.
“Billy.”
As Grubbs waited, the prisoner turned and looked through the bars at the death row guard supervisor. “Yes, lieutenant?”
Lt. Gary Rain’s face was broad and amiable beneath a shock of blond hair. He looked like he should be hosting a kid’s TV show rather than running the death row screws. Billy had been renting a room at Rain’s hotel for seven years.
“I won’t be seeing you again, Billy.” He smiled and raised his eyebrows. “It’ll seem strange after all this time.” Lt. Rain’s shoulders shrugged slightly. There were some words called for, but Grubbs was there, and Stark had been convicted of killing three men, and Billy knew that Gary Rain hated that. You don’t say “good luck” to someone you think ought to fry. Good-byes in prison were screwed up anyway. Billy would miss Gary Rain. The death row guard commander was a by-the-book officer, but he was scrupulously fair and always treated the condemned as though they might be human. He figured the payment to be collected from the condemned was death, not humiliation. Billy would miss Gary Rain and he hoped he would never see the man’s face again.
“I hope the experiment does some good.” Lt. Rain turned and walked back toward death row.
Grubbs shook his head as he watched the solid fire door close behind Lt. Rain. “I bet he’s good to his mother.”
Billy turned his head and looked at the guard with steady gray eyes. He did not change expression, and after a moment Grubbs shifted uncomfortably and nodded toward the first gallery cells. “Step off, Stark. Head for personal issue and get your bedding. After that there’s an old friend of yours in your cell. You’re in one-sixteen.”
Burdened now with bedclothes and pillow, in addition to his box of belongings, Billy entered cell one-sixteen. There was the old friend Grubbs had mentioned. Detective Sergeant John Draper was seated in the middle of the small cell’s only bed, his back against the cell wall, hands in his trouser pockets, his legs thrust out before him and crossed at the ankles. Draper was a slender man in his early fifties with a long angular face beneath short brown hair peppered with gray. His brownish sport coat needed pressing and his five-dollar necktie was pulled down, his collar button open. A rumpled trench coat, wet from the damp day outside, was tossed on the foot of the bed. Billy stood there until Grubbs said, “Prisoner, put the stuff on the desk and put out the wrists.”
When the cuffs were removed, Grubbs left and Billy was left alone with the officer who had tracked him down and arrested him almost eight years ago. Draper looked up at him with pale blue eyes. “Hi, Billy.”
Billy rubbed his wrists and nodded. “Sgt. Draper. Congratulations on the promotion.”
Draper shifted his gaze and looked around at the cell’s dingy yellow interior. “This is a lot nicer than The Row, isn’t it? Bookshelf, desk, your own chair. You even got your shoelaces back. Now you can go out in the exercise yard, play chess, and powwow with all the other killers.”
Billy pulled out the chair, faced its back toward Draper, straddled the seat, and sat down. “What can I do for you, sergeant?”
“I don’t suppose you’d consider suicide.” Draper sat up, removed his hands from his pockets and leaned his elbows on his knees. “You think you got away from Old Sparky up there, don’t you, killer? You run out of stalls, appeals, and stays, and presto, out pops donating your body to science.” The detective slowly shook his head. “And I’ll be damned if the governor didn’t go for it.”
“The people at the institute asked me, sergeant. It was their idea. I didn’t ask them.”
“Yeah, I know. Out of all the cons in here, you’re the one who has never been sick a day in your life. You don’t smoke and never used any drugs, so when they shoot those enzymes and that secret gunk into you, the only thing they have to worry about is: does it work on humans?” The cop grinned slightly. “I wonder if it does?”
“That’s what they’re going to find out with me, isn’t it?”
Draper’s grin faded. “Last week I went to the institute for a visit. Those people are real proud of their work. Dr. Polinzer gave me the fifty-cent tour, showed me a bunch of slides, talked a yard of gibberish, introduced me to a couple of chimps, and put on a demonstration just for me. He and his assistant took a full grown sedated chimp, wired it up, and gave it a shot. Then we all watched while the chimp looked around dopey for a bit and then started screaming.”
The homicide detective slowly turned his head to the left and allowed his gaze to settle on a prisoner in the center of the block mopping the gallery floor. “Billy, you never heard such screaming, not in your whole life.” He faced the new occupant of cell one-sixteen. “Not even from your victims. It almost made me send in my dues for animal rights.” Draper stood, walked to the back of the cell next to the seatless toilet, turned around and fixed Billy with his gaze.
“I asked the good doctor if the screaming was because of what the chimp was thinking, seeing, or feeling. He didn’t know about the first two, but he told me the chimp was doing some big time feeling. Pain, man. Pain that is so far off the pain scale it’s impossible to imagine. You see, Billy, every cell in that animal’s body was undergoing reconstruction. That gunk chops up the cells, rearranges the parts, throws away what it doesn’t want, and puts it all back together again.”
The detective clasped his hands behind his back and brushed the cell’s tiny bookshelf checking for dust. He looked at his fingertips, brushed them against his thumb, and nodded. “That includes every nerve cell, Billy. Can you imagine having a trillion splinters? All at the same time? Man, it’s going to be like having your entire mind and body amputated and put through a meatgrinder a million times over. All while you’re conscious.”
The police officer waited a moment, but Billy Stark’s face did not change expression. “Anyway, I watched that chimp for almost six hours. The first thing that happened, besides the screaming, was all his hair fell out. Then it looked like he lost control of every function of his body. Remember those films you see in the service about nerve gas?”
“I never was in the service, but you already know that.”
“You’re damned right I know that!” Draper exploded. He took several deep breaths and slowly resumed an appearance of uncaring calm. “Every muscle begins twitching uncontrollably,” he continued, “you lose control of your bowels and bladder, tears run from your eyes, mucous from your nose, drool from your mouth. Then, slick with sweat, the breathing gets very hard. That chimp bled from its eyes and ears.” Draper forced a smile onto his face. “And that was the easy part.”
Billy raised his eyebrows and held out one hand for a moment. “They showed me a video of that back on The Row.”
“Did they show you the end, when the dead and dying skin comes off in sheets and you begin excreting the old you.”
Billy let the hand drop. “Yeah. My lawyer made them go into the whole thing detail by detail.” He smiled. “Surround sound and living color. More than once.”
The detective resumed his seat on the bed. “I have studied you and everything I could about you for more than eight years, Billy. I know you’re not stupid.”
“The prison shrink says I got the IQ of a genius. ‘Course if she was any good, she wouldn’t be workin’ here, right?”
Draper lifted a hand and rubbed the back of his neck as he continued studying the prisoner. “Billy, the chimp I saw died a death I wouldn’t even wish on you.”