“Oh, for God’s sake!” I spun back around to face her. “For God’s sake,” I said.
As I put my hand on the knob, I heard her voice again. Toneless again. Flattened out by the weight on it. “Anyway, I seen a lot of innocent folks get killed in this part of town,” she said. “But it’s funny. I ain’t never seen you here before.”
5
As I drove back over the boulevard toward the city, I thought of all the things I should have said to her. I should’ve told her about the potato chips and my instinct that Porterhouse was lying. I should’ve told her about the way the car backed into Beachum’s left side. I should’ve drawn her a map and showed her. Sometimes you have to go on instinct, I should have said. And as for the sins of society, blacks and whites and bigotry and unfairness … all I know about are the things that happen, I should’ve said. Someone held the gun, someone pulled the trigger. Those were the facts. Amy Wilson was murdered and the wrong man was going to die for it. That’s all I knew. That’s what I should have told her.
I was cruising through University City now, cruising through the dark. Driving slowly, for me, driving just above the speed limit anyway, with nowhere special to go. The radio was on; the news station was playing, the self-important rhythms of the news were murmured low. I was passing the McDonald’s where-as I found out later from the police report-Michelle Ziegler had had her cup of coffee that morning, had sat and cried about a lousy one-night stand, before weaving off toward Dead Man’s Curve.
I should have said something, I thought as I passed it. I should have said anything that came to mind. It probably wouldn’t have made much difference, but now, as things stood, there was nothing left. Nothing else to do, no one else to talk to, no other leads to run down. It was after eight. With less than four hours to the execution, I didn’t have a single piece of evidence I could bring to the publisher, to Lowenstein, nothing to make him get on the phone to the state-house and buy Beachum a little time, enough time.
I suppose I should have been working on that. Racking my brains, trying to come up with a fresh angle, a new lead. But I wasn’t. I couldn’t. I didn’t have it in me. I couldn’t even get myself to think about it for any stretch of time. Whenever I tried, my mind drifted away to other things. My job, for instance. Without this story to raise my stock, how the hell was I going to get Bob off my case, how was I going to convince him to let me keep my job? And Barbara. She would find out the truth when they fired me. She would find out the truth one way or another anyway. Then she’d be gone. And Davy would be gone with her. And I loved Davy, if I loved anyone, and I didn’t want to grow old alone. If I just could’ve gotten this story, I kept thinking. If I just could have played the hero on this one and come through, maybe I could’ve turned things around, maybe I could’ve made a case for myself. At the paper. With my wife. Maybe. Somehow.
The boulevard streetlights came toward me, flashed over me. I passed the park, then the long stretch of low garages, fast food restaurants, parking lots. I reached the border of the city and saw Dead Man’s Curve ahead. I came round it slowly in the flow of the scant Monday-night traffic. As I went, I cast a quick look through the window in the direction of the filling station. The broken husk of Michelle’s red Datsun had been towed away, but the black mark of the crash was still smeared over the garage’s white wall. I could see it in the high station sodium lights. On the asphalt, in the glow, shards of glass still twinkled.
“Dumb broad,” I murmured, and my heart hurt for her, and for Beachum, and for myself.
I was just coming out of the bend, when I heard his name, Beachum’s. I heard it spoken by the newsman on the radio. I pushed up the volume, listened as the road straightened out before me.
“Frank Beachum,” the solemn newscaster said, “the St. Louis man scheduled to go to his death by lethal injection at midnight, has reportedly confessed to his crime.”
6
I pulled the Tempo over to the side of the road. The newsman continued: “Television station KSLM is now reporting that a source close to the governor’s office says Beachum has expressed remorse over the murder of Amy Wilson, the pregnant woman he shot dead six years ago.”
I gripped the wheel hard, my mouth open. I leaned forward until my brow was pressed against the wheel’s hard plastic.
“The source refused to be named and the confession has not been confirmed by officials at the prison, but the source told KSLM that Beachum said he was sorry for the grief he had caused the victim’s family. Mrs. Wilson’s father, Frederick Robertson says sorry is not enough.”
I leaned against the wheel. I stared down at the floor, unseeing. Frederick Robertson spoke on the radio.
“Sure he’s sorry. Now he’s facing his punishment I’m sure he’s sorry as hell. But that doesn’t bring my daughter back. That doesn’t bring her baby back, my grandchild.”
“The governor,” added the newsman, “has already said he will not call off the execution.”
I lifted my head. I looked around me, dazed. Confessed? I thought. I saw the gas station where Michelle Ziegler had crashed just behind me. I put the Tempo into reverse and backed over the curb into the lot. I felt dizzy and sick. I felt as if a black ooze was spreading through me. Depression. Nausea. Spreading through me. And something else too. Relief. I hated to admit it, but I felt relief. The man had confessed. It was over. I was off the dime.
I slowed the Tempo behind a line of parked cars and stopped it there. The newscaster had now gone on to other things. I turned off the radio. I sat gripping the wheel, shaking my head, reswallowing the contents of my stomach. Confessed, I thought. Confessed. It was over.
I put a cigarette in my mouth, hoping to calm my gut. Strangely enough, I believed the story completely, believed it thoroughly the moment I heard it. Beachum had confessed. He was guilty. It seemed to me to make sense of everything. It seemed to make all the pieces of the long day fall into place. There was no innocent man on death row. There was no last-minute race for justice. It had been a dream. I had known all along, deep down, it was a dream. But I had dreamed on. And now he had confessed.
I punched the steering wheel with the heel of my palm. How could I have deceived myself like that? How, knowing that I might deceive myself, had I deceived myself notwithstanding? But I knew the answers to these questions too. I could trace it back clearly over the day. It had started with the phone call from Bob. His phone call to Patricia. I had known from that moment what was going to happen: the end of my job, the end of my marriage. Just like in New York, only worse. And I was desperate not to go through it all again. I had seized on this story-the Beachum story-the second it had come into my hands. I had seized on it crazily in the wild hope of saving myself. Insignificant details-nonsense details-the gunshot Nancy Larson didn’t hear, the rack of potato chips, the accountant’s self-doubting eyes, a black kid buying a soda in the parking lot outside-I had seized on them all and tried to turn them into high-drama in my mind. I had turned them into a dream, a dream of salvation, of a last-minute reprieve for me and Beachum both.
But I was not dreaming anymore. He had confessed. I could see the whole business clearly. I could see I had nothing. I had nary a damn thing even to suggest that Beachum was innocent of the crime. How could I have? In one day? After a police investigation? After press coverage. After a trial, after six years of appeals. Could anyone-could anyone less desperate to salvage his miserable life-could anyone anywhere believe that the American justice system would make a fatal mistake so simple that it could suddenly be put right by a single man in a single day?