The Impaler

he opened them again, he found Stokes being secured in the chair. His mind seemed to drain at once into the reality of the present, and he noted on his watch that it took nearly fifteen minutes to finish prepping the Neanderthal for his injection.

At first, Stokes was alert and awake. He spoke to the attendants and even seemed to chuckle at one point. Markham couldn’t hear what they were saying, but felt nothing as he cataloged the scene before him like a scientist. After a while, however, Stokes seemed to grow distant and sad, his head turning toward the window to his right. And when the drugs finally began to flow, Stokes mouthed the words “I love you” to that window—and his mother behind it, Markham assumed.

But still Markham felt nothing. He could hear his mother-in-law quietly weeping somewhere to his left, but felt not the slightest inclination to look at her. Instead, he found himself staring into the execution chamber, running through the formula for the lethal injection in his mind—Sodium Pentothal, pancuronium bromide, potassium chloride …

Then Stokes’s eyes closed, and Markham leaned forward, watching the big man’s chest rise and fall, rise and fall—at first slowly, then much faster as he went under. Markham didn’t mark the time or how long it took until everything stopped, but only stared ahead in silence for several minutes until the attendants drew the curtains.

Elmer Stokes, the Smiling Shanty Man, was pronounced dead at 1:34 a.m. It took almost eleven years for this day to arrive, Markham would realize afterward, but only thirty-four minutes for the whole thing to go down in the end.

It was over, but he felt no different.

He had expected that—the numb emptiness, the surreal charade—but what he hadn’t seen coming was the gnawing envy he suddenly felt for Elmer Stokes.

Sam Markham wanted to sleep, too. To sleep and not pull back the curtains until he was sure his wife was waiting for him on the other side.

Chapter 57

Cindy Smith reached out her arm and found nothing but air. Her head hurt and her throat was parched, and for a moment she had no idea where she was. She bolted upright and caught sight of the ghost light on the stage below—its single bulb casting shadows that ran across her body like prison bars. She sat there for a moment thinking—her memory, like a leaky faucet, coming back to her in drips.

She was on the second tier of the Macbeth set, behind the railing on the stage right side. That’s right. She and Edmund had come up here after kissing in the parking lot—but where was he? Cindy looked around and found her handbag beside her. She took out her cell phone. 3:42 a.m.

“Christ,” she sighed, closing her eyes.

It had been her idea, she remembered suddenly, guiltily—she who’d asked Edmund to open the theater so they could have some privacy in case any of the other students spotted them in the parking lot on the way home from the party.

The party, Cindy said to herself. There was a fight at the party.

But Cindy didn’t care about that, and instead fast- forwarded to the memory of Edmund leading her up the stairs—the outline of his muscular back through his shirt glowing an eerie blue in the shadows from the ghost light. Then they were together, pawing at each other in the dark-ness—her back against the hard platform, the warmth of his skin, the sour smell of stage paint all around her. She had been drunk, but that wasn’t why she wanted him. She understood this even now, but thought it strange that Edmund wouldn’t take off his shirt even as she felt his hardness probing between her thighs.

Suddenly, Edmund froze—whispered something in her ear that sounded like “arrest a gal”— and then slid off. Cindy felt a wave of embarrassment and shame as she remembered how she all but begged him to continue “Come on,” she’d said, “put it inside me.” But now she couldn’t remember exactly what Edmund said next—mumbled something about stars and not having permission.

“Permission?” Cindy had slurred. “You’re too much of a gentleman.” Then came the fuzzy memory of them dress-ing—of him dressing her—and the warmth of his embrace as they drifted off to sleep. But Edmund hadn’t slept. Cindy knew that now.

“Edmund?” she whispered—but only her voice echoed back from the black. And suddenly Cindy was not only angry but also very afraid.

She stood up and grabbed her handbag, dashed down the escape steps behind the set, and felt her way through the wings to the side entrance. Her head was throbbing, her sense of balance off, but she found the doorknob and burst out into the night.

The cool air felt good on Cindy’s face—sobered her up but did nothing for her anger. She quickly descended the outside stairs and ran into the parking lot. Edmund’s pickup was gone, but her piece-of-shit Pontiac was right where she had left it before the show.

“Asshole,” she muttered—but once she was inside her car, her anger left her at once. On the passenger seat was a white rose, taken from her dressing room while she was asleep, she knew. Lying across it was a folded piece of notebook paper. She flicked on the dome light and read the note.

Dear Cindy: Please forgive me for leaving, but I need to be sure things are what they seem before we go any further. I will see you after the show tonight. I hope you’re not angry with me. Edmund

Cindy sat there for a moment, confused, reading the note over and over again. Edmund had written it in pencil, but it appeared as if he’d written another name first, then erased it and wrote Cindy instead. What was it?

Looks like the name begins with E, Cindy thought, but she couldn’t make out the rest of it in the Pontiac’s dim dome light. But the note itself—what the hell was that about? And what kind of guy would leave a girl all alone in a darkened theater?

Cindy sat in the driver’s seat, playing over the night’s events in her mind until the windows of her Pontiac began to fog. Amy Pratt was right. There was something kind of creepy about Edmund Lambert. The note, the talk about things being what they seem—so strange, yes, but at the same time … well …

Cindy sighed and closed her eyes; tried to block out the realization of just how much that strangeness intrigued her—how much it turned her on. Jesus Christ, she almost had sex with Edmund Lambert after only a single date! This from the girl who in high school made her boyfriend wait over a year to get in her pants—and that was only because she was drunk and it was the senior prom and he begged her.

But now, tonight, it was she who had begged Edmund Lambert. What the fuck was going on with her? And what was it about Edmund Lambert that made her act so unlike herself—made her throw herself at him just like that slut Amy Pratt would do?

Cindy opened her eyes and stared down at Edmund’s neat block-lettered print. She needed to get to bed and sleep off what had the potential to be a bitch of a hangover; she had to pull the lunch shift at Chili’s, too, before heading off to the show.

“He needs to be sure things are what they seem,” Cindy whispered, reading the note again. “Whatever the fuck that means.”

What things “seem” like, a voice said in her head, is that he ditched you in the theater. Didn’t wake you or stick around to walk to you to your car. That’s fucked up.

“But the note,” Cindy replied. “And the flower. It’s not like he just left me. Maybe he tried to wake me —”

Are you kidding? You’re gonna give him a pass on this?

“And the way he defended me at the party—”

Oh, my God! You’re truly one needy, pathetic bitch!

Cindy closed her eyes and told the voice in her head to fuck off. It was right: she should be furious with Edmund Lambert—but she wasn’t. And there was this odd feeling in the pit of her stomach: a dull sense of inevitability that at once both terrified and excited her—made her feel strangely liberated but at the same time like