is on me, because he has anointed me to preach good news,' he murmured.
'Amen,' said a woman in the gallery.
I'll be honest, this was not quite what I had had in mind when I had told Shay he could make one final attempt to sway this court. To me, religious scripture sounded just as wacky and zealous as the diatribe Shay had given on the nature of organized religion. But maybe Shay was smarter than I was, because his quote made the judge purse his lips. 'Is that from the Bible, Mr. Bourne?'
'I don't know,' Shay replied. 'I don't remember where it comes from.'
A tiny paper airplane torpedoed over my shoulder to land in my lap.
I opened it up, read Father Michael's hastily scrawled note. 'Yes, Judge,' I said quickly. 'It is.'
'Marshal,' Judge Haig said, 'bring me the Bible.' He began to thumb through the onionskin pages. 'Do you happen to know where, Ms.
Bloom?'
I didn't know when or if Shay Bourne had been reading scripture.
This quote could have come from the priest; it could have come from
God; it could have been the only line he knew in the whole Old Testament.
But somehow, he'd piqued the interest of Judge Haig, who was no longer dismissing my client outright, but instead tracing the pages of the
Bible as if it were written in Braille.
I stood, armed with Father Michael's citation. 'It's in Isaiah, Your
Honor,' I said.
During the lunch recess, I drove to my office. Not because I had such an inviolable work ethic (although technically I had sixteen other cases going at the same time as Shay's, my boss had given me his blessing to put them on the back burner of the largest metaphorical stove ever), but because I just needed to get away from the trial completely. The secretary at the ACLU office blinked when I walked through the door. 'Aren't you supposed to be-'
'Yes,' I snapped, and I walked through the maze of filing cabinets to my desk.
I didn't know how Shay's outburst would affect the judge. I didn't know if I'd already lost this case, before the defense had even presented its witnesses. I did know that I hadn't slept well in three weeks and was flat out of rabbit food for Oliver, and I was having a really bad hair day. I rubbed my hands down my face, and then realized I'd probably smeared my mascara.
With a sigh, I glanced at the mountain of paperwork on my desk that had been steadily growing without me there to act as clearinghouse.
350 J O D I P I C O U LT
There was an appeal that had been filed in the Supreme Court by the attorneys of a skinhead who'd written the word towelhead in white paint on the driveway of his employer, a Pakistani convenience store owner who'd fired him for being drunk on the job; some research about why the words under God had been added to the Pledge of Allegiance in i954 during the
McCarthy era; and a stack of mail equally balanced between desperate souls who wanted me to fight on their behalf and right-wing conservatives who berated the ACLU for making it criminal to be a white churchgoing
Christian.
One letter sifted through my hands and dropped onto my lap-a plain envelope printed with the address of the New Hampshire State
Prison, the Office of the Warden. I opened it and found inside a pressed white sheet of paper, still bearing its watermark.
It was an invitation to attend the execution of Isaiah Bourne. The guest list included the attorney general, the governor, the lawyer who originally prosecuted Shay's case, me, Father Michael, and several other names I didn't recognize. By law, there had to be a certain number of people present for an execution from both the inmate's and the victim's sides. In this, it was a bit like organizing a wedding. And just like a wedding, there was a number to call to RSVP
It was fifteen days before Shay was scheduled to die.
Clearly, I was the only one who found it remotely hilarious that the first and only witness the defense called-the commissioner of corrections- was a man named Joe Lynch. He was a tall, thin man whose sense of humor had apparently dissipated along with the hair on his scalp. I was quite sure that when he took the job, he'd never dreamed that he would be faced with New Hampshire's first execution in more than half a century.
'Commissioner Lynch,' the assistant attorney general said, 'what preparations have been made for the execution of Shay Bourne?'
'As you're aware,' Lynch said, 'the State of New Hampshire was not equipped to deal with the death sentence handed down to Inmate
Bourne. We'd hoped that the job could be done at Terre Haute, but found out that wasn't going to happen. To that end, we've had to construct a lethal injection chamber-which now occupies a good corner of what used to be our exercise yard at the state penitentiary.'
'Can you give us a breakdown of the costs involved?'
The commissioner began to read from a ledger. 'The architectural and construction fees for the project were $39,100. A lethal injection gurney cost $830. The equipment associated with lethal injection cost
$684. In addition, the human cost included meeting with staff, training the staff, and attending hearings- totaling $48,846. Initial supplies were
$1,361, and the chemicals cost $426. In addition to this, several physical improvements were made to the space where the execution would occur: vertical blinds in the witness area, a dimmer switch in the chamber, a tinted one-way mirror, air-conditioning and an emergency generator, a wireless microphone and amplifier into the viewing area, a mono plug phone jack. These ran up to $14,669.'
'You've done the math, Commissioner. By your calculation, what do you estimate you've spent on Shay Bourne's execution so far?'
'$105,916.'
'Commissioner,' Greenleaf asked, 'does the State of New Hampshire have a gallows that could be used if the court ordered Mr. Bourne to be hanged?'
'Not anymore,' Lynch replied.
'Would it be correct to assume, then, that there would be an additional outlay for the taxpayers of New Hampshire if a new gallows had to be constructed?'
'That's correct.'
'What specifications are needed to build a gallows?'
The commissioner nodded. 'A floor height of at least nine feet, a crossbeam of nine feet, with a clearance of three feet above the inmate being executed. The opening in the trapdoor would have to be at least three feet to ensure proper clearance. There would have to be a means of releasing the trapdoor and stopping it from swinging after it has been opened, and a fastening mechanism for the rope with the noose.'
In a few short sentences, Gordon Greenleaf had recentered this trial from the woo-woo touchy-feely freedom- of-religion aspect, to the inevitability of Shay's imminent death. I glanced at Shay. He had gone white as the blank sheet of paper framed between his chained hands.
'You're looking at no less than seventy-five hundred for construction and materials,' the commissioner said. 'In addition, there would be the investment of a body restraint.'
'What's that, exactly?' Greenleaf asked.
'A waist strap with two wrist restraints, made of three-thousandpound test nylon, and another leg restraint
