He’s ushered into the room at ten-forty-five, a full hour and a quarter before the proceedings are scheduled to begin, and there are already half a dozen people present, four men and two women. One man a few years his junior, wearing a shirt and tie but no jacket, makes conversational overtures. He’s sure the man is a journalist, and he doesn’t want to talk to him, or indeed to anyone. He dismisses the man with a shake of his head.
There is, he’s surprised to note, a refreshment table laid out for the 72
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spectators, with a coffee urn and a pitcher of iced tea, along with a plate of doughnuts and another of corn and bran muffins. He doesn’t want to eat anything, the whole idea is faintly distasteful, but does help himself to a cup of coffee.
And takes a chair. There are no bad seats; the viewing gallery is long and narrow, with every chair adjacent to the big plate-glass window. He’s struck immediately by how close they are to what they’re going to watch.
But for the intervening glass, they’d be able to smell the breath of the attending physician, and the fear of his unfortunate patient.
The equipment is in place, the gurney, the apparatus holding three suspended bottles and an array of medical equipment. He glances to his right, at a middle-aged man and woman whose eyes are fixed upon a framed photograph the woman is holding. Their son, of course. One of Applewhite’s three victims.
He shifts in his seat, manages a glimpse of the photo. The shock of blond hair is an unmistakable field mark; these are the Willises, parents of the first boy slain, the one whose remains were never found.
The body’s location is the secret Preston Applewhite is evidently determined to take with him to the grave.
The door opens to admit another man, who takes a seat, then sees the refreshment table and helps himself to coffee and a doughnut. “That looks good,” someone says, and goes to the table.
And the coffee is in fact better than one might expect, weaker than he’d prefer but otherwise acceptable, and freshly made. He finishes it, sets the cup aside, and gazes through the pane of glass.
And allows the memories to come . . .
Richmond, Virginia, no more than fifty miles away, but further removed in time than in distance. Years ago, when the Willis boy—Jeffrey?—is alive, when Preston Applewhite is a free man, a husband and father, a respected member of his community. And a man who still enjoys a game of basketball once or twice a week at the municipal outdoor recreation area a few blocks from his office.
And he himself, Arne Bodinson (although he has another name then, and it would take some concentration to conjure it up from his memory), All the Flowers Are Dying
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happens to be passing through the grounds. He’s never walked there before, he’s barely arrived in Richmond, and he pauses to watch the men play a boys’ game.
Two men leap for a rebound. The elbow of one collides with the face of the other, and the second man cries out in pain and crumples to the pavement, blood streaming from his nose.
Why do things happen? Why does one man live while another dies, one prosper while another fails? It seems self-evident that one of two operating principles must apply. Either everything happens for a reason or nothing happens for a reason. Either it was all coded in the molecules from the very instant of the Big Bang or every bit of it, every left or right turn, every lightning strike, every broken shoelace, is the product of nothing but random chance.
He could argue the question either way, but more often than not he leans toward the latter version. Random chance rolls the dice. Things happen because they happen. You get what you get.
Consider this, then: Anyone could have paused to watch that basketball game, but it is not just anyone, it is he himself, the future Arne Bodinson, with his particular history and personality. And, although the weather renders it superfluous, he is nevertheless wearing a sport jacket, and in its breast pocket, atypically for him, there is a neatly folded white handkerchief. He’s put it there that morning, so he realizes he has it, and without conscious thought he rushes across the court to the fallen man, drawing the hanky from his pocket, using it to stanch the flow of blood from the injured (but not, it will turn out, broken) nose.
Others, teammates and opponents, are also quick to assist Applewhite, and in no time at all they have him on his feet and are leading him away to get medical attention. And he’s left there with a bloody handkerchief in his hand, and he looks at it, and, wondrous to say, he is able to foresee everything that is to follow. Another man would have disposed of the handkerchief in the nearest trashcan, but he sees it at once as an unpar-alleled opportunity.
He bears it carefully away. As soon as he conveniently can, he tucks it away in a plastic Ziploc bag.
.
.
.
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A man in a brown suit, evidently a subordinate of the warden’s, enters the room and clears his throat, explaining in some detail just what is going to take place shortly on the other side of the window. He’s heard it all before, and suspects that’s as true of the others, the bereaved, the members of the press, and whoever else has contrived to get one of these precious front-row seats.
But the fellow is not just there to refresh everybody’s memory. He’s the approximate equivalent of the chap whose task it is to warm up a television show’s studio audience, telling jokes to heighten their spirits, exhort-ing them to respond enthusiastically to the promptings of the applause sign. The man in the brown suit doesn’t tell jokes, of course, and his goal is to mute and muffle emotions, not amplify them. “Remember the solemnity of the occasion,” he urges them. “You may feel the impulse to say something. Whatever it is, keep it to yourself until after we’ve finished here. The sight of this man who’s brought you so much pain may move you to cry out. If you feel you won’t be able to control yourself, I’m going to ask you to tell me now, and I’ll have you escorted to another part of the facility.”
