Two days later, after the boy’s disappearance has made the newspaper headlines and led the TV news, after an eyewitness has turned up who saw a boy fitting Marcus Leacock’s description getting into a small dark sedan, he uses an untraceable phone to call the number provided for tips in the case. He reports having noticed a dark-colored car leaving the grounds of the old Fairview Country Club on the evening of the boy’s disappearance, and that there was something about the incident that made him suspicious enough to jot down the first four digits of the license number, which was as much as he could get.
And of course it is enough . . .
And here’s the guest of honor. Here’s Preston Applewhite, the star of our little spectacle, making his belated entrance. He’s wearing leg shackles and wrist restraints, so it’s a less elegant entrance than it might be, but he’s here now, and the show can go on.
His face is expressionless, his mood unreadable. What fills his mind now? Dread of the unknown? Fury at the failure of the system to exonerate an innocent man? Hope, however unwarranted, that some miracle may come along to save his life?
A week ago he, Arne Bodinson, could have furnished just such a miracle. He might have confessed, openly or anonymously, and proved his claim by offering up the location of the Willis boy’s grave. Now, having spent so many hours with Applewhite, anything he might say would be discredited out of hand. You say you know where the body is, Dr. Bodinson? If so, it’s because Applewhite told you. You’re only confirming his guilt.
The warden, his face lined with the demands of his office, recites a few pro forma words, then asks the condemned man if he has anything to say.
There is an extended pause. Applegate—they’ve not yet strapped him to the gurney, he’s evidently allowed to be on his feet while he voices his last All the Flowers Are Dying
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words—has his eyes lowered in thought, then raises them to look for the first time at the faces behind the glass. He finds his new friend Arne, and his eyes brighten in recognition, but only for a moment.
When he speaks, his voice is soft, as if he doesn’t intend it to reach his audience. There’s a microphone, however, so it’s audible in the witness chamber.
“You’re all certain I did these things,” he says. “I know otherwise, but there’s no reason for anyone to believe me. I almost wish I were guilty.
Then I could confess, I could beg forgiveness.” A pause, and the attendants move in, thinking he’s finished, but a quick shake of his head halts them. “I forgive you,” he says. “All of you.” And at the end his eyes fix on those of the one man who professes to believe in his innocence. Has he figured it out? Is that the meaning of those final three words? But no, he’s looking for approval of his eloquence, and he gets it, a nod of acknowledgment from behind the glass. And Applewhite registers the nod, and seems grateful for it.
Applewhite lies down on the gurney and they adjust the straps. The physician finds a good vein in his arm, swabs the skin with alcohol-soaked cotton, gets the IV inserted on the second attempt.
And then he sits transfixed, watching, while a man dies before his eyes.
There’s very little to see. The first drug, the pentothal, has no apparent effect. The second, the Pavulon, induces paralysis, rendering Applewhite incapable of breathing—or of changing expression. And the final ingre-dient, the potassium chloride, burns or does not burn, it’s impossible to tell, but what is evident, at least to those close enough to see the heart monitor, or the physician who checks the pulse, is that it does what it is supposed to do.
Preston Applewhite is dead.
And, behind the glass, the man who will soon discard forever the name Arne Bodinson is careful to maintain the expression he has worn throughout, one of somber detachment. He has an erection, but he’s fairly certain no one has noticed it.
I-95, he knows, will be a nightmare on a Friday. He takes Interstates 64
and 81 instead, spends what’s left of the night at a motel in Pennsylvania, 88
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then drives east on I-80 Saturday morning, aiming to hit the George Washington Bridge when traffic’s likely to be light. And it works out as he’d planned.
Lately, everything’s been working out as he planned.
As he’d thought it would. He’d done the hard work years ago in Richmond, made his kills, planted the incriminating evidence, fitted the frame precisely around a man whose only mistake was to sustain a bloody nose at the worst possible moment. This past week came under the heading of unfinished business.
He has unfinished business of another sort in New York.
10
Monday night I was having a cup of coffee in front of the television set when my cell phone rang.
“I feel like a fucking spy,” Louise said. “I’m in the ladies’ room at the restaurant. We’re about to go back to my place. You’ve got the address?” I said I did.
“This is so deeply weird. I’m going to take him home and have sex with him, and meanwhile you’ll be lurking outside waiting to follow him home. Tell me that’s not weird.”
“If you’d prefer—”
“No, it makes sense, it’s just totally weird. If he’s who he says he is, then he never has to know about this. If he’s not, then I have to know about it.”
I asked if he was likely to stay overnight.
“If he does, it’ll be a first. He usually comes over and stays for three or four hours, but this time we had dinner, which we usually don’t, so we’re getting a late start. What time is it, eight-thirty? No, closer to nine. My guess is he won’t stay past eleven-thirty.” I asked what he was wearing, to make sure I didn’t follow the wrong guy. Designer jeans and a navy-blue polo shirt, she said. I suggested she could flick the lights on and off a half dozen times as
