The Executioner's Song

I--Colleen

1

She had once been told she looked like a Botticelli. She was tall and slender, and had light-brown hair, ivory skin and a long well-shaped nose with a small bump on the bridge. Yet she hardly knew Botticelli's work. They did not teach a great deal about the Renaissance at Utah State in Logan, where she was majoring in art education.

It was at Utah State that Colleen was introduced to her future husband, Max Jensen. Afterward, they would laugh at how long it took. The few times Max saw Colleen Halling on the campus, she happened to be talking to her cousin. Max decided the fellow was her boyfriend, and therefore it never occurred to him to ask her out.

The following year, however, Max happened to be rooming with the guy and got around to asking if he was still interested in the girl he had seen him with. Max's new roommate started laughing and explained that was no romance--just cousins. By now, Colleen was already out of college, but since she was working at the College of Education, she was, in the practical sense, still on campus.

Colleen only became aware of Max when he spoke in church at the beginning of the new school year. He was wearing a suit that day and looked very distinguished, and seemed a little older than the other students; but then, he had already finished his two-year mission. That stood out. He spoke on the importance of not tearing other people down but building them up. Managed to show he had quite a sense of humor as he spoke.

2

A few weeks later, Colleen invited her cousin and his five roommates to come over for a little dinner party with herself and her five roommates. Everything was laid out on the table and people walked by to get their porcupine meatballs; that is, hamburger-and-rice casserole. Since they were all strict Mormons, no iced tea or coffee was served, just milk and water. A pleasant meal on regular plates, not paper, and they talked about school, basketball and church activities. Colleen remembered Max sitting several feet away on a big pillow and laughing with the group. He had a distinctive voice that was a little bit raspy. She learned later he had hay fever and it gave his voice the deep throbbing sound that comes from having a cold. One of Colleen's roommates later described it as being very sexy.

The next day he called. One of her roommates told Colleen she was wanted on the telephone. This was their little trick. If a girl was on the line, they would yell, "Phone!" but should it be a guy, then "Telephone." Colleen was used to hearing the second, so she had no particular idea it would be Max. The night before, she certainly hadn't gotten the feeling he was making any special attempt to communicate with her, yet he now asked her if she would like to go to a show tonight. She told him yes.

Afterward, it was kind of funny when they each admitted they had seen What's Up, Doc? before but hadn't wanted to spoil the other's opportunity to go. Then they went to the Pizza Hut and talked about their ideas on life, and how active they and their families were in Latterday Saints work. Max said he was the oldest of four children and his father, a farmer in Montpelier, Idaho, was also a Stake President. That impressed Colleen. There couldn't be that many Stake Presidents in all of Idaho.

He also told her about his mission to Brazil. What got her respect was that he had earned all the money to do that by himself. Missionaries had to pay their own way over, of course, and then also pay for living expenses on the mission, so most of them had to be helped financially by their families. It wasn't easy for an adolescent to earn enough money by the age of 19 to maintain himself for two years on a mission in a foreign country. Max, however, had done that.

He enjoyed Brazil, his conversion rate had been high. On average, you could hope to convert one person a month over your two-year stretch in that country, but he had done considerably better. He remembered it as a time of great challenge and much necessity to learn how to live with different people.

Naturally, she had heard a lot about missionary work, but he explained some of the things that didn't always get mentioned. For instance, he told her how a missionary might have trouble with his companion. It could be tough to live with a fellow who was a complete stranger. You and your companion had to be together all the time in a foreign city. It was closer than marriage. You did your work and you lived together in pairs. Even people who really knew how to get along had to grate on each other a little with their personal habits. Just the noise you made brushing your teeth. Of course, the Church had a practice of rotating missionaries before too much irritation built up.

The most valuable part, he told her, was the way you developed your ability to take rebuff. Sometimes you would really be having fruitful conversations with a possible convert, and the person might even declare they were close. Then one day you'd go over and, lo and behold, the local Catholic priest was sitting there. There were a lot of such setbacks. You had to learn it wasn't you doing the converting but the readiness of the other person to meet the Spirit.

Colleen's family life wasn't too different from his. Her family did a lot of things that centered around the Church, and they expected you to take on things and do well. In high school, she told him, she had been yearbook editor, president of the service club and school artist. She had also done portraits out at Lagoon resort, which enabled her to save money for college. From the time she entered first grade, she wanted her drawings to be better than anyone else's.

Afterward, he drove her home in his car, a bright-red Nova that he kept sparkling clean. Her roommates said the two of them really looked good together as a couple.

3

They began dating pretty steadily. Colleen never did think, however, that it was love at first sight. It was more that Max was impressed with her and she was impressed with him.

At Christmastime, while washing dishes, her mother had wanted to know, "If Max asks you, will you say yes?"

Colleen had turned around and looked at her and said, "I'd be a fool if I didn't."

During their engagement, she only found little things she did not like about Max. He was a perfectionist and occasionally Colleen might say something that wasn't grammatically correct. Max didn't worry about hurting her feelings. It was natural for him to come out and tell her, "You made a mistake," and expect her to correct it.

He was very proud of her painting and drawing, however. Sometimes he would rib her in company by saying that if he wanted her to talk, all he had to do was say "Art." She'd start like crazy.

They really got along pretty well. Before they were married, her mother once asked, "What bothers you about him?" and Colleen answered, "Nothing." Of course, she meant nothing that couldn't soon be worked out.

The wedding took place in Logan Temple on May 9, 1975, at six o'clock in the morning (continued on page 170)Executioner's Song(continued from page 139) before 30 close friends and members of their families. For the ceremony, Colleen and Max were both dressed in white. They were going to be married in time and eternity, married not only in this life but, as each of them had explained to many a Sunday-school class, married in death as well, for the souls of the husband and wife would meet again in eternity and be together forever. In fact, marriage in other Christian churches was practically equal to divorce, since such marriages were only made until parting by death. That was what Max and Colleen had taught their students. Now they were marrying each other. Forever.

In the evening, there was a reception at their own church. The families had sent out 800 invitations and light refreshments were offered. They had a reception line. Hundreds of relatives and friends walked through.

4

For their honeymoon, they went to Disneyland. They had calculated their money and decided by cutting it close, they would have just enough. They were right. It was a nice week.

Colleen got pregnant soon after, and it was kind of difficult for Max to understand why she didn't feel good all the time. They were both working, but she felt so little like eating that at lunch she would prepare just a small sandwich for each of them. He would say, "You're starving me to death." She would laugh and tell him she had quite a bit to learn about a guy's eating habits.

In marriage, he never raised his voice and neither did she. If, occasionally, she felt like speaking sharply, she wouldn't. They had decided right from the beginning that they would never leave each other without kissing goodbye. Nor would they go to bed with personal problems unsolved. If they were mad at each other, they would stay up to talk it out. They were not going to sleep even one night being mad at each other.

By August, close to the start of law school, they moved from Logan to Provo. That was a good time. Colleen was over morning sickness and had no trouble working. Max was squared away on studies. They found a nice basement apartment with a small front room and a tiny bedroom about 12 blocks from the college for $100 a month, and got along really well.

The week before she had the baby, Colleen typed a 30-page paper for Max, and he sent her a dozen red roses in return. She loved him for that. They had a little girl born to them on Valentine's Day, a little over nine months from the date of their marriage. The baby had lots of dark hair and weighed seven pounds and Max was real proud of her and took snapshots before she was a day old. They named her Monica. When she got older, he loved to play with her.

Wasn't much time, of course. Finishing up first-year law school, Max was really working hard. She'd fix his breakfast and he'd leave; back for dinner at five, out again at six to the law library, home at ten. She was in charge of the baby for sure.

They needed a larger place to live, so they bought a trailer they really liked. It was 12 feet wide, 52 feet long and had two bedrooms. Colleen's parents loaned the money for the down payment.

The trailer was furnished with a couple of old things her parents gave them, and they had a little lawn. Max also planted a small garden out to the side. Every day he'd water his tomatoes. Maybe there were 100 trailers in the court, and all kinds of neighbors. Most were their own age, with children, and nice enough. There were even several couples they went to church with.

5

He had a construction job promised for that summer, but when it was not yet ready after school, they went up to his dad's farm for a few weeks and Max dug ditches, fed cattle, branded them, planted crops, helped irrigate. It was good to see him physically relaxed instead of worn out from studying.

When they went back to Provo, the man who had promised the construction job to Max said that it had gone instead to the son of one of the men working there already. That job would have paid $6.50 an hour.

Max had a temper and knew how to keep it under control, but this got him truly upset. It was the first time Colleen saw Max really depressed. She had to do a lot of talking to turn his mood around. Finally, he said, "OK, I'll start thinking about another job," and went to the university employment office, but it was late to look for summer work and he only found a listing for Sinclair gas-station attendant at $2.75 an hour.

It was a self-service station on a back street in Orem. His work was limited to giving out change, cleaning windows and taking care of the rest rooms from three in the afternoon until 11 at night. The pay, of course, was a lot less than they had counted on, yet for all of June and the first weeks of July, he worked without complaint and came home hot and tired. All the same, he was beginning to make friends with some of the customers and the manager liked him. They worshiped in the same ward.

Two weeks after the Fourth of July, Max and Colleen were asked to give a talk in church. Max spoke of how there were too few people in this world who were really honest. He gave a powerful speech on the importance of being honest. It made all the difference between being able to build on a real foundation or not being able to. Colleen's talk that Sunday was on joy: on the joy she experienced when she met Max, and when they married, and when they had their baby. Afterward, on the way home, he gave her a big hug, and a lot of fine feelings came over her and she said, "We're really beginning to live and love each other more than ever." They went to bed with a real good understanding.

Monday morning, Max was excited about getting some shelves finished for Monica and spent the morning hammering and sawing and drilling. Colleen had a lot of things to do, the wash, the ironing, fixing dinner. Usually, they ate in plenty of time before Max went off to work at three p.m., but today they were a little rushed because Max wanted to get the shelves done first. Now, being a little late, he was in a hurry to finish. He was never late to anything and usually ready one minute before her. So, as soon as he swallowed dinner, he walked down the hall, grabbed some things he needed and started to walk out the door while she was still sitting at the table. Only then did he realize he hadn't kissed her goodbye, and so he turned around and kind of grinned and said, "Well, I'll meet you halfway."

She walked around the table and he gave her a kiss and a really good hug and looked into her eyes, things were just going well, and Colleen said, "I'll see you tonight."

He said, "OK," went out, got in the car and drove off.

He was a very conscientious driver, never broke the speed limit or anything. Fifty-five miles an hour all the time. In her mind, she saw him driving down the road that way. He would be moving (continued on page 193)Executioner's Song(continued from page 170) along the interstate at just such a speed until he went around a slow graded turn and disappeared from sight and left her mind free to think of one and then another of the small things she must do that day.

II--The White Truck

1

About the time Max Jensen was starting work at the Sinclair gas station, Gary Gilmore was in the showroom at V. J. Motors on State Street, about a mile away, coming to terms with Val Conlin about the truck. There wasn't going to be a cosigner, after all. Gary was going to turn over his Mustang on which he'd already paid close to $400 (if you gave him credit for the battery) and he would produce another $400 in two days, cash. Then he would come up with another $600 by the fourth of August. Val would let him make the transfer now and he could sign the papers tonight.

Rusty Christiansen could hear them talking, and had to smile. She had come in to work part time on the books, reconcile Val's bank account, get license plates and, in general, help. She knew some of the ropes by now.

Rusty's unspoken opinion was that the truck had to be disgustingly overpriced. It was selling for $1700 and, with interest, would come to $2300. Val probably hadn't paid $1000 for that carcass. Now he would have the Mustang to resell, plus $1000 in cash by the first week of August. Otherwise, he would repossess the truck. He wasn't taking that big a chance. Gary could sure have found something better for the money than this white angel with 100,000 miles on her. He had fallen in love with a paint job.

It was moving toward dark when Nicole's mother, Kathryne, saw him. Some of her family had come over that day. The cherry trees were ripe in the yard, and everybody was out with the kids, picking fruit. At that point, Gary came to the back door and said, "Could I talk to you?" Kathryne invited him in, but he kept saying, "I have to talk to you outside. It's important."

She went and took a look at his truck, oohed and ahhhed. He looked odd to Kathryne, not drunk, exactly, but made a point of telling her how sober he was. In fact, she couldn't smell alcohol on his breath. He did seem odd, however. She said, no, she hadn't seen Nicole. He said, "As far as I'm concerned, your daughter can go to hell." Then he looked at Kathryne like some nut in him was being tightened right off the threads and said, "She can get fucked."

That really shocked Kathryne. She could hardly believe Gary would use such words for Nicole. Then he looked at her in that way he had of getting into every little thought you might like to keep to yourself and said, "Kathryne, I want my gun back."

Kathryne said, "Gary, why don't you come back tomorrow and pick it up when you're sober?"

He said, "I'm not drinking, and I'm not going to get in trouble. Moreover, if I want to use a gun"--he pulled his jacket open--"this little baby takes care of it all." That was one pistol she recognized. A real German Luger stuck in his pants. "In addition," he said, "I got a sackful." At that point, he opened the truck door and a burlap bag tipped over. By the clanking, it sounded like it held half a dozen more guns.

Kathryne said to herself, "What does it matter?" She took the Special out from under the mattress and gave it to him, and stood with Gary in the twilight, trying to calm him down. He was so angry.

Then Nicole's sister April came running out of the house. She was close to hysterical. "Where's Pat?" she asked. "Where's Pat?"

"She's gone, April," Kathryne said.

"Oh," cried April, "Pat promised to take me down to K Mart to get my guitar string."

At this point, Gary said, "I'll run you over."

Quickly, Kathryne told her, "You don't need to go."

But April jumped into the truck and Gary said, "That's all right. I'll bring her back." They were gone.

It was in this moment that Kathryne realized she didn't know Gary's last name. Knew him as Gary, just Gary.

They sat in the kitchen among all the boxes of cherries they'd picked. Kathryne wasn't about to call the cops. If the police stopped Gary, he might open up on them. Instead, she waited till her friend Pat got back and went out with her to look for the white truck. They drove till one or two in the morning, going up and down roads. No way they were going to find him, it seemed.

2

April moved in close, turned on the radio, said, "It's hard to get along if you have to wait too long. The rooms get narrow and very often there is a dog." She began to shiver as she thought of the dog. "Every day," she said, "is the same. It's all one day," and nodded her head. "You have to get them used up."

"That's right," he said.

Just before he arrived, she had been lying in the grass, watching others pick cherries. She was playing the guitar with the broken string. It came over her that Grandmother was going to die if she didn't fix the string. April was letting her soul run wild as she played, and thought of Jimi Hendrix and Otis Redding dead, and that made her start thinking hard about the diseases. The bugs, spiders and flies bring it in, and the fevers give a humming sound until they are aroused, then they make a noise like a breaking string. Death would certainly come to Grandma if she didn't fix the string. That was her thought in the grass. As she looked up, there was a dog in front of her.

This dog started crying. It sounded like a man crying his heart out. The recollection of that sound got April nodding full force. She didn't like such feelings. When she nodded that way, she might just as well have been galloping on a horse. Her head was certainly being snapped each step the horse came down. It got her to the point where her personal motor turned on again, as if Satan was running her body, and pulling in all the people who usually floated around as personalities from Mars and Venus. The guitar certainly needed a new string to attract more harmonious spirits. "I," said April to Gary, "am the one swinging on the string." She nodded, careful not to do it so hard that the galloping horse would snap her neck.

"Look," she said, "my grandma's washing machine is next to the sewer. That's why those people are floating around. I hate filth." She could feel her mouth twisting from her nostrils to the corners of her lips. "Oh, Gary, I'm cottonmouthed," she said, "I need Midol. Can you get me a toothbrush?" She could feel him patting her. He said he would get her what she needed.

It was crucial to put it across to people that you didn't go to a store and pull things from the counter, but took a good look at the object you were going to buy and inquired of it. There were all sorts of answers: The object could say, "Go away," or "Please steal me." It could even ask to be bought. The objects had as much concern about themselves as anyone else. Gary just went plink, plink, plunk, got her Midol, got her toothbrush, got her the hell out of there. He wasn't drinking beer. Boy, he was uptight.

Now they were driving in Pleasant Grove again. "I don't want to go home. I want to stay out all night," she said.

"That's cool," he said.

3

Craig Taylor was just putting the kids to sleep, when Gary knocked on the door and introduced this girl as Nicole's sister April. They looked odd. Not drunk, but the girl was in bad shape. She walked around Craig like he was a barrel or something.

Gary came out of the bathroom and asked did he still have the gun. Craig said, Yeah. Gary asked to borrow it back. Plus a few shells. "Oh, yeah," said Craig. "Well, it's yours, I'll give it to you." Craig didn't exactly have a good feeling as he passed the shells. Gary seemed awfully emotionless. "Gary, I can't refuse you," Craig said, "it's your gun," but he took a good last look. It was a goldtrigger Browning Automatic with a black metal barrel, nice wood handle.

"I don't want to go home," said April when they were in the truck again.

"Hell," said Gary, "I'll keep you out all night." He drove to Val Conlin's to sign the papers. On the way, April realized they hadn't gone to the K Mart after all. She still didn't have the guitar string. It got too complicated to ask again. She felt like she was fighting spider webs.

When they came into V. J. Motors, April said aloud, "Hey, that's a show for free." Gary and this fellow Val kept looking at car keys like magicians studying old dried herbs, weird! She wandered around and the room distorted. Warp was in the atmosphere. So she sat down in a corner. That way you could hold the thing together.

Rusty Christiansen was bored. She wouldn't be home till a quarter of ten. The interest still had to be calculated and the payments worked out. They kept going out to the lot to take numbers off the car and the truck. Once in a while, this little girl April in the corner said something in a big voice.

For that matter, Val's voice was pretty good, too. "I'm going to take a chance," said Val, "because you've been good with me. But goddamn it, Gary, you better pay."

"Right," said Gary.

"OK," said Val, "I'm going to take a chance."

Gary went to transfer some clothes from the Mustang to the truck, and while he was gone, Val looked at the little broad in the corner and said, "Hey, what are you on?"

She looked at him like she had just come in from the next century, and then she honked, "Wha-whaa-wha...." Val thought, Whee, she's plain out here in orbit. The girl looked at him steadily and said, "Sometimes I'm not even a girl." She began to cry.

When Gary returned, Val said, "If you don't pay me that first four hundred in two days, I'll take the truck back so goddamn fast you won't even know you had wheels, pardner. You won't have the truck and you won't have the Mustang, understand?"

"Understand," said Gary, "no problem. OK." He signed the last papers and Val turned the truck over.

When they got in, Gary drove around looking for Nicole. "Use your radar," he said. She didn't want to tell him how interference could keep the most powerful forces of mind from entering a focus. So they kept driving. April kept hoping she could say something proper. That could regain a lot of force. That was what it took. A word to go out and get all ugly things back in harmony.

"When I was young," said April, "my grandpa put me on the back of a hog in the pigpen and scared me half to death. There was a bunch of wild hogs loose and they was chasing us. I hid in the bathtub. Wasn't much to do that night, but I learned to hide. You hide by getting half inside." She snickered. "You see, Gary," April said, "I always wanted to be a pig." She was feeling the force of the pig.

Gary pulled the truck over and parked it. "I'm going to go make a phone call," he said; "see if your mother's heard from Nicole."

After he got out, she listened to a group sing Let Your Love Flow. Two guys, not a sad group. "Let your love flow and let your love grow." She was trying to remember going through people's medicine cabinets in olden times when she baby-sat. "Let your love flow and let your love grow." It used to be like love was flowing through her fingers as she went through cabinets taking out the right pills to get stoned. Oh, to be inside a trance again with black beauties. She loved the way she got on them. Black beauties could be sweet as the harmony of the spring. "I mean," said April to herself, "I can always talk to the radio if I'm that desperate. Disc jockeys realize that people are talking to them."

4

Gary walked around the corner from where the truck was parked and went into a Sinclair service station. It was now deserted. There was only one man present, the attendant. He was a pleasant-looking, serious young man with broad jaws and broad shoulders. He had a clean, straight part in his hair. His jawbones were slightly farther apart than his ears. On the chest of his overalls was pinned a name plate, Max Jensen. He asked, "Can I help you?"

Gilmore brought out the .22 Browning Automatic and told Jensen to empty his pockets. As soon as Gilmore had pocketed the cash, he picked up the coin changer in his free hand and said, "Go to the bathroom." Right after they passed through the bathroom door, Gilmore said, "Get down." The floor was clean. Jensen must have cleaned it in the last 15 minutes. He was trying to smile as he lay down on the floor. Gilmore said, "Put your arms under your body." Jensen got into position with his hands under his stomach. He was still trying to smile.

It was a bathroom with green tiles that came to the height of your chest, and buff-colored walls. The floor, six feet by eight feet, was laid in dull-gray tiles. A rack for paper towels on the wall had Towlsaver printed on it. The toilet had a split seat. An overhead light was in the wall.

Gilmore brought the Automatic to Jensen's head. "This one is for me," he said, and fired.

"This one is for Nicole," he said, and fired again. The body reacted each time.

He stood up. There was a lot of blood. It spread across the floor at a surprising rate. Some of it got onto the bottom of his pants.

He walked out of the rest room with the bills in his pocket and the coin changer in his hand, walked by the big Coke machine and the phone on the wall, walked out of this real clean gas station.

5

After a while, Gary came back. April had been smoking a smoke and waiting. "Come on," he said, "let's go."

As they pulled up to the drive-in theater, April saw Cuckoo in the title, so she thought they were going to see The Sterile Cuckoo with Liza Minnelli. April had always thought her own looks outside had to be just like the way Liza Minnelli felt inside, so she was looking forward a lot to seeing the movie. But right as they stopped under the light of the ticket booth, she could see that Gary's pants had blood on the cuffs.

(continued on page 264) Executioner's Song (continued from page 194)

They parked. He got shifty in his seat and said he would take a leak. Then she could see him rummaging in the back of the truck. Looked like another pair of pants to her. He went off to the men's room. To herself, April was saying, "The FBI look in on houses to see if people are committing crimes. Through the TV, you know."

She tried to watch the movie while Gary was gone, but it made her think of the night she was raped. That was after walking through the street in Hawaii with the black dudes and the first one of the three said there was a party going on. Cocaine, and they would all get high. She'd had LSD already, and so was fascinated with the high-class looks of their pad, although the red couches aggravated the problem of her odor. She sweated when she sniffed Lady Snow and the odor was very bad. The black boy named Warren told her she stank, and she turned purple inside from those red couches and all those black people. Started to dance around. They asked her if she wanted a shower. She said yes. Then she was in the tub and wet and streaking through the place. She was naked, and she was dancing. "I think I'm a nymphomaniac," she said.

"You're a maniac?" they asked. She said it again slowly and they asked, "Info with a maniac?"

She replied haughtily, "You are trying to make myself and my face black."

She danced with them right on the floor and they danced her down to the floor and hurt her pretty bad. She was bleeding all over the place. Like a whore. Warren was forceful on cocaine, awful mean. Even when he relaxed, he was hard on her. She was hallucinating so bad that the one called Bob made his face come together at the top and the bottom while his nose wib-wobbled from side to side. One time, two times, three times, intercourse. Then they turned a light on and Bobby was sitting on the floor and said, "Why don't you sit on the couch? Get high. Don't think of yourself so low, you know?" Then he was on top of her and she was screaming to the song. The twist they gave was vertigo and she was a turntable with the motor started and Satan could dance in the whirlpool the table made.

Suddenly, she could see the movie she had been looking at. It wasn't The Sterile Cuckoo. It was One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

All the kooks she had ever lived with in the hospital were on the screen. Jack Nicholson bothered her enormously. He had a numb spot under his nose like the numb spot under her own nose. That reminded her of the blood on Gary's pants--it was in the stiff way Jack Nicholson walked.

Now Gary came back. She said, "Let's blow this place. I hate the movie. Fucker's freaking me out."

Gary looked disappointed. "This is one movie," he said, "I want to see again."

"You insane fool," she said, "don't you have any taste?"

At 11 o'clock in the evening, a man drove into the Sinclair service station at 800 North, 175 East in Orem and served himself 12 gallons of gas and one quart of oil. He couldn't find an attendant, so he left his business card with a description of what he had purchased. A little later, Robbie Hamilton, who lived in Tooele, Utah, stopped off. After filling his tank with gas, he went to the open door of the grease room and hollered, "Anybody home?" No answer, so he went back to the car. His wife told him to knock on the bathroom door. When he received no answer there, he pushed the door open a crack and saw a lot of blood. He did not enter. He just called the Orem City Police Department. It took them 15 minutes to find it. Being from Tooele, Mr. Hamilton did not know what street he was on and had to describe the location in general terms to the dispatcher.

6

John was back from the hospital and sleeping on the couch again. Brenda was ready to go to bed. There was a knock on the door. It was cousin Gary, with this strange little girl.

He said, "This is Nicole's sister January."

The girl got mad. She came alive for the first time.

"It's April," she said. Gary chuckled.

Brenda said, "Well, April, May, June or July, whatever your name is, I suppose I'm glad to meet you." Then she said to Gary, "What's wrong with her?" This girl looked awful.

"Oh," Gary said, "April's having flashbacks from LSD. She took it a long time ago, but it keeps catching up."

"She's sick, Gary," Brenda said. "She's awfully pale." At that point, the girl said she wanted to go to the bathroom. Following her, Brenda asked, "Honey, are you all right?"

The girl said, "I just feel sick to my stomach."

Brenda came out to Gary and said, "What's going on?"

He said nothing in reply. Brenda had the impression he was nervous but careful. Very nervous and very careful. He was sitting on the edge of his seat, as if to concentrate on every sound in the silence.

April came back and said, "Man, you really scare me when you act like that. I can't take it."

"What scared you, honey?" Brenda asked.

April said, "Gary really scares me."

He drew himself up then. "April, tell Brenda I didn't try to rape you, or molest you."

"Oh, man, you know I didn't mean that," April said. "You've been nice to me tonight. But, man, I really get afraid of you."

"Afraid of what?" asked Brenda.

"I can't tell you," April said.

There was something so broken-assed about it that Brenda was getting ill herself. "Gary, what have you done?" she asked. To her surprise, he winced.

"Hey," he said, "let's drop it. OK?"

Gary said, "Can I talk to you in the other room?" When he got her in the kitchen, he said, "Look, I know John is just back, and you guys won't be getting your check right away from the hospital insurance, so listen, Brenda, could you use fifty?"

"Gary, no," she said, "we've got groceries. We'll make it."

Gary said, "I really want to help."

Brenda said, "Honey, you are generous." She knew what he was up to, but she was moved in spite of herself. Ridiculously moved. She felt like crying at the fact that even in this phony way he could think of her a little. Instead, she said, "Keep your money. I want you to learn to handle it." Saying that, she was suddenly suspicious, and had to ask, "Gary, where in the hell did you get a lot of cash?"

"A friend of mine," said Gary, "loaned me four hundred for my truck."

"You mean you stole the money."

"That's not very nice," he said.

"If I'm wrong," said Brenda, "then it's not very nice."

He took ahold of her face and kissed her on the brow and said, "I can't tell you what's going on. You don't want to be involved."

"All right, Gary," she said. "If it's that bad, maybe you shouldn't involve us."

"OK," he said, "fair enough." He wasn't angry. He took April and went to the truck. Picked April up by the elbows, so to speak, ushered her out.

Brenda found herself following. He had a half gallon of milk in the back of the truck and a bunch of clothes with a rag wrapped around them. She said, "Gary, you'll tip your milk over. Let me fix it."

He said, "Don't touch it. Leave it alone!"

"All right," Brenda said, "spill your milk. See if I care." After he drove off, she kept wondering what there was about the bunch of clothes that he hadn't wanted her to see.

Back on the road, Gary said to April, "No more riding around. I want a fancy place to sleep like the Holiday Inn." He turned onto the interstate and bore down the two miles to the next exit.

"I'm not going to fuck you," April said. "I'm feeling too paranoid."

"I've got to work in the morning," Gary informed her. "We'll get two beds."

III--The Motel Room

1

At the far end of the bedroom, to one side of the far wall, was the only window and it looked out over the swimming pool. The window was sealed. Thus, there was an air conditioner installed beneath. On either side hung drapes made of a green-blue synthetic fabric. They were drawn apart by white vertical cords that passed around milk-colored plastic pulleys. Two black-leatherette barrel chairs and an octagon-shaped synthetic-walnut table sat in front of the window, and next to the table was a TV set on a swivel stand. Its chromium ball feet were set in plastic casters which buried themselves in a blue shaggy synthetic-fabric rug.

The beds on the opposite wall had headboards of synthetic walnut and their coverlets were of green-blue synthetic fabric. They gave off the same smell as the room. It was the odor of old air conditioners and old cigars.

Between the beds was an end table with a lamp and an octagonal glass ashtray that carried the green logo of Holiday Inn. A red light for messages kept flashing on the phone. Since it was on by error, it did not go off. Neither did the air conditioner. After a while, its hum vibrated in the bowels.

A strip of white paper was looped around the seat of the toilet bowl to certify that no one had sat there since the strip was placed in position. The toilet paper from the toilet-paper holder in the wall to the left of the toilet seat was soft and very absorbent, and would stick to the anus.

2

"April," Gary said, "are you going to tear that strip off the toilet, or do I have to?" She glowered at him and threw the paper at the wastebasket.

"The world makes you work," she said, "because of the rich. Every organization is rich, you see."

"Man, you sure can talk," said Gary. He walked over and gave her a kiss.

She said, "Sissy. Sissy wouldn't like this." He walked away from her and took out a stick of pot. "I want some," said April.

He laughed and held it out of her reach. "Give us a kiss," he said.

"I can't kiss you because of Sissy," she said. "Sissy was vampires."

Gary lit the stick and took a puff. "A toke?" he asked. But when she came near, he held it out of her reach again.

Walking around the room, she started taking off clothes. She felt as if they were congesting her. First her peasant blouse, then her Levis. Walking around in her bra and her panties, she felt better. "Did you ever get up at four in the morning, Gary, and make cookies?"

He was lying on the bed and taking his time on the marijuana. He just waved a hand. Then he sat up and burped. A look of pain came over his face, and he reached for the milk and took a swig. "Hey, kid, let's unwind," he said. "I'll give you a massage and you give me one."

"The FBI," she said, "look in on houses to see if people are committing any crimes. They do it through the TV, you know." She lay back on the bed and the room was spinning. It was like a motel room she had gone to with a rich man. She had felt so alive that night because the plastic was so dead.

"Gary," she said, "give me a toke. I'm kind of messed up." He passed her the stick and she sucked in. She must have taken a trip, because there was Gary kissing her face, waking her up. "Leave me alone," she cried. When he gave her another kiss, she said, "Gary, you and Nicole were meant for each other."

"Nicole can get fucked."

Gary was sort of giving her a massage, walking behind her, right behind her, his legs locked with hers as if they were in prison lock step, and they walked around the room that way, with his thumbs massaging her shoulders and the back of her neck. After a little while, she began to feel very close to him and whispered, "It isn't very good for us to do that. Sissy wouldn't think that was very good." Gary would smack her from behind, or finger her panties, then he would growl in her ear like a lion. She'd think of rich men in motels and knock off his hand with her elbow. "Fuck you," she said. "Let me go to bed."

"We're sleeping standing up," he replied.

They were a king and a queen and she began to get pleased at the thought of them sleeping each in a separate bed, but she knew she would go down into a sleep that gave a very heavy feeling, like pictures she had seen in the Bible of demons coming out of dark space to torment people on this planet and really tear us apart limb from limb. She could picture thousands in the sky coming down like eagles on mice.

Now she knew there was something wrong with the back massage. Gary had changed his personality. Gary, who was always so manly around her, more manly even than her father, had turned female and was crawling on her from behind with this back massage. If she would turn around and look at his face, she would see a woman. He was feeling her in order to feel his own breasts, his own belly. April could feel a woman behind her. That turned her off cold, man.

"Let's go to sleep," she said. He didn't fight. He got into his bed and she got into hers, and he turned out the lights and she lay down in the dark and looked up at the ceiling. The spackled plaster had sparkles of glass embedded to look like a thousand stars. She couldn't stand the smell in the room and turned on the lights. On the wallpaper just back of her was a landscape of palm trees and the ruin of a stone arch and, on a hill, an old Italian house. Long, skinny people wearing capes were walking around that countryside.

Gary said, "Turn off the light. I need my sleep."

She lay there some more, and he came over to her bed in the dark and tried to make her. She didn't know if he was serious or not. They just scuffled in the dark and he tore her underwear, but she held the pieces together and said, "No." She said, "Gary, I don't feel like doing this." She said, "Gary, you're losing your mind." She said, "Sissy. Sissy. Sissy wouldn't think this is very good." At last he gave up and she lay there in the dark. The room started coming back to her. She saw the room very clearly, like she was looking through a magnifying glass. "It's just one more eight in a prison cell," she said to herself, "and I've been in prison all my life."

3

Deep down in sleep, the first thing Colleen knew was that somebody was knocking lightly on her door. It left her startled. She didn't know what time it was until she got up and passed the kitchen clock and saw it was two in the morning and Max was still away. Then she turned on the porch light and looked out the little window that was set in the door. What she saw made her very scared.

Outside were five men, and the first of them was President Kanin of her Stake.

He put his arm around her shoulder. "Colleen," he said, "Max won't be home tonight."

She received a feeling that Max might never be home again.

"Is he dead?" she asked.

All five nodded.

She cried for a minute. It wasn't real to her.

At this point, one of the two men she didn't know said to President Kanin, "Will she be OK with you?" When the answer was yes, these two strangers left. She realized they were plainclothes policemen.

President Kanin helped her dial home. No one answered. She remembered her parents were camping and had left that morning, so she dialed Max's parents. They had also gone camping. Colleen thought of her cousins who lived across the street from her parents in Clearfield. They were home and said they'd drive right over. That would take an hour and a half.

President Kanin now asked her if there was somebody who could stay with her until the cousins arrived. She said there was a girl in the ward who lived two trailers down. They called and she came over. The three men left.

The girl stayed nearly two hours. They lay down beside each other on the bed and talked. Monica stayed asleep and Colleen was numb. She had no desire to see where they had taken Max's body. She did not feel like saying "Let me go to him." She just talked to her neighbor and it all seemed unreal. They would talk for a while, and then it would come back. It was a quarter to five when her relatives knocked on the door.

4

April had taken out her earring, and in the dark she was using it to stick herself. She had this dream that one day she was going to take an injection and end it all. She wanted to know what it felt like. So she kept trying the point of the earring post against her neck.

In the morning, while it was still kind of dark, Gary moved over to her bed again and tried one more time. Not that hard. Then he drank more milk. It certainly was love he needed more than sex, but April knew she could not let Sissy down, 'cause Sissy still loved him.

By 6:30, when Monica awoke in the dawn, Colleen was saying to herself that she was alive, and her baby was still alive, and the baby had to be nursed. It would be terrible to totally upset the baby. So she went in and greeted Monica with "Good morning" and picked her up and loved her and gave her a bath and got her ready for the day.

When the light came through the window, April and Gary dressed and he drove her home. As he dropped her off, he said, "April, whatever last night was like, I want you to remember that you'll always be my friend and I'll always care about you."

She went in the house and nobody was there. Kathryne was off driving Mike to work and April started sweeping the floor. Right in the middle of it, she said out loud, "I'll never get married, never."

Kathryne had stayed up all night waiting for Gary and April. By five, she must have fallen asleep, and then the alarm went off not long after. She had to take her son Mike up the canyon every morning to where he worked for the Forest Service, a 20-mile trip up twisting roads, and after a day and night of cigarette smoke, the fear in her lungs felt ready to whistle a storm with every breath. Then she came down the canyon to her house, walked in the door, and there was April enthroned like a zombie in the kitchen chair.

"Where in the hell have you been?" April did not answer. She just sat and stared. "Were you," Cathryne asked, "with that dirty crumb all night?" For all the easing of her fear, there was still no relief. She just felt sick. My God, April was in a trance. "Damn it," Kathryne shouted, "did you stay with Gary all night?"

Suddenly, April screamed. "Leave me alone! Can't you leave me alone? I know nothing." She ran into the bedroom. "You're nosy," she cried from the other side of the door.

"I can't do anything about it," Kathryne said to herself. She was just thankful the child was home. It was one more wall Kathryne was holding up with her life.

IV--Debbie And Ben

1

Debbie was five feet tall and didn't weigh a lot more than 100 pounds. Ben was 6'5" and weighed 190 when they were married. Two years later, he weighed 290 and looked big and fat and fine to Debbie. He was always going on a diet or splurging. He would lift bar bells to try to keep in shape.

For a young Mormon couple, they lived well. They had steaks in the freezer, and loved to go out and get pizzas. They learned to make even better pizzas at home. Ben would cover every square inch with meat and cheese. They also dressed well and they managed to meet a $100 payment each month on their Pinto. Ben could have been the huge man who gets out of the little car in the TV commercial.

They worked hard, however. Ben kept trying to get back to his courses in business management at Brigham Young University, but it took two to three jobs a day, plus Debbie's managing a day-care center, in order to keep abreast of what they spent living happily with each other. So they hardly needed friends. They had their baby, Benjamin, who was their first priority, and they had each other. That was all of it. It was enough.

Debbie didn't know about matters outside the house. She knew a lot about plastic pants and disposable diapers and just about anything to do with children in the day-care center. She was terrific with kids and would rather mop her kitchen floor than read.

Before Benjamin was born, there was one stretch when Ben used to get up at four in the morning and drop Debbie at the day-care center at five. She would get play materials ready for the children who came in at seven, and by then, Ben would have driven to Salt Lake, where he managed a quick-food restaurant. That work began at six a.m., and he wouldn't get home until eight at night.Then he got another job that began at noon in a chain called Arctic Circle. He would get home at two a.m. In the winter, it was rough when the roads were icy. Ben began to get a bad feeling about doing that 45-mile drive in each direction day and night.

When the position of manager at the City Center Motel came open, Ben leaped to take it. The job paid a minimum of $150 a week, plus an apartment, but the business was there for him to build. It was not a new motel, and not on a highway, but at capacity, he could end up drawing as much as $600 a week. In addition, they could have all the time together they wanted.

Their clientele was mostly parents coming up to visit their kids at BYU. If occasionally a couple looked like they weren't married, Debbie didn't exactly approve of it and tried to give them a nice noisy, dirty room.

The busiest time was at nine A.m., getting the maids out to work. They used to keep four chambermaids, who each had a certain number of rooms to do in a given time. If it took six hours but should have taken two, they got paid for two. Of course, if there was an extra mess, Ben made an adjustment. He was fair.

After a while, Debbie began to enjoy motel work more than she'd expected. There was lots of time together. The job, however, was a little confining. They couldn't, for instance, leave the motel together unless they made arrangements in advance. That interfered with going out to a restaurant. It also rushed their dinner hour. Sometimes they had to eat a little too early.

All the same, time went by well. Ben got what social life he needed by going around town to drum up business. He wanted to get the name of the City Center Motel well known, so he worked out special arrangements with a few of the larger places. City Center was always the first small motel to put out a No Vacancy.

Nor were they ever afraid of being robbed. Once in a great while, they talked about what they would do if they had to face a gun, and Ben would shrug. He said that a little bit of money wasn't worth, you know, risking your life for. He would do what the robber asked.

2

Craig Taylor heard about the servicestation murder on the radio next morning while driving to work. His first thought was that Gary had done it. Then he thought he heard the announcer say Jensen had been killed with a .32. That gave him hope. The Browning Automatic was a .22.

At work, Gary seemed normal. It wasn't that he was relaxed, but he had been on edge since the day he broke up with Nicole. This morning he was just normally on edge.

Later that morning, Spencer McGrath got a call from a lady who said she had an apartment in Provo for Gilmore. If he was going to take the place, he had better come by around noon and give a deposit. Spencer felt that if there was any chance left for the guy, it was to get out of Spanish Fork and learn to live by himself. So he told Gary to take the afternoon off. It was the sad truth, Spencer decided, that he was happier when Gary wasn't around.

Craig didn't have a chance to talk about anything until right before the lunch break. But as they were slowing down about a quarter to 12, Gary said, "Want to pitch pennies?" With that, he pulled out a handful of change. It sat there in his palm, a mountain of change. After Gary left, Craig couldn't help but wonder if that was money from the service-station murder.

Gary stopped at Val Conlin's to thank Rusty Christiansen. She had pretended to be the landlady with an apartment for Gary. Val took the opportunity to remind him that he had to get the money for the truck.

Later that afternoon, Gary showed up at V. J. Motors carrying a pair of water skis. "I don't want those slats," Val Conlin said.

"They're worth," Gary told him, "a hundred and fifty dollars."

"Hey, Gary, I don't have a goddamn boat. What do I want water skis for?" When Gilmore set them down in a corner, Val said, "When are you going to take your personal shit out of the Mustang so I can sell it?"

"Take a look at these water skis," Gary said.

"Hot?" Val asked.

Gary said, "What difference does it make?"

Val said, "I'm not a hock shop. I don't want hot merchandise. I sure as hell don't need new problems."

"Well," said Gary, "it's a good buy."

"Not worth a turd without a boat," said Val. "Where's the boat? Just remember you owe me four hundred as of tomorrow."

"I'll have it."

"Gary, you son of a bitch," said Val, "you better understand this and understand this good. If I don't have the goddamn money, you walk. You won't even know you had wheels."

"Val, you've been good to me, and don't worry. I'll have it."

"OK," said Val. "Fine."

In the silence, Val picked up a newspaper and began reading. After a bit, he put the paper down and exploded. "Judas priest, can you believe this murder?" he asked. "What kind of idiot would do it? Guy gotta be nuts, just shooting a guy in a gas station. For nothing." It really upset him. He slammed the paper on his desk. "You know, I can understand a son of a bitch shooting somebody if you can't get the money. But anybody that would take the cash, and then put the kid in the back room and lay him on the floor and shoot him in the head twice has got to be a psychomaniac son of a bitch! They ought to string up that bastard."

Conlin heard himself raving even as he was saying it, and Gilmore looked him back in the eye and said, "Well, maybe he deserved to be killed."

The expression on his face was so blank that Rusty decided Gary knew something about the killing. Had he sold a hot gun?

Val was yelling, "Oh, Gary, come on, for Christ's sakes, to shoot a kid in the head? You got to be crazy, man. Nuts!"

Gary just said, "Well...."He got up and asked if Val wanted a beer.

Val said, "No, we got some. Take it with you, Gary." Maybe it was drinking all that beer so early, but there was definitely a pall on the afternoon.

3

On Tuesday afternoons, Gary had his weekly session with Mont Court. On this hot Tuesday in July, it lasted for over an hour. Gilmore had finally begun to confide, and the parole officer saw it as his opportunity to reach him.

Gilmore was talking about drinking and how much he wanted to cut it out. As he saw it, that was the only way to get back with Nicole. He had to get back.

Court found out that Nicole had left because she was frightened. That disturbed Gilmore. He didn't want her to think he was a violent person. Court listened politely, but he thought Gary was being unrealistic. You couldn't turn somebody's fear around by your desire that he not be afraid. Court did think, however, that Gilmore was being realistic in understanding how much he needed Nicole, and that his chances of getting her back might be better if he cut out drinking.

Of course, he hardly looked like a teetotaler now. His goatee was on the way to becoming a beard and his clothing looked sloppy.

It was the nearest they had ever come to a real talk. Gilmore sat there forlornly, saying in a flat, sad voice that he thought he had problems as a lover. That carried their relationship a step forward, Court thought.

Gary spent the next few hours looking for Nicole around Orem and Provo, then in Springville and Spanish Fork.

That evening over the newspaper, Johnny said to Brenda, "Hey, they had a shooting over here." He waited for her to read the account and then said, "It has all the earmarks of Gary Gilmore."

Brenda said, "I know he's an asshole, Johnny, but he's not a killer."

Johnny said, "I'm afraid he is."

4

All day at the motel, Debbie Bushnell had been nervous. All afternoon, she kept calling her friend Chris Caffee. That was most unusual. Chris had used to work for her at the Busy Bee day-care center and they got along well, but they weren't exactly close friends. Debbie was so restless this Tuesday afternoon, however. Chris finally said, "Debbie, I have five hundred things to do. I don't have anything more to say."

Debbie couldn't help herself; she phoned two hours later. "What are you doing?" she asked.

Chris said, "Nothing. Why are you calling?"

Debbie had been having a strange feeling from Sunday on. It continued all day Monday and was worse on Tuesday afternoon. Same with Ben. They had gone to visit his best friend, Porter Dudson, up in Wyoming on Sunday, a rare Sunday off from the motel, and Ben couldn't sit all day. Rushed poor Porter and his wife, Pam, through the meal and everything. Now he was over whatever was bothering him. He had spent part of Tuesday afternoon working on his weights and then took a nap. It was Debbie at this point who didn't know what to do with herself.

When Ben got up, she fixed him a steak and a salad. Benjamin was already bathed and asleep and finally it got dark. People started coming in for rooms and Ben turned on the TV in the office and began to watch the Olympics. After a while, Debbie left him alone to handle incoming guests and went back to cleaning the house. But this stupid fear just kept crawling in her stomach.

Gary stopped at a gas station on University Street and Third South, a block and a half from Vern's house. Gary knew a fellow named Martin Ontiveros who worked there and, in fact, had put in some time that week painting Martin's car. Now he stopped off to ask Ontiveros if he could borrow $400, but was told by Martin's stepfather, Norman Fulmer, who ran the gas station, that they'd just bought 6000 gallons that day and didn't have a dime to their name.

Around nine o'clock, Gary stopped at a store, and the motor wouldn't start. The truck had to have a push. So he pulled in again at Norman Fulmer's gas station to complain. Not only did he have trouble starting, he told them, but, in addition, the motor was overheating. "Well," said Norman, "just put it in the bay. We'll change the thermostat." Gilmore asked how long it would take and when Fulmer said 20 minutes, Gilmore said he would do a little visiting.

As soon as Gilmore was gone, Martin got into the truck, turned the key and pressed the starter. The motor turned over with no trouble.

In the middle of washing the couch cushions, Debbie Bushnell went out to the front office and asked Ben to go to the store and get some low-fat milk. She was also hoping he would bring back some ice cream and candy bars, and began to giggle at the thought she must be pregnant again. She had certainly felt telltale cravings. Ben, however, didn't want to go. He was interested in the Olympics.

Washing the couch cushions proved to be a job. She couldn't get it done to her satisfaction with a damp cloth. So she decided to unzip the covers, wash them, dry them, put them on again. In the meanwhile, she was planning to vacuum out the corners of the couch, but when she started to turn on the Kirby, she couldn't bring herself to press the switch. Three times in a row she just kept looking at the vacuum and not turning it on.

Then she heard Ben talking to somebody in the front office. She thought maybe there was a child there, because she heard a balloon pop. So she went out to talk. No reason. Just felt like talking to a kid.

As she went through the door from the apartment to the office, a tall man with a goatee, who had been about to leave, turned around and came toward her. The craziest word went through her head. "There's poopy-doo," she said to herself. Quickly, she turned around and went back to the apartment, closed the door.

She actually retreated into the farthest corner of the baby's bedroom. In her mind, she kept seeing that man looking her square in the face from the other side of the counter. She had an ice-cold feeling in her heart. That man was after her.

Then she got herself together and came through the living room into the kitchen and peeked into the office. She got there in time to watch the strange man walk out the door. Then she walked in.

Ben was on the floor. He just lay there face down, and his legs were shaking. When she bent over to look at him, she saw his head was bleeding. She had had first-aid courses once and they told you to put your hand to a wound and apply pressure, but this was awful heavy bleeding. A wave of blood kept rising out of his hair.

She sat there with the phone in her free hand, ringing the operator. It rang five times, and ten, and 15 times, and another stranger came into the office and said he had seen the fellow with the gun. The phone was ringing the 18th, and the 20th, and the 22nd, and the 25th time. There was still no answer. She said to the man, "I need an ambulance." The new man didn't speak very good English, but he held the phone, and the operator still didn't answer. The man went out to call the police.

Now she called Chris Caffee. It was easy to remember that number after calling her four times that afternoon. Then Debbie just sat there with her hand on Ben's head and time went on for a long time. She couldn't tell how long before help came.

V--Armed And Dangerous

1

Peter Arroyo was coming back to the City Center Motel from the Golden Spike Restaurant, where he had gone with his wife and his son and two nieces for supper around 9:30 that evening. It was now close to 10:30 and they were returning to their rooms.

As they passed the front window of the motel office, Arroyo could see a strange sight. He had noticed, while registering, a large motel attendant with a small wife. Now neither of them was visible. Instead, a tall man with a goatee was stepping around the counter just as Arroyo came along the street. The man had a cash drawer in his hand. Arroyo could see that he also had a pistol with a long barrel in the other hand.

The kids observed nothing. One of Arroyo's nieces even wanted to go into the office to get stamps. Arroyo said, "Just keep going." Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the man turn around and go back to the counter. Arroyo looked no more but continued walking to his car. He kept hoping that what he had seen was somebody fooling around with a gun. Maybe there was a simple, legitimate explanation.

Now the man with the gun came out of the door, turned left and went up the street on foot. Arroyo went right back to the office.

He could see the motel manager on the floor, and the man's wife next to him with a phone in her hand, and blood all over the place. The man on the floor didn't say anything, he just made noises. His leg was moving a little. Arroyo tried to help the woman turn him over, but the footing was slippery. The man was very heavy and lying in too great a puddle.

2

Walking away from the motel, Gary put the money in his pocket and discarded the cashbox in a bush. About a block from the gas station, he stopped to get rid of the gun. Took it by the muzzle and pushed it into another bush. A twig must have caught the trigger, for the gun went off. The bullet shot into the soft meat between the thumb and the palm.

Norman Fulmer took a bucket of water and threw it over the walls of the bathroom. He took a big sponge and washed the tile and scrubbed the floor. Then he went out to see how the work was going on Gilmore's truck. Instead, he saw Gary walking real fast right past him to the men's room that Fulmer had just finished cleaning. There was a trail of blood following Gilmore. "I don't know," Norman said to himself, "I guess he ran into something." And he just mopped up those big drops right there on the bay floor.

The scanner box was overhead, and Fulmer heard the police dispatcher talking about an aggravated assault and robbery at the City Center Motel. Norman began to listen real hard. He was in the habit of paying attention to the scanner, anyway. It was more interesting than music. The dispatcher was now saying that a man got shot and another left on foot.

Fulmer went back into the bay and saw with one look that Martin Ontiveros had also heard the scanner. He hadn't even removed the old thermostat, but right now he started putting a bolt back in, and Fulmer screwed in the other, and soon as that was done, they slammed down the hood, even as Gary came back through the men's-room door and said, "Got it done?"

Fulmer said, "Yep. I got it all done."

Gilmore went in from the shotgun side and slid all the way over to the driver's seat. He was hurting, Fulmer could tell. Had to lean all the way over to the left of the steering wheel in order to get the key in with his right hand. When he finally got it started, Fulmer said, "Hey, take care," and Gary said, "All right," and backed out, and sure enough, he slammed into the concrete pole that was there to prevent people from hitting the drinking fountain. "Oh, God," said Fulmer to himself. Gilmore wasn't moving the truck now, and Fulmer was thinking Gilmore still had a gun, but he went back out and slapped the side of the door and said, "Hey, looks like you're a little wasted. You ought to get some Zs."

Gilmore said, "Yeah, I'm gonna go crash."

"All right," said Norman, "see you tomorrow."

As he drove away, Fulmer got the license number. He noticed that Gilmore turned west on Third Street, and called the police, and told them what kind of truck Gilmore was driving. The dispatcher said, "How do you know it's the right man?" He told her about the bloody trail. Then she asked how Gilmore parted his hair.

Fulmer said, "Down the middle. He's got a little goatee."

The girl said, "That's him." Somebody else must have given a description already.

3

That night Vern and Ida had been sitting in their living room next to the motel and never heard a sound. Perry Mason had been on television, then Ironside. After which, the sirens began to sound right in front of their house. Naturally, they went out in the street to see what was happening. Vern was wearing slippers, and Ida, an orange robe. She was actually barefoot. That's how sudden the police were.

Ida had never viewed a scene to compare with it. Patrol cars were coming in every moment with their blue lights turning and that awful siren going. Loud-speakers kept making different kinds of noises. Some were blasting orders to the cops, others kept droning the same remark over and over to the by standers, "Would you keep the sidewalk clear, please? Would you keep the sidewalk clear, please?" Ida could see blazes of light, and pools of light, and now an ambulance came up and paramedics started running out. One great big white light was circling, as if to look for the guilty party. The sirens were frantic. Every 30 seconds, a new police car came screaming into the motel compound. There was more noise than if the town of Provo was burning down.

Swat arrived. Special Weapons and Tactical Team. Two teams of five, one after the other. Moving around in dark-blue two-piece fatigue uniforms, with black high-laced jump boots, they looked like paratroopers. Except the word Police was spelled out in big yellow letters on their shirts. They were certainly carrying heavy stuff--shotguns, .357 magnums, semiautomatic rifles, tear gas.

In the courtyard of the motel, one guest kept shouting, "I saw somebody run in there." He was pointing to a downstairs room, 115.

It wasn't easy to break in on an armed killer. The police were sweating plenty as they axed the door down. Then they Maced the hell out of the interior. Put on their gas masks and jumped through the mess of broken plywood. Nobody was in the room. The smell of Mace, so close to the odor of vomit, drifted out into the courtyard of the motel. For the rest of the evening, everything smelled of vomit.

Outside, people kept rushing up to the office window. Kids would come tearing along, look in at paramedics pounding away on the chest of Bennie Bushnell and take off. The office looked like a slaughterhouse.

Paramedics kept running back and forth between the office and the ambulance. They wouldn't let Chris and David Caffee inside. Chris still felt half unconscious. When the phone rang, she and David had been asleep and woke up to hear the sound of Debbie screaming, "Ben's been shot."

Chris had said out of her sleep, "You know, this isn't a real good joke for late at night. This isn't funny." Half-asleep, after being completely asleep, nothing made sense. They had rummaged around the house, trying to find what to wear, then rushed over to the motel. Hours later, she would notice David's zipper was still down.

Chris worked her way to the front door of the motel and yelled, "Debbie, I'm here." She could see that Debbie, whose head barely came over the top of the counter, had heard her voice, for she left the office to go back into her apartment, then emerged from the private door. Debbie had little Benjamin wrapped in a blanket and was carrying a large plastic bag of diapers. Debbie now threw the baby on her. Just dumped him over. Like he wasn't real. Debbie wasn't screaming, but she looked weird.

Debbie said, "Ben's been shot in the head, and I think he's going to die."

Chris said, "Oh, no, Debbie. Remember when my mom fell down the steps in D.C. and cracked her head open? Her head bled a lot, but she's all right now. Ben'll be just fine." She didn't know what to say. How many times did somebody get shot in the head? She really didn't know what it meant.

Debbie went back in the house, and David looked at Chris and said, "If he's been shot in the head, he's already gone."

About this time, Chris began to notice that the baby was acting very odd. Benjamin usually recognized her. Chris had worked so often with Debbie in the daycare center that little Benjamin had seen Chris nearly every day of his early life. He was usually very lively and perky with her. Now Benjamin lay there like he was dead. His eyes were completely still. Just flopped in her arms and didn't move.

4

Vern had known Bushnell slightly. They would chat while Vern sprinkled his lawn and Bushnell watered the motel flowers. One evening a pile of scrap lumber got left in the Damico driveway and had to be brought to Bushnell's attention. He apologized and said he'd get after the carpenters. Next morning the mess was gone. It gave Vern the impression of a conscientious man.

Now Martin Ontiveros came up to Vern and said, "Gary did it."

Vern said, "Gary who?"

The kid said, "Gilmore."

Vern said, "How do you know Gary did it? Did you see him do it?"

"No," said Martin Ontiveros.

"Then how do you know I didn't do it?" Vern asked. "You didn't see it happen."

Vern said, "Go tell an officer. If you think it was him, go tell." Ontiveros now said Gary had just been up at the station, and there was blood all over his pants.

Vern thought, Well, it has to bear looking into. He grabbed a cop who was married to a niece of Ida's, Phil Johnson, and asked him to check. Some talk went back and forth on a police radio. Then Phil came back and said, "It must have been him, Vern."

"Do you think he did it?" asked Ida.

"Yeah, he did it, the stupid shit," said Vern.

Glen Overton, who owned the City Center Motel, had just finished listening to the TV news when Debbie called. He lived in Indian Hills at the other end of Provo and came over fast in his green BMW, running every red light on the way.

When he arrived, the street was in chaos. Nothing but police and spectators jamming the sidewalk and all over the road. There was an unheard sound in the air like everybody was waiting for a scream.

Before he even tried to get into the office, he saw Debbie standing all alone outside her apartment. She seemed to be in total shock. He put his arm around her and held her. She kept asking, "Is Ben going to die?" Glen finally asked her to wait outside a minute.

The police were making chalk marks on the carpet and photographing an empty cartridge on the floor. When Glen saw a paramedic giving Ben heart massage right there, the heel of the man's hand thumping in brutal all-out rhythm against Ben's chest, he knew Ben was dead, or near it. Heart massage was a last resort.

Now a detective asked Glen to count the receipts and estimate the loss. Glen told them straight out that they never kept much more than $100 in the cashbox. Any greater amount would be concealed in the apartment.

At this point, the medics got ready to take Ben to the ambulance. Glen Overton found Debbie and as soon as the ambulance took off, he put her in his BMW and followed.

On the drive, Glen sat behind the wheel trying to digest the irony that Ben had wanted this job because it would safeguard his life.

On the day Glen first interviewed him, Ben had said he was working in Salt Lake but hated the drive. Said he had the feeling he was going to be killed on that drive. Somehow, Glen felt Bushnell's conviction. There had been a number of good applicants at Ben's level, but the intensity of his feeling that he had to get off the road got him the job. Glen didn't regret it. In fact, he had never known a manager who was so anxious to do more. Ben had kept talking to him about getting his life in order. It obsessed Ben a little that he hadn't finished college yet and a new baby might be on the way.

Ida was on the phone to Brenda. "Honey, somebody slot that dear Mr. Bushnell next door." Ida started to cry. In between sobs, she said, "Somebody seen Gary running away. They've identified him."

"Oh, Mom." Brenda had been walking around all evening with a sense of disaster.

Ida said, "He'll come to you. He always does."

Brenda knew the police dispatcher in Orem, so she called and said, "This is nothing more than a suspicion, but I think I'm going to need help with my cousin. Catch Toby Bath before he goes off duty."

Toby was her neighbor. It was like having your own private police force.

Then they locked the doors and Johnny got out his .22 rifle. They had no more than done this when the phone rang. It was Gary. "Brenda," he said, "is Johnny home? Can I talk to him?" Brenda thought, That's different. He usually wants to talk to me first.

"Johnny," he said, "I need some help."

"What's the matter?"

"I've been shot," said Gary. "I'm hurt real bad, man. I'm over at Craig Taylor's, and I need your help."

At the hospital, they put Debbie in a little office. She sat there thinking she had to believe in something. So she kept thinking Ben was going to be all right. Then she realized that the doctor had come into the room with Bishop Christiansen, and they had both been sitting there. Why wasn't the doctor with Ben? Then another doctor came in. They were all sitting there. It came in on her slowly. They were waiting to get up their nerve.

Bishop Christiansen looked at her and whispered gently. She didn't hear it. She kept looking at his silver hair. The doctor said that if Ben had lived, he would have been a vegetable. That thought went all the way in. That thought cleared her head. Debbie said, "If Ben had lived, he would have been warm, and I could have fed him and taken care of him." She had never felt more certain about what she knew. "At least," she said, "I would have had him with me."

5

She had met Ben at the Mormon Institute near Pasadena City College when she was 21. She had never dreamed of going out with him. He was big and very good-looking, with a high pompadour of nice dark hair, and she was just a pintsized ex-tomboy with a big, broad turnedup nose and a slightly receded chin. Still, she made a point of sitting behind him. She wanted to keep her eye on him.

It took a while for Ben to ask her out, but on Christmas Eve of 1972, he did, and they went to church. Debbie didn't remember any of the bishop's talk, she just sat by Ben. They saw each other every night after that. Took their happiness from looking at each other. They hadn't been going together a week before they decided to get married.

Glen Overton happened to be with Debbie when they brought her in to see Ben. That was the hardest part of the evening for Glen. He was looking at a person he had spoken to three hours previously. Now that person was stretched out, face blue, mouth open. Glen had seen a boy killed in an avalanche. This was worse.

A sheet covered Ben up to his neck, but Debbie walked forward, put her arms around him and hugged him. She really threw her arms around him. They had to sort of pull her away. She held on. They let her stay for 30 seconds more before they asked her to come out. Then they had to pull her away after all.

A doctor took Chris Caffee aside. "Would it be all right if Debbie went home with you? She doesn't have anyone in Provo."

Chris said, "Well, yeah, if the police'll check my house every minute on the minute all night long." They certainly hadn't found the murderer yet.

On the way out of the hospital, a nurse followed them to the car and handed over a paper bag with Ben's bloody clothes, his valuables and his watch. The nurse said, "Do you want his wedding band?"

Debbie looked at them and asked, "Do I want it?"

David said, "Well, why don't you take it?"

Chris said, "If you decide you don't want it, you have it put back on him."

They stood where waiting while the nurse went in, and came back out and said, "We can't get his ring off. He's too fat. Do you want us to cut it off?" She was terrible.

They said, "Leave the ring." Debbie was getting wimpy now. She wasn't crying hysterically or anything, but she kind of collapsed.

6

Julie Taylor had come home from the hospital that day, and was sleeping with Craig in their double bed, when the knock came. Gary was standing on the porch. Just like that, he said, "I've been shot." Made a point of showing a bleeding hand.

He didn't ask if he could come in the house and Craig didn't feel exactly ready to let him in. Didn't know why, just didn't want to ask him. Julie being out of the hospital, he didn't want blood all over the house, and her having to clean it.

Gary, however, didn't seem to care. Just said he needed help. He had to have a set of clothes. And he wanted Craig to take him to the airport.

"I'll take you to the hospital if you like," Craig told him.

"No," Gary said from the other side of the screen door, "I can't do that." He wasn't the least bit boisterous. Just moved his mouth, then said, "Call Brenda, then."

When Craig heard her voice, he passed the receiver out the window. From the corner of his eye, Craig could see that Julie had already gone back to sleep.

Even as Johnny was talking to Gary on the phone, Toby Bath and his partner, Jay Barker, drove up and motioned for Brenda to come out. Right away, she heard an all-points bulletin on their radio. A voice said, "Gilmore is considered armed and extremely dangerous. Be prepared to shoot on sight."

Brenda started to bawl. "Come on in," she managed to say, "Gary's talking to us."

Johnny handed the phone to Brenda. She got herself together and said, "How are you doing, Gary?"

He told a story about a man robbing a store. There he was, getting shot while trying to prevent it. It was a shitty story and he was a shitty liar. He really was.

"Will you come to me?" Gary asked.

"Yeah," she said, "I'll come to you. I've got some codeine and I've got bandages. Where are you?" He gave the address. She said it out loud for Johnny to write down. Toby Bath and Jay Barker stood there in their uniforms and also wrote it down.

It hardly improved matters that Gary was at Craig Taylor's. Craig had a wife and two children. Brenda could see the shoot-out. Soon as she hung up, the cops proposed that Johnny go in his truck. They would hide in back.

If Gary discovered that Johnny had brought cops with him, everybody would get wasted. Johnny found himself lighting one cigarette right after putting the previous one, just lit, in the ashtray, and he said, "I don't want to go over." It was about as good a fear as Johnny ever felt. On reconsideration, the police agreed it was too risky.

Brenda said, "I'll go. I don't think Gary will hurt me. Just let me take care of his hand."

Johnny said, "You're not going."

The cops said no. Flat-out.

Brenda didn't know if she were relieved or miserable.

Johnny went down to Orem police headquarters with Toby Bath and Jay Barker. A minute later, the Orem police chief called Brenda. "Stall Gilmore as much as you can," he said. "We need time." They agreed that Brenda would keep her telephone line open for Gary, and communicate by C.B. with the police.

Before long, Craig was calling again. He said, "Gary's getting kind of nervous. How long has Johnny been gone?"

"Tell Gary," Brenda said, "that, as usual, Johnny's out of gas again." This might pacify him for a few minutes. Johnny was famous as the family character who never had gas when he needed it. On the street outside her house, police cars were screaming around the corners.

Craig called again. Brenda told him Johnny had probably gotten lost. People who lived in Orem, she explained, only had to deal with a checkerboard arrangement for their streets. It got them spoiled. They didn't know what to do with the weirdly curved roads in Pleasant Grove, where Fourth North didn't mind getting its ass skewed around Third South.

She called the police to tell them that Gary was getting impatient. Brenda felt like a traitor. Gary's trust was the weapon she was using to nail him. It was true she wanted to nail him, she told herself, but she didn't want, well, she didn't want to have to betray him to do it.

Craig had gone outside to be with Gary. They sat in the dark on the bungalow porch. Craig didn't know about any killings this night. He was still worrying over last night but didn't feel ready to ask outright. Did say, "Gary, if I knew you had anything to do with that fellow Jensen's murder, I'd turn you in right now."

Gary said, "I swear to God I didn't shoot the guy." Looked him straight in the eye. He had a powerful knack of staring right into you.

Again, Gary asked him to call. Craig went inside, picked up the phone, talked to Brenda once more. She was nervous. Craig could more or less sense she had called the police. She didn't say anything such to Craig, she just asked if he and his family were all right, and if Gary was being decent, and Craig said, "We're all right. He's fine."

He went back to the porch.

Gary said he had friends in Washington State and believed he would go underground. He mentioned Patty Hearst. Said he could connect with her old network. Craig didn't know if Gary really knew her or was bragging. Craig asked once more if he wanted to go to the hospital. Gary said he was an ex-con and the hospital wouldn't understand.

They sat out there half an hour. Gary spoke about April. Said she was a slick chick. Said she was "real nice." The longer they sat out there, the calmer Gary got. He was almost despondent. Then he said that when he was settled, he would send Craig a painting. He also said, "I'll write you my new address."

To himself, Craig kept saying, "Come on, Johnny, you son of a bitch, get here."

7

When the Caffees got home, they discovered that Debbie was covered with blood. Chris had to take her into the other room to change. Then Debbie wanted to make phone calls. She telephoned her mom, and Ben's sister, and all her own brothers and sisters, and Ben's friend Porter Dudson up in Wyoming. She just called and called. She would start crying and say, "Ben's been shot and he's dead." It was like a recording.

Chris opened their sofa bed in the living room, and she and David lay there while Debbie sat in the rocking chair and rocked Benjamin.

Now it was Gary on the phone. "Where's John?" he asked.

"He should be with you by now," said Brenda.

"God, man," said Gary, "he's not."

"Well, honey, calm down," she said.

"Cousin, is Johnny really coming out?"

Brenda said, "He's coming, Gary."

She had a flash. "Gary, what was the house number, seventy-six or seventy-nine?"

Gary said, "No, it was sixty-seven."

"Uh-oh," said Brenda, "I gave him the wrong one."

"Will you get it right this time?" he snapped.

"Ok, Gary," she said meekly. "Johnny's got the C.B. in the truck, and I have one here. I'll plug him into the right address. Just hang tight." She took a breath. "If you feel kind of faint," she said, "or kind of badly from the wound, why don't you go out on the porch, where the air is cool, and take some deep breaths? Turn the light on so Johnny can find you."

"How stupid," said Gary, "do you think I am?"

Brenda said, "Excuse me, stay inside."

"All right," he said. He still must trust her.

Soon as she hung up, she began to bawl again. It seemed so wrong to do it this way. But she called the police department and told them, "He's getting very impatient."

To Gary, who soon called again, she said, "Listen, I know you're in pain. Hang loose. Just stay put."

Brenda's D.B. was now patched in with the police in Provo, Orem and Pleasant Grove. She could tell from what the dispatchers were saying that the houses around Craig Taylor's were being quietly evacuated. The police were moving into position.

Just then Gary called back again. "If John ain't here in five minutes, I'm splitting."

"My God, Gary," she said, "are you on the run or something?"

Gary said, "I'm leaving in five minutes."

She said, "Be careful, Gary. I love you."

He said, "Yeah." Hung up.

To the police, she said, "He's coming out. I know he's got a gun, but for God's sake, try not to kill him." Brenda added, "I mean it. Don't fire. He doesn't know you're there. See if you can surround him." She didn't know if she was reaching anybody.

After the last call, Craig talked to Gary through the window, until finally Gary said, "Stick your head out and let me see your face."

Now Gary shook hands with Craig and said, "Well, they're never coming, so I'm leaving." They shook hands, thumbs up, pretty good handshake, Gary still looking Craig in the eye. Then he went out to his truck. Craig watched him go down the road.

For a while, Brenda got the play-by-play. Over the special channel on the C.B., a voice said, "Gilmore's leaving. I can see the truck. He's pulling out now. He has the lights on." Then she heard he was heading down to the first roadblock. She didn't know what happened next. He seemed to have driven around that first roadblock. He was out. He was loose in Pleasant Grove.

She heard somebody from the police say, "I've got to cut you off now." Cut her off they did. For an hour and a half. It was all of that before she knew what had happened.

Craig called Spence McGrath and said Gary was in trouble and might try to get over to his place. Craig thought the police were after him. Spencer said, "Wow, that's kind of wild," and got out his deer rifle, and had it lying right next to the door.

Lights shone through the window, and the cops were shouting at Craig Taylor, "Come out with your hands up." They searched the house. Julie appeared in her bathrobe, but the cops weren't all that courteous. They told Craig to drive down to Provo and give a statement. He was up all night.

8

A Swat team from Provo, five officers from Orem and three from Pleasant Grove, a couple of county sheriffs and some highway patrol had all met at the Pleasant Grove High School, where an impromptu command post had been established. Since there was every chance of a shoot-out, they had cleaned out the area around Craig Taylor's house. It meant tiptoeing from door to door, waking people up, leading them out of the neighborhood--it took time. In the meanwhile, they set up roadblocks.

When word came down that somebody was driving away from Craig Taylor's in a white truck, everybody expected a vehicle to come barreling through. What fooled them was that the white truck drove at a moderate rate of speed, slowed down and went right around. It hadn't been that heavy a roadblock. Just a barrier across one half of the two-lane, with a police car parked to the side. After the guy in the white truck went past, it was reported that he had a goatee. Then it registered. That was him. Two of their vehicles took off.

A couple of the cops stayed right where they were. They were thinking this fellow might have been a decoy passing the roadblock in hopes everybody would chase him. Then Gilmore could walk right on out.

One trouble with a roadblock is that it could start a lot of guns firing. So Lieutenant Peacock, who was running the operation from the command post at the Pleasant Grove High School, had told his people that if there was any doubt, they were to let a vehicle go through. Next thing, he got the news. The driver did fit Gilmore's description. Then Peacock could actually see the white truck, just a few hundred yards away from the high school, driving east toward the mountains on a street called Battle Creek Drive. Going along at no great speed, infact. Maybe five or ten miles over the speed limit, which was only 25 miles an hour there. Peacock radioed for somebody to follow, but when he heard that all vehicles in the vicinity were tied up, he got into his unmarked patrol car, a plain four-door '76 Chevelle, and proceeded after Gilmore. Within a few blocks, he got near enough to see the truck again. Since he had been calling in his position, another car driven by Ron Allen soon came up behind.

The white truck started going down an empty country road at the edge of Pleasant Grove. There were just a few houses on either side, but he was heading back toward population. At that point, still another patrol car had pulled in line, and Peacock decided he now had sufficient assistance to make a stop on the truck. While the road they were on was not wide, it would still be broad enough for three cars to get abreast. So, at that point, he radioed for the other two to come up on his left-hand side, and as soon as they did, all three turned on their spotlights and their overhead revolving red lights.

Over the P.A. system, Peacock cried out: "Driver in the white truck, stop your vehicle, stop your vehicle." He could see the truck waver, slow down, come to a halt. Peacock opened his door. He had a Remington 12-gauge shotgun in the front seat, but, instinctively, he came out with his service weapon.

The white truck had stopped in the center of the road. Peacock stood behind the protection of his open door. He could hear Ron Allen commanding Gilmore to put his hands up. Right there in the driver's seat he was to put his hands up. Lift them so he could be seen through the rear window. The man hesitated. Allen had to give the order a third time before he finally raised them. Next Allen told him to put those hands outside the driver's window. The driver hesitated again. Finally obeyed. Now he was told to open the door by the outside latch. Once that door was open, he was told to get out of the truck.

By now, Peacock had walked around in back of his Chevelle and was standing behind the headlights, on the righthand side of the road, where it was dark. He had his weapon ready. He knew the suspect couldn't see him. The man's eyes would be blinded by the lights of the car. In turn, the other officers were standing back of the open doors of their patrol cars.

On command, the man took two steps away from his vehicle. He hesitated. They told him to lie down on the road. He hesitated again. At that moment, his pickup truck started to roll away. He kept hesitating. He didn't know whether to run after the truck and set the emergency brake or to lie down. At this point, Peacock hollered, "Let the truck go. Lay down immediately. Let the truck go." The man finally did as he was told and the white truck rolled farther and farther away from him and picked up speed going down that road, which sloped all the way into town.

Slowly, gently, almost thoughtfully, it coasted off the shoulder, broke through a fence, ran through a pasture and came to rest in the field.

Now all three officers, weapons out, moved forward along the blacktop. Peacock and the next officer were holding service weapons. The third had a shotgun.

When they reached the man, Peacock put his gun away and frisked him right there on the ground. Simultaneously, Officer Allen began to read off the Miranda.

"You have the right to remain silent and refuse to answer questions. Do you understand?" asked Allen. There was a nod. The man didn't speak.

"Anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. Do you understand?" asked Allen. A nod.

While the rest of the Miranda was being read, Lieutenant Peacock was putting handcuffs on him.

"Be careful of that hand. It's been hurt," said the man.

Peacock fastened the restraints, turned him over and began to go through his pockets. The fellow had upwards of $200 in change and small bills in various shirt pockets and pants pockets, and he certainly had a wild look in his eye. What am I going to do now? said his expression. What's my next move?

Peacock had the feeling that the prisoner did not stir a hair without looking for the possibility of escape. Even though he had him handcuffed, Peacock remained on guard. It was as if he was still capturing the fellow. There was such resistance in the way this fellow hesitated whenever a command was given. He looked like a wildcat in a bag. Temporarily quiet.

A number of people had begun to come out of nearby houses and they stood in a circle, staring at the captive.

9

For hours before this capture, Kathryne had been spending a fearful evening. April had taken off again, and the weather was hot beyond belief all day. They left the doors open, and the windows, and kept waiting for April to come back. Watched television. The tension in the house got so great they couldn't even sleep. Nicole had come over with the kids and tried to bed down with them on the floor of their room because it was cooler.

Then, all of a sudden, a floodlight went right across the windows. A huge loud-speaker boomed in, a huge loudspeaker. "You in the white truck," it shouted.

"Crazy Gary" jumped instantly into Kathryne's mind. "Oh, my God, it's that crazy Gary."

Then she heard the loud-speaker say, "At the count of two, put up your hands," and Kathryne hit the floor. She could have been a soldier, she did it so instinctively. The bedroom flared with light. Police beacons were turning in a circle. When she dared to raise her head, she could see three policemen walking up the road carrying guns.

Then someone yelled, "They got him."

Nicole woke out of a crazy dream and started screaming. Kathryne was holding onto her, shouting, "Sissy, don't go out there. You can't go out," which was all Nicole needed to break loose and she was out and in the crowd that was standing on the road staring at Gary on the ground. With all those lights on him, he didn't seem to know what was going on.

The police wouldn't let Nicole up close. She stood a distance away, and one of the cops began to question Kathryne and asked, "Do you know him?" When Kathryne said, "Yeah," the cop said, "Well, he was right about up to your driveway when we got him. You were lucky."

Then another cop said, "We think he killed the fellow last night, too." That's when panic hit Kathryne. They still hadn't found April.

Nicole didn't know whether she wanted to go up to him or not. She just stood there, watching them point those guns. There was nothing in her.

Back inside the house, however, she was shaking and screaming and crying. She took Gary's photograph and threw it in the garbage. "That crazy son of a bitch," she shouted, "I should have killed him when I had the chance!"

Later that night, she went through all kinds of changes. She lay there and words went through her mind like a broken record. Things they had said, over and over.

Toby Bath called Brenda. "We've got him," he told her.

"Is he OK?" asked Brenda.

"Yes," said Toby, "he's fine."

"Anybody else get hurt?" asked Brenda.

"Nope, nobody got hurt. Did a good clean job."

"Thank God," said Brenda. She had never been in a more shattered state. She couldn't even cry. "Oh," she said, "Gary's going to hate me. He's not too happy with me anyways. But now he's going to hate me." She was more worried about that than anything.

10

Chris Caffee couldn't sleep at all and Debbie kept saying, "I can't believe Ben's dead. I can't believe it."

They were all feeling pretty paranoid. Chris got up once to take a shower but started shaking when she realized there was a window in the bathroom and the killer could come through it. While the water was running, she wouldn't hear a sound. it was like the movie Psycho.

Then she got back in the living room, and almost gave a yip. Some big person with a flashlight was walking in the front yard. But it was only a policeman. He had noticed their car door was open and a cat had taken up abode in the back seat. They invited the man in, and that was how they learned a suspect had been caught. They didn't know if it was really the killer, but at least the police had somebody.

Debbie kept saying things you couldn't answer any more than you could talk back to your TV set. "When I was a kid," she announced, "I used to play touch football with the boys. I liked to swing off the roof on ropes." She said that sitting in the rocking chair, holding Benjamin.

"Yeah, that's great," said Chris from the studio bed.

"Ben took a lot of classes in bookkeeping and business administration, but his main interest was working with people," Debbie said, "and advising them."

"That's true," said Chris.

Debbie said, "We never had any time to play tennis or water-ski, because there was no recreation time. We were working all the way."

Holding Benjamin and rocking in the chair, she looked straight ahead. She had dark-green eyes, but they looked flat and black now. "It was Ben," she said, "who wanted to have the baby by natural childbirth. I went along because we always had the same idea about things."

"Yes," Debbie said, "Benjamin weighed seven pounds when he was born. The delivery presented no problem at all. Ben was with me at the hospital. He had a doctor's white outfit on. I could feel his presence all the time. That was a nice time." She paused. "I wonder if I am pregnant now. Yesterday, I told Ben I thought I was. I think he's happy about it."

Debbie was in the rocking chair all night and Benjamin was in her arms. She kept trying to get the new thing together, but there had been too many breaks. Seeing the strange man in the motel office was a break in her understanding. Then the instant when she saw Ben's head bleeding. That was an awfully large break. Ben dead. She never went back to the motel.

Next afternoon, Debbie's mom came, and people from the ward, and the bishop. Things never stopped moving. Debbie stayed with Chris and David for three days before she went back to Pasadena. It was the first time she traveled on an airplane in her life.

VI--Captured

1

Nicole was staying in Springville with her ex-husband Barrett when the police came. They didn't phone or anything. Just a cop to ask her to get ready. A little later, a lieutenant named Nielsen was there in a car. He would drive her over to see Gary.

She didn't know how she felt, and she didn't know if she cared how she felt. It had been a real hang-up listening to Barrett. The last couple of days he had been coming on as the wise man, talking all the time about her bad judgment.

Like she had picked Gary Gilmore, a middle-aged murderer, all for herself.

On the way, Lieutenant Nielsen was nice and polite, and he laid it out. They were going to let Nicole talk to Gary, but she had to ask if he had done the murders. Nicole was about to get mad at the suggestion, except she figured Nielsen needed a reason to justify bringing her over. She was sure he wasn't so dumb as to think Gary was going to answer her question while a bunch of cops was listening.

That was how it turned out. Nicole walked into this funky one-story jail, went down a couple of short corridors, passed a bunch of inmates who looked like beer bums, then a couple of dudes who whistled as she went by, twirled their mustaches, showed a biceps, generally acted like the cat's ass. Two cops and Detective Nielsen were right behind her, and she came to a big cell with a table in the middle of it, four bunks she could see and thick prison bars in front of her.

Then Gary came toward her from the back of the cell. His left hand was in a cast. It was only three days from the night she had seen him arrested and lying on the ground, but she could feel the difference. He said, "Hello, baby," and, at first, she didn't even want to look at him.

With her head down, she muttered, "Did you do this?"

She was really whispering, as if, should he say yes, maybe the cops wouldn't hear the question. He said, "Nicole, don't ask me that."

Now she looked up. She couldn't get over how clear his eyes were. There was a minute where they didn't say any more. Then he put one arm through the bars. She wanted to touch him but didn't. However, she kept feeling the impulse. More and more she had this desire to touch him.

It was close to a spooky experience. Nicole didn't know what she was feeling. She certainly wasn't feeling sorry for him. She wasn't feeling sorry for herself. Rather, she couldn't breathe. She could hardly believe it, but she was ready to faint. She knew it didn't matter what she had said about him these last couple of weeks. She had been in love with him from the moment she met him and she would love him forever.

It wasn't an emotion so much as a physical sensation. A magnet could have been pulling her to the bars. She reached out to put a hand on the arm he extended through, and one of the officers stepped forward and said, "No physical contact."

She stepped back, and Gary looked good. He looked surprisingly good. His eyes were more blue than they had ever been. All that fog from the Fiorinal was gone. His eyes looked into her as if he was returning from all the way back and something ugly had passed through completely and was gone All through these last couple of bad weeks, it was like he had been looking a year older every day. Now he looked fine. "I love you," he said as they said goodbye.

"I love you," she said.

In the same hour that Nicole was going to and from the jail, April went berserk. She began to scream that someone was trying to blow her head off. Kathryne could do nothing. First she had to call the police, and then she decided to commit her to the hospital. It was horrible. April had flipped out completely. Kathryne even had to keep the children out of the house all those hours while it was being decided.

2

About the second time that Brenda went down to the jail, which was on Sunday, a week and a half after his arrest, Nicole had also shown up. When Gary heard she was outside, the expression on his face, Brenda had to admit, was beautiful. "Oh, God," he said, "she promised to come back and she did."

However, he explained, it didn't mean he could visit with her. She wasn't allowed on his list just yet. Brenda said, "Let me see what I can do." She went up to a big tough Indian guard at the door, a confident-looking fellow, and said, "Alex, could you put Nicole Barrett in for the last five minutes of my time?"

"Well, now," he said, "we really shouldn't bend the rules."

"Bullshit," said Brenda, "what's the difference if it's me or Nicole? He ain't going to go nowhere! Why, Alex Hunt, you mean to tell me," she asked, "you can't take care of this poor man with a busted-up hand? What's he going to do with his one hand? Tear you apart?"

"Well," said Alex, "I think we can handle Gilmore."

While Nicole was visiting, Brenda walked over to Nicole's sister-in-law, who had also come. It was hot that day, and Sue Baker was holding her newborn baby and perspiring in volumes. "How is Nicole doing?" asked Brenda.

The sun didn't stir on the black cinder gravel back of the jail.

"She's pretty broke up," said Sue.

Brenda said, "Gary's not going to get out of this one. If Nicole gets all hung up, it's going to ruin her."

"She won't quit," said Sue, "we already tried."

"Well," said Brenda, "she's in for a lot of hurt."

When Nicole came out, she was weeping. Brenda put her arms around her and said, "Nicole, we both love him."

Then Brenda said, "Nicole, why don't you think a little about giving up the ship? Gary is never going to get out. You'll spend the rest of your life visiting this guy. That's all the future you're going to have." Now Brenda began to cry. "Tuck those beautiful memories in your heart," she said, "tuck them away."

Nicole muttered, "I'll stick."

She was feeling an animosity toward Brenda she didn't even understand. Nicole heard herself thinking, As if I owe her a million dollars for giving me five minutes of her visiting time.

3

There was a preliminary hearing on August third in Provo and Nicole drove over, but they let her visit with Gary for only a moment. It made her dizzy to see him in leg shackles. Then they only gave her time for one hug and a tremendous kiss before pulling him away. She was left in the hall of the court with the world rocketing around her. Outside, in the summer light, the horseflies were mean as insanity itself.

On the drive back to Springville, she was dreaming away and got in a wreck. Nobody was hurt but the car. After that, all the way home, her Mustang sounded like it was breaking up in pain. She couldn't shift out of second.

It became a crazy trip. She kept having an urge to cross the divider and bang into oncoming traffic. Next day, when the mail came, there was a very long (concluded on page 288)Executioner's Song (continued from page 284) letter from Gary that he had begun to write soon as they took him back to jail from the hearing. So she realized he had been saying these words to her at the same time she had been driving along with the urge to smash into every car going the other way.

Now she read Gary's letter over and over. She must have read it five times and the words went in and out of her head like a wind blowing off the top of the world.

August 3

Nothing in my experience, prepared me for the kind of honest open love you gave me. I'm so used to bullshit and hostility, deceit and pettiness, evil and hatred. Those things are my natural habitat. They have shaped me. I look at the world through eyes that suspect, doubt, fear, hate, cheat, mock, are selfish and vain. All things unacceptable, I see them as natural and have even come to accept them as such. I look around the ugly vile cell and know that I truly belong in a place this dank and dirty, for where else should I be? There's water all over the floor from the fucking toilet that don't flush right. The shower is filthy and the thin mattress they gave me is almost black, it's so old. I have no pillow. There are dead cockroaches in the corners. At nite there are mosquitoes and the lite is very dim. I'm alone here with my thoughts and I can feel the oldness. Remember I told you about The Oldness? and you told me how ugly it was--the oldness, the oldness. I can hear the tumbrel wheels creek. So fucking ugly and coming so close to me. When I was a child... I had a nitemare about being beheaded. But it was more than just a dream. More like a memory. It brought me right out of the bed. And it was sort of a turning point in my life.... Recently it has begun to make a little sense. I owe a debt, from a long time ago. Nicole, this must depress you. I've never told anybody of this thing, except my mother the nite I had that nitemare and she came in to comfort me but we never spoke of it after that. And I started to tell you one nite and I told you quite a bit of it before it became plain to me that you didn't want to hear it. There have been years when I haven't even thought much of it at all and then something (a picture of a guillotine, a headmans block, or a broad ax, or even a rope) will bring it all back and for days it will seem I'm on the verge of knowing something very personal, something about myself. Something that somehow wasn't completed and makes me different. Something I owe, I guess. Wish I knew.

Once you asked me if I was the devil, remember? I'm not. The devil would be far more clever than I, would operate on a much larger scale and of course would feel no remorse. So I'm not Beelzebub. And I know the devil can't feel love. But I might be further from God than I am from the devil. Which is not a good thing. It seems that I know evil more intimately than I know goodness and that's not a good thing either. I want to get even, to be made even, whole, my debts paid (whatever it may take!) to have no blemish, no reason to feel guilt or fear. I hope this ain't corny, but I'd like to stand in the sight of God. To know that I'm just and right and clean. When you're this way you know it. And when you're not, you know that too. It's all inside of us, each of us--but I guess I ran from it and when I did try to approach it, I went about it wrong, became discouraged, bored, lazy, and finally unacceptable. But what do I do now? I don't know. Hang myself?

I've thought about that for years, I may do that. Hope that the state executes me? That's more acceptable and easier than suicide. But they haven't executed anybody here since 1963 (just about the last year for legal executions anywhere). What do I do, rot in prison? growing old and bitter and eventually work this around in my mind to where it reads that I'm the one who's getting fucked around, that I'm just an innocent victim of society's bullshit? What do I do? Spend a life in prison searching for the God I've wanted to know for such a long time? Resume my painting? Write poetry? Play handball? Eat my heart out for the wondrous love you gave me that I threw away one Monday nite because I was so spoiled and couldn't immediately have a white pickup truck I wanted? What do I do? We always have a choice, don't we?

I'm not asking you to answer these questions for me, Angel, please don't think that I am. I have to make my own choice. But anything you want to comment on or suggest, or say, is always welcome.

God, I love you, Nicole.

continuing the stunning story of gary gilmore

"Max gave her a kiss and a really good hug. Colleen said, 'I'll see you tonight.'"

"Gary opened the truck door and a burlap bag tipped over. It sounded like it held half a dozen guns."

"She was suddenly suspicious, and had to ask, 'Gary, where in the hell did you get a lot of cash?'"

"I had a nitemare about being beheaded. But it was more than just a dream. More like a memory."

This is the second of three installments of "The Executioner's Song." Part three will appear in the December issue.