The Executioner's Song

I--An Evening of Dancing and Light Refreshment

1

It's ten A.M. Sun Morn. I got up and showered and shaved--well first I did my exercise, ten minutes running. These fucking guards think I'm nuts when I run up and down the tier. Almost all these guards are fat lazy fuckers.

Hey you're an elf, ain't ya?!

They asked me who I invite to watch me get shot. I said

Number One: Nicole Two: Vern Damico, Three: Ron Stanger, lawyer, Four: Bob Moody, lawyer, Five: Lawrence Schiller, big Wheeler dealer from Hollywood.

I knew they wouldn't let you come, so I said to just reserve a place in your honor.

The New York Post said I was auctioning off seats--

Lot of people rite a lot of shit in the paper.

Baby you said if I am shot...what will be in you?

I will.

I will come to and hold you my darling companion.

Do not doubt.

I'll show you.

Baby I've been avoiding something but I'll come to it right now.

If you choose to join me or if you choose to wait--it is your choice.

Whenever you come I will be there.

I swear on all that is holy.

I do not want anybody else to ever have you if you choose to wait.

You are mine.

My soul mate.

Indeed, my very soul.

Do not fear nothingness my Angel. You will never experience it.

2

Gary's uncle, Vern, was on the phone to Larry Schiller. Offers were coming in from wax museums to buy Gary's clothes. The sums were up to several thousand dollars. While there was no question of selling, it had now become a matter of safeguarding the last things Gary wore. Then they decided they had better protect his remains as well. While the prison would deliver Gary's body to the Salt Lake hospital, where his eyes and organs would be removed, Schiller decided to post a guard when they moved Gary from the hospital to the crematorium.

In the visiting room at Maximum Security, Bob Moody, Gary's lawyer, began the last list of questions prepared by Larry Schiller for the Gilmore interview that would be published after his death.

Moody: If on your passage you meet a new soul coming to take your place, what advice would you have for him?

Gilmore: Nothing. I don't expect someone to take my place. "Hi, I'm your replacement...where's the key to the locker...where do you keep the towels?"

Moody: I don't know, wouldn't you have something to tell him about the life that ah...awaits him?

Gilmore: Shit....That's a serious question.

Moody: I think Larry Schiller wants you to be very serious about it.

Gilmore: I've talked to people who know more than I do, and people who know less, and I listen, and I decided the only fucking thing I know about death, the only real feeling I have about it, it'll be familiar; I don't think it'll be a harsh, unkind thing. Things that're harsh and unkind are here on earth, and they're temporary. They don't last. This all passes. That is my summation of my ideas, and I might be all wet.

Moody: Do you know what Joe Hill's last message to the wobblies was?

Gilmore: Joe?

Moody: Joe Hill. He's a man who was killed in Utah a number of years ago.

Gilmore: His name was Joe Hillstrom. What did he tell the wobblies?

Moody: "Don't mourn, boys, organize."

Gilmore: Don't warn?

Moody: "Don't mourn, boys, organize."

Gilmore: Well, I got something like that I kinda like: "Never fear, never breathe." That's a Muslim saying. I don't know where they got it, but you can apply it to anything. It makes pretty good sense. "Don't mourn, boys, organize."

Moody: You know the old line in the war movies, (text continued on page 176) "Any man who said he ain't scared is either a liar or a fool"?

Gilmore: What about it?

Moody: Doesn't that apply at least a little to your situation?

Gilmore: I didn't say I wasn't scared, did I?

Moody: No. But your message to the world has the connotation of don't fear.

Gilmore: Well, why fear? It's negative. You know, you could damn near call it a sin if you let fear run your life.

Moody: You're certainly determined to defeat fear.

Gilmore: I don't feel any fear right now. I don't think I will tomorrow morning. I haven't felt any yet.

Moody: How are you able to overcome fear from coming into your soul?

Gilmore: I guess I'm lucky. It hasn't come in. You know, a truly brave man is somebody who feels fear and goes out and does what he's supposed to do in spite of it. You couldn't really say I'm that fucking brave, because I ain't fighting against fear and overcoming it. I don't know about tomorrow morning...I don't know if I'll feel any different tomorrow morning than I do right now, or than I felt on the first of November when I waived the fucking appeal.

Moody: Well, you're remarkably composed.

Gilmore: Thank you, Bob.

Moody: I don't know what to say, I just really....

Gilmore: Look, man, I'm being kind of rude. You guys are a little upset about all of this, aren't ya?

Moody: It's hard, Gary, I'm physically ill.

At this point, Bob Moody began to cry. A little later, when he got control of himself, he and Gilmore and Stanger talked a bit more. Then they said goodbye. They would return in the late afternoon to visit through the night. As they went out, Gilmore said, "Don't forget the vest."

"The what?" asked Bob.

"The bulletproof vest," said Gilmore.

"I'll wear it in myself," said Moody.

"You guys take care," said Gilmore.

3

Moody telephoned. "You're going to get a call from the warden," he told Schiller. "You are going to see the execution." Though the news had been in the papers, Larry had not yet received official word. So he was worried. If the warden refused him at the gate, there would have to be last-minute legal maneuvers. The statutes might be all on his side, but such a situation would still be horrendous with tension.

In five minutes, the phone rang again. Deputy Warden Hatch was saying, "Warden Smith has asked me to advise you to appear tomorrow morning at six A.M. at the prison gate with no cameras and no recording devices, if you wish to witness the execution of Gary Mark Gilmore."

Schiller said, "Thank you. Will you please deliver this message to the warden? I do not intend to violate any rules and regulations that he has set up. Please assure him that I will conduct myself in the manner in which he would want me to conduct myself."

Now Schiller called Ron Stanger, Gary's other lawyer, and asked, "Will the warden let me see Gary before the execution?" When Stanger said he didn't know, Larry called the prison. The warden wouldn't talk to him. Schiller told himself, "If they do change their mind, I want to be right at the front door."

Schiller studied the prison plan for handling the media tonight before the execution, and decided it was very professional. "I don't believe the warden made this out," he said aloud. It was just too sensible. Through the night, public announcements would be made every 30 minutes on the speaker, and a prison representative would come out frequently to talk to the reporters. A few minutes after the execution, the warden would make a statement. Ten minutes after that, the press would be allowed to visit the site. It showed knowledge of the media that had not been evident before. The very layout of the language intrigued Schiller. He said to himself, "I now have a match for my intelligence," and had one of his Dream-the-Impossible-Dream ideas. Maybe he would yet meet the author of this plan tonight and be able to explain why they should let him in to talk to Gary. "Yes," he said to himself, "I'm going now as a member of the press."

Of course, he had made plans for such a contingency. John Durniak, the picture editor at Time, had told him he could use Time credentials if he wished. Lawrence Schiller, Witness to the Execution, who would not be allowed into the prison until 6:30 A.M., was now ready to enter at six P.M., better than 12 hours earlier, with his new press pass as Lawrence Schiller, accredited to Time magazine.

At least an hour before six, Schiller didn't feel like waiting around Orem any longer, and he put a couple of liquor-filled cough-syrup bottles in his pocket and took off from the motel. When he got to the gate, a lot of press was already going in. If they had been calling it a circus before, it looked now like a gypsy caravan. A great many television vans were lined up on the access road outside, plus all the vans for the movie-reel people and second crews and remotes, in addition to several hundred members of the press, who were jammed into every conceivable kind of vehicle, all going one by one through the main gate. What hit Schiller was that everybody was drinking.

The prison press release had not stated whether the press could bring liquor or beer, but, of course, this omission was no flaw in the master plan. Who had ever heard of the world press staking out a place for 12 hours without liquor? Besides, it was so bitter cold that without booze, they would all freeze. Schiller flashed to six in the morning and 300 newsmen stiff on the prison grounds. What a shot! Not a stringer alive to send out word. Yes, this was truly a master plan. Any demonstrations that took place would be off on the access road, well outside the prison. The objectors would be shouting their opposition from 1500 feet away. If not for this plan, some of the best men in the media might have been looking right now for interviews with the demonstrators, even encouraging them to come up with scorching remarks.(continued on page 192)Executioner's Song(continued from page 177) By morning, there would have been numerous stories of what was said by spokesmen hostile to the execution. So this was brilliant. The press might be livid, but the plan had a beautiful concept: Lock up the press.

Of course, next day, the stories would be vindictive, but then the press had been rough on the state of Utah all the way. At least the execution would take place without a mob scene in the dawn and everybody trying to get into the prison grounds at once. Now the mob scene would take place at six o'clock the night before, and the antagonism of the press might even wear out by morning. Drinking all night, they would be stupefied at dawn. By the time Gilmore was transferred from Maximum to the cannery, these reporters would be so happy to come in from the cold, they would probably wait without grumbling in whichever room they were penned. This plan, Schiller believed, had to come from Washington. Somebody in the FBI or the Department of Justice, at least.

Soon enough, six P.M. came, and that was it. The reporters were locked in. The long winter night came down off Point of the Mountain, passed over the parking lot and the prison and chased the last of the evening pale across the desert.

4

Earlier, at five in the afternoon, when Toni Gurney went in to visit with Gary, the press, already collected in the parking lot, crowded around her at the outside gate to Maximum. A condemned man's attractive female cousin was news, after all! It would be a lot worse when she came out. More press. Walking down that corridor between the wire fences over the snow with the wind coming off the mountain, Toni was thinking of the first time she'd gone to see Gary at the prison, two days before his birthday. She hadn't known then whether she was ready to forgive him or never would, but after seeing how tickled he was at her visit, she asked what she could send, and he wanted two dark sweat shirts with the sleeves cut off, extra large, with the shoulders reinforced so that they would peak without sleeves. She had gone to visit him again after that. He would always greet her by saying, "God, you're beautiful," which had her blushing.

This Sunday, however, was different. It was, of all coincidences, her own birthday, and Howard's family was coming for supper. So all the while that Toni had been planning her visit to the prison on this last evening, she had been cooking the meal for the evening party, and worrying how she could visit Gary early enough so that she could get back by seven for Howard's folks.

It was ten of six before they even let her into the visiting room, and then she had to wait 20 minutes with the other guests. When they opened the door for Gary, he saw her first and put his arms around her and gave a hug as if he were cracking all the ice of winter with one squeeze, held her so hard and long, she didn't think he would ever let go. Her mother was right with her and said, "Now it's my turn." So Gary released Toni with one arm and hugged Ida, but he never let go completely. In fact, as soon as Ida stepped back, he lifted Toni till her feet came off the floor, and gave her a great big kiss on the lips. He was still holding her 15 minutes later when she absolutely had to leave.

Gary said then, "You are coming back, aren't you?" That was the first Toni considered it. It was the look in his eyes. "Go home," he said, "and take care of your family, then come back." But it was going to be complicated. Not to mention her in-laws, this was also the solitary day Toni would have with Howard all week. He was working on a construction job in southern Utah and only got home on Sundays.

Before she could say yes or no, Gary gave her another big birthday kiss. Then Moody and Stanger took her mother and herself out along the corridor through the wire fences and the crowd, which was now massive. Toni knew why they called them the press. They almost squeezed her to death. But that was no more weird than leaving this prison to go back to her birthday party.

5

Sunday had started for Bob Moody at six in the morning with a High Council meeting. That lasted until eight. At 9:30, he went to Priesthood meeting, came back to take his family to church, went out to the prison, and came back to pick up his family when Sunday school concluded at one P.M. Then all of the Moody family went home to dinner. By four P.M., Ron Stanger and he were ready to drive to the prison.

In the parking lot were Vern and Ida, then Toni and two middle-aged cousins of Gary's named Evelyn and Dick Gray. All of them, together with Father Meersman, were taken over to Maximum Security, and Lieutenant Fagan was cordial on this night and showed the facilities. The prisoners had been fed early, and the gates between the visiting room and the main dining room for Maximum Security were open, so that they could pass back and forth between the two rooms during the evening. A considerable space altogether. Perhaps as much as 100 feet of movement in the longest direction, half of that the other way, plus a couple of smaller rooms adjacent for more private conversations. Lieutenant Fagan's office was open, and the kitchen, and the booth with the glass window where formerly they talked with Gary.

All this was at the front of Maximum Security just back of the two sliding gates that separated them from the exterior. At the rear of the visiting room, also barred by a gate, was the long hallway through Maximum off which were set the various cell rows. Moody had never been back there, and was not familiar with the area as much as respectful of it. It was like the hallway that led to the cellar stairs in a large oppressive old house. Just as you imagined you could hear groans in those old cellars, so from the cell blocks came cries and shouts and moans and slamming sounds clear up to the visiting room, but muted, as if under the rock.

Since they planned to be there through the night and wanted to save their good clothes for morning, Moody and Stanger had come with a change. They had also brought crackers and soft drinks, which proved unnecessary, for the prison offered light refreshments all evening. Tang and Kool-Aid and cookies and coffee. Father Meersman procured a TV set and plugged it in. Somebody had managed to bring a portable stereo with a few records, and what with the three or four guards' circulating through the kitchen and dining room and visiting room and, at various times, Father Meersman and Cline Campbell, the Mormon chaplain, and the two lawyers and the cousins and Vern and Toni and Ida, it was almost enough people for a party. Not to mention the guard on duty all through the night in the bulletproof glass-enclosed booth that overlooked the visiting room.

Every couple of hours, somebody would come from the pharmacy with medication. As the evening went on, Bob Moody came to recognize they were (continued on page 196)Executioner's Song(continued from page 192) giving Gary some kind of speed. Doubtless, the pharmacists saw it as a blessing and kept it coming, and in the early hours of the evening, Gary did keep getting happier and happier. In the beginning, he was so delighted to see Toni, and held her for so long, and kissed her with such cousinly gusto, that Bob and Ron and Vern and the others just sat back and waited, didn't want to interrupt when Gary was so obviously delighting in her visit. Besides, there were chores to accomplish. The guards had brought in a couple of cots with mattresses, and provisions were being laid out for the evening, and then Toni was hardly there very long before Ron and Bob had to take her down between the barbed-wire fences into the swarm of press. It was practically an operation. Until they got her into the truck, it felt like their eyes were being seared with strobe lights and their souls with the general mania. For they were magical to the press tonight. They had seen the man and could report on him.

They kept saying, "No comment," and looked for Schiller, and talked enough to keep the media close with their microphones and tape recorders. That gave Vern time to slip around and have a talk with Larry.

Moody and Stanger might have been temporarily satisfying the majority of these reporters, but there was a great deal of press, and Larry and Vern also became the center of a swarm. In the squeeze, Vern could only whisper, "Have you got the liquor?"

And Schiller said, "Yeah."

"How," whispered Vern, "am I going to get it in?"

"Put the little bottles under your armpits," said Larry, "and keep your elbows close."

"Fine," said Vern, "but how do I get them under my coat?" The press was surrounding them as tightly as a crowd packed around two players of the winning team caught on the field after the game.

Schiller turned and shouted, "Can't you let this man have a little privacy? You're hounding him. Get back." Physically, he pushed on the press a little, not laying on rough hands so much as using the mixture of pressure and slight hysteria that worked best with reporters. "Give him a little privacy," he repeated. They retreated two feet, maybe three, room enough for Vern to do something with the liquor. By the time Larry turned around, Vern was ready to go back to the glare of the lights in the visiting room with the record player going and the TV set, and Gilmore beginning to spend his last night on earth.

6

The little bottles went fast. Gary would dip into a back room and take a nip, then come out with a wink. Moody thought it was appropriate. If that was what the man wanted, then he ought to be able to enjoy a drink. It had been years since Moody had tasted alcohol, but this was a social event. If some corner of Moody's mind could hear the criticism that Gilmore was going to meet his Maker in the morning, and that might be wiser on a sober head, still Moody thought, This is more like a last meal. If he wants to go out drunk, he has a right. He thought of how Gary had deliberately not requested his six-pack of Coors at the end because he did not want the world to think he would be unable to face it without something to help him. But now, the speed was coming in, and the booze.

Yet, at the sight of Gary's pleasure, and the way he enjoyed the feeling of slight intoxication, for he didn't get very drunk, it began as a nice evening. Gary even took one of the guards into one of the back offices and gave him liquor from the curved medicine bottles Schiller had also sent in.

Bob himself loved the idea that he was able to go up to Gary, shake hands with him, hold him, look at him for a second, face to face--it was unexpected how great a need had developed to do something as simple as that after all these weeks. In fact, this was the first face-to-face meeting without urgent business to discuss. So it was a pleasure to see Gary become loose and grow to enjoy the night.

It was easy and it was relaxed. During the course of the hours, Ron or he would get up and walk out and get a soft drink in the kitchen, and Evelyn and Dick Gray would go back and forth, and Vern. There was not any terrible feeling of a clock or any sense that outside the prison, other lawyers might be preparing to seek a stay.

A little later, while the evening was still pleasant, Ron Stanger started talking about his boxing experience on the team at Brigham Young University, and Gary mentioned that he knew a little about it. They got up and started sparring. Ron had assumed it would be a matter of throwing a mock punch or two, but Gary wanted to make it more of a contest. While he couldn't really box, he was a street fighter and threw a lot of punches. Ron kept stepping aside to aviod getting hit, but, of course, that wasn't the purpose of the whole thing. Only Gilmore kind of got this glint. The harder he hit, the more there was to enjoy. Gary sure had his little mean streak. Hit with fists closed, Ron had to catch it on his shoulders and hands. At one point, like it was still in fun, Gary analyzed his own style, said, "I don't lead, I'm a counterpuncher," and threw a lead. Ron slipped it, turned his shoulder into Gary to tie him up, then balied out and walked away. Gary kept pursuing. It wasn't like normal social sparring, where you go in, tap a man, then withdraw to show how you could have hit the guy hard. Gary was throwing one real bomb after another. A couple almost clobbered Ron good. Of course, for the first 20 or 30 seconds, Ron was still feeling beautiful. He was faster than Gary. It was just that after a minute, be began to count his age with every breath, and Gary was a couple of inches taller and had a longer reach. Soon there was the same flavor Stanger would find whenever he walked into Maximum. All these cons worked out with weights, knowing they had bodies. Their presence leaned on you psychologically. It was as if their bodies said, "I got more right to be free than you, boy." So Ron was glad when he found an opportunity to clinch with Gary, hug him, grin and indicate it was over.

After the boxing, Gary began to make some phone calls. Ron could hear him on the line with the station that played country-and-western, and he kidded them about how bad they were and thanked them for playing Walking in the Footsteps of Your Mind. Next, he went into Fagan's office to make a call to his mother. Of course, Ron didn't try to listen, but Gary came out all excited because he also was able to get a call in to Johnny Cash. Then he began to move around restlessly, as if it bothered him that the record player was going and there was nobody to dance with. Yet things were still in a good mood. The boxing had set up a kind of intimacy between Gary and Ron. While ups and downs were beginning to appear in the evening, still, it was OK, and the mood was all right. Like any long night, there had to be peaks and valleys. During one of the lulls, Gary now came over to Ron and said he wanted to tell him something, (continued on page 368)Executioner's Song(continued from page 196) wanted to be alone with him. They took a bench in a corner of the visiting room, away from the others.

Gary said he had $50,000 and looked Ron right in the eye. His pale gray-blue eyes looked as deep as the sky on one of those odd mornings when you cannot tell by the light of dawn whether good or foul weather lies ahead. "Yes, Ron," he said, "I've got fifty thousand dollars, or, to be exact about it, access to fifty thousand dollars, and I'll give it to you. All I want is that the next time you go outside, leave me the keys to your extra clothes." Those other clothes were in a locker back in one of the little rooms. "There's so much hubbub around here," Gilmore said, "that the guards won't know. Just leave your key."

"What do you have in mind?" Ron asked. Ron couldn't believe how stupid he was acting. "Well, what, really, Gary, do you have in mind?" he asked again, and then it hit him, and he felt doubly stupid.

"Ron," said Gary, "if I can get through that double gate in your clothes, I'm out. There's nothing past there but the outside door, and that's always open. I'll just skin up the barbed wire and flip over the rolls at the top. That wire'll put a few holes in me, but it's nothing."

"Then you drop?" asked Ron.

"Yeah," said Gilmore. "Then I drop, and start running. If I get out there, I'm gone. You leave those clothes, all right?"

Now Ron realized what had been going into those arduous calisthenics Gary had done every day. He forced himself to look back into Gary's eyes, Ron would say that much for himself, and he answered, "Gary, when we started, part of our bargain was no hanky-panky." Then he made himself say, "I've grown very close to you. I'd do anything I could for you. But I'm not going to put my children and my family in jeopardy." Gary nodded. Acknowledged it all with that nod. Didn't seem discouraged so much as confirmed.

Ron was remembering that as Toni and Ida left, Gary had gone into a playful little scene where he put on Toni's hat and Ida's coat and pretended to get into the double door with them. All very funny at the time. Everybody was laughing, including the novice guard on the gate, a young kid Ron had never seen before, but all that guard would have had to do was, by mistake, open both doors at once. Gary would have been gone. Wow! It came over him. This guy meant what he said. If he had to stay in prison, he wanted to die. But if he could get outside, that was another game.

7

Sitting on a bench, trying to keep his thoughts above the pain in his calcified knee, taking it all in with sorrow and fatigue and considerable churning at the core of his stomach, Vern was feeling pretty emotional. He knew his face was set like stone, but it was getting hard to hold up. He almost busted out once--didn't know if it was to cry or laugh--when Gary said over the phone, "Is this the real Johnny Cash?" That was as crazy as you would want.

Now Gary was going around in the hat Vern had bought for him at Albertson's food store, a Robin Hood type of archer's hat, way too big. It had been the last one left. Vern had looked at Ida and said, "He wears funny things, anyway, so I'll buy it." How could you love a guy because he wanted to wear a crazy hat?

Ah, Gary was so full of love this night. Vern had never seen him this rich. The only thing in the world he could still get mad about was the prison, and he even had a funny attitude there. "My last night," he kept saying with his grin, "so they can't punish me anymore," and Vern came near again to that feeling he was going to cry. He remembered that day so many visits ago that Gary had said, "Vern, there's no use talking about the situation. I killed those men, and they're dead. I can't bring them back, or I would."

A little later, Stanger was feeling restless. Talking of escape with Gary hadn't exactly calmed him down, so he said, "Hey, let's get some pizza," and asked Lieutenant Fagan, "Can we get cleared?" Everybody liked the idea.

Fagan volunteered a car with a man to drive them, and then Ron and Bob and the guard went out and stopped in the parking lot long enough for Stanger to slip out of the car, walk around, find Larry and tell him, "Gary wants to call you around one-thirty in the morning."

Schiller said, "OK, I'll go with you."

By now, the press wasn't on Schiller's ear and elbow anymore. The cold had gotten to everybody. People stayed in their vans drinking, and Schiller was able to stroll around the perimeter and get to the police car unobserved. The guard in the front seat said, "Who are you?"

But Schiller only replied, "I'm supposed to be going out with you," and got in, and lay down in the back. Stanger, in the meanwhile, had gotten waylaid by a reporter. It took five minutes before he and Moody could return. Then they went up the road, and the outer gate swung open and they were out of the prison grounds. Schiller got off the floor and everybody started laughing.

If they drove Larry all the way back to Orem, the prison would wonder why the car had been gone so long. It was better they head north to the near outskirts of Salt Lake. From there, Schiller called his driver to take him back to the motel to wait for Gary's call.

The Pizza Hut was the only place open, and they were the last customers, and ordered the stuff with ham, salami and pepperoni, Bob Moody thinking he'd hit everybody with the selection, and they picked up some beer in a grocery. Back at the prison, their car was searched and the beer confiscated. It made them mad, but the guard examining them was a stiff and said alcohol would not be tolerated on prison grounds. The irony was that he didn't even look at the pizza boxes. They could have hidden five pistols in there. Then they proceeded from the outer gate down the entrance road to the front of administration and the guard at the top of the tower spoke down to them like God's voice coming out of a dark cloud to say there had been a ruling against pizza. Not acceptable.

While they were still disputing that, new word came. They could walk in with the pizzas, after all. It was just that Gary wouldn't be able to have any. He had not put it on the list for his last supper.

Bob and Ron were so angry they stood out there to eat their pizza in the cold, and by the time they went in, Lieutenant Fagan was very embarrassed over the situation, very. He was a small man, with white hair, a mustache and a lean build, usually a crisp and pleasant man, but hangdog now over the way his superiors had reacted. After a while, a guard came up and said Gary could have a piece, too. Of course, Gary wouldn't go near the stuff by then. Gave a look to blister paint and said, "I hope everybody's enjoying my last meal."

After this episode, there was a feeling of humiliation all over. Last night, Gary could have requested any of a hundred dishes. The warden would have initialed the form and he could have had it tonight. Now it was too late. A couple of pharmacists, however, came to give him pills. He couldn't eat pizza, but they would feed him speed. Stanger decided the best word for the prison administration was "beautiful."

8

At Toni's birthday party, there were dozens of phone calls from friends, so Toni didn't have to think about Gary. All the same, she kept saying to her mother, "I want to go back up."

And Ida would reply, "Oh, hon, all those reporters know who you are now." Toni thought, All right, I'll wake myself up at five.

Her in-laws left early, and she and Howard just sat there, talking. She knew he could feel how she wanted to be with Gary again. Of course, she also didn't want to leave Howard. Besides, that press! The lights in your eyes were frightening, and you could hear reporters' nerves snapping on every question. It was the first time she had ever felt like an animal in a cage with other animals.

Howard must have been reading her thoughts, because he said, "Come on, honey, I'll get you through the reporters." So they left a note for Ida and took off. It was close to ten by the time they reached the prison and they must have used up 45 minutes getting through the gate. Security was tight by then. They were accustomed to her face, but Howard was new, and they wouldn't clear him. She had to go and talk to the warden, and that did mean pushing through the reporters outside administration by herself.

Sam Smith wouldn't let Howard in. Toni had the feeling the warden would relent if she kept pushing, but Howard didn't want to. He just kept saying, "How can you sit and talk to someone who is going to die in a few hours?"

When they opened the double gate, there were Daddy and Gary sitting together on a cot. Vern was sleepy, and Gary was uptight, but they must have been used to people going in and out, because the first gate slammed behind her and they didn't even look up when the second gate opened. She was actually in the room before Gary saw her and jumped to his feet and held her in the air. He said, "I knew you'd come back. Thank God you came back."

He whirled her around and hugged her and gave her another big kiss. Vern said, "What are you doing back here? It's a long way from morning," but he left them alone.

They sat down and started to talk, and Gary just held on to her hands. He said, "I wish we had more time together."

"I'm sorry, too," said Toni.

"Well," he said, "maybe it's for a reason. Maybe if we'd developed a relationship earlier, tonight wouldn't mean so much." Then he asked if she wanted to see some pictures of Nicole, and got out a carton he had taped, and carefully unwrapped it, and showed Nicole as a child. "These," he added, "you don't have to look at, if you don't want to," but pulled out a couple of beautiful drawings he'd done of Nicole nude. Then a whole series of pictures taken on photo machines where you would get four shots for half a dollar. Nicole was showing her breasts. It was obvious these pictures meant a lot to Gary, and Toni thought they weren't foul. Really, kind of meaningful. All the while, Gary kept bringing up more snapshots of Nicole when she was five, and eight, and ten, saying what a beautiful child she was.

Toni said, "She's a beautiful woman now." What was all this carrying on about how she looked as a child?

"I wish," said Gary, "I could have seen her one more time." They sat there full of silence at the thought of Nicole trapped against her will in the mental hospital and of Brenda, trapped against her will in a hospital bed.

The record player was going and Gary said, "Come on, I haven't danced in years." So they got up. She had heard him sing once and he was a terrible singer, but she could see he was going to be even worse as a dancer. Yet she enjoyed it. Sitting on the floor, looking through his things, she had felt so close. Her marriage with Howard had lasted nine years. In less trouble now than ever, it was a good marriage, but Toni had never exactly felt the kind of special feeling she had now. It was like she'd known Gary for a lifetime in these couple of hours.

The music was fast. Gary put his funny hat on Toni, fluffed her hair and they danced. She did her best to follow. When they finished, Gary said, "I never really was very good, but I haven't had much chance to go to dances," and they laughed, and he told her that he had talked to Johnny Cash on the phone, but it was a bad connection. Still he had asked, "Is this the real Johnny Cash?" and right after the answer, hollered back, "Well, this is the real Gary Gilmore."

They sat down again. Gary said, "I have found something with you tonight that I knew with Brenda through all these years, and I wish I'd made things more equal between you and your sister." When Toni looked puzzled, he said, "I gave three thousand dollars for you and Howard, and five thousand to Brenda and Johnny. I'm sorry I did not make it equal. I never really knew you." She told him the money didn't mean anything.

He said, "You're so many people to me tonight. You're Nicole, and you're Brenda, and in a way, you're like my mother in the way I remember when she was young." Toni didn't know if she was reading his mind, but she thought he was feeling a strong urge to put his arms once more around his mother.

Every now and then, a couple of guards would come in to shake hands with Gary, and he would say, "Do you want my autograph?"

"Sure, Gary," they would tell him. So he would borrow a pen and sign the pocket of their shirt or their cuffs.

When the pharmacist came back, Gary said, "Here's this old boy who takes care of me."

And the pharmacist grunted and said, "Yeah, you keep me pretty busy with all your shenanigans."

All the while, Toni was reminding herself that Howard was out there shivering in the parking lot. Finally, she told Gary, "Look, I'll bring Mother back by five."

And Gary said, "I want you here in the morning with me," and put his arms around her to give another big hug and said, "Thank you, for tonight." He held her one more time and said, "A cool, peaceful summer evening, a lovefilled room. You just brightened my whole night, Toni, and filled it with love," and he cuddled her face in his hands, putting one hand on each cheek, and gave her a kiss on the forehead. "You brought my Nicole back to me tonight," he said.

Then he gave her a big hug and Toni said, "I'm going to have to go."

Gary walked her toward the gate. "I'll see you in the morning," he said. "Go home and take care of Ida." Then he added, "Tell Howard hello. It's so great that Howard came to try to see me." Toni went out letting him think that the only reason Howard had not been there was that the warden would not let him. When the first gate closed behind her, Gary held the bars to watch until they opened the other gate, and when that closed behind her, she put her coat on and left. She never got to see him again.

9

Up till then, despite the pizza, it had really been a party and everybody was feeling good, and there were no problems, except one so large it removed all sense of the others. But now, after Toni was gone, Gary started to get mad about the pizza all over again. He became very solemn, very upset. Toni remembered how Gary always said, "I don't want a last meal, because they'll play games with me." Ron knew he didn't want to talk to Gary now.

Nor did Moody. A sense of death had come into the visitors' room. It had been there before, but it gave everyone strength. Now it was as if it came creeping like smoke beneath the door. It was getting late. Things had quieted. The record player was not going, and Vern had gone to sleep. Dick and Evelyn Gray were snoozing. Ron went to the kitchen to talk to the guards. It was then that Gary came over to Bob.

"You wouldn't change clothes with me, would you?" he said.

And Bob answered, "No, I wouldn't."

Gary began to describe how he could get out, if Bob would just give him the clothes. The guards were paying no attention. He could walk through those twin gates as Bob Moody, be out the door of Maximum and over that barbed-wire fence faster than you could ever believe. He would just climb up the wire, then he would do a forward roll over the barbed wire at the top, pick up a hole or two in his skin, nothing, and be running, man. They would not find him. It was a somber moment. "I know," said Gary, "that I can get out of here."

"No," said Bob Moody, "I can't do it, Gary, and I won't do it."

Cline Campbell had been in and out all night, so he saw the change in mood. For the first couple of hours, you would have thought it was Christmas morning. But Campbell had to leave by 7:30 that evening to give a lecture in Salt Lake and didn't get back until close to midnight. By then, it had all changed. Earlier, a guard had been sitting at the head of a cot, Gilmore in the middle and Campbell at the foot. In the middle of talking away, Gilmore reached under the pillow and came up with a sample bottle of whiskey. "Ooops," said Campbell and looked away. "I see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. But have at it, partner, just have at it." Gilmore laughed. That was earlier.

After the speaking engagement, Campbell rushed back to the prison without stopping to eat, and discovered everybody had gone through the pizza. There was none left. He and Gilmore were the only two with empty bellies. When they were alone, Campbell said, "It looks like this time will be it."

"It's going through," said Gary. "They can't stop it now."

"You know," said Campbell, "we're to meet again. It will be the same for you and me, no matter what's on the other side." They were in Lieutenant Fagan's office and Gary was still wearing the hat with a feather that looked like it belonged to Chico Marx. "It doesn't matter," said Campbell, "whether what you feel, religiously, is right, or what I feel, either way, we're going to see each other again. In whatever form, Gary, I want you to know I think you're a good guy." It was awful, thought Campbell, the more time he spent with Gilmore, the less he was able to remind himself that Gary was a man capable of murder. In fact, by now, most of the time, Gilmore looked not at all capable of that, at least not compared with most of the faces Cline Campbell saw every day in uniform and out.

Father Meersman said to Moody and Stanger that he had this advantage over almost everybody else, that he'd been through two other executions. He explained to them how he had succeeded in convincing the warden and his staff that it was necessary to walk through the procedure on this night, for every step ought to be taken equal to those steps which would be taken in the morning when the real execution took place, and they had done that. Some of the prison officials had agreed to a dry run and taken the steps so that it would be calm and dignified when they all participated. They had gone through the whole thing and somebody had a stop watch and timed it, and that was a normal thing to do for such an important procedure. It was important to have a run-through of the whole mechanics of the execution.

II--Gilmore's Last Tape

1

About one o'clock in the morning, with everybody half asleep, Gary moved into Lieutenant Fagan's office and got a call out to Larry Schiller at the motel. Schiller, who had been waiting by the phone, seized it with all the questions of the last month in his throat. "How are you, champ?" were his first words.

"All right," said Gilmore. "What do you want to ask me? What do you want to know?"

"I'd like to go over a couple of things."

"Go ahead."

He got to the subject fast. "At this point, Gary, at one in the morning--"

"Pardon?" said Gilmore.

"At one in the morning," Larry continued, reading off a card, "do you think you still have to hide anything about your life?"

"Like what?"

"I'm not asking you to tell me what it is, you see? I'm just asking if there's the feeling that you want to hold back something."

Gilmore sighed. "Do you have anything specific?" he asked.

"Well, let's say," said Schiller, "did you ever kill anybody besides Jensen and Bushnell?"

Maybe it was more of his romanticism, but he had the idea that if a man was about to die, he would be ready to reveal himself, and Schiller really wanted to know if Gilmore had ever killed anyone before.

"Did you?" repeated Schiller.

"No," said Gilmore.

"No," repeated Schiller. One more frustration. There was a silence. No way to continue. He had to try another line of inquiry.

"Is there anything about your relationship with your mother or father," he asked, "that is so personal to you, that even at the moment of death you'd rather not talk about?" What kind of relationship could a mother have, he was thinking, that she would not come to see her son? Even if she had to arrive by stretcher! Schiller couldn't comprehend it. There had to be some buried animosity--something Gary had done to her, or she to him. If he could only get a clue to that. But nobody got to Bessie Gilmore. Dave Johnston had gone up to Portland on his own for the L.A. Times and couldn't speak to her. When Dave Johnston failed, you had a woman not ready to talk.

"Goddamn it," said Gilmore over the phone, "I'm getting pissed off at that kind of question. I don't give a damn what anybody else has said. I've told you the fucking truth. Man, my mother's a hell of a woman. She has suffered with rheumatoid arthritis for about four years and she's never bitched about it at all. Now, does that tell you anything?"

"That tells me a fucking lot, right now," said Schiller hoarsely.

"My dad got thrown a lot in jail, when we was kids," said Gilmore. "He was a rounder. My mother would say, 'Well, he walked out,' and she let it go at that. She did the very goddamned best she could, and, man, she was always there, we always had something to eat, we always had somebody to tuck us in."

"OK," said Schiller, "I believe you."

"What about your mother?" asked Gilmore.

"My mother," said Schiller, "was a rough, hard woman. She worked every day. She used to put me in the movies with my brother. We'd watch movies every day while she scrubbed floors for my dad." Much of human motivation, he had decided for himself in later years, came from the idea of behavior that movie plots laid into your head. When you could make remarks that brought back those movie plots, people acted on them. So the story he told Gilmore was something of a film scene. In actuality, his family had been in financial straits for only a few years, and in that period, his mother had to scrub floors at times, but the idea of a life spent on one's knees certainly mollified Gilmore.

"My mother," said Gary, "worked in a hash house as a buswoman. She didn't have any money, and she was trying to hold on to a beautiful house that we had with a nice swing-around driveway where you drive up and it makes a circle. She wanted that. She wanted some things. She lost it. When she did, she moved into a trailer. She never bitched about it."

"You really love her, man, don't you?" said Schiller.

"Goddamn it, yes," said Gary. "I don't want to hear any fucking bullshit that she was mean to me. She never hit me."

At that moment, there was an interruption on the phone. "Hello," said a voice.

"Hello," said Gary.

"Is this Mr. Fagan?" said the voice.

"Who's this?" asked Gary.

"This is the warden."

"This is Mr. Gilmore," said Gary modestly. "I'm making a phone call that Mr. Fagan approved."

"OK, thank you," said Sam Smith, "pardon me," and he hung up. There was something in the warden's voice that sounded like he was just about holding on to himself. It gave Schiller the feeling he had better hurry.

Schiller took his last crack at the question he could not get Gilmore to respond to. "I believe you had rough breaks," said Schiller. "You got into trouble, and had a temper and were impatient, but you weren't a killer. Something happened. Something turned you into a man who could kill Jensen and Bushnell, some feeling, or emotion, or event."

"I was always capable of murder," said Gilmore. "There's a side of me that I don't like. I can become totally devoid of feelings for others, unemotional. I know I'm doing something grossly fucking wrong. I can still go ahead and do it."

It wasn't exactly the answer Schiller was hoping to hear. He wanted an episode. "I still," he said, "don't understand what goes on in a person's mind who decides to kill."

"Hey, look," said Gilmore, "listen. One time I was driving down the street in Portland. I was just fucking around, about half high, and I seen two guys walk out of a bar. I was just a youngster, man, nineteen, twenty, something like that, and one of these dudes is a young chicano about my age and the other's about forty, an older dude. So I said, 'Hey, you guys want to see some girls? Get in.' And they got in the back. I had a Forty-nine Chevrolet, two-door, you know, fastback? And they got in. And I drove out to Clackamas County, a very dark...now, I'm telling you the truth, I ain't making this up, I'm not dramatizing, I'm going to be blasted out of my fucking boots, and I swear to Jesus Christ on everything that's holy that I'm telling you the truth ver-fucking-batim. This is a strange story."

"OK."

"They got back there," said Gary, "and I got to telling them about these broads, I was just embroidering how they had big tits and liked to fuck and had a party going and how I left the party to get some guys to bring out there because they were short on dudes, and these two were about half drunk, and I drove 'em down this pitch-black fucking road, it had gravel on it, you know, not a rough road, black, smooth, flat, chipped fucking concrete, that's how I remember it, and I reached down under the seat--I always kept a baseball bat or a pipe, you know--and I reached down under the seat...just a minute."

He heard Gary say, "Jesus fucking Christ."

Schiller could feel a shift in the silence.

"Lieutenant Fagan just told me that Judge Ritter issued a stay," said Gary. "Son of a bitch. Goddamn foul motherfucker."

"OK," said Schiller, "let's just hold this shit together. You can hold it. You've held it together before, man." Now he wanted to hear the story.

Instead, he had to listen to Gary talking to Fagan. "Ritter definitely issued a stay," Gary said to Larry finally. "Says it's illegal to use taxpayers' money to shoot me."

"Yeah," said Schiller softly. There was a long pause and then he declared, "You couldn't define what the roughest torture is. What Ritter just did, is."

"Yeah," said Gilmore, "Ritter's a bumbling, fumbling fool. Yeah, yeah," he said, "yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Foul cocksuckers. A taxpayers' suit. I'll pay for it myself. I'll buy the bullets, rifles, pay the riflemen. Jesus fucking goddamned Christ, man, I want it to be over." He sounded like he was close to crying.

"You have a right for it to be over," said Schiller, "an inalienable right."

"Get ahold of Hansen," said Gilmore.

"Get on the fucking phones, girls," shouted Schiller to Lucinda and Debbie, his secretaries. "Get an attorney in Salt Lake City named Hansen."

Gilmore said, "He's the fucking attorney general of the state of Utah."

"Attorney general of the state of Utah, OK?" Schiller repeated to the girls.

"Tell him to go to the next highest judge and get Ritter's bullshit thrown out."

Maybe, Schiller thought, I've seen too many movies myself. He could hear his voice exhorting Gary to live. It was the kind of pep talk he had heard in many a flick.

"Gary," Schiller was saying, "maybe you're not meant to die. Maybe there's something so phenomenal, so deep, in the depths of your story, that maybe you're not meant to die right now. Maybe there are things left to do. We may not know what they are. Maybe by not dying you may be doing a hell of a lot for the whole fucking world. Maybe the suffering that you're doing now is the way you're giving back those two lives. Maybe you're laying a foundation for the way society and our civilization should proceed in the future. Maybe the punishment you're going through now is a greater punishment than death, and maybe a lot of fucking good's gonna come from it." Abruptly, he realized he was affecting himself a good deal more than he was moving Gilmore. Oh, am I going to sound like a schmuck in the transcript, thought Schiller, and aloud he said, "You're not listening to me, are you?"

"What?" said Gary. "Yeah," he said, "I'm listening."

"Let's look at the other side of it," said Schiller. "Let's get through the next hour together. You know they're making you suffer like nobody's suffered."

Gary's voice sounded like it was close to snapping. "Do me a favor," he said. "I got to get off this fucking phone. Because Mr. Fagan wants to use it. Get ahold of your girls."

"Right."

"Give 'em each a kiss for me. Tell 'em to get ahold of Mr. Hansen. Find out what the fuck can be done to overcome that guy immediately. That fool Ritter. He'll do any given thing on any fucking given day. And call me back."

"You gotta call me," said Schiller. "I can't call you."

"I'll call you back in a half hour."

"In one half hour. Keep your shit together."

"Yeah."

"It's shit," said Larry, "but keep it together."

"Jesus Christ," Gary replied. "Shit. Piss. Gawd!"

2

In the visiting room, Stanger heard a great groan come up from the inmates in Maximum Security. It rolled down the long corridor that went from cell row to cell row. Stanger had completely forgotten there were all those men back in Maximum listening to the radio on their earphones. All of a sudden, you could hear the sound. He couldn't tell if they were clapping or cheering, or moaning. Some deep confused sound, like earth shifting. He could hear "There's a stay!" being yelled through the cell rows, and he turned on the television. At that moment, Gary came back from making a phone call and almost charged into the set. Stanger thought he was going to put his fist through it.

Cline Campbell had seen Gary get angry once or twice before. He took on wrath in a different way than most people. Gilmore's anger, Campbell had long ago decided, came from very far inside. Other men might slam a wall or grab a book and throw it down, but Gilmore would only grit his teeth and give a low growl. Then he would hold his hands and press them together as if to crush the anger. This night, when the news came through about Ritter, it looked like Gary was going to break his hands. Campbell had never seen him as angry as this.

Bob Moody had what he considered an inappropriate leap of the heart. There could have been nothing more impermissible for him to say to his client at the moment than, "Wait a second, excuse me, Gary, they don't have to kill!" But then Bob saw the look on his face. Gary had prepared himself to receive the sentence. By what method, Moody did not know, whether by whipping his will into line or pulling off his fears, like leaves. No matter how he had done it, the judge had just consigned him to hell. Something began to collapse in Gary. He was more sullen, more threatening, and he had less stature. Went around saying, "I'll hang myself before eight in the morning. I'll be dead. Those shoelaces will be used." Moody had heard of the shoelaces. Stanger told him of an occasion when he and Gary had been alone in Fagan's office for 20 seconds. Fagan had had to go out for a moment. Call it less than 20 seconds, ten seconds. In that time, Gary stole a pair of shoelaces out of Fagan's desk drawer. They kept him under such guard it was not easy to steal anything nor keep it, but he had held the shoelaces these last two weeks. Now he was talking of using them.

Moody and Stanger couldn't take it anymore. They went out of Maximum Detention and over to the parking lot, where they mingled with the press. Suddenly, a roar went up. A lot of TV lights started to shine on a particular car that was leaving the prison grounds. Just then, Stanger and Moody heard from a reporter that Judge Ritter had driven up to the prison with a Federal marshal to make certain the stay would be delivered in person to the warden. It seemed Ritter, large and old as he was, had gotten down on the floor of the car when it passed the parking lot, in order not to be visible to the press. That was typical of the judge. Deliver the paper himself. Probably expected the writ to slip between the floor boards if he didn't.

Now that he had just driven out of the gate, Moody and Stanger could hear the press grumbling. Furious to have been cheated of the interview of the night. Yet they were roaring at the possibilities for headlines. "Ritter Delivers the writ," said one. "Writ rides with Ritter," came back another. There was a funny bad taste in the back of everyone's mouth. They had been waking up in the cold to start the motors of their vans, then drinking some more and falling asleep again. The stay of execution, if it held, would make this add up to one long night of pointless suffering for all.

Back in the visitors' room, Moody could see that the prison officials, in effect, had decided, OK, Gary, no more speed. You couldn't give it out to a man who was an ordinary resident on death row again. He might be around for 30 more days. So there was Gary full of anger and speed, obliged to start coming down from his high.

After a while, he went off by himself. Father Meersman had brought a recorder, and Gary had been planning all night to make a tape for Nicole to be given to her after his execution. Stanger couldn't imagine what would be on it but didn't have long to wonder. Not a half hour later, Gary sat down close to Ron and said, "I'll let you listen to it."

3

"Baby, I love you," the tape began. "You're a part of me, and a long time ago, we made in the month of May, vows to each other, to teachers, masters and loved ones of Nicole and Gary, because we've known each other for so long."

"This may be awfully personal," Stanger said to him.

"Just listen to it," said Gary.

He told Stanger, "You know, Nicole and I talked about more personal things together than you could think of. I've discussed every personal thought I've ever had with her." He nodded. "I'd like you to have an idea of what it's like when we speak to one another."

So Stanger started listening. But the tape really got personal and sexy. About the time Gary started to talk about kissing her private parts, it entered the area of the very personal and very crude. Stanger began to protest again. "Gary, you know, it is very personal."

"Well, what do you think?" Gary said. Stanger said, "I think, Gary, it's very, very personal."

The voice in this recording was unlike anything Ron had heard coming out of Gary before, a funny voice, fancy and phony and slurred. Every now and then, it would be highly enunciated. It was as if each of his personalities took a turn, and Ron thought it was like an actor putting on one mask, taking it off, putting on another for a new voice. Sometimes Gary would sound pompous, sometimes weak and close to crying. All in all, Stanger wished he did not have to listen. Whenever Gary walked away, Ron kept turning the Fast forward so he would not have to hear it all. Yet it surprised him. The speech was more eloquent than you'd expect. Stanger did not know if he could ever address anyone he loved in such words.

"In the early morning when your mind is clear, that's the best time to know, but you're in a place like I am, you don't want to be part of ringing bells and hollering get up, get up, or we'll come in and take your bedding. I have to listen to the clanging and banging of steel and concrete and bullshit and I wake up and I can't, you know, think pure thoughts, these need quiet and relaxation. Hey, elf, I love you," he said, "I want to suck your little cunt. Godfucking-damn, I was ready to die. Ohhh, the fuckers. Just remember that I love you, and like any foolish man, my head stays sort of funky and all the girls write to me, girls from Honolulu wrote to me, they're fourteen, their names are Stacy and Rory and they was just talking about fucking, smoking dope, but you know they come from good families, and one of 'em wrote, Man, tell me about Nicole. I want to know about her, and I told her, Man, she's the most beautiful, sexy girl in the world and I kept her naked most of the time, 'cause she's such an elf, and a cute little elf, the elf, the elf, my elf." His voice trailed off, and then he seemed to collect himself and told Nicole, "She wrote back and she says, Well, I got red hair and freckles, too. It was just before Christmas and I sent 'em each one hundred dollars, a Christmas gift from Gary and Nicole, they didn't ask for it, they weren't looking for nothing--it's just I like to do things like that," and he stammered a little and said, "I sent 'em each a Gary Gilmore T-shirt, and I asked 'em to wear it, or whatever, I told 'em they could wear it with nothing on underneath. A lot of girls write to me and they say different things, and love, they don't know me, if they knew me, they wouldn't love me. They're in love with the motherfucker that's got his name in the paper every day. You know, I flirt with them a little bit, but I always tell them, Ah, look, I got a girl, I didn't mean to fucking mislead your ass, but I got the most terrific girl in the world, she's part of me, nobody but you, Nicole, never, ever, ever.... I love you with all that I am, I give you my heart and my soul." He sighed. "I read things in the paper...they say this evil son of a bitch with his hypnotic, charismatic, fucking personality talked this girl into suicide...whew, whew...I'm not going to tell you what to think. Like you said, you're on that fucking psycho ward, you're watched by the hospital posse. When we tried our suicide, I took sixty fucking phenobarbital. I laid there for twelve hours. I have this pretty strong body, you know, I haven't ruined it with too much drink and smoking, 'cause I've been in this ol' prison so long. If they do stay my execution, I'm going to hang myself, fuck 'em in their goddamn rosy red asses." He took a breath and began to sing. He had one of the worst singing voices Stanger had ever heard, never on pitch, and Gary had no idea when he was off. When he thought to croon, he groaned. The groans strangled. When he came near a note, he was sour. Still, he began to sing Rock of Ages. "'While I draw this fleeting breath, when my eyelids close in bed...(continued on page 382)Executioner's Song(continued from page 376) when I soar to worlds unknown, see Thee on my judgment time, rock of ages, let me hide myself in Thee.'" He stopped singing. "Oh, man, I told you I talked to Johnny Cash, goddamn." Gilmore laughed. "Johnny Cash knows I'm alive, he knows you're alive, he likes us.... Oh, Nicole...I'm not a Charlie Manson type, I'm not swaying you to do this...if you want to go on living and raise your children, you're a famous girl, you've got a lot of money and I want to see you get a lot more, too, go ahead, baby, but don't let nobody fuck you." Now he whispered, "Don't let nobody have you. Baby, don't, you're mine. Discipline, restraint--maybe a girl, I don't know, shit.... I was supposed to be executed at seven forty-nine.... I got this hymnal in front of me, you're pretty, sexy and you got something about you, baby, that just sticks right out. Well, I know them guys got designs, they're designing motherfuckers, take advantage of opportunities. They see you, see how pretty you are, think I'm going to be dead, they want your money, they want you, there's something about you that anybody would want, I hope, God, I hope, oh, my God, I just fucking hope...man. I want you, baby." He started to cry right there. "Oh, fuck," he whispered, "I feel so bad right now. I thought I was going to be dead in a few hours...free to join you...I don't care if you want to go on living...you got children, I'm not telling you...to come out and commit suicide. I have such a hard thing to do...."Now he whispered, "I just don't want anybody to fuck you, I want you to be mine, only, only...only mine. Oh, baby, I want to be fucking free of this planet....I gave all my money away, a hundred thousand dollars....I didn't want to tell you about that. I didn't want to seem like I was bragging, you got more money than I do, I just want to be honest with you. I thought they were going to kill me, the chickenshit sorry cocksuckers...fucking sleazy motherfuckers...." The words wore down. He was droning into the tape recorder, "Nicole, I don't know what's happening. Maybe we're supposed to live a little longer, listen, I took everything you gave me...twenty-five Seconals, ten Dalmane at midnight. I don't have to, but I know so many hymns. It's a Catholic hymnal...the priest come out last night and said a Mass, God, nothing more boring than Mass....Nicole...you're mine, God, I feel such power in our love...baby, I asked you to love me with all that you are. I miss you so fucking bad, I want only you, and I swear to God, I'll have you. I ain't going to the planet Uranus. I don't care what I have to go through, the demons I have to fight, no matter whatever I have to overcome, I'm going to make myself plain to you. I don't give a shit what I have to do, torture, suffer, how many lives, you can know if I love you tenderly and softly, wildly and rowdy, naked, wrapped around me...."

4

Vern had been watching Gary carefully. After everybody else began to sleep, Gary turned on the radio so loud it was practically offensive. Then he lay down and pretended to sleep himself, but it was obvious he couldn't. A little while later, he got up, shut the radio off, milled around, glowered, looked like he might throw a punch at the wall, then tried once more to sleep.

Evelyn Gray, who was a nice lady, a slender, middle-aged lady with eyeglasses and short curled red hair like she went to the beauty parlor regularly, went up to Gary now and tried to console him.

"Gary," she said, "is there anything I can possibly do for you?"

Gary looked up at her and said, "All I ever wanted was a little love."

Evelyn Gray came away so touched, she had moved over into tears.

"There you go," said Vern to himself. "'All I ever wanted was a little love.'"

Earlier in the evening, the guards had carried in Gary's belongings. Those filled several cartons, and a number of plastic bags contained his mail. Now, after trying to rest for a little while, he got up and said to Vern, "I want to show you some stuff."

They sat there, side by side, while Gary went through trinkets and foreign coins. Then he asked Vern to help him in taping up a package for Nicole. They started to pick out letters and special items. When done, Gary rearranged the cartons. He looked up at one point and said, "Vern, if they don't do it, I'm committing suicide." Said it so quietly and evenly that Vern finally decided it would be that day and Gary wasn't going to wait too long after the hour was passed.

One way or another, Vern put it to himself, dead before noon.

They went through the papers a last time, and Gary took off the Robin Hood hat that Vern had bought him and put it in the box for Nicole. Then he taped her carton. "I want you to swear that this will all go to her," said Gary.

And Vern said, "You know I'll do what you want."

III--Sunrise

1

Toni had gotten home from the prison early enough to have a little time with Howard before he had to be up at 4:30 to start for southern Utah and Monday morning's work. Under these circumstances, however, they hardly had any sleep before they were out of bed again.

Then back at the prison this third visit, they told her it was too late to see Gary again. His visitors would soon be leaving, so they couldn't take her in. That was ridiculous. They kept her waiting a long time in Minimum Security before Dick Gray was brought in and said, "Toni, don't try to get back. Remember him like you did last night."

She shook her head. "I got to say goodbye."

"No," Dick Gray told her, "that could just make it harder for Gary to go to his execution. If you break down, maybe he would, too." At that moment, Toni had the feeling Gary was real scared and didn't want to die.

When Schiller got to the gate at 5:45, the guards couldn't believe it. "I never went in last night," Schiller said.

"Oh," they said, "yes, you did."

"Well," Schiller agreed, "yeah, I went in at five-thirty, but I came out five minutes before six." That was his answer. They shrugged. They knew he was lying, but what could they do? An officer came to guide him to the holding area. Schiller parked his car and they began to walk all the way down to Minimum Security in the ice-cold night with the sun just starting to stir somewhere beyond the ridge. It was dark still, but the sky was turning light way to the east.

In these mountains, it might be only half an hour to the dawn, but two hours to the rise of the sun, and Schiller kept walking. The guard was really nice. He seemed to sense that Schiller hadn't slept for a long time and said, "If you want to stop and rest, you can."

Schiller didn't know whether or not they were all getting near some kind of release, but this guard had a nice personality. "You want some coffee?" he asked. Just a guard walking him down, but Schiller was feeling a calm and a serenity he had never experienced in a prison before. It was five minutes to six, and when he turned around, the sky had come up another shade of blue from dark to light. There was a clear light on the eastern horizon and the buildings of the prison around him began to feel like a monastery.

They led him to the visitors' room in Minimum Security, where he was one of the first to enter. As he sat and thought of the notes he was going to have to take on the execution, he reached inside his pocket to get his pad, but all he had with him was his checkbook. He would have to take notes on the backs of checks. At that recognition, his bowels flared up like a calf bawling. Of all the fat-ass things to do. There were tears in his eyes from the effort of holding his gut through the spasm. If a reporter ever saw him now with checks in hand after all their anger at the way he had bought the rights to Gilmore's life!

There was a bathroom near the visitors' room, and his condition had him going back and forth every five minutes. In addition, he had a near to overwhelming desire to urinate, but nothing was coming out. Nothing. All his insides were fucked up. He had never felt like this in his life. Everything was going crazy.

2

About ten of seven, some guards came into the visiting room at Maximum Detention and told everybody they would have to say goodbye to Gary. The warden had sent word to proceed as though the execution was on. So they began to get him ready. Of course, until word came from Denver, nobody would know for sure. It was a funny leave-taking, therefore. Kind of scattered. Evelyn and Dick Gray had already left, and now Ron and Vern went out through the double gate and into a waiting car. Cline Campbell and Bob Moody remained while Gary shook hands with his regular guards. Even put his arm around one. "You've been great, you know," he said, and to another, he grinned and stated, "You're sort of a black bastard, but I like you, anyway." The black guard took it with good humor. Here were these tough, rough young fellows and they were almost crying. Then this other damned gang of officers had to come in. They stood there with shackles in their hands, dressed in maroon jackets, real big fellows, and Gilmore turned to them and said, "OK, start."

He was calm. He put out his hands and Campbell left to go to the waiting car. After Cline passed through the gates, however, he turned around and could see a scuffle going on. Over the leg shackles.

Moody saw it clearly. "Look," said Gary to the guards, "I'll walk out. You don't really need those things."

The guards were saying, "This is prison procedure. We're following orders." It was a mistake. Gary was all the way down from the speed by now. Just about crashing. It was the wrong time to push.

Before it was over, it looked like a gang rape. It was like he had to have one final fight to show the guards he was not going to take it ever again. Moody wanted to cry out, "Couldn't you just come in and say, 'OK, Gary, it's time,' and see if he'll walk out like a man? If he doesn't, then go to the shackles. Dumb dumb gorillas."

They kept grabbing ahold of Gary, and Gary kept saying, "I'm not ready to go yet." He was looking to pick up some last object, whatever it was. Then they seized him and took him through another door. Other guards were requesting Moody to exit, and he passed outside and into the vehicle that would carry him to the appointed place.

3

In the Minimum Security room to which Schiller had been escorted by the guards were a lot of people he didn't recognize. One by one, they would pass in, try not to look confused, take a folding chair and sit down. Nobody was talking to anyone else. It did not have the atmosphere of a funeral, but there was an utter and polite calm.

Then Toni Gurney walked in. For the first time, Larry saw somebody he could say hello to and chatted with her. It was not so much that he was the man who broke the ice, but at least one conversation had begun, and soon a lot of people began to converse.

After a while, Vern came over and pointed out a fellow Schiller had noticed, a rather icy-looking man, wearing an obvious toupee, accompanied by two severe-looking women. Schiller assumed the fellow was a mortician, but Vern said, "That's the doctor who's going to take Gary's eyes out."

Then Stanger came into the room and maintained that this would be another dry run. The execution was simply not going to come down. Schiller heard someone in the corner say, "They may keep us here three hours."

Just then, a guard came running in from the back door and yelled some words over his shoulder. "Overturned!" he cried out. "It's on!" At that moment, Stanger, for the first time, understood Gary Gilmore was going to be shot. It went through him like he had been kicked in the chest. Then he felt chilled. It was an appalling sensation. The strangeness of the reaction went all through him. For the first time in his life, Ron could feel the ends of his nerves. His heart could have been caked in ice. He looked over at Schiller taking notes on the back of some paper and thought, I'm sure glad he's recording all this, because I can't even move. I don't know if I can walk.

Then they started to transfer the guests. As they led him to the car, Stanger knew he must look ready to throw up. He felt as close to death as breathing, and wondered if he were going mad, because he would have bet a million Gary Gilmore would never be executed. It had made his job easy. He had never felt any moral dilemma in carrying out Gary's desires. In fact, he couldn't have represented him if he really believed the state would go through with it all. It had been a play. He had seen himself as no more important than one more person on the stage.

4

When Gary came out of Maximum Detention, he was escorted to the van and seated behind the driver. Meersman sat next to him and then Warden Smith came in, and three new guards. The van drove slowly with the seven men, the only car moving in all that quarter mile of prison streets from Maximum Detention to the cannery.

As soon as they started. Gary reached in with both manacled hands to a pocket of his pants and took out a folded piece of paper and put it on his knee so that he could look at it. It was a picture of Nicole clipped from a magazine, and he stared at it.

When the driver of the van turned the key for the motor, the radio, having been on before, now went on again. The tension in the van was sufficient that everyone jumped. Then the words of a song were heard. The driver immediately reached down to turn the radio off, but Gary looked up and said, "Please leave it on." So they began to drive and there was music coming from the radio. The words of the song told of the flight of a white bird. "Una paloma blanca," went the refrain, "I'm just a bird in the sky. Una paloma blanca, over the mountains I fly."

The driver said, "Would you like me to leave the radio on?"

Again, Gary said, "Yes."

"It's a new day, it's a new way," said the words, "and I fly up to the sun."

As they drove along slowly, and the song about the white bird kept playing, Father Meersman noticed that Gary no longer looked at the picture. It was as if the words had become more important.

"Once I had my share of losing, Once they locked me on a chain, Yes, they tried to break my power, Oh, I still can feel the pain."

No one spoke any longer. They listened to the song.

"No one can take my freedom away, Yes, no one can take my freedom away."

When it was done, they drove in silence and got out at the cannery, one by one, disembarking in the way they had practiced in the early hours of the morning, when these same prison guards had walked through the scene with a model standing in for Gary. Now they brought him into the cannery, very, very smoothly. None of them knew that Nicole had written a letter to Gary that said:

Last nite I flew in my dream like a white bird through the window...Tonite i will tell my soul to fly me to you.

IV--Wake

1

Toni was waiting in Minimum Security with Ida, Dick Gray, Evelyn Gray and all the people who had not been invited to the cannery. A guard in a maroon jacket walked into the room and said, "Anybody come to tell you?"

Toni said, "No."

The man was pale and trembling terribly. He said, "It's over with. Gary's dead."

When they got to her truck, Vern wasn't there yet, and the parking area seemed massive with cars and people. Reporters clustered around like flies, interviewing her mother through one window, herself through the other, until Toni finally got foulmouthed. By then, she had really had it. She was smoking with the window open, and one of them came over and kept asking for an interview, even though Toni was shaking her head. This TV man had no respect for her feeling that she didn't want to talk and he set his microphone in the window and said, "Can I put this here?" That was when she told him where he could put it. His hands flew all over. Later, a girlfriend told her that on Good Morning America you could catch where they cut a few words.

Then she could see Vern, cane in hand, trying to walk up to them. His face was distraught. He was obviously in pain, and she had the feeling his knee was going to go on him. So she jumped out of the truck to run over, and three reporters grabbed her arm. So help her, three. "Please give us a few words."

She grabbed one of the microphones as if to say something, then threw it to the ground, where it broke into a dozen little pieces, and shouted to Vern, "Get your truck out later. It's stuck behind the others now." Then she led him to her truck, and drove to her home in Lehi, gave him coffee, got him settled down, then took him for breakfast to the Spic and Span Cafe in Provo. About two hours later, he went out to the prison with her and recovered his vehicle.

2

At the hour of Gilmore's execution, Colleen Jensen was at home in Clearfield, getting ready for school. She was now a substitute teacher and had begun the job just two weeks before. Today, she was having her first class with a new group of students, and while she got dressed this morning, thinking the execution was stayed, for that was what she heard on the first news, by the time she reached school, it was over. Kids in the class were talking about it as she came through the door. She could hear their whispers about her involvement in it. So she gave a little speech to the class.

She did not tell them that in the evenings, when she sat downstairs, nursing Monica and rocking her to sleep, she would show the baby pictures of her murdered daddy, and tell Monica who he was. At such times, Colleen would try to speak out of the stillness of herself, and thereby tell the one-year-old that Max was dead, her daddy was dead. For now, talking to the class, she merely said that for those who did not know, she would tell them who she was and what her part in it all had been. She added that it was not something they would need to discuss again. She also said she was ready, if they were, to get on with the teaching and the class.

3

Nicole had found out that Gary was going to be executed today, but she had no idea of the time. In the morning, walking back from the ward dining room, she suddenly felt a great need to lie down on her bed. They started making a big thing of it, but she just walked toward her room. Nobody said anything more. Then she lay there and tried to think about Gary. For days, she had been dreaming of the moment he was shot and falling back. She always saw Gary standing up when he got it. Now, in her mind, she saw nothing but those red blocks they gave the patients to put together into a cube.

They were in her head, and she was trying to push them away, when suddenly Gary's face came to her out of the darkness, came in fast with a look of pain and horror. He didn't fall back but right up toward her. Her body flipped around on the bed, her eyes opened and that was all. She kept trying to feel him again, but couldn't. He wasn't near her at all for a few days.

4

Schiller had reassigned Jerry Scott from watching over the office to meeting up with Gary's body in Salt Lake. Jerry was to make certain no kooks tried something while the autopsy took place.

On the drive from Orem to the hospital, Jerry was mulling over how he had been the one to take Gary to Utah State Prison from the county jail right after his trial, and now he'd probably be the last one to view the remains. That was a large enough coincidence to occupy your mind.

The autopsy room on the fifth floor at the University of Utah hospital was good-sized, with two slabs, and Jerry, by way of his policework, was familiar with it. Post-mortems for the state were held there. This morning, they had just brought in the body of a woman who had drowned in a river north of Salt Lake, and they had her beside Gary, the two tables about ten feet apart.

At first, it was hard to tell who were the doctors, what with three males and three females all around the table, and a couple of them busy removing Gilmore's eyes, and then another team on the organs for the transplants. They all seemed to be working in a great rush and obviously had to get everything out pretty quickly. All the same, another doctor, watching, kept saying, "Can you hurry? I have a lot of work to do." And just a little later, "Aren't you done with him yet?"

Finally, the last of the special doctors said, "Yes, he's yours," and the regular autopsy crew took over.

Jerry stood only three or four feet away. He was curious to see what was going on, and the medical examiner told him he could be a witness to the postmortem and took his name, plus the name of Cordell Jones, a deputy sheriff whom Scott was glad to see there, because he expected trouble later with the people outside when Gary's body would be transported from the hospital to the crematorium. In fact, he asked Cordell Jones to help on crowd control. Jerry had counted at least 20 people down below at the hospital door, of which only a couple were bona fide newsmen and more than a good dozen were oddballs and thrill seekers. So, at the least, Jerry was expecting problems and a confrontation, possibly with agitators.

The doctor who had been getting the transplants had left Gary open from above the pubic hair to his breastbone. Now the autopsy crew washed him down and the examiner took a scalpel and continued the incision up the breastbone to the neck, and continued the cut on out to the shoulder on each side. Then he started pulling up.

He skinned Gilmore right up over his shoulders like taking a shirt half off, and with a saw cut right up the breastbone to the throat, and removed the breastplate and set it in a big, open sink with running water. Then he took out what was left of Gilmore's heart. Jerry couldn't believe what he saw. The thing was pulverized. Not even half left. Jerry didn't recognize it as the heart. Had to ask the doctor. "Excuse me," he said, "is that it?"

The doctor said, "Yeah."

"Well, he didn't feel anything, did he?" asked Jerry.

The doctor said, "No." Jerry had been looking at the bullet pattern earlier, and there had been four neat little holes you could have covered with a water glass, all within a half inch of one another. The doctors had been careful to take quite a few pictures. They numbered each hole with a felt marker and turned Gary over to photograph where it had exited from his back. Looking at those holes, Jerry could see the guys on the firing squad hadn't been shaky at all. You could tell they'd all squeezed off a good shot.

Of course, Jerry was always thinking about getting shot himself. It could happen any time on duty. He had to keep wondering what it would be like. Now, looking at the heart, he repeated, "He didn't feel anything, did he?"

The doctor said, "No, nothing."

Jerry said, "Well, did he move around after he was shot?"

The doctor said, "Yes, about two minutes."

"Was that just nerves?" Jerry asked.

The fellow said, "Yes," and added, "He was dead, but we had to officially wait until he quit moving. That was about two minutes later."

After that, it got really gruesome. Jerry had to admit it. They started removing different parts of Gilmore's body. Took his plumbing out, stomach, entrails and everything, then cut little pieces out of each organ. One guy was up at the head, just working away. Next thing you knew, he had Gilmore's tongue in his hand. "Why take that?" asked Jerry. He didn't know whether his questions bothered the doctors or not, but since he had to witness, he thought he might as well find out what was going on.

The dissectionist answered, "We're going to take a sample of it." Put the tongue down on the slab, cut it in half and sliced out a piece. Put it in a bottle of solution.

Jerry had seen a lot of bodies, and gone to a lot of plane wrecks, and he knew what a person dismembered could look like, but just sitting there, watching them cut away, got to him. These fellows were really good at it, and kept talking back and forth, but they couldn't have been less excited if they were in a meat stall doing a job on a quarter of beef. Once in a while, they'd call across to some other medics working on that woman who had drowned. She was so fat that when they cut her open, her stomach hung over her thigh. Kept working like it was nothing.

Now the fellow who was at the head of Jerry's table made an incision from behind Gary's left ear all the way up across the top of his head and then down below to the other ear, after which he grabbed the scalp on both sides of the cut and pulled it right open, just pulled the whole face down below his chin until it was inside out like the back of a rubber mask. Then he took a saw and cut around the skull. Picked up something like a putty knife and pried the bone open, popped the top of the head off. Then he stuck his hand inside the cavity and pulled the brain out, weighed it. Pound and a half, it looked like. Then they removed the pituitary, put it aside and sliced the brain like meat loaf. "Why are you doing that?" asked Jerry.

"Well," said one of the doctors, "we're looking for tumors." They started explaining to him about the different areas of the brain, and how they were looking to see if there were any problems in Gary Gilmore's motor system. Everything, however, looked to be just fine.

After the autopsy was all over, they took pictures of Gary's tattoos. MOM had been written on his left shoulder and Nicole on his left forearm. They took his fingerprints, and then they took all the organs they did not need for dissection and put them back into the body and head cavities, and drew his face up, pulled it right back taut over the bones and muscles, like putting on the mask again, fit the sawed-off bone cap back on the skull and sewed the scalp and body cavity. When they were all finished, it looked like Gary Gilmore again.

During all of this, Jerry Scott noticed that Gilmore had only two teeth on his bottom gums and none on the top. Then they put his false teeth back. Looking at him now, reconstituted, Jerry was amazed to see he had quite a layer of body fat for a fellow as skinny as he was. Still, he looked in pretty good shape, practically the build of an athlete, but for that belly fat.

Jerry looked at his watch then. It was 1:30 in the afternoon. He had been there for four hours. Then the fellow from Walker Mortuary came over, and they put Gilmore on a rollaway-type bed with a sheet covering him and a nice blanket over the top, and scooted him out to the street and loaded him into a hearse, in which they took him over to the Shrine of Memories crematorium in Salt Lake.

Since the coffin would be incinerated with the body, they had only a welfare-type casket waiting. It was made out of plywood, though covered in maroon velvet, and it had silver rails on the sides, and nice white satin on the inside, plus a real nice satin pillow. It was better than just a plain wood box, though nowhere near one of the fancy metal jobs.

Among Jerry Scott's orders this day was to make sure the right guy was being burned. So just before they put the casket into the furnace, he lifted the sheet to verify Gary's face. Then they lifted the big oven door they had slammed down earlier to protect against the fourfoot flame that shot out during the preheating, and inserted the box and body. Once it was in the kiln, and burning for a few minutes, they opened the door another time for Jerry, and the guy who ran the place took a long poker and knocked off the head of the casket. Then they stared through a furnace hole about 14" x 14" through which Jerry Scott could see Gary's head. Already the scalp was burning and the skin was falling off to the side.

Scott could see Gary's face going, and the top flesh blacken and disappear. Then the muscle began to burn, and Gilmore's arms, which had been folded on his chest, came up from the tightening, and lifted until the fingers of both hands were pointing at the sky. That was the very last recognition Jerry Scott had of him. He kept this picture in his head all the while the body was burning, and that was plenty of time, for he had gone to the furnace at 2:30 and the work wasn't done until five, when there was nothing left but a bit of ash and the char of the bones.

5

A couple of waitresses, friends of Toni Gurney, who worked at The Stirrup, came over to the place before the evening shift to sit at the bar. It was a large, dark cocktail lounge with a dance floor and, of course, being Utah, you had to buy a membership in the club to get your drink, but that was not too difficult. The Stirrup was lively in the evenings, and one of the few nice places between Provo and Salt Lake where you could drink and dance. Now, however, being afternoon, it was quiet, and only a few people were there in the half-dark.

One of these friends, named Willa Brant, asked Alice Anders, the hostess, who the three guys were sitting in the lounge, for they were certainly new. Alice replied they were some of Gary's executioners. "How do you know?" asked Willa.

The hostess replied, "Well, I signed them in. They're members of the Pronghorn Club in Salt Lake, and we honor that membership."

Willa went to get a pack of cigarettes and made a point of passing their table. One of the men said, "Why don't you sit down and talk to us?"

They were sitting there drinking and playing liar's poker with dollar bills. After Willa took a seat, they played only a little while before one of the men said, "I bet you think we are bloodthirsty bastards, don't you?"

"Well," said Willa, "it had to be done. That was what Gary wanted." She left it at that. Didn't say she knew Toni Gurney and the rest of the family.

Then the executioner said, "Want to see something sadistic?" He showed her a strap of webbing and the slug of a bullet, and he said, "This is one of the bullets that killed Gary, and this was one of the nylon straps that was holding his arm."

Asked if she wanted to touch them, Willa said, "No," but couldn't help herself. She did it with a slight smirk on her face. Then he put them back in his pocket.

Another one at the table now said he had the hood out in the car. He didn't talk much about it. Merely said he had it. They were certainly drinking.

One of these men was short and stocky and in his mid-30s, bald on top, and another was also in his mid-30s, with light-brown hair, around six feet tall, average weight, only he had a real potbelly and wore glasses. Those were the two talking the most. The third one, who didn't talk, had dark hair and an average build, but he had a real full beard and a mustache that was graying and he had tears in his eyes. Finally, he said if he had known what he was getting in for, he would never have done it. Then a young married woman named Rene Wales, whom Willa knew slightly, sat down with them, and they all played a lot more liar's poker.

After a while, the executioners began to talk about their C.B.s. All three were equipped, but one began to brag about the distance he could get on his. Before you knew it, Rene Wales left with him to go check out the C.B. in his pickup. Before she got back, 45 minutes had passed. Rene came in with the fellow, and both had a look on their faces like they'd been sopping up some of the gravy.

"Toni knew why they called them the press. They almost squeezed her to death."

"This is more like a last meal, Moody thought. If he wants to go out drunk, he has a right."

"If he had to stay in prison, he wanted to die. But if he could get outside, that was another game."

"Gary looked up at her and said, 'All I ever wanted was a little love.'"