The Jodi Picoult Collection #4 Read online

  Lynch shrugged. “Nobody wants to execute a man. It’s my job to do it with as much dignity as possible.”

  “What would be the cost of constructing and purchasing all this equipment, Commissioner Lynch?”

  “A bit less than ten thousand.”

  “And you said the State of New Hampshire has already invested over a hundred thousand on the execution of Shay Bourne?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Would it be a burden on the penitentiary system if you were required to construct a gallows at this time, in order to accommodate Mr. Bourne’s so-called religious preferences?”

  The commissioner puffed out a long breath. “It would be more than a burden. It would be damn near impossible, given the date of the execution.”

  “Why?”

  “The law said we were to execute Mr. Bourne by lethal injection, and we are ready and able to do it, after much preparation. I wouldn’t feel personally and professionally comfortable cutting corners to create a last-minute gallows.”

  “Maggie,” Shay whispered, “I think I’m going to throw up.”

  I shook my head. “Swallow it.”

  He lay his head down on the table. With any luck a few sympathetic people would assume that he was crying.

  “If you were ordered by the court to construct a gallows,” Greenleaf asked, “how long would it delay Mr. Bourne’s execution?”

  “I’d say six months to a year,” the commissioner said.

  “A whole year that Inmate Bourne would live past his execution warrant date?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why so long?”

  “You’re talking about construction going on inside a working penitentiary system, Mr. Greenleaf. Background checks have to be done before a crew can come to work inside our gates—they’re bringing in tools from the outside, which can be security threats; we have to have officers standing guard to watch them to make sure they don’t wander into insecure areas; we have to make sure they’re not trying to pass contraband to the inmates. It would be a substantial burden on the correctional institution if we had to, well, start from scratch.”

  “Thank you, Commissioner,” Greenleaf said. “Nothing further.”

  I rose from my seat and approached the commissioner. “Your estimate for constructing the gallows is about ten thousand dollars?”

  “Yes.”

  “So in fact, the cost to hang Shay Bourne would be one-tenth the cost of executing him by lethal injection.”

  “Actually,” the commissioner said, “it would be a hundred and ten percent. You can’t get a lethal injection chamber at Nordstrom with a satisfaction guarantee, Ms. Bloom. I can’t return what we’ve already built.”

  “Well, you needed to construct that chamber anyway, didn’t you?”

  “Not if Inmate Bourne isn’t going to be executed that way.”

  “The Department of Corrections didn’t have the lethal injection chamber available for any other death row prisoners, however.”

  “Ms. Bloom,” the commissioner said, “New Hampshire doesn’t have any other death row prisoners.”

  I couldn’t very well suggest that in the future we might—no one wanted to entertain that option. “Would executing Shay Bourne by hanging affect the safety of the other inmates in the prison?”

  “No. Not during the actual process.”

  “Would it impinge on the safety of the officers there?”

  “No.”

  “And in terms of the personnel—there would be, in fact, less manpower needed for an execution by hanging than an execution by lethal injection, correct?”

  “Yes,” the commissioner said.

  “So there’s no safety issue involved in changing Shay’s method of execution. Not for staff, and not for inmates. The only thing you can point to as a burden on the Department of Corrections, really, is a cost of just under ten thousand dollars to construct a gallows. Ten thousand lousy bucks. Is that right, Commissioner?”

  The judge caught the commissioner’s eye. “Do you have that in the budget?”

  “I don’t know,” Lynch said. “Budgets are always tight.”

  “Your Honor, I have here a copy of the budget of the Department of Corrections, to be entered into evidence.” I handed it to Greenleaf, to Judge Haig, and finally, to Commissioner Lynch. “Commissioner, does this look familiar?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you read me the line that’s highlighted?”

  Lynch settled his spectacles on his nose. “Supplies for capital punishment,” he said. “Nine thousand eight hundred and eighty dollars.”

  “By supplies, what did you mean?”

  “Chemicals,” the commissioner said. “And whatever else came along.”

  What he meant, I was sure, was a fudge line in the budget. “By your own testimony, chemicals would only cost four hundred and twenty-six dollars.”

  “We didn’t know what else might be involved,” Lynch said. “Police blocks, traffic direction, medical supplies, extra manpower on staff . . . this is our first execution in nearly seventy years. We budgeted conservatively, so that we wouldn’t find ourselves short when it actually came to pass.”

  “If that money was going to be spent on Shay Bourne’s execution no matter what, does it really matter whether it’s used to purchase Sodium Pentothal . . . or to construct a gallows?”

  “Uh,” Lynch stammered. “It’s still not ten thousand dollars.”

  “No,” I admitted. “You’re a hundred and twenty dollars short. Tell me . . . is that worth the price of a man’s soul?”

  June

  Someone once told me that when you give birth to a daughter, you’ve just met the person whose hand you’ll be holding the day you die. In the days after Elizabeth was born, I would watch those minuscule fingers, the nail beds like tiny shells, the surprisingly firm grip she had on my index finger—and wonder if, years from now, I’d be the one holding on so tight.

  It is unnatural to survive your child. It is like seeing an albino butterfly, or a bloodred lake; a skyscraper tumbling down. I had already been through it once; now I was desperate to keep from experiencing that again.

  Claire and I were playing Hearts, and don’t think I didn’t appreciate the irony. The deck of cards showcased Peanuts characters; my game strategy had nothing to do with the suit, and everything to do with collecting as many Charlie Browns as I could. “Mom,” Claire said, “play like you mean it.”

  I looked up at her. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’re cheating. But you’re doing it so you’ll lose.” She shuffled the remaining deck and turned over the top card. “Why do you think they’re called clubs?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Do you think it’s the kind you want to join? Or the kind that you use to beat someone up?”

  Behind her, on the cardiac monitor, Claire’s failing heart chugged a steady rhythm. At moments like these, it was hard to believe that she was as sick as she was. But then, all I had to do was witness her trying to swing her legs over the bed to go to the bathroom, see how winded she became, to know that looks could be deceiving.

  “Do you remember when you made up that secret society?” I asked. “The one that met behind the hedge?”

  Claire shook her head. “I never did that.”

  “Of course you did,” I said. “You were little, that’s why you’ve forgotten. But you were absolutely insistent about who could and couldn’t be a member of the club. You had a stamp that said CANCELED and an ink pad—you put it on the back of my hand, and if I even wanted to tell you dinner was ready I had to give a password first.”

  Across the room, my cell phone began to ring in my purse. I made a beeline for it—mobile phones were strictly verboten in the hospital, and if a nurse caught you with one, you would be given the look of death. “Hello?”

  “June. This is Maggie Bloom.”

  I stopped breathing. Last year, Claire had learned in school that there were whole segments of t