Cut to the Bone(45)

He grimaced, then picked up a chunk of concrete. Took a running start and heaved it at the death house. It arced back to earth a quarter way up. He sighed, shoved his hands in his pockets.

“I should never have agreed,” he muttered.

“To what?”

He waved his arms. “To this. To come here. To participate in Covington’s stupid death dance. This execution shouldn’t happen.”

“Why not?” Emily asked. “Do you think Trent’s innocent?”

Marty made a noise that said, Get real. “The bastard’s guilty as hell. But that doesn’t matter,” he said. “Capital punishment is the crack cocaine of politics, and this so-called ‘Justice’ Center is obscene.”

That stunned her. In their two years together, they’d never discussed the death penalty. Not even when Covington convinced the Supreme Court to overturn predecessor George Ryan’s 2003 clearance of Death Row. Not even when he brought back the electric chair, scorning lethal injection as “too humane a way to dispatch our monsters.” She’d just assumed Marty was as passionately in favor of it as she was.

“Some people deserve to die,” she said, feeling the blood rush in her ears. “Some crimes are so inhuman that nothing less will do.”

“That’s what they said about Jesus,” Marty said. “I rest my case.”

“Charles Manson. Ted Bundy. Osama bin Laden,” she shot back. “I rest my case.”

“Mass murderers are poster children for the chair, all right,” Marty agreed. “But you forgot someone equally important to the debate.”

“Who?”

“Manuel.”

She cocked her head. She’d been studying the nation’s most bloodthirsty serial, mass, spree, and thrill killers, from the Boston Strangler to the Bind-Torture-Kill madman in Kansas, and hadn’t run across that name. “Manuel who?”

“Just Manuel,” Marty said. “He was a slave, so he only had one name. He was executed on June 15, 1779. Right here in Illinois. The good citizens built a bonfire and burned him alive. Know what his crime was?”

“Homicide,” she guessed. “Rape. Running away from his master.”

“Witchcraft.”

She blinked.

“That’s right. The very first execution in the Land of Lincoln was a destitute black man we confused with the gal from Bewitched,” Marty said. “Just one of the thousands of people America’s whacked since the Mayflower.”

“For murder. Or treason, or kidnapping,” Emily said, shaking her head. “Manuel notwithstanding, I can’t lose any sleep over that.”

“You should,” Marty countered. “Seeing how we’ve also executed for adultery, burglary, forgery, counterfeiting, breaking into houses, stealing horses, gay sex, helping slaves escape, the aforementioned witchcraft, and my personal favorite, concealing the birth of an infant.” He swatted a mosquito, smiled faintly at the irony.

Adultery, she thought. How appropriate.

“That’s past tense, Marty. Ancient history,” Emily scoffed, temples pounding from anger. After all the death and destruction she’d suffered in her life, how could he possibly be one of those gutless, nothing-on-the-line Antis? “We’ve grown tremendously as a society. We execute only cold-blooded murderers now, not rustlers, not witches. And only if we’re sure they’re guilty as charged.”

“Pretty sure, anyway-”

“Absolutely sure,” she said, starting to pace. “It’s impossible to execute an innocent person anymore. We have media. Miranda rights. Probable cause. Dream teams. DNA. Videotaped interrogations. Juries. Judges. Appeals. Pardons. Internet. A thousand-and-one safeguards to make sure only the guilty are condemned.”

“Yet, people are freed from Death Row every day for wrongful convictions,” Marty said. “That’s why capital punishment is unacceptable, Em - because we’re not perfect. We make mistakes. We screw up. And when we do, the Titanic sinks, the space shuttle explodes, and an innocent person burns.” Marty stared at the Justice Center. “With all the bread and circuses our ‘enlightened’ society can muster.”

“Then why are you involved?” she said, pointing to the cold buff walls of the complex. “Why are you witnessing Trent’s execution if it’s so ‘wrong’?”

“I was his arresting officer,” Marty said, going rigid. “I have to be there.”

“No, you don’t,” she said. “Branch was your partner that night, and he’s not going to watch.”

“Branch is in charge of security Friday. He can’t be there. I don’t have a choice-”