Once Craved

Riley had wavered about accepting Gail’s invitation to the execution. She’d only seen one other, that time as a volunteer witness sitting among reporters, lawyers, law enforcement officers, spiritual advisors, and the jury foreman. Now she and Gail were among nine relatives of women that Caldwell had murdered, all of them crowded together in a tight space, sitting on plastic chairs.

Gail, a small sixty-year-old woman with a delicate, birdlike face, had kept up contact with Riley over the years. By the time of the execution her husband had died, and she had written Riley that she had no one to see her through the momentous event. So Riley had agreed to join her.

The death chamber was right there on the other side of the window. The only furniture in the room was the execution gurney, a cross-shaped table. A blue plastic curtain hung at the head of the gurney. Riley knew that the IV lines and lethal chemicals were behind that curtain.

A red telephone on the wall connected with the governor’s office. It would only ring in case of a last-minute decision for clemency. No one expected that to happen this time. A clock over the door to the room was the only other visible decor.

In Virginia, convicted offenders could choose between the electric chair and lethal injection, but the chemicals were far more often chosen. If the prisoner made no choice, injection was assigned.

Riley was almost surprised that Caldwell hadn’t opted for the electric chair. He was an unrepentant monster who seemed to welcome his own death.

The clock read 8:55 when the door opened. Riley heard a wordless murmur in the room as several members of the execution team ushered Caldwell into the chamber. Two guards flanked him, gripping each arm, and another followed right behind him. A well-dressed man came in after all the rest – the prison warden.

Caldwell was wearing blue pants, a blue work shirt, and sandals with no socks. He was handcuffed and shackled. Riley hadn’t seen him for years. During his brief stint as a serial killer he’d had unruly long hair and a shaggy beard, a bohemian look befitting a sidewalk artist. Now he was clean-shaven and ordinary looking.

Although he didn’t put up a struggle, he looked frightened.

Good, Riley thought.

He looked at the gurney, then glanced quickly away. He seemed to be trying not to look at the blue plastic curtain at the head of the gurney. For a moment, he stared into the viewing room window. He suddenly seemed calmer and more collected.

“I wish he could see us,” Gail murmured.

They were shielded from his view behind one-way glass and Riley didn’t share Gail’s wish. Caldwell had already looked at her much too closely for her liking. To capture him, she’d gone undercover. She’d pretended to be a tourist on the Dunes Beach Boardwalk and hired him to draw her portrait. As he worked, he’d showered her with flowery flattery, telling her that she was the most beautiful woman he’d drawn in a long time.

She knew right then that she was his next intended victim. That night she’d served as bait to draw him out, letting him stalk her along the beach. When he had tried to attack her, backup agents had no trouble catching him.

His capture had been pretty nondescript. The discovery of how he had carved up his victims and kept them in his freezer had been another matter. Standing there when the freezer was opened was one of the most harrowing moments of Riley’s career. She still felt pity for the victims’ families – Gail among them – for having to identify their dismembered wives, daughters, sisters …

“Too beautiful to live,” he had called them.

It chilled Riley deeply that she had been one of the women he had seen that way. She’d never thought of herself as beautiful, and men – even her ex-husband, Ryan – seldom told her that she was. Caldwell was a stark and horrible exception.

What did it mean, she wondered, that a pathological monster had found her so perfectly lovely? Had he recognized something inside her that was as monstrous as he? For a couple of years after his trial and conviction, she’d had nightmares about his admiring eyes, his honeyed words, and his freezer full of body parts.

The execution team got Caldwell up onto the execution gurney, removed the cuffs and shackles, took off his sandals, and strapped him into place. They fastened him down with leather bands – two across his chest, two to hold his legs, two around his ankles, and two around his wrists. His bare feet were turned toward the window. It was hard to see his face.

Suddenly, the curtains closed over the viewing room windows. Riley understood that this was to conceal the phase of the execution where something was most likely to go wrong – say, the team might have trouble finding a suitable vein. Still, she found it peculiar. The people in both viewing rooms were about to watch Caldwell die, but they were not allowed to witness the mundane insertion of the needles. The curtains swayed a little, apparently brushed by one of the team members moving around on the other side.

When the curtains opened again, the IV lines were in place, running from the prisoner’s arms through holes in the blue plastic curtains. Some members of the execution team had retreated behind those curtains, where they would administer the lethal drugs.

One man held the red telephone receiver, ready to receive a call that would surely never come. Another spoke to Caldwell, his words a barely audible crackle over the poor sound system. He was asking Caldwell whether he had any last words.

By contrast, Caldwell’s response came through with startling clarity.

“Is Agent Paige here?” he asked.

His words gave Riley a jolt.

The official didn’t reply. It wasn’t a question that Caldwell had any right to have answered.

After a tense silence, Caldwell spoke again.

“Tell Agent Paige that I wish my art could have done justice to her.”

Although Riley couldn’t see his face clearly, she thought she heard him chuckle.

“That’s all,” he said. “I’m ready.”

Riley was flooded by rage, horror, and confusion. This was the last thing she had expected. Derrick Caldwell had chosen to make his last living moments all about her. And sitting here behind this unbreakable shield of glass, she was helpless to do anything about it.

She had brought him to justice, but in the end, he had achieved a weird, sick kind of revenge.

She felt Gail’s small hand gripping her own.

Good God, Riley thought. She’s comforting me.

Riley fought down a wave of nausea.

Caldwell said one more thing.

“Will I feel it when it begins?”

Again, he received no reply. Riley could see fluid moving through the transparent IV tubes. Caldwell took several deep breaths and appeared to fall asleep. His left foot twitched a couple of times, then fell still.

After a moment, one of the guards pinched both feet and got no reaction. It seemed a peculiar sort of gesture. But Riley realized that the guard was checking to make sure the sedative was working and that Caldwell was fully unconscious.

The guard called out something inaudible to the people behind the curtain. Riley saw a renewed flow of fluid through the IV tubes. She knew that a second drug was in the process of stopping his lungs. In a little while, a third drug would stop his heart.

As Caldwell’s breathing slowed, Riley found herself thinking about what she was watching. How was this different from the times she had used lethal force herself? In the line of duty, she had killed several killers.

But this was not like any of those other deaths. By comparison, it was bizarrely controlled, clean, clinical, immaculate. It seemed inexplicably wrong. Irrationally, Riley found herself thinking …

I shouldn’t have let it come to this.

She knew she was wrong, that she had carried out Caldwell’s apprehension professionally and by the book. But even so she thought …

I should have killed him myself.

Gail held Riley’s hand steadily for ten long minutes. Finally, the official beside Caldwell said something that Riley couldn’t hear.

The warden stepped out from behind the curtain and spoke in a clear enough voice to be understood by all the witnesses.

“The sentence was successfully carried out at 9:07 a.m.”

Then the curtains closed across the window again. The witnesses had seen all that they were meant to see. Guards came into the room and urged everybody to leave as quickly as possible.

As the group spilled out into the hallway, Gail took hold of Riley’s hand again.