Would You Die for Me?

"Would you die for me?" Vanessa asked me as she reached to give me a ghostly welcoming hug, her body feeling as firm and material as yours or mine. Her touch still froze me, draining my will and my fear of my all-to certain future.

"Y...yes, I will, but I don't know what to do or how to save you... or myself." I told her, giving myself up completely to her cause and need for justice.

"Don't be too afraid. It's the only way. I'll tell you what to do and then everything will be all settled. There will be some discomfort, some sadness, but in the end everything will be better, and then we can be together... in peace and happiness this time. Trust me."

I did. She told me what I must do and how I must act. Her kisses were like burning hoarfrost that devoured my soul and made me weak but yet brave in her arms. I was still terribly afraid... but her anchor on my soul now gave me the strength and courage to act and speak on her behalf and go where she could not.

It would all be alright in the end... I was sure of it now.

She was once more wearing my jacket when she seemingly melted away right into my arms, but leaving me this time a single long strand of her hair left in my fingers. I expected it to melt away in my hand at the first break of daylight, but it remained in my hands. It was a lovely honey-brown color and I wished I could have seen it and caressed her hair in life.

I never saw my jacket again.

*********

My final campaign began in the wee hours of Monday morning. Using my hidden savings I had printed up a thousand handbills of my Manifesto, "Ralph Granger -- Murderer of Vanessa Miller!" and I had put copies up on telephone poles, in mailboxes and on car windshields all over the county. I even put up a few larger signs on the county square and in front of the larger businesses in the county, including Ralph's office building.

The signs would get taken down fast, but it would take a while to find and remove them all and in the meantime the word would spread. The accusation would have been publicly made and not easily refuted.

I tried to stay out of sight and keep a low profile until the last of my flyers were distributed and the business day at Ralph's office was well underway. I wanted a full house for my one big speech... it was quite unlikely that I'd get a similar opportunity and I wanted to make the most of it.

Ralph, a rather nervous and seedy looking individual in his late twenties who appeared to be heavily partaking of his own methamphetamine products, was the nominal manager of a regional telemarketing call center in the county seat. Frankly, even this was probably beyond his limited managerial capabilities, but in this nepotistic county there was always some mostly harmless place to put the idiot sons and nephews to give them some sort of useful work. Allegedly, he and some old school buddies were also brewing up meth and after smoking up all that they could, they then tried to distribute the rest. Only family connections were keeping him out of jail. Not even his drug fueled rampages and his impulsive murder of Vanessa had been enough embarrassment for his dad and his uncles to quietly dispose of their troublesome kin.

After today, it was now going to be much too late. I got out of my truck and gave it a last caress goodbye. It had been good to me, driving me across seven different states in the last seven months and I hoped its next owner would treat it well. Where I was going soon, I would be unlikely to ever need it again.

**********

Ralph's call center was a large former factory building not far from the center of town that had been converted into a large open cubicle work area, hosting at least two hundred employees to handle the phone calls. At a glance I could tell that it was really sucky work, especially for young ladies forced to work under Ralph's roving and exploitative eyes. Most of the phone workers were women, local girls and housewives that desperately needed the extra income... even at the risk of falling prey to the sexual interest of Ralph or his even cruder friends. The aura of fear, hopelessness and misery was palpable everywhere inside.

I smiled at the girls and cleared my throat. It was a big noisy room but I was sure that even the poor gals in the furthest corner would be able to hear me. I wouldn't have long at all; already I could see Ralph in his corner glass office looking at me in panic and starting to dial a number on his telephone. They would be coming for me soon, much too soon... but I would have time to tell Vanessa's story, and in front of a lot of witnesses. Not all of which could be frightened into permanent silence after this was all over.

"Ralph! Come out of your office so that you can defend yourself. I will not harm you in any way, but I do wish to speak to you, to accuse you before these witnesses of the willful murder of Vanessa Miller. Why did you kill her Ralph? Because you had date-rape drugged her in the first place to bring her into your bed? Because she repeatedly fought to avoid your unwanted advances and the loathsome touch of your hands upon her? You've violated dozens, maybe over a hundred young women Ralph, but once you found Vanessa you swore that you'd keep her and make her yours. You kept her against her will, Ralph. Here under your sharp eyes while at work and then locked into your bedroom at night where you made her submit to you. Say this isn't so, Ralph?"

Ralph said nothing to me, but jabbered some more into his telephone, apparently in a near complete panic. The rest of my audience was giving me their complete attention and several young (and not-so young) ladies were nodding in agreement with every word I said.

"You got her pregnant Ralph, the thing that she feared and dreaded the most, being forced to bear your child, the permanent reminder of your abuse and rape. She wanted to terminate it, to escape from you, to run away to some place far away where she could excise every single trace and memory of you -- but you wouldn't let her go. In your drug-fueled anger at her disobedience, you kicked down the bathroom door where she was then having a bout of morning sickness nausea and you beat her in a fury of rage until, at length in your insane fury, you drowned her with her head inside the toilet bowl until she was dead and oh so cold to the touch. You murdered her Ralph, and then unable to take even the slightest responsibility for your crime you then dumped her body into the pond behind the house to be found later. Isn't that so, Ralph?"

Ralph still made no reply. Now he was cowering under his desk with his hands pressed over his ears so that he could blot out my stinging words. I just spoke up louder, right outside his locked glass office door so that he could hear every single word. My time was almost up and the sheriff's deputies would be here any moment to haul me away.

"Your father helped you cover up the crime and called in the rest of the family to make sure that no one paid the slightest bit of attention to yet one more grave in the county cemetery. Poor Vanessa went into that cold, cold ground quickly that first night, away from friendly eyes or anyone who might show have the slightest interest in her demise. Even now, the Grangers will hold together, lying their old tired lies and frightening or beating anyone who dares utter a word of the real truth, like me. They think they can still protect you, but they can't... not from her. By telling her story I've released her - she's now free and loosened from her deep cold prison. When you leave here today you will see her. When you look into the mirror you will see her lurking behind you. When you lock yourself into your bedroom tonight she will be there inside with you as well. You cannot escape her ever again, her blue eyes will look into yours and you will hear her cries of 'J'accuse!' You can never escape what you have done, but you can choose to confess your crimes here and now... or else you can take them to your grave, when Vanessa comes to you for her revenge. What shall it be Ralph?"

Oh, for just a few minutes more... unfortunately, the rescue party of sheriff's men came bursting through the door right at this point and soon had me down face to the floor with a heavy boot in the middle of my back and soon handcuffed. Ralph was blubbering something but I couldn't distinguish anything of what he was saying. Frankly at this point it didn't much matter. I had told my story and there were now witnesses that knew the real truth.

A half hour later I was back in jail and getting the worst beatdown of my entire life. It cost me three teeth and four broken ribs but even at the end I could still laugh at my persecutors.

Late the next morning, I learned that Ralph had been found dead in his father's home, of a single gunshot wound. Self-inflicted. Apparently Vanessa had come to pay him a visit and her direct and more personal accusations had steadied his nerves and his trigger hand. I would have smiled at the news, but my face hurt far too much.

Later in the afternoon I learned, that despite being already held in custody, I was going to be formally accused of Ralph's murder... and that of Vanessa's as well, assuming they could find a way to fudge the evidence reports. All of my booking paperwork from yesterday was removed to be shredded and burned... as if it had never happened. Now I was 'arrested' once again and a new fraudulent paper trail was created, every single page and report was a travesty of justice and pure outright fraud.

Ralph's father wrote a deposition claiming he had seen me at the house threatening Ralph once again, right before he heard the single gunshot. The 'suicide gun' was relocated across the room by the doorway with the prints wiped off clean. Ralph, like Vanessa, was buried with extreme haste and without a coroner's investigation or autopsy.

I just laughed and laughed. The more forged evidence they planted, created or forged, the more I just laughed in their faces. The family was desperate; I had been too bold, too public with my charges and I must be made to go away, fast and silently, and most importantly permanently. They even tried the trick of leaving my cell door 'accidentally' unlocked at night so that I could be shot while trying to escape. They were franticly seeking the quickest possible fix. That 'fix' was a forged confession letter that rounded off my case for prosecution at an all too speedy trial.

Three days after my alleged murder of Ralph Granger I was standing manacled and gagged in the courtroom of his uncle, the county criminal court judge Wyatt Granger, who took less than fifteen minutes to hold my trial and convict me of two counts of murder in the first degree. I never got to utter a single word in my defense, nor did I have even any sort of legal representation. All of these trivial details would be forged up later in a bogus trial transcript where I had alleged confessed to every crime, as if I were in a Russian kangaroo court in the days of Stalin.

The sentence was of course Death.

Underneath my gag I was still laughing at the poor fools. It would take time, but they had now sown the seeds of their own destruction more completely and thoroughly than anything I possibly could have ever done on my own. The sands of the glass timer were now slowly falling and nothing on earth was now going to be able to stop their advance, and our belated justice upon the Grangers.

*********

You might be saying to yourself about now 'Ok, nice frame-up, but it's all just too obvious. Somebody, somewhere will catch on and real justice would then start to ensue, right?' Well not quite... yes and no, mostly no. Jails all over the world are full of 'innocent' people, poor folks caught at the wrong place at the wrong time, or who just had the wrong sort of enemies. The world everywhere is full of lazy police and prosecutors unwilling to reach for anything except the lowest hanging fruit on the tree, blind to other suspects that might cost them both time and money to pursue. One bird in a hand is better than a dozen other ones hidden in a bush... even if it's the wrong bird. Innocent men and women are on death row and die there with regularity. Once the system has made a decision it is difficult to the point of near impossibility to stop the train of justice and get the wheels to slowly go backwards to fix even the most blatant mistakes. Governors are elected on 'tough on crime' platforms and often tend to view convicted felons as 100.00% guilty of their crimes. Common sense has almost never played any role in any courtroom anywhere.

While it is true there are anti-death penalty activists and "Innocence" organizations that crusade for cases like mine, they are all under-funded and heavily overworked. They too look mostly for the low-hanging fruit; low labor and costs -- high reward cases. More than anything else, these groups seek out martyrs to further their political ends. The idea of an innocent man being wantonly executed by a harsh and uncaring state would make them salivate with pleasure, and they would leave no stone unturned in their path to make the most political gain, not to mention reap tons of favorable publicity. To them politically, one dead martyr to their cause was worth a dozen still living wrongly convicted death row inmates. I was counting heavily on this.

All of this was true in my case especially. The Grangers were extremely politically powerful in the state and they were friends (and big campaign finance donors) with the Governor, his Attorney General and the state administrator of prisons. I wasn't the first troublemaker they had railroaded into prison for life, or worse. I didn't have any money for lawyers other than the crappy next to useless ones appointed to draft my automatic death penalty appeal, most of whom couldn't even explain what a tort was, well, correctly anyway.

On the surface, the evidence against me seemed to be overwhelming, albeit largely circumstantial, and no one I met while on death row for the next three and a half years seemed to show any inclination towards scratching at anything below the top surface of my case. As far as I was concerned, matters were progressing exactly as I wished them to and I wasn't bending over even slightly to assist any of my appalling young and woefully inexperienced legal staff. Most of the male lawyers were barely old enough to shave. None were willing to accept my quite even tempered claims of innocence or even once indulged in any basic investigation of the facts of my case. So be it.

Soon faced with the decision of either appealing my sentence to spend years if not decades tilting at windmills in the hope of finding an attorney willing to work pro-bono that would actually investigate my case, or to just to drop my appeals and await my execution, I felt I had no choice but to choose the latter. Time was not on my side. The longer I waited the fewer witnesses that would be available to later investigators and there would be a greater risk of more genuine evidence being lost or destroyed. For Vanessa to get her complete revenge, my role in it had to be completed as quickly as possible. By waiving my final appeals, I could be facing the hangman's rope in just a matter of months now, instead of years or even decades.

I accepted my fate... but I didn't have to like it one little bit. I didn't want to die... but I was willing to, to save Vanessa.

*********

By eleven-thirty that fateful night I made my final prayers and confessions to the prison chaplain, who was a rather likeable and wise old man that had known for some time that another innocent man was about to make that last final walk tonight.

I'd just finished my last meal, a rather pleasant dish of old-fashioned chicken and dumplings. Given a choice of nearly anything for a final last dinner, most inmates simply pick a cheeseburger and fries, and I quite understand why. They want something comforting to remind them of home. In my case I was remembering and craving something from my childhood. Happier memories from a simpler age and time.

Earlier in the evening, with both the chaplain and the warden present, I recounted the complete telling of my story, much as I have told it here. They also signed as witnesses my final notarized statement of the truth containing the facts of the case of the murder of Vanessa Miller, the suicide of Ralph Granger, the resulting cover-up and my kangaroo court trial. In the hands of a good crusading anti-death penalty lawyer, this length and comprehensive statement that recounted everything I had learned and every witness I had spoken to, would give any investigator a complete roadmap to the truth. In the hands of a good political zealot, this statement would blaze the trail for one of the biggest political scandals in a generation.

Part of me was scared that this would all be for naught, but holding Vanessa's single long brown hair both calmed and reassured me. Somehow I still trusted her. The warden and the chaplain both thought I was benignly daft.

"Let me call the Governor and get a 48 hour stay of execution!" The warden begged. "I can call in the state police and if even one of the accusations you make is accurate then you'll get an automatic appeal. There is no need to throw away your life in order to get revenge!"

"I'm not throwing away my life. I'm willingly but begrudgingly sacrificing it in order to fulfill an oath and to make the world a much better place after I'm gone. Hopefully quite soon. Warden, were you ever in the military?"

"Semper Fi!" he replied, and I nodded.

"In combat, would you have risked your life for a fellow Marine? Maybe even fallen upon a hand-grenade to save your squad? Or even fought against impossible odds on a dark street at night to protect the life of your wife and children, just to give them an extra chance at survival?"

He agreed he would do all or any of those things. I rather liked my warden; he was a fair man and a pretty good egg under his hard external shell.

"This is the exact same sort of thing that I am now doing. I'm going to fall on that grenade so that the decent men and women of Gilbreath County can someday enjoy the breath of non-corrupt air and so that no more of their wives and daughters will ever have to undergo even a small part of what Vanessa suffered. I have to do this... for her and for them."

I think they both now truly understood. They both promised that they would see that my statements got into some proper hands where they could do some good.

********

Entering the execution chamber, I was a bit surprised. I almost expected some gothic chamber of horrors, complete with blood stains on the concrete, or the rampant odor of mildew and old fecal material or the stench of stale urine, but instead the room was bright and clean. It was almost a cheerful room, albeit with a slight heavy odor of pine-sol industrial cleaner. I was even more surprised to see some of my old nemesis's sitting in the glass paned small witness room to watch my sentence being carried out. I guess the top Grangers wanted to make sure that I was finally out of their hair. Eli Granger was staring at me with undisguised hatred and only the presence of a preacher sitting next to him kept his rage and manners in check. His elder brother the judge sitting on the other side of him was a bit more circumspect, almost bored even, as if he wished to get a trivial annoyance done and out of his life for good.

Sorry, I wasn't going to oblige them. I was willing to die to save Vanessa, and the others, but I wasn't going to go meekly or gentle into that good night. The warden promised me that I'd have a few short minutes to make a final statement right at the end. Not long enough to tell my story over again to the pair of bored newspaper writers that were drinking coffee in a vain attempt to ward off the lateness of the hour, but enough to leave everyone with just a taste or hint of what was to come next. Or so I could only hope.