The Executioner's Song - The Executioner's Song Part 19
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The Executioner's Song Part 19

He had a great big pair of rainbow-colored slalom water skis sticking out of the window of his truck with a price tag from Grand Central still on them. Now he explained he wanted to lock the skis in the trunk of her car.

Next, they went looking for the keys. He retraced his steps through various stores and in the health-food shop he found them-a great big bunch.

Going back through the Mall, Rusty stopped in front of Kiddy Ville. Her little girl collected Madam Alexander International Dolls and she could see they had a new one in from Spain. So Rusty said, "Have you got a minute?" and he said, "Hey, you know, sure."

Two old salesladies were clear down the other end. Rusty waited and waited-must have been five minutes. Nobody acknowledged they were in the place, and Gilmore was getting nervous.

She could feel how painful it was for him to wait. Finally, he said, "Which one do you want?" She told him. He said, "Don't worry about it," and opened the case, took the doll, took her elbow, and before she could protest, he had her out of the store. There was a bright red satin dress on the doll and Gary was saying, "Well, you know, it's really cute."

Rusty didn't know if he was showing off, but at this stage of her life, nothing was going to shock her. She just wanted to get out of the Mall.

As they went around the long way in the parking lot, Gary said, "You know, you're a pretty cool lady. You handle everything really good. You don't fall apart." When she nodded, he said, "I've been looking for someone to work with."

"Oh, that's nice," Rusty said. She was in one hurry to get to the car. She'd already decided he was unbalanced, so she certainly didn't want to insult him. "I'm glad you think I can handle things," she said. "You're not bad looking," he said, "but you're too old for me." Looked at her critically. "How old are you?" he asked.

"Twenty-seven," Rusty said.

"You don't have a little sister, do you?" Gilmore asked.

Rusty thought, Lord, if I did, she'd be locked in the basement! Gary said, "It's really too bad but you're just a little too old. I like younger girls."

"Well," Rusty said, "that's my loss."

Gilmore stopped to pick up a couple of six-packs so she got back to V.J. Motors before him. "Hey," she said, as she came in, "don't do this to me anymore, Conlin. You go next time." And told about the water skis.

Gary came in with the loot. "I don't want those slats," Val Conlin said. "They're worth," Gary told him, "$I50."

"Hey, Gary, I don't have a goddamn boat. What do I want water skis for?" When Gilmore set them down in a corner, Val said, "When are you going to take your personal shit out of the Mustang so I can sell it?"

"Take a look at these water skis," Gary said.

"Hot?" Val asked.

Gary said, "What difference does it make?"

Val said, "I'm not a hock shop. I don't want hot merchandise. I sure as hell don't need new problems."

"Well," said Gary, "it's a good buy."

"Not a worth a turd without a boat," said Val. "Where's the boat? Just remember you owe me $400 as of tomorrow."

"I'll have it."

"Gary, you son of a bitch," said Val, "you better understand this and understand this good. If I don't have the goddamn money, you walk. You won't even know you had wheels."

"Val, you've been good to me, and don't worry. I'll have it."

"Okay," said Val. "Fine."

In the silence, Val picked up a newspaper and began reading. After a bit, he put the paper down and exploded. "Judas Priest, can you believe this murder?" he asked. "What kind of idiot would do it? Guy gotta be nuts, just shooting a guy in a gas station. For nothing."

It really upset him. He slammed the paper on his desk. "You know, I can understand a son of a bitch shooting somebody if you can't get the money. But anybody that would take the cash, and then put the kid in the back room and lay him on the floor and shoot him in the head twice, has got to be a psychomaniac son of a bitch! They ought to string up that bastard." Conlin heard himself raving even as he was saying it, and Gilmore looked him back in the eye and said, "Well, maybe he deserved to be killed."

The expression on his face was so blank that Rusty decided Gary knew something about the killing. Had he sold a hot gun?

Val was yelling, "Oh, Gary, come on, for Christ's sakes, to shoot a kid in the head? You got to be crazy, man. Nuts!" Gary just said, "Well . . . " He got up and asked if Val wanted another beer. Val said, "No, we got some. Take it with you, Gary." Maybe it was drinking all that beer so early, but there was definitely a pall on the afternoon.

3.

On Tuesday afternoons Gary had his weekly session with Mont Court. Their meetings, since Gary had stolen the tape deck at Grand Central, took longer now, but on this hot Tuesday in July, it lasted for over an hour. Gilmore had finally begun to confide, and the parole officer saw it as his opportunity to reach him. In a few days, Court would have to make a recommendation on the presentence investigation, and he had about decided to propose a week of jail. It would give Gary a taste.

Court didn't look forward to that, however. Gilmore was using every opportunity to manipulate his environment but still it was hard not to feel sorry for him, particularly on a day like this.

Gilmore was talking about drinking, and how much he wanted to cut it out. As he saw it, that was the only way to get back with Nicole. He had to get back.

They talked, and Court found out that Nicole had left because she was frightened. That disturbed Gilmore. He didn't want her to think he was a violent person. Court listened politely, but he thought Gary was being unrealistic. You couldn't turn somebody's fear around by your desire that they not be afraid. Court did think, however, that Gilmore was being realistic in understanding how much he needed Nicole, and that his chances of getting her back might be better if he cut out drinking.

Of course, he hardly looked like a teetotaler now. His goatee was on the way to becoming a beard and his clothing looked sloppy.

It was the nearest they had ever come to a real talk. Gilmore sat there forlornly, saying in a flat sad voice that he thought he had problems as a lover. That carried their relationship a step forward, Court thought.

Gary spent the next few hours looking for Nicole around Orem and Provo, then in Springville and Spanish Fork. While he was driving on one road, Nicole and Roger Eaton were moving along another.

Nicole was in a state. Before long, Roger Eaton was in the state. The Tuesday afternoon he had been looking forward to turning out well.

First, she told him about seeing Gary on Sunday in Spanish Fork. Showed Roger the little Derringer. Seeing the way Nicole pulled it out of her pocketbook, Roger was pretty sure she could use it. He said, "Put that away." He never knew anybody who began to live the way Nicole had to live.

While driving around, Roger told her about the murder last night at the gas station. That was the first she had heard of it. If she had known, she wouldn't have left her house, she told him. "I'm scared," said Nicole.

After a little while, she murmured, "I think Gary did that murder." "Are you kidding me?" he asked. "No, I think so," she repeated. "But you don't know for sure?" Roger asked. She wouldn't answer.

He took her to the Utah Valley Mall and bought her a pair of jeans that ran around $25 and a shirt that cost $35. Then he took her back to her apartment in Springville quickly as he could and let her off about a block away. Before she got out of the car, she warned Roger that Gary had seen the letter he sent.

Roger began to think that Gary might find Nicole, and beat her up until she gave away his name. Then Gary would come over to the Mall to look for him. When that thought went through Roger's mind, he said to himself, "My ass is grass."

As they were saying goodbye, Roger couldn't help himself. He said, "Nicole, I'm afraid Gary might find me." She said, "He'll kill you if he does."

"What did you do to him?" Roger asked.

She said, "Nothing. He just wants me."

Roger said, "He must want you a lot worse than I do, because I don't want to get killed over you."

She said, "I can understand that."

He said, "I want this thing to end if it's going to mean my damned life or yours. Let's just forget this crap."

It was getting dark when he said goodbye to her.

That evening over the newspaper, Johnny said to Brenda, "Hey, they had a shooting over here." He waited for her to read the account, and then said, "It has all the earmarks of Gary Gilmore."

Brenda said, "I know he's an asshole, Johnny, but he's not a killer,"

Johnny said, "I'm afraid he is."

5.

All day at the motel, Debbie Bushnell had been nervous. All afternoon, she kept calling her friend Chris Caffee. That was most unusual. She and Chris usually talked to each other about once every two weeks, and Chris would drop in at the motel now and again. Chris had used to work for her at the Busy Bee, and they got along well, but they weren't exactly close friends. Debbie was so restless this Tuesday afternoon, however, that she kept calling. Chris finally said, "Debbie, I have five hundred things to do. I don't have anything more to say." Debbie couldn't help herself, she phoned two hours later. "What are you doing?" she asked. Chris said, "Nothing. Why are you calling?"

Debbie had been having a strange feeling from Sunday on. It continued all day Monday and was worse on Tuesday afternoon. Same with Ben. They had gone to visit his best friend, Porter Dudson, up in Wyoming on Sunday, a rare Sunday off from the motel and Ben couldn't sit still all day. Rushed poor Porter and his wife Pam, through the meal and everything. Now, he was over whatever was bothering him. He had spent part of Tuesday afternoon working on his weights and then he took a nap. It was Debbie at this point who didn't know what to do with herself.

When Ben got up, she fixed him a steak and a salad and they sat down to dinner. Benjamin was already bathed and asleep and finally it got dark. People started coming in for rooms and Ben turned on the TV in the office and began to watch the Olympics. After a while Debbie left him alone to handle incoming guests and went back to cleaning the house. But this stupid fear just kept crawling in her stomach.

Gary stopped at a gas station on University Street and Third South, a couple of blocks from Vern's house. Gary knew a fellow named Martin Ontiveros who worked there, and in fact, had put in some time that week painting Martin's car. Now he stopped off to ask Ontiveros if he could borrow $400, but was told by Martin's stepfather, Norman Fulmer, who ran the gas station, that they'd just bought 6,000 gallons that day, and didn't have a dime to their name. Nothing in the station but credit-card slips. Very little cash. Gary drove off to Orem.

Around nine o'clock he started to go back to Spanish Fork to look for Nicole, but on the way he stopped at a store, and the motor wouldn't start. The truck had to have a push. So he pulled in again at Norman Fulmer's gas station to complain. Not only did he have trouble starting, he told them, but in addition, the motor was overheating. "Well," said Norman, "just put it in the bay. We'll change the thermostat." Gilmore asked how long it would take and when Fulmer said twenty minutes, Gilmore said he would do a little visiting.

As soon as Gilmore was gone, Martin got into the truck, turned the key and pressed the starter. The motor turned over with no trouble.

In the middle of washing the couch cushions, Debbie Bushnell went out to the front office and asked Ben to go to the store and get some low-fat milk. She was also hoping he would bring back some ice cream and candy bars, and began to giggle at the thought she must be pregnant again. She had certainly felt telltale cravings. Ben, however, didn't want to go. He was interested in the Olympics.

Washing the couch cushions proved to be a job. She couldn't get it done to her satisfaction with a damp cloth. So she decided to unzip the covers, wash them, dry them, put them on again. In the meanwhile, she was planning to vacuum out the corners of the couch, but when she started to turn on the Kirby, she couldn't bring herself to press the switch. Three times in a row she just kept looking at the label-Kirby-on the vacuum, and not turning it on.

Then she heard Ben talking to somebody in the front office. She thought maybe there was a child there, because she heard a balloon pop. So she went out to talk. No reason. Just felt like talking to a kid.

As she went through the door from the apartment to the office, a tall man with a goatee, who had been about to leave, turned around and came back toward her. The craziest word went through her head. "There's poopy-doo," she said to herself. Quickly, she turned around and went back to the apartment.

She actually retreated into the farthest corner of the baby's bedroom.

In her mind, she kept seeing that man looking her square in the face from the other side of the counter. She had an ice-cold feeling on her heart. That man was after her.

Then she got herself together, and walked through the living room into the kitchen and peeked into the office through the narrow space between the television set and the square hole in the wall that separated the kitchen from the office. You could sort of squint into the office through that space. She got there in time to watch the strange man walk out the door. Then she walked in.

Ben was on the floor. He just lay there face down, and his legs were shaking. When she bent over to look at him, she saw his head was bleeding. She had had first-aid courses once and they told you to put your hand to a wound and apply pressure, but this was awful heavy bleeding. A wave of blood kept rising out of his hair. She put her hand on it.

She sat there with the phone in her free hand ringing the operator. It rang five times, and ten, and fifteen times, and a man came into the office and said he had seen the fellow with the gun. The phone was ringing the eighteenth, and the twentieth, and twenty-second, and the twenty-fifth time. There was still no answer. She said to the man, "I need an ambulance." The new man didn't speak very good English, but he held the phone, and the operator still didn't answer. The man went out to call the police.

Now she called Chris Caffee. It was easy to remember that number after calling her four times that afternoon. Then Debbie just sat there with her hand on Ben's head and time went on for a long time. She couldn't tell how long before help came.

Chapter 16.

ARMED AND DANGEROUS.

Peter Arroyo was coming back to the City Center Motel from the Golden Spike Restaurant where he had gone with his wife and his son and two nieces for supper around nine-thirty that evening. It was now close to ten-thirty and they were returning to their rooms.

As they passed the front window of the motel office, Arroyo could see a strange sight. He had noticed, while registering, a large motel attendant with a small wife. Now neither of them was visible. Instead, a tall man with a goatee was stepping around the counter just as Arroyo came along the street. The man had a cash drawer in his hand. Arroyo could see that he also had a pistol with a long barrel in the other hand.

The kids observed nothing. One of Arroyo's nieces even wanted to go into the office to get stamps. Arroyo said, "Just keep going." Out of the corner of his eye he could see the man turn around and go back to the counter. Arroyo looked no more, but continued walking to his car. He kept hoping that what he had seen was somebody fooling around with a gun. Maybe there was a simple legitimate explanation.

When he reached his Matador which was parked about fifty feet from the office, he sent the girls upstairs. Then he started unloading the car carrier on the roof. Two men came down from the balcony, and he wondered if they were going to the office, but they just happened to be looking for ice, and went right upstairs again.

Now the man with the gun came out of the door, turned left, and went up the street on foot. Arroyo headed right to the office.

He could see the motel manager on the floor, and the man's wife next to him with a phone in her hand, and blood all over the place. The man on the ground didn't say anything, he just made noises. His leg was moving a little. Arroyo tried to help the woman turn him over but the footing was slippery. The man was very heavy and lying in too great a puddle.

2.

Walking away from the motel, Gary put the money in his pocket and discarded the cash box in a bush. About a block from the gas station, he stopped to get rid of the gun. Took it by the muzzle and pushed it into another bush. A twig must have caught the trigger for the gun went off. The bullet shot into the soft meat between the thumb and the palm.

Norman Fulmer took a bucket of water and threw it over walls of the bathroom. He took a big sponge and washed the tile and scrubbed the floor. Then he went out to see how the work was going on Gilmore's truck. Instead, he saw Gary walking real fast right past him to the men's room that Fulmer had just finished cleaning. There was a trail of blood following Gilmore. "I don't know," Norman said to himself, "I guess he ran into something." And he just mopped up those big drops right there on the bay floor.

The scanner box was overhead, and Fulmer heard the police dispatcher talking about an aggravated assault and robbery at the City Center Motel. Norman began to listen real hard. He was in the habit of paying attention to the scanner anyway. It was more interesting than music. The dispatcher was now saying that a man got shot and another left on foot.

Fulmer went back into the bay and saw with one look that Martin Ontiveros had also heard the scanner. He hadn't even removed the old thermostat, but right now he started putting a bolt back in and Fulmer screwed in the other, and soon as that was done, they slammed down the hood even as Gary came back through the men's room door, and said, "Got it done?" Fulmer said, "Yep. I got it all done."

Gilmore went in from the shotgun side and slid all the way over to the driver's seat. He was hurting, Fulmer could tell. Had to lean all the way over to the left of the steering wheel in order to get the key in with his right hand. When he finally got it started, Fulmer said, "Hey, take care," and Gary said, "All right," and backed out, and sure enough, he slammed into the concrete pole that was there to prevent people from hitting the drinking fountain. "Oh, God," said Fulmer to himself. Gilmore wasn't moving the truck now, and Fulmer was thinking Gilmore still had a gun, but he went back out and slapped the side of the door, and said, "Hey, looks like you're a little wasted. You ought to get some Z's." Gilmore said, "Yeah, I'm gonna go crash." "All right," said Norman, "see you tomorrow."

As he drove away, Fulmer got the license number, and wrote it right down. He noticed that Gilmore turned west on Third Street, and so was probably going to drive directly past the City Center Motel. Fulmer put a dime in the phone, called the police, told them what kind of a truck Gilmore was driving. The dispatcher said, "How do you know it's the right man?" He told her about the bloody trail Gilmore had left. Then she asked how Gilmore parted his hair. Fulmer said, "Down the middle. He's got a little goatee." The girl said, "That's him." Somebody else must have given a description already. Then Fulmer could hear the dispatcher telling the police that the suspect was heading west from University Avenue. At that moment, one of the patrol cars came screaming through the intersection going east. Fulmer called the dispatcher back and said, "Hey, lady, one of your friends just went the wrong way with the siren on," and had the pleasure of hearing her yell, "Turn around and go the other way."

3.