Blow Fly by Patricia Cornwell Page B

that the drugs are chilled beyond what’s necessary, almost to the freezing point. The teams think it only fair that the condemned inmate feel the frigid intravenous hit, as enough poison to kill four horses rushes through the needle and shocks the blood. If the inmate doesn’t exclaim, “Oh, God!” or, “Jesus!” or some utterance when he feels his icy, imminent death, the members of the execution teams are disappointed and a bit pissed off.
    â€œThat last ol’ boy sure as hell had an ice-cream headache,” voices yell and bounce off steel doors as inmates retell the stories.
    â€œA screamin’ one. You hear how he puckered when the shit hit?”
    â€œNo way that was on the radio.”
    â€œHe begged for his mama.”
    â€œA lot of the whores I done begged for their mama. Last one screamed, ‘Mama! Mama! Mama!’ ” The man the other inmates call Beast is bragging again.
    He thinks his anecdotes are funny.
    â€œYou’re a fucker. Can’t believe the governor gave you another month, you fucker!”
    Beast is the source of most of the execution stories circulating through the cells in the death-row pod. Beast was transported by van the forty-three miles to Huntsville and was already eating his last meal of fried shrimp, steak, fries and pecan pie in the barred cage next to the death chamber when the governor suddenly granted him a stay of execution so further DNA tests could be run. Beast knows damn well the tests are a waste of time, but he continues to milk what he can out of his last days on Earth now that he has been returned to the Polunsky Unit. He goes on and on about a process that is supposed to be secret. He even knows the names of the members of the tie-down and IV teams and the doctor who was scheduled to start the IV and pronounce Beast dead.
    â€œIf I ever get out, I’m going to do every one of the bitches and videotape it!” Beast brags some more.
    â€œWish I videotaped the ones I did. Hell, I’d pay all I got for even one videotape. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it at the time. Give those shrinks and FBI assholes an eyeful to worry about when they go home to their little wives and kiddies.”
    Jean-Baptiste never filmed his murders. There wasn’t time, and stupidly, the idea never occurred to him. For that he continually rebukes himself. How rare it is for him to be so stupid . . .
    Espèce de sale gorille  . . .
    Stupid monkey mutant.
    Jean-Baptiste covers his ears with his hands.
    â€œWho’s there?”
    If only he had filmed his bloody art or at least had taken photographs.Oh, the longing, the longing, the anxiety he cannot relieve because he cannot relive, relive, relive their ecstasy as they died. The thought turns the key on an unbearable pressure in his groin. He can’t relieve the misery. He was born with an ignition that doesn’t work, sexual pistons that spark but will not fire. He breathes hard, straining on the toilet, sweat dripping from his face.

    W HAT YOU DOING in there?”
    An officer bangs on the door. Two mocking dark eyes are there again, between the bars in the window.
    â€œPlaying ring-around-the-ass again. Man, your guts are gonna come out one of these days.”
    Jean-Baptiste hears footsteps on metal catwalks and other death-row inmates yelling their usual complaints and obscenities. Not including Jean-Baptiste, 245 men wait their turn while lawyers continue appeals and do what they can to persuade district supreme courts or the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a sentence or at least convince a judge to rule in their favor and allow DNA tests or some other trickery. Jean-Baptiste knows what he did and pled guilty, despite the histrionics of his attorney, Rocco Caggiano, also owned by the Chandonne family.
    Rocco Caggiano’s feigned vigorous opposition to Jean-Baptiste’s pleading guilty before the judge was very poor acting. Caggiano