Means & Oppiortunity

Chapter 1

I’m wanted for murder.

There’s a warrant for my arrest. The D.C. police think I’ve killed several people.

It’s been in all the newspapers, including my own. Surely everyone I know is aware of what the police think.

Four weeks ago I had a normal life. As routine a life as a reporter can have.

Just four weeks.

Now I’m on the run—not a term I thought would ever apply to me—hiding out 200 miles away at a friend’s beach house in New Jersey. Of course he isn’t here, nor does he know I’m here.

Long Beach Island is a sliver of land about 18 miles long and, at its widest, a half mile across. The only vehicle access is a single causeway that bridges L.B.I. to the New Jersey mainland in the island’s middle.

It’s winter and the six other houses on this street appear to be vacant. It’s stark. No lights on. Driveways empty.

I stare out at the inky blackness of the Atlantic. There’s dark nothingness except for the occasional faint ship’s light in the distance. The sound of the high tide’s waves assures me the ocean is nearby. I don’t know if it represents a means of escape, or a wall at my back.

How did this happen? It’s a question I haven’t stopped asking myself since this whole nightmare started. I’m not a bad guy. Other than habitually driving over the speed limit and a good-sized pile of Post-It pads swiped from work, I may be the most law-abiding person I know.

A car’s lights pierce through the slats in the beach house’s half-drawn blinds, interrupting my introspection.

he small beach community is mostly empty this time of year and the sudden appearance of a vehicle makes me drop to the floor. It’s the first sign of life I’ve seen since I slipped into the chilly house more than two hours ago. I crawl over, cautiously lifting one of the slats and peering over the window’s sill.

The car—a sedan—slowly drives past the house and stops. It couldn’t go any further unless it had pontoons; the street dead ends into the beach.

Could be a cop, I think.

The vehicle backs up until it passes the driveway of the house next door. It pulls in, backs out and then, pointing away from the ocean, drives away.

I stay at my position at the window for probably a half hour. I have to be sure it was just a mistake. I don’t know what I’d do if it was the police.

I check the back door to be sure.

Locked. No one there.

I go back to the window to make sure. Just in case.

I can see my reflection in the window. I stare hard at myself and the question seems to hang around my face like a thick fog: How did this happen?

It seems like such an insignificant episode in my life has flipped everything upside down.

If I had known then what I know now.

Chapter 2

Only six months earlier, I stood outside the tall chain gate in front of the prison. The high gray walls I had expected from all the 1940s-era black-and-white movies I’d seen on late-night television when I was kid weren’t there. Most of the prisons from that era had been decommissioned.

The entire facility was surrounded by a 12-foot-high hurricane fence. Each section of the barrier was crowned with thick, threatening coils of razor wire and woven with bare electrical lines. Signs were posted every twenty feet or so pointing out that the fence was electrified and could be fatal if touched. I didn’t need to be told twice, and stood several feet back with my hands in my pockets.

I had been assigned by my editor at the Washington Constitution, John Sanders, to do a story on death row inmates.

But D.C. doesn’t have the death penalty, I had told John.

I know that, but they do in Virginia and Maryland. Hell, they put people to death in Virginia just for jaywalking, he said laughing. Line it up with the prison authority across the river.

I was relatively new to the Constitution, having come to D.C. about a year and a half earlier. My wife, Joanie, and I had moved from Texas, and I was excited about working in a major market. I had been at four newspapers in a dozen years, chasing bigger circulations with each move. Port Arthur to Beaumont, to El Paso, to Houston.

Newspaper journalism when I started was like minor league baseball. You began in the farm leagues and tried to prove yourself so you could advance to bigger markets. If you worked hard and got lucky, you got called up to the show.

For me, the Constitution was the show. As a general assignment reporter I covered whatever my editor dreamed up for me. It was mostly soft news, pieces for the Sunday magazine, and backing up the beat reporters who were on vacation or needed help. This was my first piece in Virginia since coming to the paper. It felt more like Texas than it did the suburbs to the north of D.C. where I had grown up.

Sussex I State Prison was a three-hour drive from the District, in Waverly, Virginia, but it could have been the moon. Mapquest gave me directions down I-95, around Richmond, and out state route 35, the last few miles of it through a stretch of pines and maples. It was creepily gorgeous. I didn’t pass another car for ten minutes. While I felt my blood pressure drop the further I got from the District, I couldn’t keep my mind from flashing on scenes from Deliverance. It was the kind of isolation I never got used to traveling around small towns in Texas.

Behind the fence was a different story. The prison was home to Virginia’s death row. Technically, Sanders had been wrong about the state’s eagerness to execute its citizens. To be eligible for the death penalty, a criminal had to commit an especially foul murder under special circumstances, like killing a cop, or a pregnant woman or multiple victims. I wasn’t sure exactly what I would find here, but I was pretty certain there weren’t many Boy Scouts at Sussex I.

A bead of sweat rolled down my neck and under my collar. With one eye on the electric fence, I carefully reached out and pressed the buzzer next to the prison’s gate.

The erector set-like guard towers rose almost 20 feet above the ground.

Yes, can I help you? a female voice with just the slightest lilt of the South asked over the speaker box that was attached to the main visitor’s gate.

I looked about for the body behind the incongruous voice, but saw no one other than the armed guards above.

A closed circuit television camera was focused on the spot where I stood.

Can I help you, the voice repeated, less cheerfully than before.

Yes, I’m Dan Bingham with the Washington Constitution. I have an appointment with Warden John McKee.

One moment, please, the voice answered.

The sound of the red tractor mower approaching me broke the silence that followed. A man in a solid white prison uniform with the word Trustee printed in large black letters on the back rode by on the other side of the fence, oblivious to me. Grass clippings flew out of the back of the mower, creating a swath of darker green on the lawn.

The fading sound of the mower as it turned and moved away again was interrupted by a loud buzzer sound. You can enter now, the woman’s voice said.

I looked back at the parking lot, then pushed the gate and it slowly moved open.

Two of the guards, rifles in hand, on the nearest towers appeared to be watching me.

I forced a smile and waved at them.

They looked down at me, but didn’t wave back.

I walked through the gate.

Once inside, it slowly closed behind me.

I now stood between the outer fence and another barrier that also had barbed wire and electrical wire on it.

The front gate made a loud clanging sound as it re-engaged, causing me to jump.

It never fails, a man, standing on the other side of the inner fence, said. Every time we get a first-time visitor, they jump like you just did when that first gate closes.

I hadn’t noticed him before, but the man was neither a guard or a prisoner. He looked totally out of place in a suit that was more appropriate to the skyscraper corporate world of a big city than to a prison out in the boondocks.

The inner fence’s gate slowly opened, and I walked through.

I’m Larry Mitchell. He extended his hand. I’m press liaison for the Commonwealth of Virginia’s Department of Corrections.

I introduced myself.

We’re going to get you screened and then go see the warden. Follow me and try not to look too guilty. Mitchell chuckled at his own joke.

I politely smiled.

A stern looking guard stood next to the second gate and nodded as we passed. He clutched a rifle in his hands.

The gate, just like the outer one, slowly closed, squeaking as it moved, and then made a solid locking sound.

You’ll need this, Mitchell told me, handing me a blue plastic visitor’s badge. Don’t hand this to anyone else while you’re inside the unit. Somebody may get out and you’ll have to spend the rest of their sentence here. He lightly laughed.

I nodded and politely smiled again. The PR man’s prison humor was starting to wear thin.

We walked down a macadam path about 20 feet, then through a doorway into a large, red brick building. I passing through a metal detector, turned over my briefcase for safe keeping and signed a waiver that said the state assumed no responsibility if I should happen to die during my visit. Mitchell led me into another, identical, brick building.

This is the prison’s diagnostic center. It’s where all the facility’s administrative offices are located. We also process all incoming male prisoners here and review their progress from time to time. The people you’re going to talk to don’t come through here. We’re not concerned about their progress.

We walked down a long carpeted corridor, with plain white walls broken by a few doors and nameplates. Deputy Administrator for Facilities Standardization. Reporting Unit Manager. Assistant Director of Technology Services. Government-speak, I mumbled to myself. At the end of the hallway, was a door different from the others. Official-looking seals were mounted on either side, and the upper section of the door had an translucent glass pane like a shower door. Stenciled on the glass were the words: Warden John McKee.

Mitchell pushed through the door, letting it fall back into me as he focused his attention on a woman sitting behind a small pressed-wood desk.

Hi, Mary Beth, Mitchell said to the receptionist as they entered the outer office. This is Dan Bingham.

The young woman nodded and smiled. Why don’t you gentlemen take a seat and I’ll see if the warden is free right now.

Mary Beth slowly rose from behind the desk. She was pretty, maybe 30 years old. Teased blonde hair added several more inches to what was already a tall body and her height was further accentuated by her short skirt. Too much makeup suggested she was struggling against all the drab institutionalism around her the best she could. Or trying to impress somebody. Maybe an office romance? Had Mitchell been flirting with her, or was he just generally slick?

My eyes stayed on her skirt as the warden’s inner office door closed behind her. Prisons are getting more and more progressive, I thought, still harkening back to my recollections from late night TV and Jimmy Cagney.

The warden sets the dress code for his employees, Mitchell said, apparently reading my mind. I guess he gave her a special dispensation.

Gentlemen, the warden is ready to see you, Mary Beth said when she returned to the outer office. She held the door open for us and then closed it softly behind us as we entered.

Mitchell did the introductions.

A heavyset redheaded man in a rumpled dark brown suit sat behind the big cluttered desk. I guessed he was about 50, the hair thinning out on top and graying down the sides. Uneven bags drooped under his eyes, and his skin had the reddish color of a fair-skinned man who spent too much time in the sun. If Mary Beth was dressing up for anybody, it was probably not the warden.

He took a long, last drag off the unfiltered cigarette in his mouth, squashed it out in the ashtray, sighed, and stood up, hitching his pants up a few inches onto his gut.

A Thank You for Not Smoking sign hung on the wall to his right.

John McKee. Nice to meet you.

He walked around the desk with his hand extended. The stubby fingers of his right hand appeared to be yellow from years of smoking.

I reached out and shook it.

Sit down.

We sat in the two fake leather chairs facing the desk.

That’s when I noticed the small plastic sign on the warden’s desk.

In this place, I’m God!

The office was paneled in plywood that was painted a brownish color to give the appearance of mahogany. It was clearly a functional, not a ceremonial, office. Metal filing cabinets filled much of the available space, each with a large combination dial on the front. On one wall two plaques in the shapes of law enforcement badges hung on either side of a large picture. In the photograph, the only personal touch I could see in the room, the warden stood in jeans, wearing a broad smile and holding a large fish.

It’s a bass, McKee said when he noticed I was staring. That was a fishing trip a couple of years ago down to Lake Okeechobee.

That’s a big one.

McKee smiled and nodded. So you want to talk to some of our terminals. The warden walked back to his chair.

I told him that I wanted to talk to a cross-section of death row inmates to see what made them tick.

His smile quickly disappeared. I’ll tell you what makes them tick. They’re evil bastards. They need to be kept away from the rest of society, and the only way to ensure that they never walk our streets again is to put them to death. Most of the time you reporters come around asking about these creatures you just want to write about how they’re little angels who just got caught up in the wrong crowd, or made one little mistake and now we want to snuff them for it. Well, that’s your right. But it doesn’t make it the truth.

I made a mental note that I didn’t need to ask the warden what his position on the death penalty was.

I’ve lined up three death row inmates for you to talk to, Mitchell told me. One of them is only a few weeks away from his due date.

Chapter 3

Larry Mitchell and I crossed through an expansive open area to a four-story, brown brick building with dozens of small slit windows. The sidewalk between the two structures was flanked by a high, chain-link fence topped with the ubiquitous barbed wire.

The walkway is for prison personnel only, Mitchell told me. That way we don’t have any unwanted interaction with the cons. He pointed to the right.

It looks like they can have interaction with us if they want to. All they have to do is walk over and talk.

That would definitely be against the rules, Mitchell said. They would get in serious trouble if they approached anyone walking through here. There are signs that prohibit it, he said, tapping the back of a sign affixed to the fence.

Given the cynicism he had shown so far, I found his faith in the sign a little strange.

A number of male inmates were in the adjacent lot between the two buildings. Some were playing basketball. Others were just talking. A few were lifting weights. Several stared at us.

Those—the talkers—are the ones that we always have to be concerned about. They’re always up to something and we need to stay on top of it before they begin whatever they’re up to.

Like what? I asked. You mean planning a break?

Could be. Most likely planning a fight between the Aryan types and the Black Muslim gangs.

Does that happen frequently?

Yeah. All too often. The problem is that the worst people who cause all the problems out there in the real world are in many cases ultimately incarcerated. So they bring all the shit of society in here along with all the problems they caused out there. Mitchell pointed toward the front gate.

Several months ago we had a fight here between the Muslims and the Aryans. One white inmate was killed and two black inmates seriously wounded.

I shook my head.

Don’t feel sorry for any of them. I promise you, not one of these guys is ever going to become a good citizen. If they ever get out of here, they’ll be back within a year.

Mitchell led me into the building and down another corridor, this one with a concrete floor painted gray and walls the same color. He opened the door to a small room with more gray. These were the rooms where prisoners could meet with their lawyers. A conference table and four chairs, two on each side, were bolted to the floor. A fisheye security camera hung in one corner.

We made small-talk until a guard brought in the first death row inmate I met that day, a woman, one of only two waiting for the court-ordered meeting with her Maker.

Margaret Cayton didn’t look like a killer. She was easily in her late 50s and looked like someone’s grandma. You could imagine her standing in the kitchen making chocolate chip cookies for the neighborhood kids.

But Margaret Cayton wasn’t known for making cookies. She was known for murder. Cayton had, over the course of several years, poisoned three men who she had hired to do odd jobs around her house. She had buried them in her garden.

I made them beautiful, she told the police when they discovered the human remains underneath her rose bushes.

A neighborhood dog had gotten out of its yard and dug up a bone from her garden. A human bone.

Are you scared to die? I had asked her.

She just smiled and shook her head. I’m gonna’ meet Jesus. I’m on my way to the Pearly Gates. Praise the Lord!

How does she know she’s going to heaven? I later asked Mitchell after Cayton left.

They all find Jesus when they’re in jail, Mitchell said. I promise if they were able to walk out of here today, Jesus Christ would be a memory. But, compared to the guy you‘re about to meet, she has a far better chance. You’re about to meet a prince among men.

And what would turn out to be a chapter from my past.

Chapter 4

Through the door’s small window I could see a large, bent over bald man escorted by two guards. The iron shackles around his legs and arms clanked loudly and rhythmically, as he walked.

Introducing Frank Sharp. You ready to meet the devil? Mitchell asked me.

I nodded slowly, not really sure I was.

Do you know about the FastBurger murders?

Vaguely. I wasn’t in D.C. then.

Two murdered. He told the police when he was arrested that he had a crappy day and a bad headache. He’s not sitting on death row for that — outside our jurisdiction. But he also murdered a gas station attendant and a customer near Richmond. Got $50. That’s the value of a human life to someone like him. Fifty bucks.

I took a deep breath as Sharp walked into the room and took a seat opposite us.

The hunched over man slowly looked up at me. His eyes darting from right to left. His large, shaved head remained slightly tilted downward, but his eyes stayed on me.

Mr. Sharp, this is Dan Bingham. He’s the reporter I told you about.

The man slowly nodded.

Sharp had a number of tattoos on his large, muscular arms, as well as one—a menacing snake with long fangs—on his bald scalp. Gold filled his mouth. A long scar meandered down the left side of his face.

I tried not to show that I was intimidated. I flipped the page on my notebook and glanced at my list of questions. I suddenly wanted to get this over with as fast as possible.

He continued to stare at me. The cruel expression hung on his face like it was chiseled in stone.

But, then…it disappeared.

He spoke, and what he said would alter my life.

Hello, Danny Boy.

It wasn’t the words. It was the voice and how he said it. Familiar. It chilled me.

Recognize me? he asked.

I stared at him. It was out of place. The face, the body, the scar, the tattoos, the murderous résumé, the last name. It didn’t fit, but it had to be him.

Frankie? I whispered weakly.

His smile broadened. He slowly nodded.

You two know each other? Mitchell looked shocked. His eyes swung back and forth between us.

Sharp nodded.

No kidding. You should have told me, the prison spokesman said.

I just stared at the man across the table. It was surreal. He didn’t look like Frankie Paulson. Not one iota. There was nothing that resembled the boy I knew when I was a kid. Yet, it was him.

To make a long story short, we covered much of his history, the good and the more extensive bad. Frankie was pretty innocent, to hear him tell it. It was society that had screwed him over. Just like the warden had predicted.

I sat, listened, and wrote, trying to understand how someone I knew, someone I hung out with, someone who was mischievous—who isn’t when they’re 13?—had transformed into such a remorseless monster.

When I told my boss, John Sanders, about the unwanted reunion he was as gleeful as any editor could be. He could see a great story, added circulation, more ads and a pay hike for himself.

You need to do a series on the guy. How the All-American boy transforms from being, well, the All-American boy to a killer sitting on death row. He held his hands up like he was framing a headline on page one. His smile seemed to grow as he spoke each syllable. He was almost salivating.

So I found myself going back to the prison, where you had the option of choosing between lethal injection or electrocution.

Frankie chose the needle.

I visited three more times, trying to pry out from him what the catalyst had been, but there was none. A psychiatrist I spoke with as I reluctantly wrote the article told me that some people are just bad.

With so little good material from Frankie, I convinced Sanders that we were better off sticking to one long-ish article for the magazine. He wanted to give it maximum play by putting it on the cover. I was delighted to have a cover story. It was only my second. But some of the subject matter still gave me indigestion. The piece was scheduled to run a few days after Frank was put to death.

I want you to come to the execution, Frankie told me during one visit, like he was inviting me to a party.

I agreed, grudgingly, but hoped that he would forget once the date came nearer. He didn’t.

It was June 13th. A Friday, naturally. There was a small group of people invited. Relatives of the victims, law enforcement officials and one reporter. Me.

We, the audience, sat in nervous anticipation. Feet shuffled. Someone played with his keys. Throats were cleared.

Then, like a stage performance, the curtains opened.

Frank Sharp lay strapped down on a gurney. An IV had been inserted into his arm.

The warden looked at his watch innumerable times until the clock struck 12. He nodded and an unseen technician turned the valve that allowed the deadly cocktail to flow into Sharp’s veins.

First, sodium thiopental flowed through the tube causing unconsciousness.

Sharp tried to fight it, but sleep came over him rapidly, and after his eyelids twitched for a moment, he closed his eyes.

Pancuronium, which causes paralysis of the respiratory muscles, was then fed through the IV.

Finally, potassium chloride was added to stop the heart and cause death.

Moments later the prison doctor pronounced him dead. That simple.

Frank Sharp was gone. It was over.

And then it started.

Chapter 5 (X)

The dead woman’s contorted body was partially covered by trash in the green Dumpster directly behind a liquor store located in a strip center. The shops were just on the Washington side of the D.C.-Maryland line. A white line down the street separated the District from the state.

Only one leg, her right arm, her mouth and a mat of hair were visible.

The yellow, plastic police tape tied from a telephone pole near the Dumpster to a fire hydrant about 15 feet away flapped noisily in a light evening breeze.

A number of police cars from the District of Columbia and the Montgomery County, Maryland, police departments were haphazardly parked around and near the building. Police radio broadcasts from the patrol cars filled what had started off as a quiet night. The cars’ flashers cast a blue, white and red light show on the nearby buildings and houses.

There’s something sticking out of her mouth. Detective Mike Castillo stared down at the corpse.

Castillo, wearing white latex gloves and using a small MagLight, cautiously boosted himself into the Dumpster. He gripped the flashlight with his teeth, bent down and carefully examined the woman’s lifeless body, still partially obscured under a number of empty liquor boxes and other debris from several stores in the strip center.

It looks like a piece of paper, Castillo’s partner, Lourdes Dickson, said as she peered over the Dumpster’s edge. She was pointing her own flashlight down at the dead woman‘s mouth.

We need to wait for the M.E. and forensics before we can take a look at it, Castillo told her as he pulled himself out of the container.

Castillo was in his early 40s but looked ten years older. His prematurely white hair and wrinkled face seemed to attest to his 20 years on the force, where he had witnessed all too many times what human beings were capable of doing to one another. The weight of that knowledge was also probably why he had never married, never had a relationship that lasted more than a few months really. He was too eager to see the bad in people; to