The Volunteer Read online

  THE VOLUNTEER

  Barbara Taylor Sissel

  Also by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  The Ninth Step

  The Last Innocent Hour

  THE VOLUNTEER

  Barbara Taylor Sissel

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Text copyright 2011 Barbara Taylor Sissel

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  For my sister, Susan Harper, and critique partners, Colleen Thompson and Joni Rodgers, who also created the very evocative and atmospheric cover. And for my dear friend Jo Merrill. Their patience in reading and proofing multiple drafts of this manuscript and their input was invaluable.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Books wouldn’t exist without the readers who are willing to take a chance on them, who take the time to read and even to fall in love with a character, a setting, a story, and to then tell other readers about it. So thank you to all readers of every book, everywhere. There would be little magic or joy for me in this process without you.

  Thanks, too, to TJ Bennett, and Wanda Dionne for their writerly guidance, and to David Sissel and Christy Kleising, who one day over brunch, talked through, questioned, and brainstormed various plot aspects with me. That afternoon was such a help to me and I treasure the memory of it and all the time we spend together. Also, thank you to Lori Devoti for her technical know-how and support.

  I did a lot of research in the writing of this story, but I admired and returned repeatedly to three books in particular: Within These Walls, Memoirs of a Death House Chaplain, by Reverend Carroll Pickett with Carlton Stowers, Copyright 2002, St. Martin’s Press; Warden, Prison Life and Death From the Inside Out, by former Texas Warden, Jim Willett and Ron Rozelle, Copyright 2004, Bright Sky Press; and Texas Death Row, with photographs by Ken Light and essay by Suzanne Donovan, Copyright 1997, University Press of Mississippi. Each of these books was a revelation to me and I stand in awe of the courage that I imagine it must have taken to write them and, in the case of Texas Death Row, to take what is a riveting and brutally intimate collection of black and white photographs. All three of these books were both haunting and chilling and invaluable to creating at least the sensibility of the actual setting. Any inaccuracies depicted in my attempt to capture the essence of prison life are my own. I will always be grateful for these books and their contributors for their generous sharing of their experience. There were others who worked within the prison community in various capacities, who while they asked to remain anonymous, were generous in answering my questions and I am grateful to them as well. What emerged as I did this research was the deep ambiguity that seems to reside at the heart of the death penalty issue. Many of those who by virtue of their profession must carry through with this act in whatever capacity when it is court ordered are terribly conflicted, yet they do what is required with courage and dignity. They have my deep and heartfelt respect.

  Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth. ~ Buddha

  Chapter 1

  Tuesday, September 14, 1999 - 33 days remain

  Sophia doesn’t register the sound when the truck pulls into her driveway. She doesn’t hear the sharp click of the truck’s door when the man makes his exit or the approaching scrape of his steps that slow and then stop at the foot of the stairs. She isn’t aware that he’s watching her. She’s on the small landing above him, outside her office. She came out when her mother called, when the conversation grew heated, needing fresh air, a remedy, knowing there isn’t any. Not in this situation. She holds the cordless receiver a little away from her ear in a vain attempt to soften the complaint in her mother’s voice.

  “I won’t have it, Sophia,” her mother declares for at least the fifth time. “You had no right to take my car keys. I will not have you treating me like an incompetent teenager.”

  “Believe me, Mother, I’m not too thrilled about it either.” Sophia could laugh, it is such an understatement. “But the State of Texas has left us no choice. They’ve taken your driver’s license.”

  “They’re a bunch of fools! I told you that accident wasn’t my fault. The policeman who gave me the ticket was a smart aleck. He wouldn’t listen.”

  “Oh, Mother.” Sophia isn’t sure who she’s sorrier for. The only way she and Esther have managed to stay civil to one another is by keeping their distance. Now they will have to be involved almost daily. Sophia is disturbed by the prospect; she resents that it is all on her shoulders now and she’s unhappy with herself, that she can’t summon a more generous spirit. Loosening her gaze, she lets it wander over the backyard toward the lake. She will walk down there, she thinks, when her mother is finished with her tirade. She will take a glass of iced tea and sit at the end of the rickety dock and listen to the water slide against the shore.

  The man at the foot of the stairs shifts his feet. Above him Sophia registers the sound, but subliminally, the way you might divine a tiny foreshock, the one that in the moment seems random, but that is actually part of a larger pattern, an announcement of the greater explosion yet to come.

  “Frances wants to make peach cobbler,” Esther’s voice needles Sophia’s ear, “but she can’t because we haven’t any peaches. And we need a new birdfeeder. The old one’s lost its perch. I could drive us to get these things, but no, you took the car keys all because of a little fender bender. Everyone has them, Sophia.”

  “What is she saying, Sister?” Frances speaks in the background.

  “Just make a list, Mother,” Sophia says. “I’ll shop on Satur—”

  “No.” Esther is adamant.

  Sophia closes her eyes. She isn’t young herself anymore. How much of this can she do? Without losing her temper, her sanity? But now there is a discreet cough behind her and she turns and sees him, the man at the foot of the stairs.

  “Someone’s here, Mother. I have to go.”

  The man says her name: “Dr. Beckman? Sophia Beckman?”

  She clicks off the cordless and in the moment before she answers, along with a dart of annoyance, she has an unreasoning urge to run. Perhaps it is something in the man’s voice that unsettles her. The impulse is gone before she can decide.

  “I hope I didn’t scare you.” The man smiles.

  She doesn’t.

  “I’m Cort Capshaw,” he says.

  Sophia sets the phone on the small bench beside her office door and looks beyond him to what she assumes is his white pickup truck parked in her driveway. When she looks back, his gaze seems intense. The line of his jaw, the set of his shoulders is very determined, but not in a way that makes her feel threatened, only more impatient. He’s selling something. He’s going to have some take-no-prisoners spiel. “Can I help you?” she asks. He’s younger than she is but older than her daughter, Sophia decides. Carolyn is twenty-six. He’s nearer forty. Medium height, solidly built, cropped sandy-hair. There’s a quality of stillness to his presence that she could admire, but she won’t. She’s not buying regardless.

  “I’m a house painter.” He half turns to gesture across the street. “I’ve been working at Miz McKesson’s and before that I painted the Nelson’s house, around the corner?”

  “I’m not interested in having my house painted,” she says, although she’s well aware that the house needs work. In fact, she and Russ had discussed getting bids last fall.

  “Oh, I thought—that is Miz McKesson told me you might be putting the house on the market, that y
ou mentioned it would need a bit of sprucing up beforehand.”

  “I’m sure she meant to be helpful.” Sophia averts her glance. Nosy woman. It was true; she had told Lily McKesson that she was considering a move. Into something smaller. A rabbit burrow maybe or a tree hollow. Someplace small and obscure where life never fell into uncertainty.

  “Painting isn’t just for looks, you know. Can you see there?” His gesture describes an area of siding over the backdoor. “The old paint is flaking. Plus, I noticed a lot of mildew and just an overall chalking.”

  Sophia thanks the man for the information. She comes down the remainder of the steps. She’s thinking how warm it is for autumn, as if summer is reluctant to give up its tenancy. She’s thinking if she were rude, she would cut the painter short, tell him she has something more pressing to do.

  “What if I come back later and talk to your husband?”

  “He died a year ago,” Sophia announces and then wishes to bite off her tongue. What has gotten into her that she would blurt out to a complete stranger that she lives alone? Russ would be appalled.

  Cort Capshaw apologizes and says he had no idea.

  Sophia is murmuring the obligatory reassurance and thinking Nosy Lily must have failed to inform him of her loss when Lily’s Cadillac pulls to the curb. Speak of the devil....

  “You said you needed a painter,” she calls through the lowered car window.

  “Yes, I suppose I did.” Sophia raises her voice.

  “Cort does excellent work, all by hand. There wasn’t a speck of damage or a drop of paint to be found on a single one of my azaleas. You won’t find anyone better, Sophia.”

  The painter hollers his thanks.

  Lily waves and drives off.

  Cort hands Sophia a business card.

  Capshaw and Company it reads in addition to his name. House painting, custom remodeling and renovation. Quality service.

  “If you like, you could call the historical society in town. I do a lot of preservation work for them. Actually it’s what I prefer, but circumstances being what they are, you know, with the economy....”

  Sophia angles her gaze toward the house.

  “Why don’t I work up a bid and leave it with you along with a list of references? In case you change your mind,” he adds.

  She hesitates, feeling herself frown even as she agrees. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.” She isn’t sure what prompts her. His talk of hard times, perhaps, her inclination to be helpful.

  She asks how long the job will take, “Assuming I accept your bid,” she cautions.

  He paces the drive, eye to the roofline. “A couple of weeks, if the weather holds, which this time of year....”

  She nods. He could mean because it’s the tag-end of hurricane season, or perhaps he’s referring to the vagaries of south Texas weather in general.

  A pause falls. One heartbeat’s worth of silence is followed by two and three. A hot wind scoots a swirl of sun-dried leaves along the driveway, scattering them over the grass where it verges on the concrete.

  Sophia lifts her hand indicating the iron-railed steps she had, minutes ago, descended. “I have an office upstairs. People coming and going. Will they have access?”

  “Shouldn’t be a problem. I’ll use a ladder over here instead of scaffolding. It’ll take up less room.”

  “I’m keeping a limited schedule of appointments at present.”

  “That’s understandable, considering your recent loss.”

  “I’m a psychologist.”

  “I know,” he tells her. “I know who you are.”

  Their glances clash. His look is searching as if he’s waiting for Sophia to recognize him. Should she?

  “Two years ago,” the painter says, “I followed Jody Doaks’ trial; you were interviewed on TV. The story was big news.”

  Sophia shifts her glance, thoroughly regretting now that she has encouraged him. What is it about appearing on television that causes perfect strangers to assume you welcome their attention? In the months since the trial she has been approached in the grocery store and the dentist’s office; people have followed her across parking lots, argued with her over the median at the gas pump. Once, a woman blocked Sophia’s exit from the ladies room at the mall threatening to hold her there until she agreed to recant the testimony she’d given on Jody’s behalf. The woman had ranted that Sophia was the devil incarnate. If only, Sophia had thought. She would have whipped out her pitchfork and prodded the woman in her ample behind.

  “I’m against the death penalty, too,” the painter says, assuming, erroneously, that Sophia shares his opinion, when, in all honesty, she isn’t certain. “I don’t think it works as a deterrent to anything other than our humanity, do you? Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I think Doaks should ever get out.”

  Sophia thinks of Jody. Poor demented, pathological Jody. Charming in the extreme. A baby-faced man who called his sister Momma because she’d raised him. A man who professed to love children, but who, in actuality, loved having sex with children. When the police searched the farm where Jody lived, they turned up the bodies of eight children buried John Wayne Gacy style in a crawl space under an old shed on the property. Jody had given Sophia this detail along with others that were more horrifying when he’d broken down during his third session with her in as many days. She is still uncertain how she managed to stay calm, handing him tissues to dry his copious tears, while he confessed he was doing things, hideous things to children, and he couldn’t stop. Sensing there was more, Sophia had prodded him very carefully and gotten him to confide in her about three-year-old Benny Chu, who at that very moment had been locked inside a room of Jody’s house. Jody hadn’t cleared the driveway before Sophia called the police.

  Without a single thought of the ramifications. It had been like running into a burning building. That was how she explained it to Russ. She hadn’t considered the risk. Hadn’t reckoned that as a result of her impulse she would be caught up in a maelstrom of publicity, hounded by reporters for weeks on end and subpoenaed by the State to give expert testimony, all of which, as Russ had pointed out, left her, and by association, Russ, himself, vulnerable to exposure. Which was unfortunate, but they both knew there was no question of letting Jody go. And in any case, for all Sophia knows, the very fact that Jody chose her to confess to, and not some other psychologist, might very well have been a test, the gift of a second chance to do the right thing.

  Not that it absolves her. She can never be forgiven for her past wrongdoing. But at least Benny was found alive and relatively unharmed, to his parents’ eternal gratitude. But that’s something else Sophia doesn’t deserve.

  “It was a good thing you did saving that boy,” the painter says now.

  Sophia doesn’t respond. Admiration is one more thing she isn’t comfortable with. A lot of it turned sour anyway when during the punishment phase of Jody’s trial, she made the controversial statement that she was unsure whether it was right to execute a man who couldn’t understand why he was being put to death. Certainly what Jody had done was of the blackest evil, but should he die for it? Who is she to judge? She of all people?

  “Do you still see him?”

  Sophia glances sidelong at the painter. Suppose he isn’t a painter but a reporter? That would explain the overly meaningful looks he’s been giving her. But in all likelihood he’s merely curious like the countless others who have no qualms about approaching her. “If you could leave the bid on the patio table under the hurricane lamp...?”

  “That’ll work,” he says. “It was nice meeting you,” he adds. “Interesting.” The word is tacked on.

  Sophia has no idea what he means. Not then.

  Chapter 2

  Friday, September 17, 1999 - 30 days remain

  Grace has told him that she repainted their bedroom the same shade, robin’s egg blue. She still sleeps under the quilt they shared, one that his mother pieced for them as a wedding gift. His favorite ball cap hangs where he left it on a
hook in the mudroom. She talks as if she expects him to walk back through the door one day and magically, their lives will be restored to the time in the beginning of their marriage when they were happy.

  Often when she visits him, she’ll put her palm to the thick sheet of Plexiglas that separates them and say, “If only you could see it,” as if he’s in a hospital and suffering from a loss of memory. But he isn’t. No.

  Jarrett swings his feet over the side of the bunk onto the concrete floor. He’s housed at the Terrell Unit outside Livingston, Texas, prisoner number 22116. The black block letters DR on the back of his shirt stand for death row. Forty-one days ago the court granted his request to end all appeals on his behalf and set the date for his execution. Forty-one days ago he became a dead man walking, a man they call a volunteer.

  He’s not winning any popularity contests for it. The other guys on the row look on what he’s done like it’s an act of treason. “Why you gotta make it easy, Capshaw?” they ask.

  “The death penalty is wrong, bro, why you gotta go and ask for it?

  “What the hell, man? What the fuck...?”

  What’s the point? That’s Jarrett’s comeback. If he was innocent, it would be different. But he isn’t. He murdered two of the three people who died that day during the government raid. Two men within minutes of each other. And the hell of it is, he didn’t intend on shooting either of them. One was Grace’s father. But the other one, the murder for which he received the death penalty, had been a federal marshal, someone Jarrett didn’t even know.

  A complete stranger.

  And he’d gunned him down. A guy near his own age, Jarrett found out later, with a wife and three kids he loved the way Jarrett loves Grace and their three children. They say Jarrett took the marshal’s life in cold blood. But Jarrett’s blood had not been cold; it had been hot to the point of boiling him alive. And that short, heated, brutal act that had taken so little time or space preys on him daily. His mind replays it, an endless loop: the figure looms in the doorway, he whips around, Grace’s father’s .38 in his hand. Bang-bang. The two shots come in quick deafening succession.