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  Outside: Kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her.

  Rona Leigh made a sound, a small one, strangled, a sucking sound. She was trying to breathe. Everyone came to their feet. She gasped for air. Gasped and gasped again. Breathed out. Gasped.

  The People photographer stood and began snapping with a vengeance, no effort to hide what he was doing.

  Rona Leigh Glueck had survived her execution.

  8

  There is only one word for what happened next: pandemonium.

  Above us was Vernon, standing up on his chair. His arms were raised to God and his words came out in a roar: “Why do you make this din and weep? The girl is asleep, not dead. Talithi cumi! Girl, I say to thee, arise!”

  Even though the endless events of the moments to follow seemed to happen all at once, there was a sequence, one action following directly upon the last, and I committed them to memory. The warden, triggered by the madness in Vernon’s voice, calmly told the nurse to put the IV needle back in Rona Leigh’s arm. She said, “But there are no more drugs. I used what I was given.”

  Still calm, but a little louder, he ordered Captain Shank to go to the cabinet in his office and get the other vials of drugs. Shank’s eyes remained on Rona Leigh. Unable to take them off her, he backed out toward the door and fumbled at the doorknob.

  The warden shouted, “Shank! Move!” Shank was gone.

  Then the warden turned his attention back to the nurse. He said, “Girl, put the needle back in her arm.”

  She said, “It’s no longer sterile.”

  I thought his eyes would bug out of his head. “Sterile? We’re killin’ this woman, you damn fool!”

  The nurse looked down at the apparatus in her hands and threw it on the floor as if it were poison. It was poison. She became hysterical. The warden grabbed her and shook her.

  Rona Leigh thrashed against her bonds. The cardinal grabbed hold of her shoulders and started to recite the Lord’s Prayer.

  Gary darted up to the glass and yelled, “Let me in there and I’ll strangle the bitch with my bare hands!”

  Then he made a beeline for the door. The nearest guard took out his gun and pointed it at Gary’s face. Our eyes went from Rona Leigh to the gun. The Rangers and the rest of the guards drew their weapons. Gary yelled, “Go ahead, shoot me!” He pointed to the window. “Better yet, shoot her!”

  The guard smashed his gun butt into the side of Gary’s head. Gary went straight to the floor.

  Rona Leigh vomited up her last meal from McDonald’s.

  The technician went into training mode. He unbuckled the shoulder and arm belts and pulled Rona Leigh up to a sitting position. He pounded her back.

  The warden couldn’t believe what he was seeing but knew he was fast losing control. He dashed out of the death chamber and came into the witness room. He stood facing the governor, who had turned to stone. He grabbed him and shook him the same way he had the nurse.

  “Damn it, Governor, I got a thousand people outside waiting for word of that girl’s death.” He pointed down at Gary. “You see this fella? There’s a lot more a him outside. They will storm my unit. It’s up to you to help me here.”

  And the governor reverted to training too. He drew himself up and removed the warden’s hands from his shoulders.

  He said, “Bring the doctor to me.”

  The doctor, still in the death chamber, had turned to stone himself. The warden shouted, “Doc! Get out here right now.”

  The man didn’t move.

  “Doc! You fuckin’ hearin’ me?”

  A guard shoved the doctor. He came out of his fog. He left and came into the witness room. The governor said to him, “What is the condemned woman’s condition?”

  The doctor glanced back through the window. Rona Leigh was collapsed in the technician’s arms, shaking violently. “She is having seizures.”

  The warden said, “Any imbecile can see that.”

  The governor put his hand up. “Doctor, is the condemned woman going to die?”

  “I believe she is dying, sir, yes.”

  Another huge convulsion shook Rona Leigh. A wet stain appeared in her lap. We watched the urine trickle down off the table.

  The warden said to the doctor, “You at least got some kind of sedative on you till she does.”

  “No.”

  The warden looked to the door. “Where the hell’s Shank?” But the tone of his voice showed he held no hope that new drugs would appear, that he could backpedal and set things right.

  The governor said, “Under normal circumstances, Doctor, what would you advise for a woman in her condition?”

  “A woman poisoned?”

  The governor shut his eyes and then said, “Obviously.”

  “I would get her to a hospital, though I doubt a woman in the condition we are seeing would make it there.”

  The governor’s voice was quiet, but we heard him over the chant outside. “Then do it.”

  The warden’s eyes couldn’t have bulged any farther out of his head. “Governor, are you out of your mind? How the hell can we take this woman to a hospital?”

  “You call an ambulance, that’s how. An ambulance!” Then he said, “Officers!” The Rangers came to attention.

  “Full police escort. Set up roadblocks. Clear the highway of all civilian cars. One of you come with me, the rest get to work. I’m going outside to prevent a catastrophe. Let’s just hope to God she’s dead before the ambulance gets here and anyone finds out what happened.” He took in the room. “No one leaves this room till I give the order.” He looked at Frank and the photographer, with their little press cards hung around their necks. “Especially the two of you.”

  He headed for the door, the warden at his heels. They ran into Captain Shank. Shank said, “Warden, that refrigerator inside the cabinet was locked. Your wife couldn’t find the key.”

  The warden’s face was red as a beet. “It’s too damn late anyway.”

  And then Captain Shank took in Rona Leigh. He said, “Lord have mercy.”

  The warden started ordering everyone around. “Who is the Ranger in charge here?”

  Max Scraggs stepped forward.

  “Commander, you are to see that we have an ambulance and clear the highway between Gatesville and Waco. You are to follow that ambulance to Waco and stay with the prisoner.” Then he mumbled to himself, “Who’s going with her?”

  Harley Shank was right there. “I’ll go, sir.”

  “All right, then, Shank. You will ride in the ambulance. You are to cuff your left wrist to the prisoner’s. And with your right hand keep your weapon pointed at her head. If she gains consciousness tell her not to move. If she does, shoot her. Go into the hospital with her, do not unlock the cuffs, I don’t care what they’re doin’ to her. You will remain attached to the prisoner until you hear from me telling you otherwise. Do not dare to holster your weapon. There’ll be Rangers all over, but you’re my man and you don’t leave her.”

  Shank reverted to training. He stood at attention. “Yes, sir.” He took out a cell phone. He pressed one button.

  It was taking four guards now to hold Rona Leigh down. Her eyes had rolled to the back of her head.

  The warden said, “Where the hell’d the governor go?”

  “He’s waiting for you at the door.”

  “Tell him I’m coming. I need one more minute.”

  He took out a cell phone of his own, pressed one button, and ordered whoever answered to get every off-duty correctional officer to the Mountain View Unit.

  Then he said, “Commander Scraggs, I need two uniformed Rangers with me to go outside for the governor’s announcement. Make it look real official. And then see that he’s taken home in a police vehicle so he doesn’t get stopped at the roadblocks.”

  He said to the press secretary, “You go out and tell the crowd there has been a medical emergency postponing Rona Leigh’s execution. Till when, you don’t know. Just say—tell them Gary Scott has had a heart
attack. Tell them an ambulance is coming for him, and as soon as it gets him out there will be an announcement from the governor.”

  The press secretary said, “Sir, I don’t think—”

  “No one’s ever paid you to think, and we ain’t startin’ now. Go. Where’s that Scraggs?”

  “I’m right here. What you want has been taken care of.”

  “Good. Listen, we need all the personnel here you can get. Don’t know how much crowd control might be necessary.”

  “Already in motion.”

  “And you’ll need—”

  “There are a dozen vehicles on the way. They’ll be following me. I’ll be in the lead, ahead of the ambulance.”

  The warden told a guard to be sure the police vehicles lined themselves up along the driveway so they could follow behind the ambulance and the Ranger commander.

  Cardinal de la Cruz came out of the death chamber to ask the warden if he could accompany Rona Leigh to the hospital.

  “Eminence, you will stay here till things are under control and then you can go with me in my car to the hospital. Meanwhile, pray for us all. I have to tend to the people outside.”

  Rona Leigh made a loud gurgling noise and suddenly stopped thrashing. She lay still.

  The doctor and the cardinal ran back into the death chamber and bent over her. The doctor said, “I believe she…” He pressed the stethoscope to her chest. She struggled to take in a breath and, once she accomplished that, threw up a projectile of blood.

  Internal hemorrhaging was under way.

  I went to the warden. I said, “I want to ride with Scraggs to the hospital. It won’t hurt to have an FBI agent witnessing everything that’s going on.”

  He looked me up and down. He said, “That there is the truth. C’mon.”

  He pointed to the door. I took one last look at Rona Leigh. The nurse was wiping blood from her face.

  We found Scraggs in the corridor on his cell phone, trying to make someone understand that the governor would need a marked car to take him back to Austin. “A marked car, goddamn it, with every light flashing and the siren turned up. Just see it’s done.” He flipped his phone shut.

  I said to him, “The warden told me to go with you.”

  “Before or after you told him you should go?”

  “After.”

  He turned on his heel, waving me on, and I followed him out of the building. The cruiser was already idling and we got in. We watched the warden and the governor walk out of the Mountain View death house, through the outside gate, and up the driveway. The two climbed on the platform set up just outside the drive alongside State School Road, where the gathered crowd was huge. Kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her, kill her fizzled, and then it stopped.

  A whir and clicking of cameras filled the silence. The warden stepped up to the microphone, the governor shoulder to shoulder with him, but before he could speak the night was rent with the wail of a siren. The ambulance came flying down the road, high beams on, blue lights flashing, and took the turn into the driveway on two wheels before it screeched to a stop in front of the gate. Two paramedics leaped out, yanked a gurney out of the rear doors, and sped down the sidewalk.

  Scraggs said, “Jesus, those fools’ll kill her for sure. And themselves while they’re at it.”

  Over the loudspeaker, the warden’s voice was shrill and metallic. He said, “Ladies and gentlemen, we are taking care of an unexpected medical emergency. The execution of Rona Leigh Glueck has been postponed for one hour. The governor will speak to you shortly.”

  Scraggs turned on the radio, AM. We caught a newscaster mid-sentence. “… and the word I’m getting is that the widower of Melody Scott has suffered a heart attack. We will have the governor live in … according to the warden here at the Mountain View death house … in a few minutes.”

  The paramedics were out. They pushed the gurney back across the sidewalk surrounded by guards running with them, step for step. They loaded Rona Leigh into the ambulance. As ordered, Harley Shank’s left wrist was cuffed to hers, and his gun was out.

  The siren came back on. The ambulance drove around in a circle and pulled up behind us. Scraggs flipped on his own siren. I looked into the sideview mirror. Three cruisers were falling in line behind the ambulance. Scraggs hit the accelerator, and we took off through the gate.

  The radio newscaster said, “The ambulance that arrived just minutes ago has left the Mountain View Unit surrounded by Texas Ranger marked cars.… Wait a minute … here is the governor now.”

  There was a little dead air and then the governor’s voice came on, an echo of it coming at us from the outdoor loudspeaker. Scraggs turned up the radio volume. The voice was rock-firm.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, I stand here before you to say that an unpleasant duty has befallen us. I must pass along shocking news, unprecedented news. The prisoner Rona Leigh Glueck, condemned to die at this hour for the murders of Melody Scott and James Munter, did not succumb to the chemicals that were injected into her bloodstream at twelve o’clock midnight. She is dying, but she is not dead. I have had no choice but to act in humane a manner as possible. I have directed that she be removed from this unit by ambulance to a hospital that will not be named. She will receive the medical attention she requires, and if she recovers she will be returned to Mountain View, where her sentence will be carried out.

  “For the sake of justice, I can only hope she will be executed as soon as possible if she does survive the … the failed attempt to”—Scraggs and I looked at each other—“to carry out her sentence. I humbly thank you, and may God bless America.”

  Over the radio, the crowd came to life, mostly with cries to God for mercy.

  It was all drowned out by another siren. A second ambulance flew past us toward the prison, this one escorted by two Ranger squad cars in front and two in the back.

  Scraggs, his eyes straight ahead on the road, said, “Maybe someone decided to take care of the widower after all.”

  Suddenly, the headlights behind us veered left and the ambulance carrying Rona Leigh shot past us.

  Scraggs gripped the steering wheel. “What the fuck is he doing?” He smashed his foot down on the accelerator.

  The radio announcer was describing the arrival of the second ambulance. He said, “Now no one will confirm whether or not Rona Leigh was in the first ambulance or if she’s to be put into this one.…”

  We approached an overpass, the entrance to the bypass that would take the ambulance to Waco. But the ambulance didn’t turn into the entrance ramp, it kept going. I could see people standing on the overpass, poised. There were three of them.

  I screamed “Max!” but it was too late. Concrete blocks hit the front end of our car. We went into a spin. The police car behind broadsided us. I caught one last glimpse of the taillights of the ambulance and watched them blink out. The ambulance was swallowed by the black night.

  Another cruiser slammed into the one that had broadsided us, and we were sent spinning toward the concrete bridge abutment.

  * * *

  Scraggs and I got to listen to the intact radio during the long slow process of being pried out of his car. We would be black and blue over most of our bodies, but we were not killed. I knew right away by the Technicolor spirals all around my head that I’d suffered my second minor concussion in less than a week. Scraggs and I were jammed into each other by the newly concaved sides of the vehicle, plus the roof had lowered and the steering wheel had us wedged.

  The first thing Scraggs said was, “Are you all right, Agent?”

  I tried to get enough air into my squashed lungs to speak. I managed it. “Yeah, I am. You?”

  “Yeah.” Then he said, “Fuck me.”

  I said, “She escaped.” I would have added, Fuck me too, but speaking had loosed a chain saw in my brain.

  So he said, “Fuck me,” again. Then, “How the fuck did they do it?” Then, “Fuck me.”

  The announcer on the radio was babbling wildly. “Again,
I am saying this again, Rona Leigh Glueck did not die. She was executed but she lived! She lived through it. Her execution failed!

  “She is presently being transported to a hospital, we believe in Waco. Apparently, the governor made that decision once the doctor in the death chamber determined she was still alive after the execution was over.

  “Folks, the ax murderer Rona Leigh Glueck, who was to be put to death at midnight—eighteen minutes ago—was not … put to death. Rather she was, but she continued to breathe after the lethal injections were administered. There is no word as to her actual condition. We are trying to get someone … wait.…”

  He whispered, “Is this my producer?” Then, into the microphone, “Ladies and gentlemen, I don’t know if I’m hearing this correctly.… Jeff, is that you? This can’t be true.…”

  Scraggs said, “I’m afraid it is, Jack.”

  A Ranger’s face appeared hovering over the webbed windshield. “Sir, can you hear me?”

  “Of course I can.”

  “The Jaws of Life machine is on its way.”

  “Ain’t any a you boys got a fuckin’ crowbar?”

  “Yes, sir, but we don’t know the extent of your injuries, and we can’t take a chance that—”

  “There is no extent to my injuries.”

  “And your passenger?”

  “She’s fine.”

  “Commissioner wants to know who she is.”

  “Penelope Rice. FBI.”

  The Ranger looked at me. “You okay with our trying to get you out manually?”

  I said, “Go to it.”

  In the ten minutes it took to wrench the driver’s side door open, we listened to the newscaster and so did the guys with the crowbar, who kept pausing to shake their heads in disgust. Then the announcer went live to his man at the prison, who told us all:

  “There is a vast amount of confusion here at the Mountain View Unit. The governor has been driven away. Rangers are arriving, van after van. The driver of the second ambulance has been telling anyone who will listen that he was responding to the call and only his ambulance was sent. There was no other ambulance. His was not the second ambulance, his was the first one and the only one. He has been taken into the prison complex by several corrections officers.