The Origins of Infamy

PROLOGUE


     Late in the afternoon on the eve of my execution, my biographer posed a question: “If given the choice between shark attack, or being drowned by an alligator, which way would you prefer to die?”
      “Well, that all depends,” I said to Dick Larsen, seated opposite me in a folding metal chair, “on the size and species of the fish. A shark attack would be over quicker if you were taken by a Great White. Its teeth would penetrate your abdomen and your lungs would fill with blood before you knew what hit you, or puncture the femoral artery if it bit off your leg. You’d be comatose with shock and not actually feel what it’s like to drown because you’d have passed out from loss of blood by then. A smaller predator, say, a five-foot long Hammerhead mistaking you for a fish, would prolong the agony by nipping at you a few times and leaving you to bleed to death slowly-that is, if the other sharks, scenting you, don’t finish the job first.”
“I agree. For posterity, too, it would seem more heroic to perish at sea,” Dick reasoned.
He was writing notes in preparation for an afterword to his latest edition of my biography, The Deliberate Stranger, first published in 1980. We had known each other since the early 70’s, when I was working for the re-election campaign of Washington State Governor Dan Evans and Dick was a political reporter for the Seattle Times. In the last few days he’d done his best to keep the conversation light, hoisting my spirits with tales of last minute rescues from Ol’ Sparky, the ghoulish nickname given to the oaken throne upon which I was to be electrocuted bright and early the following morning. Dressed in jeans and an unironed button-down shirt, he was sincere and unpretentious, with congenial mannerisms that eased somewhat the instinctive mistrust I’d reserved for the countless self-serving evangelists that arrived at my cell that week with tape recorders in hand. Unlike other last-minute visitors with hidden agendas, he seemed to recognize the uselessness of referencing meaningless Scripture, reciting the Lord’s Prayer, or prying a confession from my lips on the day before my death.
      “Although,” it occurred to me, “dying in the jaws of an alligator does have the lure of the exotic.”
      “Exotic? Hardly,” he said, returning my mischievous smile. “An alligator would tease you for a while before it killed you, maybe let you swim up to the surface before pulling you under. Sort of the way a cat swats at a dazed mouse before killing it. Not to mention, your bloated corpse, half-chewed by fish, would wash up on the bank a few days later, and you would have to be identified. Not too glamorous a way to be remembered.”
     I saw right through this morbid discussion as Dick’s method of desensitizing the impact of my looming execution. His face, wearied by the sorrow of hopelessness, was etched with deeply creviced seams, the kind drawn on the expressions of the longshoremen debarking the ships moored alongside the bulkheads of Tacoma, Washington, my hometown. When he asked if I had any lingering thoughts I might wish to share with him, here on the eve of my passing, a great silence filled the cell as I thought of what to say.
      “Take your time,” he said, leaning both elbows on his knees and peering into my eyes, as though silently and with clairvoyant exactness he was preparing to shepherd me across the deep and treacherous rivers of the afterlife. Although he never gave me any reason to disbelieve him, the way rheumatics can feel a front of inclement weather aching their bones, I sensed he was narrowing in on an incriminating matter he wanted to discuss. With the jovial façade of our trivial conversation behind us, the room grew maddeningly silent. The solace of knowing that the misery of my anticipation would be over soon, and that I would probably be dead by this time tomorrow, offered little relief for my anguish. “What I mean, Ted, is that we’re coming to the end of the road here, and what with about seventeen hours left, give or take, now might be as good a time as ever to get whatever it is you need to off your mind.” He spoke evasively, covering the scent of his tracks as he did whenever stealing down the passages of my blood-soaked memories. “You know, cleanse your soul, so to speak, before tomorrow.”
     Despite his vow of confidentiality, during the few afternoons we had met I never told him or anyone else about all the killings. Neither did I recount the details of every murder I committed. What incentive was there for me to repent now? I held out little hope for clemency or a last minute pardon. My appeals had been exhausted, and Governor Martinez had already signed my death warrant. The authorities would never find where I scattered the remaining bodies. I made certain of that. Until now, I figured that the satisfaction of taking a few secrets with me to the chair was a small measure of revenge, a keepsake from this life I’d take with me to the other side. Savvy of prison rules of barter and exchange, I bargained for one last walk outside in the fresh air while I considered whether to answer him.