The Last Mile (Amos Decker, #2)(3)

Texas killed you dead whether you took it brave or not.

The Supreme Court had debated the cruel and unusual aspects of death by lethal injection because of quite a few instances where the inmate had been in terrible agony before he died. The court had come down on the side of letting it continue, appalling agony be damned. It wasn’t like the condemneds’ victims hadn’t suffered horrific pain and fear. So who could say they were wrong? Mars couldn’t. He just hoped they got it right with him.

The death chamber was not large, nine by twelve feet, with cheery turquoise-painted brick walls and metal door, which seemed out of place with the room’s purpose. You were being executed, not vacationing in the Caribbean.

The gurney, which came with a comfy pillow and sturdy leather straps, was set near the center of the room. There were two adjacent rooms with glass windows looking into the chamber. One was for families of the victim. The other was for family of the person being executed.

Mars knew that in his case the groups were one and the same. And he also knew that both rooms would be empty.

He sat back on his bunk soaking in the stink of his own sweat, his mind drifting back to the only good memories he had left.

He was hardly a jumbo in the world of college football, but he’d been big for a running back. Most important, he’d been long on talent. The NFL was considered a lock for someone like him. He had been a Heisman Trophy finalist his senior year, the only tailback in the group. The others had all been quarterbacks. He could run over, around, or simply through anyone. He could block, and his soft hands could catch the ball coming out of the backfield. And he nearly always made the first guy miss with an instinctive lateral move—a rare talent the NFL gurus lapped up.

And when he needed the turbos they flared to life and he was gone. The only thing left to do was hand the ball to the ref after scoring and go let coach pat his butt on the sidelines.

His official time in the forty-yard dash at the combine was 4.31 seconds. Twenty years ago that was serious speed even for a corner or a receiver, much less a monster running back with shoulders as wide as the sky who made his living smashing between the tackles. And it would still be considered exceptional wheels even today.

God-given it was. He was the total package. A freak of nature, they called him.

He felt a smile spread across his sweaty face.

Yes, a lock. A lock with a big paycheck. This was long before the salary constraints for rookies had been implemented. He could have scored big bucks from day one, millions and millions of them. A mansion, cars, women, respect.

He was a guaranteed first rounder, everyone said. Probably top five. He would probably go ahead of several of the quarterbacks he had competed against for the Heisman. It was rumored that the New York Giants, coming off a couple crappy years, and the Tampa Bay Bucs, coming off many crappy years, and both armed with a high draft pick, would love to take him and open the bank of their wealthy owners in doing so. Hell, he might even hoist some Super Bowl hardware one day. It was all looking good. He’d worked his ass off for all of it. No one had given him anything. The hurdles had been immense. He had leapt them all.

And then the jury had spoken. “We find the defendant guilty”—and no one in the world of professional football gave a damn about 4.31 Mars, Melvin anymore.

Jumbo had crashed.

There were no survivors.

And in a few minutes, there would be no more of him. He would be laid to rest in a potter’s field because he had no one left to bury him proper.

He would have been forty-two years old in two months. His forty-first had been his very last birthday, as it turned out.

He looked at his watch again. The time was up. His watch told him that, and so did the sound of the footsteps coming down the hall.

He had long since made up his mind. He would die like a man. Back straight, head high.

Suddenly he felt a lump in his throat and his eyes moistened. He tried to breathe normally, trying to keep it all together. This was it. He looked around his cell and saw the walls of his death row cage back at the Polunsky Unit.

See you, Sue, you fine woman. Adios, Johnny. Godspeed, Ben. Take care, Reed.

He stood and put his back against the wall, maybe to stiffen his spine.

Like going to sleep, man. You just ain’t waking up is all. Like going to sleep.

The door to his cell opened and the men were revealed standing there. Three suits and four uniforms. The suits looked terrified, the uniforms ticked off.

Mars noted this, and also that there was no man of the cloth holding his Bible.

Something was definitely off.

The man with slender glasses and a build to match stepped gingerly into the cell as though he expected the door to close, trapping him inside forever.

Mars could seriously relate to the feeling.

The other suits’ expressions were now wary, like they knew there was a bomb in here somewhere but they had no idea when it might go off.

Skinny Glasses cleared his throat. He looked at the floor, the wall, the ceiling, the one light high up on the ceiling, everywhere except at Mars. It was as though the big, sweaty biracial dude five feet from him was invisible.

He cleared his throat again. To Mars it sounded like all the muck jostling around in the world’s largest sewer.

Staring at the floor now, Skinny Glasses said, “There’s been an unexpected development in your case. Your execution has been called off.”

Mars, Melvin didn’t say anything back.