Death Row Casanova
by Edward C. Lynskey

The unearthed corpse’s wristwatch was ticking. It was quarter past three. I unhooked the leather band. Using my thumbs, I rubbed the back to check the inscription: "To PN, Love WF". PN was Pam Nunn and WF stood for Wes Ferrol. Pam was the object of my search; her husband Wes was behind bars on death row.
The single gunshot hole I saw planted between Pam’s eyebrows unnerved me. So did the maggots. At once, my throat twisted from the raw stench of human decay. Grabbing my gut, doubled over, I retched.
Wiping my mouth, I adjusted the metal detector’s headset, prowled the marked off grid. I dug a zinc canning jar lid, nothing else. Disgusted, I leaned the detector against my knee. It bleeped. Crouching, I clawed a snub-nose .38 from the dirt. Pam’s execution had been swift, methodical, the weapon then discarded. I saw someone had filed its serial number smooth before tucking it into my pocket with the wristwatch.
Anxious to depart, I covered up Pam in her shallow grave and walked at length down the logging road. Straining to peer through the late April foliage, I made out the Tudor mansion where Pam’s parents resided. I crept in closer. Could it be any grimmer and grayer? Satisfied with my surveillance, I backtracked and sprinted the last quarter mile to the main road where my truck waited. While stowing the metal detector behind the cab seat, I felt nothing but relief to be out of the murky woods.
Driving to town, I pondered how I was obligated to report Pam Nunn’s crime scene to the Seneca County Sheriff’s Department. I had my reasons why that was not to happen just yet. Their corruption and ineptness topped my list.
The day was shot and so was I, but the trek to Glasgow Correctional Facility would take all night. After tanking up and buying a carton of cigarettes, I settled behind the wheel, pressed pedal to the metal. The blackness outside matched that in my heart.
* * *
"Well, who peed in your cornflakes, Skeeter?" Wes Ferrel barked on the telephone.
We had the visitors’ corral at Glasgow Correctional Facility all to ourselves. Death row inmates weren’t permitted to mingle with the general prison population.
I stared bleary-eyed through the smudgy Plexiglas partition separating us. Wes had sprouted a Fu Manchu beard since my previous visit. Constantly he fidgeted and twitched in his seat, a nervous energy he never burned off.
"Hey, I’ve been rattling down I-81 for eight hours," I defended myself.
We chewed the fat for a while. I mentioned the scorching weather due ahead. According to Wes, a spooky-ass wind rustled over the death row roof in the quiet of night. He laughed. I shivered. Despite the antiseptic aroma of Pine-Sol and ammonia, I abhorred the filth surrounding me.
"Skeeter, did you look at any bass boats?" He winked twice.
That was my cue to converse in code because the prison superintendent had our conversations monitored. Wes just inquired if I’d located Pam’s body. In a smuggled out letter, he had proposed the idea to sweep a metal detector through the stretch of woods behind the Nunn’s place. He’d also devised our code speak.
"Yep, I purchased one, but haven’t caught jack." Yes, I replied, her body was where Wes had suggested.
"Does it ride tight?" he wondered. Did I tip off the Sheriff’s Department?
"Like pantyhose on a mermaid," I replied. No, I hadn’t involved the Sheriff.
Now came my turn to pose what was on my mind. "Any messages for your dad?" Whom, I wished to learn, did Wes finger for Pam’s killer?
"Tell him to crawl up my ass and die." Wes’ harsh glare almost cracked the Plexiglas. He was adamant. He thought Pam’s mother, Mrs. Nunn, had lured her own daughter into the woods, then pumped a slug into her skull. My discovery of Pam’s body behind the Nunn’s place only confirmed Wes’ suspicion.
Dumfounded, I flinched when he rapped on the Plexiglas.
"You tell him that, dammit," Wes insisted. "I mean every word."
I nodded. A pair of sadistic thugs in pressed browns hauled Wes off behind riveted doors. As I exited the visitors’ corral, the sergeant on duty at the green metal desk yawned behind a men’s magazine, waved me through.
"Later, Mr. Salazar," he said.
As I turned around to correct him, the steel door clanged shut on my nose. I doubled my stride through the parking lot. In truth, my muscles and nerves did not relax until I had motored beyond the curlicues of razor wire and cleared the outermost prison gate. Having cranked both windows down, I prayed all the way home that I would always walk the chalk straight, never end up like Wes.
* * *
In a previous incarnation, Wes and I had been partners in a private-detective firm lucrative enough to keep us solvent. We siphoned off the seedy stuff like photographing philandering spouses that the very selective big city agencies refused. There was plenty of seedy stuff, too. Due to client-confidentiality, Wes and I rarely if ever discussed our individual cases, but the afternoon the Sheriff barged in and led Wes away in handcuffs, that policy changed.
"Say what? You were boning your married client?" We were leaning across the courtroom rail at Wes’ arraignment, talking in fierce, clipped whispers. A hatchet-faced deputy sheriff glowered at our noise.
"Uh-huh. Turned out the husband wasn’t cheating on Mrs. Nunn. Then she decided to give it a fling. Call me the sap there to catch her." Wes’ eyes darted left, right as if planning a spontaneous jailbreak.
"You wised up, terminated the hanky-panky?" I saw the court stenographer asking the deputy sheriff to move a table and lamp. Grunting from the effort, he kept an eye on us, too.
"Yep. Told her I was bored with slinking around. I was sick and tired of playing her backdoor man."
Wincing, I rolled my eyes imagining the unsavory scene. Still, I could read his mind about what ensued next. "So, pissed off, Mrs. Nunn swiped your piece. Next, she blew away the liquor store clerk, planted your piece, snatched the greenbacks, and tripped the silent alarm. Crying a river, she dialed you, begged to meet her one last time . . ."
Wes polished off the narrative. "Which I couldn’t resist. I pulled in seconds before the fuzz charged up. In a daze, I stood at the counter, my piece in hand." He paused. "If I stick to that script, what are my chances of beating this rap?"
The deputy sheriff was prodding Wes to trudge before the Judge’s bench. Wes almost tripped but the cloddish bailiff grabbed him by the long hair to break his fall.
"Slim to nil," I muttered under my breath. "She framed you like the Mona Lisa."
Judge Ritter, a divorced cuss Wes had once photographed in salacious positions at a sugar shack for his ex-wife, predictably refused to release Wes on bail. Weeks later, the trial was a travesty. Wes’ defense attorney was beat down the first morning by the D.A.’s objections. I was seething.
At lunch, I briefly spoke to Wes in the corridor waiting between his guards at the elevator.
"The D.A. has your lawyer hamstrung," I told him.
Wes, mumbling through the side of his mouth, replied, "What’s worse, the Judge has disallowed any testimony about Mrs. Nunn. She’s paid him off. My goose is cooked."
"Shut up and get on," the deputy sheriff growled, shoving Wes into the elevator while the other deputy blocked my entry.
The next morning, the jury dozed through the D.A. painting Wes to be a cold-blooded psychopath. After a lunch break at the local saloon, the jurors tottered back into the courtroom. Their verdict was guilty of murder one. Smirking, Judge Ritter imposed the maximum sentence -- death by electrocution. The predatory D.A gloated. I envisaged my best friend going up in smoke.
From the corner of my eye, I glimpsed Mrs. Nunn ducking past the stampede of reporters. When she glanced back by the door, her face appeared strained and pale.
For a price, illicit merchandise, even wives and girlfriends showing up for conjugal visits, flowed in and out of Glasgow Correctional Facility. That is how I had received the first letter from Wes in the mail two months after his incarceration. Holed up in my office, I slit open the brown envelope and read aloud:
Dear Frank,

You’re not to suffer a heart attack, but I’ve gotten married! Yeah, that’s right, Skeeter, I beat you to the punch. Wish me well. Pam Nunn and I were pen pals 
and next thing you know it was wedding bells for us. She’s mustering a defense 
fund to re-open my case. Any aid you might lend her is much appreciated from 
this hellhole.
Aces,
Wes
Curious, I tugged out the local telephone directory. Sure enough, Pam Nunn resided on Fitzwater Drive that I clocked ten minutes away from my office. I rapped on the red door inside a two-story house carved up into snug apartments. A baby wailed. A dog yapped. The dryer chirred. I went to knock again when the door flew open.
A genuine looker in black jeans and a pink crop top, Pam Nunn smiled and we hugged after I introduced myself. An oscillating fan on a throw rug stirred a breeze across the kitchen where we sat. Her roommates were away. The beer she popped for me was good and cold. From the start, we hit it off. She was a sweet kid.
"May your future days turn sunny," I toasted the newlyweds before a sip.
"Oh, thanks a bunch, Mr. Johnson," she gushed.
"Jeez, I’m busting a gut here. Just how did a gal next door like yourself wind up hitched to a death row con?"
"He proposed me. I accepted." Pam’s blue eyes were steady and serious. "We’re very much in love, Mr. Johnson."
"Uh-huh. How did you guys hook up?" I quizzed her.
"I responded to a personal ad he’d posted in a men’s magazine." Pam crossed her legs, took a long, soulful sip. "His words struck a chord in me. I guess you could say we just clicked."
"Do your parents approve?"
Defiance pinching her chiseled features, Pam tilted her chin. "I’m a mature 22 and college-educated, Mr. Johnson. I make up my own mind. Daddy is always abroad. Mother is a raving lunatic. Well, what can she do to oppose it? I’m of legal age."
"Wes has, you understand, a checkered history. There were, for instance, other babes before you stole his heart." Embarrassed, I peeled off the bottle label, refused to meet her direct gaze.
"What’s past is past," Pam decreed. "Wes loves me and that’s all I care. Listen, did you come to judge him or to extend a helping hand?"
The force of her conviction swayed me to abandon broaching the topic of her mother’s affair with Wes. "Sign me up," I agreed. "We’ll see about time. I still have a P.I. firm to run."
With a head for figures, Pam had scrapped together several thousand dollars for Wes. I sold my vintage GTO and redeemed my savings bonds to chip in. After that infusion of cash, Pam had the account put in both our names. When we had cultivated a nifty sum, I contacted Tapscott, a sharpie lawyer Wes and I had consulted in the past. Despite distracted by this hectic schedule, I had enough presence of mind to spot the Valiant tailing my moves, but I couldn’t be bothered by it.
We soon met in the parking lot behind the bowling alley. The kid climbing out of the Valiant was about my height but he was nowhere near the same girth. Almost comically, the kid approached me toting a tire iron, his gait cocky and athletic. I slouched against my truck door, a bit uneasy but feeling authoritative.
He squared off several paces from me, pointed the tire iron. "Mister, if you don’t give Pam Nunn wide berth, I’ll slug you to a senseless pulp."
"Hey, wait a second. Pipe down, kid," I suggested. "Ms. Nunn is only my client."
"Then why is your nose forever lodged up her butt?" the kid demanded.
"Don’t see how that’s any of your business," I replied. "Suffice to say, I’m assisting Pam to spring her husband from jail."
The kid’s jaw dangled in disbelief. "Husband? Oh hell, she’s married? When?"
"Yep. Guess that fish swam away from you." I straightened up, hand extracted from my pants pocket. The 9mm wiggled for his benefit. "Plenty of others in the sea. Go on, bait your hook and plop it off the wharf. Something else will nibble, kid."
The kid fumed and stomped both feet, whipping himself up into a jealous snit. Again, he jabbed the tire iron in my direction. "You inform Pam Nunn I love her. She was mine and broke a vow."
"Do your own bidding, kid."
Yelling, the kid sprang at me, heaving his weapon. I dodged his onslaught, the tire iron whapped the truck fender. Pirouetting like a bear, I hacked the 9mm tomahawk-style and thwacked the kid behind the ear. Staggering, he released the tire iron, his backing steps wobbly.
Retrieving the tire iron, I carted both to the Valiant and tucked them in. "Some free advice, kid. Never bring this to a gunfight."
"Pam is mine. I’ll kill her," he threatened before I thrust his car door closed. The mean little pisspot worried me enough to install deadbolt locks on Pam’s apartment doors. My precautions, as it turned out, were too little too late.
* * *
Once I returned from Glasgow, I drove straight to my office and inside the door tripped over the mail order catalogs peddling gadgets and gizmos for professional crimefighters. The red light was twinkling on the answering machine. I had one message from Tapscott. He had banked his retainer and sat poised to explore legal strategies to spring the wrongfully convicted Wes. This newfangled DNA technology, Tapscott pointed out, offered a promising option.
Still, I didn’t return Tapscott’s call. Something about visiting Wes hours earlier bugged me. Smoking, I wilted there in the night, stared out the parted venetian blinds. Caution lights flashed atop the radio tower on a remote, wine dark mountain. I brooded over how Wes could plot against his tormenter, Mrs. Nunn. Of course, the depths of Mrs. Nunn’s depraved spite knew no bounds. Once spurned, she had framed Wes for the liquor store clerk’s murder, then gunned down her own daughter married to Wes and devoted to securing his freedom. I wondered to what lengths Wes might now go.
On a hunch, I telephoned a cousin who worked for the F.B.I. up at Quantico. He answered on the third buzz.
"Mike, Frank Johnson here. I need some information corroborated."
"Sure, but same as before my hands are tied by regulations. The best I can do is to deny or acknowledge whatever you have." Mike’s resolute, commanding bass was reassuring.
"One name," I said. "A Mr. Salazar. Is he sought by the Feds?"
"Hector Salazar is an alias." Mike coughed to clear his throat. "But yes, very much so."
"Is his stock in trade of a violent nature?" I quizzed.
"As well as a master of disguise and deception. You hold one more chit, Frank. Make it count."
"He’s a wise guy," I speculated. "A professional hit man based, say, on the East Coast."
"Bingo. Sorry, I have a meeting," Mike said before severing the connection.
Kayoed by a bourbon bottle, I nodded asleep tilted back in my executive chair, boots propped up on an extracted file drawer. In the morning, skipping a solid breakfast, once on the road, I caught my adolescent stalker in the rearview mirror. This time the kid lagged a respectable pace behind me. I rejected my first impulse to shake him. I had to intercept a hit man named Salazar and prevent further bloodshed.
Reaching the wayside where I’d parked before on the main road, I noted the kid had also pulled over. He waited. Sighing, I wedged the 9mm into my waistband, scuttled into the woods to the logging road. Jogging, I covered the distance to Pam’s gravesite in short order. Huddled behind a laurel bush, I detected the kid’s footfall tramping louder and louder over dry leaves. When he huffed into view, I stepped out.
"Kid, after all these months behaving yourself, are you shadowing me again?" I asked.
Startled, the kid’s gawky legs tangled but he regained his balance. He had nurtured a fringe of chin whiskers and a wispy mustache. He was also smart enough to leave the tire iron in the trunk.
"You sneaked out here to rendezvous with Pam. I overheard at the gun shop that she quit grad school, moved back in with her parents." His ferret eyes shrewdly gauging my reaction were disappointed at my bland expression.
"That girl’s under your skin real bad, huh?" I grabbed him by the collar. "There is one sure cure." My angry outburst surprised even my own ears. My temper was overheating, my sore eyes burning.
Once I dragged the protesting kid over, I toed away the dirt to unveil the Pam Nunn’s chalky face. The kid’s hands shielded his eyes. He shrieked, jerked free from my grasp.
"Hey, come take a good, long look," I shouted after him. "Breathe the stench of death and decay, kid. Nothing in the world like it." The kid’s sobbing receded as he streaked back to flee in the Valiant.
Shaken, I squatted on a stump and smoked a cigarette. Once composed, I backfilled the dirt over Pam’s rictus and loped down the logging road. Breathless, I stumbled upon Mrs. Nunn sunning herself on the back patio. She cringed, but remained lying in the chaise lounge, her tan offsetting the orange bikini.
"Listen to me," I managed to utter between wheezes. "You are in danger. A hit man is after you. His name is Salazar."
Tugging on a terrycloth robe, Mrs. Nunn spoke in a subdued but even voice. "You might make better sense, Mr. Johnson, if you’d slow down and start at the beginning."
I sat on the brick wall. "Wes Ferrol had an affair with you. He ended it. Out of scorn, you set him up for murder and . . ."
Snapping her fingers, Mrs. Nunn cut me off. "Whoa, mister. You’re way off track. As far as I know, the liquor store robbery was Wes’ doing. I know he was always strapped for cash. God only knows I coughed up enough bucks to hire him a trial lawyer."
"You covered Wes’ legal expenses?" I asked, incredulous.
"You think Wes could afford the Hobart & Wilson firm? Look, Wes and I enjoyed a few laughs together. I called it quits. My marriage and family had to take priority again."
"Even after he married your daughter Pam?" My frown deepened. "From death row."
"Naturally I was opposed to the idea. Especially since Wes and I were ex-lovers." Tearful, Mrs. Nunn looked away, her shoulders tense. "When Pam heard, it seemed to make her more determined than ever. She knows it hurts me. A mother, I suppose, pays for her reckless mistakes."
As soon as I began to realize I had had things backwards, my rage gave way to pangs of pity. "I’m sure Pam was misguided by her youth, not a vindictive disrespect." I rested a palm on Mrs. Nunn’s quivering shoulder before slipping into the forest.
Back at my office, the answering machine’s red light blinked. It was Salazar. He wanted his fee, $10,000 in cash, for killing Pam Nunn. So: Wes thought I’d underwrite his ultimate revenge inflicted on Mrs. Nunn. Fat chance, you lying son of a bitch.
I contacted the Sheriff about the Pam Nunn crime scene, then the funeral home director. That finished, I grieved for the sweet kid in black jeans and pink crop top. By then, darkness engulfed the room. I lit a cigarette.
Cocking the 9mm, I leaned back in the chair, put my boots up on the desk. No doubt, Salazar would come after me. I counted on it. No doubt, Wes on death row in time would fry. I counted on that, too. 

Edward C. Lynskey returns a third time to PWG. His mystery short fiction appears in The Writer's Hood, The Murder Hole, and Orchard Press Mystery.