Free By Reason of Insanity by Shane Stevens

with visions of a new life. He was careful not to mention anything definite, emphasizing that no one else must know of their plan. Only the two of them were to go, only they would be free. “But how?” Mungo kept asking. “How do we do it?” And when he received no answer he would always ask, “When?” Bishop would smile. “Soon,” he would say. “Very soon.”
     
    While the two men waited, one for the moment and the other for the word, the beginning of summer splashed itself up and down the California coast. In a splendid office atop a building in Los Angeles a man sat waiting for the arrival of two of his staff. He was Derek Layery, West Coast editor and bureau chief of one of the country’s biggest newsweeklies. Fortyish, silver hair crowning a large energetic body that kept itself in athletic trim, Lavery devoted his professional life to speed and facts. Each week he would assign his crew to work up stories of public interest. Though timeliness was the keynote, Lavery often developed articles of some depth on burning issues of the day that he would get out to the public before anybody else.
    One such topic of the moment was capital punishment and Lavery, who was very good at his job, could feel the interest building up. He was determined to get in on the ground floor. What he needed was a kickoff story, and he believed he had found the angle.
    Adam Kenton was the first to arrive for the ten o’clock meeting. He paid the cab driver and hurried into the six-story building.
    “Is he in yet?” he asked the elevator man, gesturing upward with his thumb.
    “Ten o’clock? Are you kidding?” The operator closed the doors. “He gets in before I do.”
    At the sixth floor Kenton turned left and marched down the hall, passing blowups of magazine covers hanging on the walls, each encased in glass with a small lamp above. The cumulative effect of the covers was obvious to him: nothing is as it seems. To which he often added the thought: Shoot the bastards who did it to us. At the end of the hall he opened the wood-paneled door.
    “You’re late,” said the female voice behind the desk. But the face smiled pleasantly enough. She reached for the phone. “Adam Kenton is here,” she said after a moment. Replacing the receiver, she indicated a door on her right. “He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”
    Inside Lavery’s office he stopped. Sunlight flooded his eyes. The room was immense, almost the entire east side of the top floor. At one end was a huge living and dining area, carpeted and furnished with expensive sofas and easy chairs and tables, and a tiny kitchen set in an alcove along one side. At the other end, up several steps, was a large work area equipped with two long layout tables, design boards and rows of files stacked against the far wall. Louvered windows ran the entire length of the office and around one side of the living space. In the middle of the room stood a massive oak desk, behind which sat Derek Lavery. He motioned Kenton to a chair.
    “What do you know about capital punishment?” he suddenly asked, his eyes fixed on the younger man.
    Kenton crossed his legs. “Just what anyone knows,” he observed smoothly. “Either it works or it doesn’t work. Either it’s justice or just plain revenge.”
    “Exactly,” replied Lavery. “Nobody knows for sure so everybody has strong feelings about it. And where there’s strong feeling there’s plenty of steam.”
    “And a lot of hot air.”
    “That too.” He gestured toward the papers on his desk. “I’ve been reading up on it. From what I can see this is only the beginning; it’ll get a lot hotter. What we should do,” he lowered his voice, “we should get in on it now.”
    “You got an angle?”
    “Might be.” His face creased but he broke it in mid-smile to scowl. “Let’s wait for Ding. The son of a bitch was never on time in his life.” He pushed his chair back and lit a fresh cigar from the humidor on his desk.
    Kenton sat