Free True Crime by Andrew Klavan Page A

Alan wanted me to cover for Michelle. Alan wanted me, Bob didn’t. What Bob wanted was burbling like hot tar at the bottom of his unwavering stare. I stood before him stupidly for a second or two. I tried to think how to answer. I tried to think of what I would’ve said if I
hadn’t
been sleeping with his wife. If I were just a reporter being called in for a pickup assignment on his day off. “So, uh … Beachum,” I said. “What did he …? This was before my time. He killed some girl or something.”
    “A pregnant woman,” said Bob in his quiet, controlled voice. “A college student. Amy Wilson. She was working the summer in a grocery in Dogtown. She owed Beachum money, fifty dollars or something, for some repairs he’d done on her car. He shot her dead.”
    “Okay. Anything special about him?”
    Bob lifted one shoulder slightly. “He was a mechanic over at that Amoco station on Clayton. That’s about it.”
    “He’s one of these born-again crazies,” Jane March chimed in.
    I was relieved—I was delighted—for the excuse to turn away from Bob, to turn my attention to her. Still, I could feel his stare, his eyes, like two tiny sets of teeth, gnawing on my profile as I faced her.
    “Yeah, they all get born again on death row,” I said. “That place has the highest birth rate in the country.”
    “Now, now, now,” said Jane. “Don’t be such a cynical boy. He was born again before all this started. He’d been a drifter or something. From Michigan, I think. Broken home, alcoholic mother. He’d been in jail a couple of times for violent assaults, barroom fights, that sort of thing. And then I think he did three years in MSP for beating up a state trooper who tried to give him a ticket.”
    “Sounds like a reasonable sort of fellow.”
    “But he was clean for something like four years beforethe Wilson killing. He got out of slam and met his wife, Bunny or Bonnie or Bipsy or something. She’s one of these born-againers too. I guess she’s the one who led him to Jesus.”
    “Yeah, I know these prison groupie types,” I said. “Boy meets girl, girl saves boy’s soul, boy and girl go on interstate kill spree.”
    “Cynical, cynical.” Jane March pursed her lips primly. “They were very nice. They had a daughter together. They bought a house in Dogtown. He had his mechanic job. She took care of the baby. They were the all-American family. The guy was totally clean for like three, four years. Then, one July fourth, he walks into the grocery store, this Pocum’s in Dogtown. Amy Wilson is working the register. She says she hasn’t got the money she owes him …”
    “And old Frank just kind of lost that nasty temper of his.”
    “Looks like it.”
    “Tsk, tsk. I hope he expressed his remorse, at least.”
    “Well, no, he’s been a little slow there,” said Jane March. “He still says he just went to the store to get some A-1 steak sauce for his Fourth of July picnic.”
    “Hey, convincing story.”
    “That’s what the jury thought. It didn’t help much that a guy in the store saw him run out with the smoking gun. And then some poor woman who had no idea what was going on nearly bumped into him in the parking lot.”
    I laughed. “A-1 Sauce. I like that. That’s good.”
    “What Michelle wanted on this story …” Bob’s soft, contained, penetrating voice brought me back around to face him, brought my mind back around to the sickly heat between us and the conversation we were not having as Jane March looked on. “What
I
want on this story,” he said, holding up his hand, explaining in that schoolteacher way ofhis, “is the human interest. All right? What it’s like on death row on the final day. Don’t overload it with the details of the case. We’ve already covered the case, and all the appeals and all that. I want what the cell looks like, and what Beachum looks like, and what’s going on inside his mind. A human interest sidebar, that’s what I want. All