March 20, 1959
That night, Mother sent Betsey and me to bed right after Zorro ended. I climbed into the top bunk, put my palms together, and whispered my usual prayer: “Now I lay me down… if I should die before I wake… but please, God, not tonight. I’ll be good….” But afterward, I didn’t go to sleep. I couldn’t. Daddy had called after dinner to tell Mother he didn’t know when he’d be home. The jury was out.
After Betsey’s breathing changed rhythm, I used my flashlight to read Nancy Drew for a while, but I put the book away when I heard mother turn on the TV. Quietly, I lowered myself from the top bunk, propped my flashlight up in one of Betsey’s tennis shoes, and stretched out on my stomach across the area rug with a pile of paper dolls. Pinky Lee slipped through the crack of the slightly opened door and curled up on top of the paper-doll evening gowns.
“Move,” I whispered. “The Alameda girls have to get ready for a party.”
Pinky purred as he washed his face.
I’m not sure what time I nodded off. When I awoke, the room was cold, my flashlight dead, and the house dark. I heard the sound of clicking typewriter keys.
I sat up, wide awake. He’s home.
Tiptoeing to my bedroom door, I peered into the hallway. Light seeped under the door of Daddy’s study. I crept to his door, silently turned the handle, and pushed it open a few inches.
Daddy scowled as he pounded his fingers across the typewriter keys, his mouth set. He pushed the carriage return lever hard, and the bell dinged. He stopped typing and stared at the page, cracking his knuckles. I hovered in the doorway as he grabbed the piece of paper and ripped it out of the typewriter.
“Goddammit,” he mumbled as he crumpled the page into a ball and tossed it on the floor next to a half dozen other wadded-up pages. He put his elbows on the desk and his fingers at his temples as he stared at the empty typewriter.
“Is she going to die?” I asked quietly.
Daddy whirled around, making a strangled noise in his throat. “Jesus. What are you doing up?”
“I’ve been waiting for you.” I pushed the door the rest of the way open and scooted inside. I smiled hopefully. “Did she get the gas?”
Daddy rolled another page into the typewriter. “Not tonight.”
“I mean did the jury say she’s getting the death penalty?”
“I know what you mean.” He took a deep breath and released it in a long drawn-out hiss. “Yes. The jury voted for death. Happy?” he said in an angry tone as he began to type again.
My lower lip trembled. “I thought you said Mrs. Duncan should die for what she did to Olga. Did you change your mind? Do you think the death penalty is wrong, like Mother?”
“Not really. I’m just tired.” He shook his head sadly. “If a nation is willing to sacrifice millions of our best young men in war in the name of self-protection, I guess we can put a few murderers to death in the name of self-protection, but…” He didn’t finish.
“What did Mrs. Duncan say when she heard?”
“Not a word. Just stared straight ahead. But Frank had plenty to say after court. He insisted that the appeal will not fail because three of the jurors said they already believed his mother was guilty before the trial ever started.”
“But everyone knows—”
“My head’s pounding. I’m not up to a bunch of questions tonight. Why the hell are you still up, anyway? Can’t your mother put you to bed on time?” He shot me a disapproving look. “Go on. Get out of here. I’ve got to finish this damn column.” He pounded the keyboard for a few more minutes, but I didn’t move.
My eyes welled. “I thought we’d be happy if the jury said ‘death’—”
He cut me off. “There’s no jubilation in something like this.”
My voice broke. “But what she did… to Olga and the baby.”
Daddy closed his eyes. “Oh, sweetheart,” he said softly. He opened his arms, and I leaned into him. He held me tight as I cried quietly into his shoulder. “You shouldn’t be thinking about executions. I don’t know how you got so interested in all this.”
I blinked back my tears. “I read all your stories in the newspaper every day. I want to know all about bad people so they don’t hurt me.”
Daddy patted my back. “Aren’t you supposed to be going to the Coca-Cola bottling plant with your Girl Scout troop tomorrow? It’s past midnight. You need to get some sleep.”
I swirled my head around. “I won’t be too tired. Judi says we’ll get free Cokes right off the assembly line. And Beth doesn’t work there anymore, you know. She lives in Los Angeles, and Mother says she’s doing better.”
“Well, good.” Daddy made a half attempt at a smile. “That’s… something.”
I bent down to pick up one of the crumpled pages from the floor and smoothed it open. “Why are you throwing away your story?”
“I already wrote my story about the verdict at the office before I came home.” He glanced at me and took the page out of my hands, then wadded it up again. “I’m trying to write about the death penalty being a deterrent to murder.” He shrugged. “But Elizabeth Duncan’s execution isn’t going to do anything to protect the next murder victim. Even Roy Gustafson concedes that point.”
“But she murdered Olga. It’s her punishment. She’s getting what she deserves, right?”
“Maybe justice will be done, but it won’t bring Olga back. And I guess nobody wants to risk Mrs. Duncan conning her way past the parole board in seven years,” he said wearily. “Gustafson calls capital punishment ‘retribution’ for a few of the worst killers, the ones he calls ‘unsalvageable’… an eye for an eye, a life for a life.”
“That’s what Reverend Ralston says, too.”
He raked his fingers through his short, spiky hair. “Her attorney told the jury that she should be spared because she’s still a human being, endowed with body and soul… Sullivan said Olga would forgive Mrs. Duncan.”
“What! That woman murdered Olga’s baby! Even Olga isn’t that good.”
“Nobody believes Sullivan, Sweetie. He’s just grasping at straws.” Daddy looked down at his typewriter keys. “Elizabeth Duncan is a miserable excuse for a human being who committed a terrible, heartless crime, but when you’ve seen someone every day, talked to”—he gave me a sideways glance—“laughed with them… it makes you think.”
“Laughed with them?”
“Like Sullivan said, ‘She’s a human being.’ ”
“But a miserable excuse,” I mumbled as he typed the number -30- at the end of the page.
“Why do you always do that at the end? Type thirty?”
“So the typesetter will know that the story is finished.”
“The end!” I said emphatically.
Daddy shook his head. “I’m afraid this isn’t the end of the story. There’ll be an appeal. Sullivan believes his client’s civil rights have been violated and that there’s ‘more glaring errors’ in this trial record than any case he’s ever tried.”
“But what about Olga? The jury said Mrs. Duncan should die for what she did to her.” I searched his face. “She won’t get off, will she?”
“Mrs. Duncan’s lawyer will try to get her off. He’ll tell the higher courts that she didn’t get a fair trial. He says that Gustafson tried the case in the press before the real trial even started. Poisoned the jury pool.” Daddy rubbed the back of his neck. “I think Sullivan plans to use some of my stories to make his case.”
My voice quivered. “Well, she shouldn’t have murdered Olga. Then you wouldn’t have had to write about all that bad stuff she did. And anyway, you only wrote the truth, and there’s nothing wrong with that, right? Just the facts.”
“I can’t forget the expression on Frank Duncan’s face when the clerk read the verdict that his mother was going to die. He says Gustafson’s climbing over his mother’s body to get to the governor’s office.” Daddy fiddled with the lever on his typewriter. “And he’s been calling the press coverage sensationalism, yellow journalism.”
“Yellow?” I pointed to a copy of the Star-Free Press he’d tossed on the side of his desk. “That newspaper is black and white.”
Daddy put his arm around me. “I guess the Supreme Court will decide if there’s anything wrong with the color of my journalism.”