Chapter One
What I’ve Done
Blood dripped from the wrench head, squirting through Stephen’s fingers that griped the handle tightly, and dancing pass the tiny bits of brain matter that had clung to the coarse texture of the wrench. Stephen watched as the man whose kneecap he had just obliterated attempted to crawl away from him to safety. With a large thud, Stephen stepped on the back of the man’s shattered knee, holding him in place and causing him to let out an agonizing screech. His cries soon turned into soft whimpers like a dog that had been chained outside after making a mess in the house. Stephen smiled as he watched the man grovel and prepared to continue his torture until a glimmer from the corner of his eye caught his attention.
Stopping in his tracks, he looked over to see what had caused the sudden shine of light that caught his eye. Almost instantaneously after seeing it, Stephen looked down again at the tortured man that laid in excruciating pain below him. He raised the wrench high above his head and delivered a crushing blow to the back of the man’s skull, killing him instantly.
* * *
The fluorescent lights buzzed overhead, waiting for the morning sun to rise so that they could finally rest after a long night of illuminating the Arkansas Department of Corrections facility waiting area. I closed the file of a Mr. Stephen J. Clark, the man who I had travelled all this way to meet. Sitting on the firm blue metal chairs of the waiting area, I had just finished looked over Stephen’s file once more, looking at the smiling mugshot I had clipped to the front. I wondered; what kind of a monster would smile after committing such heinous murders hours before. Had it not been clipped to a report of the detailed after math, Stephen may have seemed like a kind regular old man. But it was this genuineness he showed, paired with the file from the police, that scared me the most.
“Mrs. Silverman?” A guard called out to me.
“Yes?” My head shot up.
“We’re ready for you. If you will?” The guard said as he held the barred door open and stuck out his arm directing me deeper into the prison.
My pale face went expressionless, I nodded my head acknowledging the guard and quickly collected my things.
Seeing my timidness, the guard told me, “Ohh sweetheart, don’t you worry about a thing; we won’t let any of these animals touch a single brown hair on that pretty little head of yours.” His attempt to reassure me of my safety fell short, as I believe his intentions to have been sincere, his comment had caused me to grow weary of him, alongside the inmates.
I stepped inside and waited patiently for the guard to close the door behind, but when having heard the jail door slide shut, it sent a chill down my spine and created a pit in my stomach.
Traversing the eerie corridors of the Supermax Varner Unit, I could not help but wonder if I was truly the best choice for this interview. I had initially thought it to be quite strange when my supervisor had hand-picked me to cover such a coveted exclusive, but it became even stranger when I had learned that Stephen was the one who had chosen me by name instead. I had been working at the Times for a little over a decade, but never had I been given the opportunity to head such a prominent story, especially one as strange as this one.
A retired old man turned mass murderer in the span of one night. Hunting down men across state lines until he eventually hands himself in and begs the judge to give him the harshest sentencing possible. Everyone wanted a piece of this story, and everyone especially wanted answers, but Mr. Clark refused to talk. Even during the 5 years and 7 months he spent on death row, its rumored that he did not even attempt to talk to the guards or other inmates. He always sat alone and kept to himself, that was until last week, when he had mysteriously told the warden he wanted to have a visitor on the day he was set to be executed, a visitor who he said, “he would tell everything”.
Then for some unexplainable reason, he chose me. Even when he was offered some of the biggest names in television to come and conduct this interview, he refused them all and he insisted on having me. This of course didn’t sit well with many of my colleagues, especially the more experienced ones, but my boss was not going to let this opportunity go by and had me on the first flight out. These thoughts helped to distract me and before I knew it, I was standing in front of a steel door painted gunmetal gray, with a silver handle being the only object able to reflect the light of the dim hallway. Reality set in, and fear had taken over my body, for behind that door was a murderer who knew my name and awaited my arrival.
A phantoms breathe escaped my lips and my hairs stood on end as my skin tightened. After taking a moment to compose my thoughts, I grabbed hold of the handle, hurling open the door, and stepped inside.
Immediately, I was greeted by a smile, the same smile from before that eluded me in his mugshot, hiding a darkness that even the fluorescent bulbs overhead could not illuminate.
The sun peeked through the steel-reinforced windows as it rose above a barren landscape. It brought a warmth to the room that only held Stephen, sat at a wooden table and a single guard standing in a corner next to a barred door.
An empty chair had been placed on the other side of my host, directly across from Mr. Clark, and was tilted in the smallest way, inviting me to take a seat. I glanced back at Mr. Clark. Complimenting his smile was an all-white uniform that he wore with bland shoes. His hair combed and gray, with a thick goatee to match. I stood frozen at the edge of the doorway while the chair beckoned me to sit with a murderer, who, by the end of the day, would be dead himself. It was then that he called out to me.
“Well look at that, you came.” He was still smiling.
There was kindness in his voice, which added warmth to his smile and helped to thaw my joints. I snapped out of my paralysis and returned to consciousness. Striding to the empty seat across the table as my heels knocked against the cold tile floor, echoing in the small room. As I got closer, I was able to better discern Stephen’s age: His skin was wrinkled, like an old leather bag, with smile lines that looked as if he’d never sulked a day in his life. His presence was that of an old man who played chess in the park and fed birds between games, not that of a psychotic killer who’d gone on a six-hour hunt. I’m not sure whether it was due to the fluorescent bulbs or the morning sun, but his hair appeared to be very healthy and looked more a platinum color than gray or white. I thought this to be strange since this was usually a sign of a healthy and well-fed person, not of someone who’d spent years on death row and hardly seen natural sunlight.
When I was within arm’s reach of the table, he attempted to stand—slowly without any sort of malice—but the guard shouted, “SIT DOWN!” The reverberating bass in the guard’s voice halted his movement, even starling myself slightly. Stopped mid-rise, he extended his arm instead and pointed to the chair, inviting me to sit with him.
“Good morning, Mr. Clark. As per your request, I will be interviewing you today regarding the murders that took place on May 9th, 2018.” I placed my briefcase on the wooden table, forming a barrier between us. Remaining upright while shuffling through my bag to retrieve my notes on Mr. Stephen J. Clark. “I’d like to begin by asking why you were so adamant that I be the one to come and interview you during your final visitation hours today?” My voice was slightly stern.
He ignored my question. “Good morning, Laura. How are you doing today?” I heard the same kindness in his voice that had use to thaw me from the doorway.
I was surprised that instead of answering my question he’d continued his warm greeting. I still felt the same unease I did when I was frozen on the other side of that door, hesitating on whether to enter or not.
“I’m fine, but if you will, would you answer the question, Mr. Clark?” Again, I wondered why I’d been called in to interview this man. I usually interviewed bystanders, witnesses, sometimes petty criminals but never death-row convicts.
Stephen’s face had changed, I noticed, and his smile diminished.
“I asked for you because my daughter and I used to read your articles together, and she always loved the way you told the story from the point of view of the witnesses, unlike some other journalists who made it feel like you were just reading a police report off a teleprompter. So, instead of wasting my last visitation session sitting alone, I figured I’d share my life story with someone who might share it properly.” Stephen shrugged. “At the very least kill a few hours talking to someone who will listen.”
That was the first compliment on my work I’d ever received that didn’t come from my spouse or family. Unintentionally, my eyebrows rose just enough to form a single wrinkle in the middle of my forehead.
Stephen noticed my involuntary reaction and the tiniest smirk peeked through his features. “You should give yourself more credit, you know. When you have a really juicy story that’s just happened to you, you don’t just go and tell it to any person on the street. You have to find that one person whose reaction you know will fulfill your story-telling needs. So, imagine you had one chance to tell someone about all those stories you’ve collected in your life … you wouldn’t want someone with an uninspired point of view to listen to them, would you?”