BARTHOLOMEW SLOAN
1932
My dearest friend's execution was largely a private affair, despite public interest in the condemned man and the mystery of his motives. It took place in less than twenty minutes on the lawn behind the courthouse—with a perfunctory prayer and a very small audience gathered before the gallows. Mostly the spectators were friends of the doomed man's late wife, wearing hard expressions of righteous vindication, but a handful of others were in attendance as well: a
court secretary in a crisp gray dress observed the proceedings; a reporter with a press badge tucked into his hatband took notes; and a tired-looking photographer snapped pictures with the too-bright, sizzling pop of a flashbulb.
The inevitable write-up in the newspaper was a real doozy, even though the judge had closed the scene to prevent the curious crowds from getting a morbid eyeful.
In the end, Oscar Amundson's death was witnessed by fewer than a dozen people, and at the request of the man in the noose himself, I was one of them.
Oscar had begged me to attend. Obviously, I couldn't say no to the man's last wish, and I couldn't look away when the trapdoor dropped and my friend dangled, feet bound together and swaying, heavy and limp, like a fortune teller's pendulum.
At least it was quick. The hangman had tied the knot correctly, and the snap of Oscar's neck had come a split second after the click of the floor's release. A loud crack, a sharp twitch, and a brilliant, innocent man was lost to this world—leaving everything behind to me, for all that I didn't deserve so much as a penny.
In the wake of that fresh, excruciatingly specific horror, I found myself at loose ends, with no idea at all what to do with myself.
I didn't know what to do with Oscar's estate or his money. I didn't know what to do with Seattle. I didn't know what to do with my hands as I stood in Oscar's parlor. My fingers fluttered at my sides as if they were searching for something, and I suppose they were. I'm not sure what.
Everyone was dead except for me.
It was a cold comfort, indeed, knowing my reputation could survive the damage if I could survive my sorrow—and what choice did I have? Heaven only knew what greeted Oscar on the other side, but I had a horrible, if vague, idea of what would await me. It would be a fate far worse than mere grief or regret.
I was no longer a young man, but neither had I wandered too deeply into middle age. The silver in my hair was fresh and sparse, and the spread of my waistline had only cost a single notch on my favorite leather belt. With luck and clean living, I might have lasted another forty years. Another fifty, even. Why not? My grandfather lived to see a full century, plus a year and a half past that.
This was both a true story and a comforting fairy tale, one I repeated to myself at length, at night, when the gaslights were turned down to a hiss that was almost as soft as silence, and the curtains scarcely fluttered from a breeze that whispered through the night's wee hours.
But fairy tales were of no use to me.
I'd made my bed, and in time I'd surely sleep in it.
But then, there, in the aftermath of Oscar's death, I stood alone in the otherwise empty Amundson home. At the time, I believed this meant that I was officially the house's sole survivor, since everyone else who'd ever lived or loved within it was gone—all three of them, taken in the span of a year.
Oscar, Venita, and Priscilla Amundson.
Oscar, lost to the gallows for the murder of his wife—the silent film star Venita Rost, who met her own tragic end at a rocky overlook...or perhaps at the bottom of the Sound, considering the coroner said she'd drowned after hitting her head on the boulders. She was likely unconscious when the final darkness took her.
Small mercies, perhaps. For all that I would've liked to strangle her myself for what she did—and for what happened in the wake of it—I couldn't begrudge her that solace at the end.
After all, we were dear friends once, and everything that became of her and her family was my fault—though for reasons vastly beyond my control, I could neither prove this fact nor change it. Likewise, I had utterly failed to prove the truth: that Venita had committed suicide and framed her husband, an innocent man now laid out on a slab somewhere, wearing nothing but a sheet and a toe tag.
But oh, how I'd tried.
