“You do know he’s dead?” Trout said. “Oh, wait … as I remember you were fucking there when they gave him the lethal injection and, another news flash—so was I! Gosh, how long ago was that? Yesterday? No, I lie … It’s twenty-three hours and—”
“—and there’s more to the story if you’d shut up and listen. ”
“Okay,” sighed Trout. “This is me shutting up. ”
“Ever since Gibbon lost his last appeal and the execution date was set there has been a neverending media shit storm. Reporters camped out in the parking lot. I don’t know how you snagged a ticket to the show—”
“I have friends in low places. ”
“—but once that asshole was dead, the party broke up. Now, new chapter. The official story was that Gibbon was going to be buried in some nondescript hole on the prison grounds. ”
“Fair enough. ”
“But that’s not what happened. ”
Trout’s interest perked up by half a degree. Homer Gibbon was the state’s most notorious serial killer. He had been convicted on eleven counts of murder and was suspected of having actually killed more than forty women and children in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, Maryland, and Virginia over a seventeen-year period. Although he had never formally admitted to any of the murders, he was convicted on an evidentiary case so compelling that the jury’s deliberation had lasted only two hours. Appeal followed appeal, but during the last appeal forensic evidence from a cold-case murder in Scranton irrefutably tied Gibbon to the rape and murder of a diner waitress and her two-year-old daughter. The murder had been shockingly brutal, with elements of torture so repellent that even the most jaded reporter tended to generalize about the details. The appeal died, the new trial was quick, the death penalty given, and the governor approved execution by lethal injection for the first time since Gary Heidnik was put down in 1999. Even the expected protests by human rights and pro-life groups were listless. Nobody wanted Gibbon to live.
“So what did happen?” asked Trout.
“The remains were shipped to his family. ”
“Uh-uh. He didn’t have any family. I did the background on Gibbon. ”
“I know, right? You wanted to do one of those bullshit human interest things. ‘What’s the cost to the family of the killer?’ or ‘The victims aren’t the only victims. ’ Some crap like that. ”
“I’m so glad you respect my work. ”
“C’mon, Trout, let’s be real here. I lock shit up and you shovel it onto the headlines. Neither of us is doing any great humanitarian good here. Best-case scenario for me is I make life hell for the baby-rapers while they’re waiting for the system to put them back into the community; and maybe you write a piece once every ten years that has more genuine heart than exploitive bullshit. Tell me I’m wrong. ”
Trout was impressed. Schlunke was an insect but apparently not as stupid a creepy-crawly as previously thought. Trout filed that away.
“The family,” he prompted, swinging back to that. “The court records said he had no family. ”
“Court records were wrong. Some old broad stepped up after the last appeal. Said that she was his aunt and apparently produced enough proof to convince the judge and the warden. Point is, she petitioned to claim the body for burial. All last minute, all hush-hush. ”
Trout was genuinely interested now. “An aunt, huh? How old?”
“’Bout two years older than dirt. She arranged to have his body shipped back and to have a mortician tidy Gibbon up before they put him in a pine box. ”
“What cemetery would allow—”
“No … She wanted to bury him on the family estate. Well … farm. Used to be an estate but there isn’t much of it left. Few dozen acres that have been left to grow wild. There’s a family cemetery behind the house, and she wants Homer Gibbon buried there. ”
“Why? She trying to ruin the property value?” asked Trout, but he was already seeing it. Old lady who’s only relative is a serial murderer. Maybe she knew him as a kid and wants to honor the child he’d been rather than the man he’d become. Classic stuff. Or, maybe she really believed in the defense’s theory that Gibbon suffered from a chemical imbalance. Was that the tether she used to cling to her self-respect and the family name?
“Are you even fucking listening to me?” growled Schlunke.
“Sure, sure,” Trout lied, thinking that the story might actually have legs. Could be a feature piece. A heartbreaker. Might even be something that could be squeezed into a Lifetime movie if the aunt was a Betty White type. “You were saying … aunt, burial prep…”
“When she petitioned the judge to receive the body, she requested that the information not be released to the press. She was afraid that his grave would be desecrated by friends and family of Gibbon’s victims, or by kids. Thrill seekers and stuff. ”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Trout. He was casting the rest of the movie in his head. Maybe go with Kristen Bell as the waitress who gets killed. “But I need that address. Story’s dead without it. ”
“I know. So … we’re absolutely clear on the hundred-twenty-five percent?”
“You’re on the wrong side of those bars, Schlunke. ”
“Yes or no?”