The Death Row Club

Chapter 11 Nicola

IMOGEN USHERS ME into the kitchen, where a farmhouse table, crafted from sturdy wood, stands in the center of the room, flanked by benches on either side.

A black marble-top counter runs along the far end, copper pots and pans dangling from the ceiling rack.

“All our dinner options are vegan and gluten-free,” she says, motioning to where serving platters of pesto pasta salad and hunks of sourdough bread have been spread out.

Ros stands next to the food, prying the cork out of a bottle of wine.

Kemy and Hannah are seated at one end of the table—Kemy gesticulating with her butter knife, Hannah nodding along. At the other end sits Zach, somberly picking at his dish.

“Is he all right?” I ask.

“He probably needs some time alone.” Imogen reaches for the stack of plates. “Talking about his father must be difficult after what happened.”

“What happened?”

She fumbles, causing them all to clatter. “Sorry,” she says. “I assumed everyone knew. He was executed this year. Lethal injection.”

Executed. Is that why everyone was acting so strangely around him at the bonfire ceremony? I never would’ve guessed… But, of course, it’s called the Death Row Club. Some of the members must have parents awaiting execution.

Ros sets the corkscrew on the counter and pours herself a glass. “It’s nothing to get upset about,” she reassures me. “Zach’s better off with him gone.”

“Ros,” Imogen chides, but Ros ignores her.

“His father made him look like a fool during the trial. Swore he wasn’t guilty and let Zach spend all their savings on the best lawyers money could buy.

It wasn’t until after the sentencing hearing that he finally told the truth.

” She picks up her dish with one hand, her wineglass with the other.

“Maybe now he’ll finally be able to get his shit together, move on with his life.

” And with that, she takes a seat next to Hannah.

“I wouldn’t recommend bringing it up,” Imogen says. “It’s a sensitive subject.”

As I ladle pasta onto my plate, I try to imagine what it would’ve been like if my dad hadn’t confessed.

The evidence against him was incontrovertible: jewelry hidden in our bathroom wall, blood embedded in the seams of his truck cushions.

But if he’d claimed to be innocent, would I have believed him anyway?

Would I have done whatever was necessary to pay his attorney’s fees, to protect him from jail time—the same way he’d always protected me?

If there’s one thing I can thank him for, it’s saving me from ever needing to make that choice.

I grab my dinner and walk to where Zach’s sitting alone. “Mind if I join you?”

He looks up from his half-eaten pasta and must notice my sympathetic expression because he asks, “Who told you?”

“Imogen.”

“Great.” He raises his wineglass in her direction; she flushes. He nudges out the bench with his heel and gestures for me to take a seat. “It’s been a rough year.”

“Sorry.”

“Thanks.” Zach watches me from over the rim of his glass. “Not many people say that to me.”

“Say what?”

“Sorry. Most of the time, I tell people my dad was executed, and their response is ‘good.’ ”

That seems unbelievable to me—until I consider my life back home. If my dad was executed tomorrow, I doubt the response from our neighbors would be any different. Good.

“I assume you’ve heard all about how awful he was.

” I don’t answer, which is, in itself, an answer.

“You know, I tried to hate him. I really did. I refused to take his phone calls, threw all his letters in the trash. But when his lawyer called and told me they’d set an execution date, I figured you only get one father.

So, I started visiting him. And you know what?

He wasn’t any different than I remembered him. ”

I stare into my food. I’ve thought about visiting my dad, even went so far as to call to make arrangements.

I ended up standing, motionless, in the living room for a good half hour on visiting day, limbs gone leaden, keys gripped numbly in my hand, before giving up.

Fear prevented me from opening the door—not the fear that my father had changed since his incarceration, but that he’d stayed the same, of finding out that he’d been the Ellicott Creek Ripper all along.

That my “father” was simply an outfit he took out of the closet and wore every day to work.

Even more than that, I was afraid of what our reunion might reveal about me. What would it mean if I looked at him, knowing what he’d done, what he really was, and still loved him?

“Have you ever been to an execution?”

I shake my head.

“You’re watching a murder. That’s what it is: You’re watching a murder through this thick Plexiglas window, and you think to yourself, My dad’s going to die if someone doesn’t stop this.

We need to call the police because my dad’s about to die.

But then you remember the police, the courts, they’re the murderers, and there’s nothing you can do to stop them. ”

He knocks back the rest of his drink. “They kept us in separate rooms, the victims’ families in one, me in the other.

And when it was over, everyone gathered around the victims’ families and hugged them and cried with them.

They told them it was over, that they could finally lay their loved ones to rest. Their loved ones had been dead for years.

My father hadn’t even been unstrapped from the table, and do you think one person, one single fucking person, came over to offer their condolences?

Instead, I left the prison and had to fight my way through a crowd of placards with slogans like Prick the Prick. ”

When he slams his empty glass onto the table, some of the club members at the other end glance in our direction. They don’t come over, though.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “Sorry. It’s…”

“No. Please don’t apologize.”

I want to reassure him that he has just as much a right to his grief as they do, but before I can, he says, “That wasn’t even the worst part.

The worst part came a week later when I was sitting in front of my TV, and one of the women who’d been at the execution came onscreen and said it had been disappointing.

That in order to get the closure she deserved, my dad needed to suffer more.

So you start wondering: Why exactly did my dad need to die?

The victims’ families weren’t satisfied; future murderers aren’t going to be deterred because of what happened to him. So, what was the fucking point?”

He grabs a half-empty bottle and pours himself a refill.

“And it’s not like he was the only one being punished.

I ended up selling the motel, racking up credit card debt, taking out every personal loan they’d give me—and for what?

Nothing I did was ever going to be enough to get him that reprieve.

Then someone like Greer Woods comes along and scores an entire TV show to help rehabilitate her father’s public image.

Next thing you know, bored stay-at-home moms are signing petitions and posting hourly on social media.

‘Oh, Tom Woods. He’s so tortured, so broken, but that’s all right.

He was never loved enough; we can fix him. ’ ”

“Wait.” He’s officially lost me. “What are you talking about? That’s not why she filmed the show.

She filmed it because she felt guilty for not realizing what her father was sooner, for not saving the women he killed.

So, she decided to make it right by getting justice for other victims in unsolved cases. ”

“Fine,” he says, holding up his hands the same way he did when Connor claimed he wasn’t raised in a cult—his gesture indicating oh, you poor, deluded fool. “Let’s say that was her motivation. Why feature her dad in almost every episode?”

“Because she was trying to catch a murderer, and he is a murderer. It makes sense that he’d have insight that we don’t.”

“Did you watch the show?”

I nod.

“Did Tom Woods ever say anything that wasn’t common sense?

‘Look for someone these girls trusted.’ You don’t say.

‘He probably lives in the neighborhood because serial killers hunt close to home.’ Any first-year criminal psychology textbook could tell you that.

Tom Woods and his irreplaceable insight was all smoke and mirrors. ”

“What are you saying?”

He leans closer; his breath’s heavy with the scent of alcohol.

“You know her dad’s hearing is coming up soon, right?

She’s trying to convince the governor to grant him clemency, and the best way to do that is to get the public on his side.

So, she picked a case she thought she could solve, and when an arrest was made, she passed most of the credit on to him.

She’ll get his sentence commuted because she had the money and power to launch an entire propaganda campaign to protect him. ”

That can’t be true. Greer had no way of knowing who the Ellicott Creek Ripper was before she started filming, no guarantee that she would be able to solve the case.

But did she even need to catch the killer to make her show a success?

Zach’s right about the social media following that’s popped up around her father.

Tom Woods might be one of the most abhorrent serial killers in history, but that hasn’t stopped the internet from decking him out in flower crowns and posting those images to Tumblr.

“Why?” I finally choke out. “Why would she do all that for him?”

“For the same reason I did. Because he’s her father. And because she loves him.”

I’d doubted her intentions when she first showed up on my doorstep, and if what Zach’s saying is true, then I was right to do so.

She never cared about Claire. She never cared about me, either.

I’ve known that since the night she deserted me, but for whatever reason, getting confirmation still hurts.

Greer destroyed me so she could save her father.

Zach eyes the staircase. “You don’t have to take this lying down, you know.”

“She’s talking to Connor.”

“And? You’re going to let her get away with making you wait?”

He’s right. I stand up from the bench and am surprised when he does, too.

“I’ll come with you,” he explains.

I shake my head. “No, I need to do this by myself.” He looks disappointed.

He probably wanted to watch me lay into Greer.

Both of them did everything they could to save their fathers, yet his died, while hers still stands a chance.

A good one, according to him. “I’ll find you afterward,” I promise. “Let you know how it goes.”

“You’d better.” He slumps back down, rolling his glass between his palms. “Good luck, Nic.”

When I reach the landing, her door’s closed, voices spilling out from under the gap.

“—should tell the others?” Connor asks.

Greer replies. “Day hikers come onto the island all the time. One of them must’ve gotten turned around on the trails. You know how easy it is to get lost out here.”

“What if they’re still out there?”

A pause.

“Just keep the tablet with you, and if things change, let me know.”

Still out there? Is someone else on the property?

“Fine. But maybe we should take some precautions. Keep everyone inside tonight.”

Connor doesn’t show any signs of ending their conversation, but I’m all out of patience.

Greer and I once drove out to the Sheridan Drive-In Theatre, reclined the front seats, portable radio sputtering on high, and watched a late-night screening of Fatal Attraction.

“I’m not going to be ignored!” Glenn Close screamed at Michael Douglas.

The two of us bellowed the line back at the screen, at the wooden telephone poles and their sagging wires, at the sky, which was turning a sticky tangerine, before dissolving into laughter.

At the time, we’d been laughing at her—this woman who refused to fit neatly into the degrading little box her affair partner carved out for her.

But now, I can understand her, empathize with her, even, because I’m also tired of being ignored.

I’m tired of being villainized and pathologized and willfully misunderstood, even as everyone claims they want to know what I’m really thinking.

I turn the knob and shove the door open.

Both of them fall silent. Connor glowers at me like I’m trespassing. “Excuse me,” he says. “We’re in the middle of—”

“No.”

His eyebrows lift. “No?”

“I’ve waited months to talk to her, and whatever you have to say, I can guarantee it’s not as important as—” I tick off the items. “Getting fired, losing my friends, filing for bankruptcy. My father being sent to jail for murdering my best friend. I have stayed silent and respected everyone’s time and space and feelings, even when no one’s respected mine, but I’m fucking through.

I deserve answers, and I’m getting them now. ”

The corner of my lip spasms as we stare each other down. I feel like I’m about to scream or cry, and I hope it’s the former; the latter might actually kill me.

Greer’s the one who breaks the tension. “Fair enough.” Connor starts to argue, but she doesn’t let him. “About time for s’mores, right?”

“I really don’t think we should—”

“Why don’t you go outside and start setting up? We’ll be down in a few minutes.”

He hesitates, as if waiting for her to change her mind, but when she doesn’t, he grumbles, “Yeah, sure, fine,” and collects his tablet.

On his way out the door, his shoulder bumps, hard, against mine.

I turn to glare at him, but catch sight of something flickering through the window instead, deep in the woods.

At first I think my vision might be playing tricks on me, but then the soft, blue glow reappears, shuddering across the glass, before being snuffed out. What was that?

“Nic?”

I wheel around to find Greer leaning against the desk, studying me. “You wanted to talk,” she says. “All right. Let’s talk.”