Reflections: Chapter Three.

The News Bulletin

Lucasville Correctional Facility

The wind wasn’t strong; more of a stiff breeze, but it was enough to play havoc with Alexandra Lorde’s flame-red hair as she walked out the facility’s gate. Her left hand raised in an attempt to tame the hair whilst her right was clenched to conceal the tiny device her cameraman had given her before she entered the prison. On reaching him she dropped the device into his upturned palm.

         ‘Tell me you got that, Otis,’ she said.

         ‘Oh, I got it all right. This picked up everything that kook had to say in there.’

         ‘Was it clear?’

         ‘As a bell,’ he said, handing her the CNN microphone. ‘So how was it in there, I mean, you know, being so close to someone as sick as that guy?’

         ‘Would you mind if we got this over with? I’d really like to get home.’

         ‘Why, you gotta hot date?’

         ‘No, I gotta cold shiver,’ she said, in reference to the forty-five-minute interview she had with the man she just watch die. ‘And I’ve got my kid sister coming over tonight, so I’d like to be there when she arrives.’

         ‘I wouldn’t worry about Sam, Alex, she’s not a kid anymore.’

       ‘It’s Samantha, and she’s seventeen, so she’s still a kid in my eyes. But thanks for your valuable input.’

         ‘Okay,’ he said, both palms up. ‘Just saying.’

         ‘Well don’t,’ she snapped. ‘Just get behind your camera and stick to what you know.’

She wasn’t pleased with that outburst, after all, Otis was right, Samantha’s not a kid anymore, but she can’t help her feelings, can’t help being protective of her baby sister. Well, half-sister, though Otis wouldn’t know anything about that, or the reason why.  

         Otis stuck to what he knew and peered down the camera’s eyepiece. ‘Okay, in five … four … three.’ Two fingers, one finger.

         ‘This morning at eleven-fifty, here at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville, and after spending fifteen years on death row at Ohio’s State Penitentiary, thirty-eight-year-old Karl Michael Evans, who was convicted of murdering five young girls whilst living at his parents’ house in Leyton Falls, paid the ultimate price today for his horrific crimes.

         ‘I, along with eighteen other guests, including Evans’ lawyers and several of his victims’ relatives, had been invited by the prison Governor, James T. Whiteman, to witness the execution of Evans by lethal injection.’

She paused, looked distracted, her gaze distant. Otis moved from his eyepiece and made an agitated winding motion with an open hand telling her to, “Keep-it-going”.

         She breathed in, continued.

‘Those of you who may recall the case will no doubt remember the press releases that said how, at the start of the three-month trial, Evans protested his innocence by claiming, some might say ludicrously, that he was not the murderer, Karl Evans, but was in fact David Foley, a fifty-six-year-old real estate agent from Arkansas. A man, whom, as his company’s records proved during the trial, did indeed visit the Evans house on the understanding of placing the property on the market. And who, on that day eighteen years ago, disappeared without trace, and has neither been seen nor heard of since.

         ‘At the trial Mr Evans also claimed, whilst still insisting he was the missing man David Foley, that when he arrived at the house he was attacked by Karl Evans and rendered unconscious. Coming to, only to find he’d been somehow transformed into the murderer. Then, bound and gagged, he was left outside Leyton Falls police station with all the incriminating evidence the police would need to secure a conviction, including directions to the whereabouts of his victims’ remains, which had been buried in a number of shallow graves out in Elijah forest, right at the back of the house he murdered them in.’

Alex looked to the breeze in a bid to rid her face of the blasted stray bang, her left arm unfurling toward the prison.

        ‘And that was how the scene played out behind these walls within the last hour, as Evans, once more protesting his innocence, claimed to be the missing man, David Foley.’

Alex again became distracted; she wanted to give her own view, her own beliefs about the man she interviewed and watched being executed, but decided against it. She needed to investigate his claims, and if she wanted to do that, she needed to keep her job.

        ‘This is Alexandra Lorde for CNN, reporting from outside the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.’

         ‘Annnd … we’re done.’ Otis said. ‘Thought you’d dried-up on me for a minute there. Twice.’

          ‘No, just lost my train, that’s all.’

          ‘Well Murray wants this patching through right away, said he needs it for the one o’clock. But I’ll erase the stalls first.’

         ‘Yeah, do that. What did you do with the recording?’

         ‘On this thumb-drive,’ he said. ‘I copied it to your phone, too.’

         ‘Thanks, can you erase the drive along with the stalls?’

         Otis set to work. ‘Sure, but you know if Murray finds out you’re holding out on him…’

         ‘There’s no need for Murray to find out anything. What do you think I was doing in my motel room the whole of last night whilst you were chatting-up the barmaids across the road?’

         ‘Please don’t say you were writing out the interview.’

         ‘Yep, Murray gets his interview, albeit mostly fake, and I get two weeks off to follow up on what was said in there.’

         ‘What? You’re not serious; tell me you don’t actually believe what