Beyond a Shadow of a Doubt

cats.

Part One: Mason’s Story

Some things you need to know.

I have to begin by saying I am innocent of the crimes they say I have committed. Of course you would expect me to say that, but I can tell you unequivocally, I had nothing to do with those people dying. Certainly not my family members and the others were just names to me. I am not sure, other than McCormick, that I would recognize their faces. No, I had nothing to do with those seven deaths. Nothing. I had no hand in their deaths. That is a promise I can make to you right here and right now. Believe it.

With the rule of law and habeas corpus and all that legal mumbo jumbo, nobody has ever been able to pin point an exact time and location where I could have possibly been involved with the deaths of Masters, McCormick and Sellers. Like I said, I doubt I could even identify Masters or Sellers. My own family, of course is a different matter. But more about them in a moment.

For 17 years I sat on Death Row in a hot, isolated cell in the State of Texas, waiting for a lethal injection, which the state claimed I deserved. Seventeen years. Think about how long that is. From the time you are born until you graduate from high school. That’s about seventeen years. That’s the amount of time I was locked up in a cell little more than 12 x 12 with no windows and a steel sink and steel toilet. My bed was a flat cement protrusion from the west wall and was covered with a thin rolled out mattress, less than an inch thick, which was inspected every other day, as if by magic I was making some kind of device that would destroy that hellhole and set my soul free. I was given permission to have a bible, which I opted out, figuring it would do me no good; a tooth brush, which was replaced once a month for what reason I do not know; and a transistor radio, issued by the State’s Correctional Department and I assume had been gone over with a fine tooth comb to prevent a sick and twisted being like me from turning it into a bomb. My pillow had no pillowcase, to protect me from wrapping it around my neck and hanging myself; and my clothes were simply an ill-fitting jump suit with no belt and the shoes were slippers with no laces. Again, all for my protection, I found it very difficult to get through my mind the concept that the State of Texas did not want me to harm or kill myself in any way; but rather, they wanted to have the pleasure of doing it themselves.

I heard on my radio that the execution of an Ohio inmate was postponed twice, because he had the flu. Really? The flu? I mean you are going to kill him, why spend the money on antibiotics and cold medicines to get him well so you can off him? I do not understand these people. And it is not like the myth by which they are portrayed. They do not relish their job. They are not freaks that wear dark robes and chant death dirges twenty-four hours a day. No they are regular Joes. They do not yearn for the next execution like a fisherman who anticipates the next bass strike. Sure, I guess there are a few odd balls among the men and women who service us on death row, but all in all, they are a very professional lot, who do a job by the letter of the law. Not that I count any of them my close friends, they are, by in large, a decent lot. And they make sure that as much as they can – under the guidance of the legislature’s direction– that they make your stay as comfortable as possible.

And, I must say, that the men who were with me for the most part of those seventeen years, believed me when I said I was innocent. There was one ass named Tad Goff, who kept needling me (no pun intended) about being ‘Mr. Big Bad Killer.’ Finally, the older guards took care of him for me. He never came back to work at The Polunsky Unit, my home away from home for nearly two decades. I was placed on death row at the age of 27. As I write this I have just celebrated my 46th birthday – two years removed from the nightmare I called life. Now I suppose you are going to want to know how it all began. Fair enough.

Light sleeper.

The house was quiet that Thursday night. Mom had turned her reading light off in her bedroom just behind the kitchen, and Ginger had done the same some fifteen minutes earlier. I made my way through the kitchen after filling a glass with water. I noticed the neon green light coming from the microwave oven and it told me the time was 11:02. I moved to the rear of the house and opened the kid’s door. Jenny was almost off the bed, nothing unusual for my four year old. Her sister, Cindy, six, was coved up head to toe with a comforter her grandmother, Ginger’s mother, had left her. She never slept without it. I hoped that it would last through her college years. I picked Jenny’s feet up and swung them back onto the bed and covered them with a sheet. I moved down the dark hallway, nearly tripping over Oscar, our ancient dog that was as blind as he was deaf. His only remaining asset was a nose that could tell within inches, where food was. Oscar was curled up in the middle of the hallway just beyond the girl’s bathroom. Sorry Oscar, I whispered, knowing the old fellow could not hear me. I could hear the thumping of his skinny tail beating on the carpet. Oscar was a loving product of the SPCA. A true mutt. With the heart of a thoroughbred. Oscar was as much a part of the family as I was. Maybe more. And he knew it.

A quick look in on Ginger and then I eased her door closed and moved to my office which at the front of the house facing the road. I turned on a desk lamp. One of those kind old bankers used, with a round green shade that spilled light below it onto a cluttered desk and kept it out of my eyes. I opened the day’s mail and separated the bills from the advertising and the other junk. I noticed a letter, hand addressed to me with no return address. I reached for a letter opener that was in a jar at the front edge of my father’s old cherry desk, which he had used as a railroad agent in Kansas for years, before moving the family to East Texas to go into the oil and gas game. My father was never a great gambler, and in the oil and gas field, you need to know when to hold them and when to play them. He never did. He died a broken man two days after my high school graduation. Broken in spirit and broken financially. It became my job to earn a living for the family. And I did.

I opened the letter and on a sheet of plain white paper, were cut out letters from magazines and newspapers forming the words, which read, Your wife is a real slut. I bet her skin is real soft. It was the third one in as many weeks. I had promised Ginger if another came, I would call the police and tell them. She taught school – mostly ninth graders, and I told her it was probably some foolish kid with a high school crush. But after three of these, I was beginning to have my own doubts. I placed the letter down and looked around. Creepy. It made you feel like you were being watched. I tightened the blinds that covered the window facing McCall Street and returned to our bedroom and looked in again on Ginger. She was sleeping comfortably. Again I eased the door closed and returned to my office. I killed the desk lamp and sat in darkness. As my eyes got used to the surroundings, I could make out sources of light from around the house. The kitchen had several, all seemingly in the same shade of green as the clock on the microwave. There was a yellowish light from the nightlight in the kid’s hall. And a bluish light filtered in from the front windows of the house off the mercury vapor street lamps outside. Then suddenly there was a flash of bright yellow-white light that swept across the living room, just beyond my office. As quickly as it appeared, it was gone. I rose from my desk chair and slowly moved to the darkened living room. Again the light flashed across the room. I ducked back into the shadow of the doorway, so as not to be caught in its path. It was coming from the small deck at the side door.

I moved through the dining room to the kitchen, where I picked up a long carving knife, the only weapon I could find, and eased my way to the den in the back of the house. Again the light swept across the rear of the house and stopped just a few feet from my hiding spot in the shadows of a built-in bookshelf.

I waited. For what seemed like an eternity I waited and nothing. Whoever or whatever it was, must have left. It was quiet and dark again outside. But to make sure, I opened the side door, which I noticed had been pried with some kind of claw-like device, such as a hammer or a crowbar. The two tooth marks were plain to see in the wood. I moved to the edge of the deck and looked down into the shrubs that ran along and under by girl’s room. Then I heard it. A creak of wood under a heavy foot, I raise to look back and everything washed to darkness.

Do I need a lawyer?

I am told I was out for three days. Two of those thanks in part to a medically induced coma by the doctors at Keen County Hospital, so that they could more easily transport me first to Medical Center in Tyler and then to Baylor Hospital in Dallas, where I underwent a brain scan for the wound on the back of my head right at the base of the skull. In those days, neither Tyler nor Keen County had MRI or CAT-scan facilities. They both do now, but again that was close to twenty-four years ago.

I awoke at Baylor Hospital to find Sevin Stephens and Matt DeLong seated next to a bed that I was apparently strapped into. Sevin was the district attorney of Keen County and his principle investigator was Matt DeLong, an old family friend. Sevin pulled his chair up real close and said, You want to tell us about it, Mason?

I rolled my head over toward him on the starched white sheets and asked what he was talking about.

Matt answered for him. Mason, tell us what happened? How’d you get all that blood all over you? How’d you get that gash in your head? What was with the scissors, Mason? Jimmy’s fine. Says to tell you to hang in there. Whole town is pulling for you, Mason. We just need to get to the bottom of this.

You’re going to need to hang in here, Mason. It was Sevin Stephens, now real close to me. We’ve got a lot of questions, son. A lot of unanswered questions.

About what, Mr. Stephens? I asked.

"Let’s start with your little girls? Or Ginger. Or your mother.

Why?"

What are you talking about? I asked.

Sevin smiled. Matt smiled. They both patted me on the head and said they’d be back. That was when I noticed a doctor had come into the room and cleared his throat. It was a signal. Time to leave him alone, now, boys. He’s mine until I say he’s well enough to be grilled. Then you can grill him.

Sevin and Matt left and I turned to the doctor, a young man, closer to my age than theirs. What are they talking about doctor? I asked.

And where am I?

You’re in the ICU at Baylor Hospital, Dallas. I’m doctor Richard Nelson, your neurologist. Pretty good blow to the head.

He rolled my head over to the side as if