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1
BUTTS COUNTY, GEORGIA—Georgia Diagnostic and Classification State Prison
At precisely midnight, the moment when Monday becomes Tuesday, the blinds to the execution chamber jerked open, echoing like a thousand crows startled into flight.
Strapped to a gurney—elevated at the head—lay Eddie Ray Calhoone. His eyes quivered like lottery balls in an air mix machine. A pair of clear, thick tubes—one connected to his left wrist, the other to his right inner elbow—scalloped back and away, disappearing through a pair of grommet holes and into the Infusion Control Room. Sheriff Parker Chord was one of twenty-four witnesses, including members of the victims’ families, law enforcement, and Calhoone’s attorney. The prisoner had asked his family not to attend. Calhoone was convicted of slaughtering five men and two women, all shot in the heart by a .22 caliber pistol. The last victim was missing an eye that was never recovered. The killer had left jeering notes taunting investigators and teasing worse crimes to come. All were signed with a one-word name—Grin. Around the lips of each victim—like an artist signing a canvas—he drew a smile in the victim’s blood. The Blood Smile Killer. In the mandated silence of the witness room, the only sound was the scritch, scritch, scritch of five media witnesses writing in prison-issued notebooks with prison-issued pencils.
An overhead speaker clicked on, and the warden began to read the death warrant. His usually strong voice cracked like lake ice in early spring as he asked, “Any last words?”
Calhoone dry-swallowed. His eyes found a spot on the ceiling.
His voice was a whisper. “Tell Meemaw, tell her I didn’t do it. Tell her I’m a good boy.”
“Are you calling for your last appeal?” the warden asked.
The muscles in Sheriff Chord’s back tightened. Calhoone had forfeited his final appeal, hastening his own execution.
The condemned man shook his head.
“I need a verbal response,” the warden said.
“I do not want to appeal. Just tell Meemaw I love her, that’s all.”
“Very well,” the warden said. “Then may the will of the people be done and may your spirit find peace.” The warden bowed his head and left the room.
The speaker clicked off.
Immediately, a dull yellow liquid shot through the tubes. Three drugs, one to anesthetize, another to paralyze, and a third to stop his heart. Eddie Ray Calhoone—the monster known as the Blood Smile Killer—closed his eyes and never opened them again.
The Thrasher County sheriff didn’t realize how tense he was until it was over, until muscles that had been as taut as piano wire relaxed, returning some fluidity to his movements. The son of a bitch is finally dead, he thought and sighed with relief.
After close to eight years, seven victims, and hundreds of man-hours, the monster who had starred so prominently in Parker Chord’s nightmares was dead.
Mumbling condolences to the victims’ family members, he excused himself. Calhoone was dead; the paperwork, however, lived on. The task force members had to sign off on the execution—in triplicate—to be filed with the concluding reports—also in triplicate—which could not be finished until the doctor provided a death certificate.
Parker headed for the prison conference room.
Judge Hubert Peterson had beaten him there; his normally ruddy complexion was now a dingy tan. Neither man spoke as the sheriff took a seat at the scratched wooden table. Now that his muscles had loosened up and the adrenaline had faded from his system, fatigue was staking a claim.
The warden was the next to enter. He sat next to Parker and slid a four-by-four box toward him. It was wrapped in sack paper, addressed in red marker to Sheriff Parker Chord.
“This was waiting when I came out.”
Parker peeled away the paper and lifted out a small white box. He examined it with no particular interest. The execution had left him emotionally flat.
Other members of the task force began filing into the room, quiet for a cluster of law enforcement officers.
The judge was the first to see it. “What the hell is that?” he asked as Parker lifted a mason jar filled with clear liquid—smelling like vinegar and burnt matches—from the maw of the box.
“There’s something in it,” Parker said, holding the jar up to the light.
Little bits of something white floated on the bottom. He stared into the jar and something, floating in the liquid, stared back.
“It’s an eye,” Parker muttered. “A blue eye.”
The note was found tucked inside the box, written in a red marker.
MY DEAR ACCOMPLICES:
AN INNOCENT MAN LIES DEAD AND COLD,
BY YOUR OWN HANDS, HIS LIFE WAS STOLE.
CALL YOUR LOVED ONES, KEEP THEM NEAR,
BECAUSE I’M BACK AND I’M EVERYTHING THAT YOU FEAR.
It was signed with the one-word name the killer had used when taunting law enforcement. Four letters that burned through all their nightmares: GRIN.
End of Excerpt
