Last Dance, Last Chance

Justice—Not People!” They held hands and chanted as they held a candlelight vigil for a man who wanted none of their help.
    James Elledge spent the night before his execution in a holding cell that had a mattress, a pillow, two sheets, two towels, and three blankets. He declined to make a request for a last supper. His last meal, then, was the breakfast he’d eaten that morning: apple juice, oatmeal, hash-browns, toast, a boiled egg, and coffee.
    Shortly after midnight, Elledge was moved from his cell to a gurney in the death chamber. He had chosen death by lethal injection.
    Witnesses sat tensely in the room with a large window, where they could see the execution. Bill Jaquette was there, as was Deputy Prosecutor John Adcock, along with the two detectives who had worked on the Fitzner murder case. Jim Nelson said he felt little sympathy for Elledge. “I feel a lot worse about her than I do about him. He knows what’s coming. He’s had a chance to make his peace with whatever he feels he needs to do. And he did this to himself. He committed his second murder, and he’s been given chance after chance.”
    At 12:30 A.M. , a white curtain that hid the execution chamber from the witnesses suddenly rose. The witnesses could see Elledge lying on his back. A dark blue sheet was pulled up to his neck, and his eyes were closed. He seemed to be dead already, but then they saw the faint movement of his chest as he breathed in and out.
    Prison Superintendent John Lambert announced, “Inmate Elledge has no last words.”
    At 12:39, the petcock was turned on the first of the drugs and it began to flow through the saline solution into Elledge’s veins. All the witnesses saw was the two lines. Just as those who throw the switch on an electric chair never know which switch is a dummy, these executioners would not know which of them let loose the fatal drugs.
    First, there was thiopental sodium to relax the muscles, then pancuronium bromide to paralyze the lungs, and finally potassium chloride to stop the heart.
    Scott North, a reporter for the Everett Herald, sat watching, his notepad in his hand, almost forgetting to write.
    Jim Elledge moved so slightly that it was almost undetectable. He seemed to take one deep breath. After several minutes, his mouth fell open slightly.
    And then the curtain fell.
    Almost immediately, Department of Corrections spokesman Veltry Johnson announced that Elledge was dead. It was 12:52. The entire process had taken 13 minutes. The oldest prisoner ever to be executed in the state of Washington was dead at the age of 58.
    Eloise Fitzner’s brother, Mike, didn’t go to the prison to observe the execution. Instead, he stayed with their elderly mother, who was in a nursing home. They had both hoped that Elledge might ask for forgiveness for murdering Eloise—but, of course, he had not said a word.
    “In my mind,” Helland said, “Elledge is just kind of a nonentity. [My sister]—through no fault of her own—ran into a bad guy, a person who was broken. I’d just not like to think about him anymore.”
    There was no one left to talk to who could speak for Bertha Lush—not after 27 years.
     
    No one can say for sure what event, if any, in Jim Elledge’s early life had filled him with so much rage. It was probably a series of losses, disappointments, abandonments, griefs. It might have been nature or nurture, or a genetic predisposition to violence enflamed by his desperate childhood. But one thing was certain: he would surely have gone on hurting and killing people as long as he had the strength to do it.
    He stopped that, fully aware of the black thing inside of him, even though he didn’t understand it.
    He took himself out of the game before he could do it again.

The Beach
    G rays Harbor County, Washington, is a great sprawling county that edges the coast along the Pacific Ocean near the southwestern corner of the state. It isn’t a heavily populated area, perhaps because it rains so much there—a relentless gray curtain of water that can leave even the most ebullient personality discouraged. The economy has driven some residents away; the timber industry has fallen on hard times.

A berdeen, the biggest town in Grays Harbor County, has under 20,000 residents, and the whole county has somewhere between 60,000 and 70,000 people. But that number doubles, often triples, during a clam tide. Commercial and sports fishing are a big draw; there are scores of shake mills, endless miles of