The Best American Mystery Stories 2005

His name was Mathew Hunstad. He would admit that after his employer refused his request for traveling expenses, he got mad. He said he was taking a suggestion to make more room on the subway literally. Thinking that if he killed half the people who rode at the same time he did, there would be plenty of room for him and all of his materials. He wasn’t insane, he was just angry, and now faced five counts of attempted murder, on top of the sixty-eight counts of murder for those he had successfully executed.

The trial was nothing to speak of. More than a hundred people watched him methodically assassinate one after another of his fellow citizens. Hunstad never even hinted at an insanity plea, and when it came time for sentencing, he fully accepted, and expected, the death penalty. He made no mention of an appeal, making it very easy to feel relieved it wouldn’t drag on and on. He was sentenced to death by lethal injection. The date was set by the court, and for the first time I could look beyond Mathew Hunstad.

I didn’t mark the date on any calendar, or call my family to tell them. It was all absurd to me. I hoped that I could forget it altogether. His execution was front-page fodder, real headline news. The stuff three-part series are made of, but for me it was already over. Then the phone rang.

The voice on the other end of the line asked for me and gave me condolences when it was confirmed that I was, in fact, myself. She told me she represented the state prison at which Hunstad would be executed. She asked if I was aware of the lottery taking place to be a witness to the execution. I hung up the phone.

It rang again, and the same sweet voice assured me that she did represent the prison. The only way I would talk with her was if she gave me her number and extension and then I would call her back. When I did, the man at the switchboard routed me through to her. I asked why she was bothering me. She said that they had held the lottery and my name was chosen as one of the twenty-five individuals who would be able to see, in person, Hunstad’s execution. I told her that I had entered no such lottery and just about hung up on her when she said that someone else must have. The lottery had only been open to those on the subway and the immediate families of those killed. Someone must have known me from the train and entered me. I told her I didn’t want it. She told me that was none of her business and that she was only responsible for informing me I had been picked. The last thing she said before she hung up was that I was the very first pick, which meant I would be in the front row, the center seat.

Somehow my name got out to the public. Instantly, my phone began to ring. Some were calls relaying their envy because I got to be right there when the “sick bastard eats it,” as one person put it. Most calls, though, were from those people asking if they could have my seat. Some offered money, others offered season tickets, home electronics, anything. It seemed everyone had become obsessed with watching a man die. One individual, who had no relation to anyone on the subway that day, called offering me three ounces of hash. I turned off the ringer and unplugged the answering machine. The daily newspaper was sitting by the sofa, so I picked it up. I crumpled up the front page without even looking at it. Nothing much seemed to be happening in the world. Maybe it only felt that way.

Jenny had always done the grocery shopping. There was nothing left in the apartment by this time and so I had to go out to get something. Down a few blocks from where we lived was a sandwich shop that we always used to go to. I hadn’t been there in some time, but it was the closest place where I knew I could get something good. Inside the shop, I could smell wild-rice soup simmering in the back. The lighting was low with soft, unintelligible music playing. I always thought they kept it that way so that a person’s sense of smell would take over. Jenny always said it was to save on electricity.

I got in line at the counter behind a tall man that looked to be in his early thirties. He didn’t notice me come up right away. Once he recognized who I was, there was no way to get him to stop talking. He kept telling me how lucky I was. The condolences for my loss came after this, showing the importance of lost life to people fixated on the potential loss soon to come. He kept talking even after he had ordered. Telling me about how the execution works. The chemicals they use. The pain the body feels. Then he told me that from the time Hunstad is injected it will take about three seconds, and then his body will start to die. When I asked him to be quiet he looked at me like I had insulted him. In a way, that’s what I had hoped to do.

A week before the execution, hundreds of family members of the deceased demanded their right to watch Hunstad die. What law gave that right I didn’t know. It’s like saying I want to be able to sit outside the cell of the man who robbed my home for his entire sentence. Regardless, the people demanded their right, and the state gave it to them. The prison would send a live feed of the execution to a closed-circuit television set up in the prison’s common area so the people could watch. There wouldn’t be just one television. There would be several, all around the room. All of them far bigger than any I’ve ever owned.