The Best American Mystery Stories 2005

Hunstad was to be executed on a Saturday. This was to allow for most people who wanted to be there to not have to worry about work. On the Thursday before, I got a call from the prison asking if I could come down and take a look beforehand at how security would work, and where I would be sitting. Also, they said if I wanted to take a look at the room itself I could. Although I never worked on Thursdays I told him that I couldn’t and asked him if he could just tell me over the phone. I felt bad for lying, especially because I hadn’t been to work at all since it happened. They didn’t know that though. So they went through it over the phone. What gate I needed to come to. Identification I needed to bring. To make sure not to bring any weapons with me. I thought this last rule was a little strange until I realized that there will be hundreds of people in a single building who are all there to watch someone die. I asked if you can go to prison for killing a man who is about to be executed. He said yes. Finally he described the room where the execution would take place. The room, as it was described to me, is no bigger than a bedroom of a cramped apartment. In it sits five rows of five chairs, each row a small step up from the one in front of it. On the wall that the chairs face is a large window that looks into another room of about the same size. In it there is only one chair. It sits on a round platform maybe a foot or so off the ground. About the arms and legs, various straps and locks are attached. To me it sounded like a theater. After flipping through some papers he said in an impressed tone that it looked like I was front and center. I thought the way he said it was in poor taste. We said goodbye and hung up the phone.

Saturday morning came and I got dressed. I didn’t want to put on anything too fancy to make people think that this was an event, as if I were going to the opera. I gathered the two forms of identification that I needed. There were a few news cameras outside the building, but I figured most of the reporters had already found their way to the prison to watch the witnesses stroll in. The taxi that I had called for was parked on the street. The meter was probably running, so. I tried to hurry. Once in the back, I told the driver I needed to go to the prison. He looked in the mirror and apparently recognized me from the papers. He said it was a shame about my wife, and that he felt just awful for what had happened. He said that he and his family had been praying for me ever since they saw it on the news. It was such a strange feeling to hear someone not talk about the execution, and rather about what had already happened. I thanked him, and for the first time in a long time I could force a smile on my face.

As we approached the prison, there were cars everywhere. The lot had overflowed onto a field where people just started making their own rows. The news vans lined the street with their towers reaching into the sky. Some protesters stood near the entrance to the prison. They were protesting for the execution, though. It seemed strange. Large groups of people stood around as if they were waiting for the last few tickets to a sold-out rock concert. The taxi driver started to slow down. He put on his blinker and waited for oncoming traffic to pass. When they had, I told him to stop.