He half-stumbled into the seat waiting for him. The unyielding metal of the chair burned into his back.

'Tough night, huh, Cowart?' the detective whispered.

He didn't answer.

The detective grunted. 'Not as tough as some have it, though.'

'Don't be so sure about that,' Cowart replied under his breath. 'How did you get here?'

'Tanny's got friends. He wanted to see if old Sully would really go through with it. Still don't believe that bullshit you wrote about him being the killer of little Joanie. Tanny said he didn't much know what it would mean if Sullivan doesn't back out. But he thought if he didn't, and I got to see it, well, it might help teach me respect for the system of justice. Tanny is always trying to teach me things. Says it makes a man a better policeman to know what can happen in the end.'

The detective's eyes glistened with a hellish humor.

'Has it?' Cowart asked.

Wilcox shook his head. 'It ain't happened yet. Class is still in session.' He grinned at Cowart. 'You're looking a bit pale. Something on your mind?'

Before Cowart could reply, Wilcox whispered, 'Got any last words? It's midnight.'

They waited a heartbeat or two.

A side door opened and the prison warden stepped through. Blair Sullivan was next, flanked by two guards and trailed by a third. His face was rigid and pale, a corpselike appearance. His whole wiry body seemed smaller and sickly. He wore a simple white shirt buttoned tight to the neck and dark blue trousers. A priest wearing a collar, carrying a Bible and an expression of frustrated dismay, trailed the group. The priest shuffled off to the side of the chamber, pausing only to shrug in the direction of the warden, and cracked open the Good Book. He started reading quietly to himself. Cowart saw Sullivan's eyes widen when he spotted the chair. They swung abruptly to a telephone on the wall, and for the briefest moment his knees seemed to lose some strength, and he tottered. But he regained control almost instantly and the moment of hesitation was lost. It was the first time he'd seen Sullivan act in any way vaguely human, Cowart thought. Then things started to happen swiftly, with the herky-jerkiness of a silent movie.

Sullivan was steered into the seat and two guards dropped to their knees and started fastening leg and arm braces. Brown leather straps were tightened around Sullivan's chest, bunching up his white shirt. One guard attached an electrode to the prisoner's leg. Another swooped behind the chair and seized a cap, ready to bring it down over Sullivan's head.

The warden stepped forward and started reading from the black-bordered death warrant signed by the governor of Florida. Each syllable pricked Cowart's fear, as if they were being read for him. The warden hurried his words, then took a deep breath and tried to slow his pace down. His voice seemed oddly tinny and distant. There were speakers built into the walls and microphones hidden in the death chamber.

The warden finished reading. For an instant, he stared at the sheet of paper as if searching for something else to read. Then he looked up and peered at Sullivan. 'Any last words?' he asked quietly.

'Fuck you. Let 'er rip,' Sullivan said. His voice quavered uncharacteristically.

The warden gestured with his right hand, the one that held the curled-up warrant, toward the guard standing behind the chair, who abruptly brought the black leather shroud cap and face mask down over the prisoner's head. The guard then attached a large electrical conductor to the cap. Sullivan squirmed then, an abrupt thrust against the bonds that held him. Cowart saw the dragon tattoos on the man's arms spring to life as the muscles beneath the skin twitched and strained. The tendons on his neck tightened like ropes pulled taut by a sudden great wind. Sullivan was shouting something but the words were muffled by a leather chin strap and tongue pad that had been forced between his teeth. The words became inarticulate grunts and moans, rising and falling in panic pitch. In the witness room there was no noise except for the slow in and out of tortured breathing. Cowart saw the warden nod almost imperceptibly toward a partition in the rear of the death chamber. There was a small slit there, and for an instant, he saw a pair of eyes.

The executioner's eyes.

They stared out at the man in the chair, then they disappeared.

There was a thunking sound.

Someone gasped. Another person coughed hard. There were a few whispered expletives. The lights dimmed momentarily. Then silence regained the room.

Cowart thought he could not breathe. It was as if some hand had encircled his chest and squeezed all the air from within him. He watched motionless as the color of Sullivan's fists changed from pink to white to gray.

The warden nodded again toward the rear partition.

A distant generator whine buzzed and shook the small space. A faint odor of burnt flesh crept into his nostrils and filled his stomach with renewed nausea.

There was another fracture in time as the physician waited for the 2,500 volts to slide from the dead man's body. Then he stepped forward, removing a stethoscope from his black bag.

And it was done. Cowart watched the people in the execution chamber as they circled around Sullivan's body, slumped in the polished oaken chair. It was as if they were stage players ready to break down a set after the final performance of some failed show. He and the other official witnesses stared, trying to catch a glimpse of the dead man's face as he was shifted from the killing seat into a black rubber body bag. But Sullivan was zipped away too quickly for anyone to see if his eyeballs had exploded or his skin had been scorched red and black. The body was hustled back through the side door on a gurney. It should be terrible, he thought, but it was simply routine. Perhaps that was the most terrifying aspect of it. He had witnessed- the factorylike processing of evil. Death canned and bottled and delivered with all the drama of the morning milk.

'Scratch one bad guy,' Wilcox said. All the jocularity had fled from his voice, replaced with a barren satisfaction. 'It's all over…' The detective glanced at Cowart.'… Except for the shouting.'

He walked through the prison corridors with the rest of the official witnesses toward where the other members of the press contingent and the demonstrators had crowded. He could see the artificial light of the television cameras flooding the vestibule, giving it a forced otherwordly glow. The polished floor glistened; the whitewashed walls seemed to vibrate with light. A bank of microphones was arranged behind a makeshift podium. He tried to sidle to the side of the room, edging toward the door, as the warden approached the gathering, holding up his hand to cut off questions, but there were no shadows to hide in.

'I'll read a short statement,' the warden said. His voice creaked with the strain of the events. 'Then I'll answer your questions. Then the pool reporters will brief you.'

He gave the official time of death as 12:08 A.M. The warden droned that a representative from the state attorney general's office had been present when Sullivan had been prepared for execution and during the procedure, to make certain that there was no controversy over the events – that no one would come forward later and claim that Sullivan had been denied his rights, had been taunted or beaten – as they had more than a dozen years earlier when the state had renewed the death penalty by executing a somewhat pathetic drifter named John Spenkelink. He said that Sullivan had refused a final plea to file an appeal, right outside the execution chamber door. He quoted the dead man's final words as 'Obscenity you. Let 'er rip.'

The still photographers' cameras made a whirring, clicking noise like some flight of mechanical birds taking wing en masse.