Chapter 39:// Closing a Thread

Sebeck sat in the sterile visitor's room near Lompoc's death row. His wife, Laura, sat across the table from him, looking down. To Sebeck's surprise, there was no bulletproof partition separating them here. His last visitation would be face-to-face. Two prison guards stood watch over them from the nearby door.

Laura looked up. "Are they treating you well?"

Sebeck grimaced. "They're going to kill me this evening."

She seemed unsure how to respond.

Sebeck just waved it aside. "It's okay. Normal conversation doesn't really work in here. Don't feel bad."

She sat thin-lipped and tense for several more moments. "Are you afraid?"

Sebeck nodded.

"I don't know what to do, Pete."

"I'm sorry about the pension and the life insurance. I hear they canceled them."

"I just can't believe this is happening."

"Neither can I."

She looked squarely at him. "Tell me again."

He looked at her. "I didn't kill anyone, Laura. I committed adultery, but I didn't do those other things. I would never have harmed Aaron or those other people."

"They say terrible things about you on TV. It never stops."

"So I'm told."

"It's been real tough on Chris at school."

They both contemplated this gravely. Then Sebeck motioned to her. "It's good to see you, Laura." He smiled weakly. "Given all that I've put you through, I wouldn't blame you for not speaking to me again."

"I've known you my whole life. I couldn't let you go without saying goodbye."

He felt a little choked up as she began to cry. He cleared his tight throat. "I know we don't really love each other. Not in a romantic way. Our marriage seemed like the right thing to do with the baby and all."

She was crying silently into her hands.

Sebeck continued. "But I think, if I had just had the chance to fall in love with you before all that, I think I would have. I just never had the chance."

She just wept.

"I love our son, Laura. I want you to know that. And I want Chris to know. I don't regret having him. I regret how I handled it. And how I blamed everyone else for the decisions I made."

She looked up. "You were just a boy, Pete. We were both just kids."

"Sometimes I feel like I still am. Like I'm frozen in time."

She tried to rein in her tears. "I don't know what to do."

Sebeck sighed. "Sell the house. Make sure Chris gets a college education. And then…go fall in love. You deserve to be happy, Laura."

She was crying harder now.

One of the guards called from the door. "Sebeck. Time's up."

Sebeck reached out a hand toward her. They held hands briefly over the table. "Thank you for being kind to me."

The guards pulled him away, and the last Sebeck saw of her, she was staring at him through tears as he was pushed through the doorway and into the echoing death row wing beyond.

Sebeck lay bound hand and foot by leather buckles and straps. A rubber tube was wrapped tightly around his right arm, bulging the veins. Another brown rubber tube ran from the intravenous line in his arm to the wall, where it disappeared through a small port. Sebeck knew there were several men behind that wall, each preparing lethal doses of sodium thiopental (to knock him out), pancuronium bromide (to stop his breathing), and potassium chloride (to interrupt the electrical signals to his heart). Only one of the IV drips was connected to Sebeck's tube-so the three executioners would never know who delivered the fatal injection. It was an odd system. One that ignored the fact that people killed each other every day without trying to conceal it. In fact, if he jumped the prison fence, they would gun him down without hesitation.

Looking down at his own body, Sebeck found it funny that he was in better physical shape now than he'd been in a decade. All he'd had to keep himself from going crazy in solitary confinement was endless reps of push-ups and sit-ups. Beneath the 24/7 buzzing fluorescent lights of his cell. He saw the knotted muscles in his arms and it brought back memories of his youth. Of better days.

Sebeck lay at a slight incline so that he could face the assembled witnesses sitting behind the nearby windows. He felt oddly calm as he regarded them. A mix of curious and angry faces stared back. Some were taking notes.

So this was the death chamber? This was what it felt like to be put to death. His hunch about Sobol had been wrong. The funeral message hadn't brought forth any rescuer from beyond the grave. It hadn't even seemed a remote possibility while he lived in the heart of suburbia that he would one day be put to death by the federal government. Yet here he was. He almost laughed. It was so ludicrous he half expected Rod Serling to saunter in and deliver a double-entendre-laden summation of his life. Pete Sebeck, a man whose demons got the better of him…

Was there ever really a Daemon after all? Even if there was, Sebeck had been defeated by it. His relatively brief life had been a complete waste. The only good thing he'd accomplished was his son-ironic since the pregnancy had always seemed like the worst thing that ever happened to him.

He considered that most of the people here really believed that he conspired to murder federal officers. He hardly blamed them for what they were doing. He would have looked on in righteous anger, too.

Just then Sebeck noticed Anji Anderson in the gallery. A flash of anger coursed through him. That was just the last straw-to see that smug, pert face with the slight curl of a smile on the edges of her mouth. Like an evil pixie. Sebeck's most malevolent stare bored into her. At first she kept the smug look, but soon the trace of a smile faded, and then she finally looked away.

After conferring for a moment with the doctor, the warden leaned down and asked if Sebeck had any last words. He'd been thinking about his last words for several months. For too long, actually. It wasn't like he was going to win over anyone. He had decided to take the stoic, unflinching approach.

He looked to the mirrored glass of the window concealing the victims' families. "I didn't kill your loved ones. I didn't kill anyone. But if I were in your position, I'd think I was guilty, too. Hopefully, the truth will come out someday, if only so that my son knows his father isn't a murderer." He paused. "That's it, let's get this over with."

Almost immediately he felt a warm sensation in his arm. It spread like a wave of numbness over his entire body. It occurred to him that this was the speed of his circulatory system. He also noticed a label on the fluorescent light fixture above him. It read, "30W BALLAST PARABOLIC REFLECTOR." It was a strange message to depart this life with. So he turned to face the doctor standing nearby, an angular man with cold blue eyes who stared icily back at Sebeck. Even Sebeck couldn't meet his fierce gaze, so he fixated on the logo on the lapel of the doctor's lab coat. It read: "Singer/Kellog Medical Services, Inc."

Sebeck found his eyes getting heavy, and his breathing became labored. He turned back toward the overhead light. As the last of his vision faded, he struggled to maintain a focus on the light. Sebeck realized he had forgotten to appreciate his last sight of this world. It was too late, and he fought for one last glimpse. But everything was blackness. And then it was nothingness, and he fell into a well of emptiness so deep and broad that it was as though the entire universe had ceased to exist.