“At five P.M., he ate his last meal. His request was sirloin steak, salad, a baked potato, and pecan pie, which we had prepared for him at Bonanza Steak House. He didn't pick the restaurant. The inmates don't get to do that. And, as is the routine, there were two identical meals ordered. The inmate eats one, a member of the death team eats the other. And this is all to make sure some overly enthusiastic chef doesn't decide to speed up the inmate's journey to the Great Beyond by spicing the food with something extra like arsenic.

“Did Waddell eat his meal?” I asked, thinking about his empty stomach “He wasn't real hungry - asked us to save it for him to eat the next day.”

“He must have thought Governor Norring was going to pardon him,” Marino said.

“I don't know what he thought. I'm just reporting to you what Waddell said when he was served his meal. Afterward, at seven-thirty, personal property officers came to his cell to take an inventory of his property and ask him what he wanted done with it. We're talking about one wristwatch, one ring, various articles of clothing and mail, books, poetry. At eight P.M., he was taken from his cell. His head, face, and right ankle were shaved. He was weighed, showered, and dressed in the clothing he would wear to the chair. Then he was returned to his cell.

“At ten-forty-five, his death warrant was read to him, witnessed by the death team.”

Roberts got up from the desk “Then he was led, without restraints, to the adjoining room.”

“What was his demeanor at this point?” Marino asked as Roberts unlocked another door and opened it.

“Let's just say that his racial affiliation did not permit him to be white as a sheet. Otherwise, he would've been.”

The room was smaller than I had imagined. About six from the back wall and centered on the shiny brown cement floor was the chair, a stark, rigid throne of dark polished oak Thick leather straps were looped around high slatted back, the two front legs, and the arm rests.

“Waddell was seated and the first strap fastened-was the chest strap,” Roberts continued in the same indifferent tone. “Then the two arm straps, the belly strap, and the straps for the legs.”

He roughly plucked at each strap as he talked. “It took one minute to strap him in. His face was covered with the leather mask - and I'll show you that in a minute. The helmet was placed on his head, the leg piece attached to his right leg.”

I got out my camera, a ruler, and photocopies of Waddell's body diagrams.

“At exactly two minutes past eleven, he received the first current - that's twenty-flue hundred volts and six and a half amps. Two amps will kill you, by the way.”

The injuries marked on Waddell's body diagrams correlated nicely with the construction of the chair and its restraints.

“The helmet attaches to this.” Roberts pointed out a pipe running from the ceiling and ending with a copper wing nut directly over the chair.

I began taking photographs of the chair from every angle. - “And the leg piece attaches to this wing nut here.”

The flashbulb going off gave me a strange sensation. I was getting jumpy.

“All this man was, was one big circuit breaker.”

“When did he start to bleed?” I asked.

“The minute he was hit the first time, ma'am. And he didn't stop until it was completely over, then a curtain was drawn, blocking him from the view of the witnesses. Three members of the death team undid his shirt and the doc listened with his stethoscope and felt the carotid and pronounced him. Waddell was placed on a gurney and taken into the cooling room, which is where we're headed next.”

“Your theory about the chair allegedly malfunctioning?” I said.

“Pure crap. Waddell was six-foot-four, weighed two hundred and fifty-nine pounds. He was cooking long before he sat in the chair, his blood pressure probably out of sight. After he was pronounced, because of the bleeding, the deputy director came over to take a look at him. His eyeballs hadn't popped out. His eardrums hadn't popped out. Waddell had a damn nosebleed, same thing people get when they strain too hard on the toilet.”

I silently agreed with him. Waddell's nosebleed was due to the Valsalva maneuver, or an abrupt increase in intrathoracic pressure. Nicholas Grueman would not be pleased with the report I planned to send him.

“What tests had you run to make sure the chair was operating properly?” Marino asked.

“Same ones we always do. First, Virginia Power looks at the equipment and checks it out.”

He pointed to a large circuit box enclosed in gray steel doors in the wall behind the chair. “Inside this is twenty two-hundred-watt light bulbs attached to plyboard for running tests. We test this during the week before the execution, three times the day of it, and then once more in front of the witnesses after they've assembled.”

“Yeah, I remember that,” Marino said, staring at the glass-enclosed witness booth no more than fifteen feet away. Inside were twelve black plastic chairs arranged in three neat rows.

“Everything worked like a charm,” Roberts said.

“Has it always?” I asked.

“To my knowledge, yes, ma'am.”

“And the switch, where is that?”

He directed my attention to a box on the wall to the right of the witness booth. “A key cuts the power on. But the button's in the control room. The warden or a designee turns the key and pushes the button. You want to see that?”

“I think I'd better.”

It wasn't much to look at, just a small cubicle directly behind the back wall of the room housing the chair. Inside was a large G.E. box with various dials to raise and lower the voltage, which went as high as three thousand volts. Rows of small lights affirmed that everything was fine or warned that things were not.

“At Greensville, it will all be computerized, “ Roberts added.

Inside a wooden cupboard were the helmet, leg piece, and two thick cables, which, he explained as he held them up, “attach to the wing nuts above and to one side of the chair, and then to this wing nut on top of the helmet and the one here on the leg piece.”

He did this without effort, adding, “Just like hooking up a VCR” The helmet and leg piece were copper riddled with holes, through which cotton string was woven to secure the sponge lining inside. The helmet was surprisingly light, a patina of green tarnish at the edges of the connecting plates. I could not imagine having such a thing placed on top of my head. The black leather mask was nothing more than a wide, crude belt that buckled behind the inmate's head, a small triangle cut in it for the nose. It could have been on display in the Tower of London and I would not have questioned its authenticity.

We passed a transformer with coils leading to the ceiling, and Roberts unlocked another door. We stepped inside another room.

“This is the cooling room,” he said. “We wheeled Waddell in here and transferred him to this table.”

It was steel, rust showing at the joints.

“We let him cool down for ten minutes, put sandbags on his leg. That's them right there.”

The sandbags were stacked on the floor at the foot of the table.

“Ten pounds each. Call it a knee-jerk reaction; but the leg's severely bent. The sandbags straighten it out. And if the burns are bad, like Waddell's were, we dress them with gauze. All done, and we put Waddell back on the stretcher and carried him out the same way you came in. Only we didn't bother with the stairs. No point in anybody getting a hernia. We used the food elevator and carried him out the front door, and loaded him in the ambulance. Then we hauled him into your place, just like we always do after our children ride the Sparky.”

Heavy doors slammed. Keys jangled. Locks clicked. Roberts continued talking boisterously as he led us back to the lobby. I barely listened and Marino did not say a word. Sleet mixed with rain beaded grass and walls with ice. The sidewalk was wet, the cold penetrating. I felt queasy. I was desperate to take a long, hot shower and change my clothes.