The Best American Mystery Stories 2005

Joseph Raiche One Mississippi

From The Baltimore Review

if fired correctly, a bullet can instantly kill whatever it is intended to kill. When fired incorrectly, it can still kill quite handily, it just takes a little longer. Sometimes it can take a lot longer. It can take days and even weeks to achieve its full potential. Truthfully, there are those bullets that are fired with no intention of coming into contact with a living thing. A firing range might be a good example. Yet, when we examine it further, we see that the targets are silhouettes with the highest points awarded, of course, for a shot to the heart, or the head.

I try not to watch the news. There are only cosmetic differences from one night to the next. “A shot B! Tonight at seven” or “A arrested in connection with whatever! Tonight at seven.” The radio or local paper isn’t much better, but a person needs to stay current. I usually skip the front page or tune out the late-breaking stories. The fringe is where most of what I need to know is anyway. I never thought that I would be part of the news. Not the “tonight at seven” part anyway, but then there I was on a subway car that had come to an unexpected stop.

It seems a twenty-four-year-old man named Mathew Hunstad filed a grievance at his job stating that he wasn’t adequately compensated for his travel expenses to get to and from certain job sites. This forced him to take all of his materials with him on the crowded subway rather than allowing him to drive his own car. Oftentimes the subway would be too full for him and all of his things, requiring him to wait for later runs. This caused him to be late for jobs, costing him money, and as the grievance stated, credibility. Well, his employer told him that if he wanted the luxury of driving his own car then he would have to pay for it, either that, or he would just have to make more space on the subway.

It couldn’t have been eight o’clock yet when the subway appeared from the tunnel and breathed to a halt, pushing me back a step. It was already crowded from the stops that it made further out in the city on its way in. My wife, Jennifer, and I went to work together every day except Thursdays, when I have the day off. We stepped onto the near full car and luckily found seats next to each other. Usually one of us ends up standing so that we can talk. Usually that person is me. That day we were just lucky.

The doors closed and the engine started to pull us forward to the heart of the city. Then, halfway through a rather long tunnel the whole subway came to a stop. Since most people riding were regulars like Jenny and me, a few people stumbled, not expecting the stop. The lights in the car stayed on, helping people to stay calm. One other time I had been stuck on a subway car. The lights went out, though, and people started to panic. A few individuals had cigarette lighters that they would flick on from time to time just to make sure nothing was going on until we started moving again. This time the lights stayed on. Besides the slight irritation of possibly being late for work, no one complained very much.

From the front of the train we heard a single shot. I dismissed it as something else, but it was quite clearly a gun being fired. No more than ten seconds later, the sound of a second gunshot popped into my ears, followed by a third, and a fourth, and a fifth. Excluding the first shot, the subsequent ones were very rhythmic. I counted to myself: “one mississippi, two mississippi, three.” Each time I got to three, the gun would go off. Each time the gun went off, it got louder. People started to panic. Looking through the window at the end of the car into the next, I could see a man walking down the center isle. Every few steps he turned and fired a shot at one of the passengers. He wasn’t doing it randomly though. After watching for only a few seconds, I could see he was shooting every other passenger.

He made his way into the car next to ours and began his routine. “One mississippi, two mississippi, three.” Of course, a few people tried to stop him. They would come at him from behind and try and wrestle one of his guns away. They tried, and failed. Every other person, “one mississippi, two mississippi, three.” He was almost to the end. The doors slid open and he stepped onto our car. He would reload in the short time it took the doors to close behind him and open in front of him. Some people tried to escape, but the door to the next car was barricaded and the walls of the tunnel were too close to escape out the window. The people in the next car had taken an old man’s cane and wedged it so that the door wouldn’t automatically slide open.

The first good look I got of him was when he stepped through the door. He didn’t hesitate, but my mind took a still picture of him. Nothing stood out. It was frightening to think that there was no discernible trait that separated him from anyone else, including me. Yes, he was a man. Yes, he was white. Beyond that I could just as well describe myself.

His first step was met with screaming, and then it began. “One mississippi, two mississippi, three.” He was going back and forth across the rows. The first person on one side followed by the second on the other. “One mississippi, two mississippi, three.” First, a secretary that worked for some law firm that specialized in mortgage foreclosures. I had talked to him a few times during the morning commute. “One mississippi, two mississippi, three.” Next, a black woman who worked in a department store downtown who kept to herself most mornings. “One mississippi, two mississippi, three.” Then, some woman who I never really talked to, but Jenny told me that she... Jenny. I was so terrified I had completely forgotten about Jenny. Counting out the seats, I realized that I was sitting in a “safe” chair. For a moment, I felt relieved.

Jenny had grabbed my arm and buried her face into my back. I pulled her toward me and tried to sneak to her other side. She hadn’t been watching the shootings and so wouldn’t know why I was doing it. My hope was that I hadn’t been noticed. No sign made me think I hadn’t been successful. The shootings went on. “One mississippi, two mississippi, three.” Only a few people away now and the sound had grown to deafening claps against my ears. “One mississippi, two mississippi, three.” Two people down from me, a body went limp and slid to the ground. Turning to the other side, another three seconds passed. He turned to me. “One mississippi, two mississippi,” I just closed my eyes.

Nothing happened. No feeling of pain. No loud explosion. Nothing. I opened my eyes and he was just staring at me. He could tell that I was scared, and now confused on top of that. A soft grin appeared on his face as he leaned into me. His lips were almost touching my ear. He whispered, “There’s no switching places.” He stood back up and turned the gun at Jenny. He fired a single shot. It wouldn’t kill her instantly. It would take almost four and a half days to do that. She would never regain consciousness. A single shot that stole all the color from the world. He turned to the other side of the car. “One mississippi, two mississippi, three.”

Someone from one of the front cars had made their way to the engine and started the subway back up. The sudden jerk sent everyone falling, including the lunatic on his rampage. Once on the ground, a man and a woman jumped at him, holding his arms. Another stepped on his hands until he let go of the guns. She broke two of his fingers in the process. All in all he had shot seventy-three people. Sixty-eight of them died. Most never made it off the subway.

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.

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.

I told him not to turn, and to just keep going. After a few seconds, I gave him a new destination. It was a small park near the center of town. He looked at me in the mirror. Not with a confused look. He knew who I was. He knew that I was supposed to be back there in the front row. He just looked at me for a second and kept driving.

The wind had picked up a little from earlier in the day. It felt good to feel it through my fingers. I sat on a bench where Jenny and I met for lunch as often as we could when we were working. I sat and just stared down one of the avenues. Time passed, I couldn’t be sure how long, I made it a rule never to wear a watch. Mathew Hunstad was dead, though, that was for sure. It would be a lie to say it brought me any relief. I always knew that it wouldn’t. Loss doesn’t die. I thought of the man in the sandwich shop, how he said that it takes about three seconds for the body to start to die. I counted it in my head, “One mississippi, two mississippi, three.”