San Quentin, California All Lars Bale has seen of the Death Watch wing is his eight-by-eight-foot cell. That, and the ugly mug of the guard earning overtime watching him twenty-four seven.
Out of his view lie fifteen other rooms, including the death chamber itself, the holding area for his corpse, the press viewing area, staff rooms, equipment rooms, viewing areas on one side for those associated with the victim, and on the other side for those linked to the prisoner.
Behind the scenes, a whole army of people are hard at work planning how to kill him and how to process the good, the bad and the ugly who've come to watch him die.
Officer Jim Tiffany has walked every foot of the complex in the last hour, checking things over. He's one of several guards who volunteered to be part of the execution team. After his earlier altercations with Bale, today is personal.
It's payback.
Tiffany feels a delicious thrill as he shouts through the high-security door. 'Get up, Bale. Turn around. Hands behind your back.'
The prisoner slowly does as he's told, sticking his wrists through a gap in the bars.
Tiffany and two other guards snap on cuffs, open up the door and then add leg chains before hobbling him off to the shake-down room. 'Turn again. We're going to un-cuff you and then we need you to strip for a medical.'
'How ironic,' says Bale, his voice sounding tired and bored. 'You are legally obliged to examine me, presumably to make sure that I'm healthy enough to die.'
Tiffany steps up close to him. 'Just do it, smartmouth.'
As Bale begins to strip, a guard lets a nervous young doctor into the room. He pulls on a pair of ghostly white latex gloves and – as advised by the governor – painstakingly avoids eye contact with the inmate as he starts the routine of checking his pulse and blood pressure.
'What are you doing, Doc?' Bale asks, as the medic runs his gloved fingers up the inside of the prisoner's right forearm.
Tiffany answers for him. 'He's trying to find a vein, Bale. Looking for the best place to hose you full of killer drugs.'
The young doctor turns his head and shoots the old guard a horrified scowl. He then returns to the task of checking the back of Bale's hands, the tops of his feet, ankles and lower legs. He makes notes then nods to the officers and retreats to the back of the room. He hasn't said anything and doesn't say anything – he wants out as quickly as possible. The whole thing makes his skin crawl. He pulls off his gloves, bins them and waits to be buzzed through the electronically locked door.
'Cuff him again,' instructs Tiffany, 'we're ready to take him back to his cell.' The big guard smiles in Bale's face. 'If it was me, I'd stick the needle right in your eye and it'd take me until Thanksgiving to inject enough chemicals to put you to sleep.' He glances at his watch. 'One hour, you piece of shit, one hour's all you've got left.'