Richard Doetsch - Half-Past Dawn

“Too bad you’ll never get that chance. You no longer have control of any strings.”

“You think you’re in control here.” Cristos smiled. “But are you?”

Jack stared at him.

“Do you know whom to trust? You don’t think I’ve been captured before? You don’t think I have ever escaped?” Cristos smiled again. “Always remember, control is tenuous at best.”

“I’ll remember that,” Jack said with a placating tone as he looked at Cristos’s chains.

The two men studied each other, the moment drawing out.

“OK,” Dorran said. “I think-”

“I was in love once.” Cristos ignored Dorran, cutting him off.

“And she loved you in return?” Jack asked.

“She died before I ever knew the truth.”

“Is that supposed to make me sympathetic?”

“No, just a reminder.” Cristos looked at Jack’s wedding ring. “We never know how long we have with the ones we love.”

Anger flowed into Jack’s face, wiping his calm away as he realized that he had let Cristos lead the conversation. “We’re done,” Jack said as he stood up. Dorran and Peter followed his lead.

“Are we going to finish our conversation?” Cristos said.

“You are being charged with the murder of three individuals,” Jack said as he looked into Cristos’s dark eyes. “We have every intention to try, convict, and see you executed for the deeds you have done. Your smugness, your overconfidence, will only help me make this happen quicker.”

Jack turned and headed for the door.

“I’d hold tight to your wife and kids,” Cristos said. “God knows what might happen if a monster like me ever got hold of them.”

Jack, Peter, and Dorran silently walked through the grand mansion, past the library and the parlor; this time, the rooms didn’t even register.

“What do you think?” Peter asked.

“This guy is far more than I or anyone thinks,” Jack said.

“Meaning?”

“Hired gun, very cool, and very experienced. He has a resume we probably couldn’t even fathom.” Jack looked at Dorran “Think we can tie him to anything else?”

“No. Not yet, at least,” Dorran said. “The fact that we caught him is pure luck.”

“Then let’s get him formally charged and on trial,” Peter said.

“State or fed?” Dorran asked.

“State will be quicker,” Peter said to Jack. “If we get him convicted, the fed can wave off. Do you think your office can get a conviction?”

“Yeah, and I’ll make sure he hangs.”

Six months later, Jack was sitting in the viewing theater at Cronos Correctional Facility in upstate New York. Although the state had reinstituted the death penalty two years before, not a single execution had been carried out.

But this matter was different. Convicted after a three-week trail, Cristos waived his right to appeal, demanding that his sentence of death by injection be carried out immediately. Although the liberal left had cried out to spare his life, he spat in their faces and railed against anyone who stood in the way of his execution. Cristos did have a final request: he wished to speak to Jack Keeler alone.

Against the advice of all, against the advice of Peter, Carter Dorran, Mia, Frank and everyone else he trusted, Jack walked out of the viewing room and was escorted down to death row, which was in a dark, windowless basement.

There had been no one to come forth for Cristos, no family, no friends; in fact, not a single person in the world stood up and said they even knew the man. He requested no priest, rabbi, monk. In fact, like everything about him, no one knew if he even had a religion.

As vile a man as Jack thought him to be, as dangerous as this man without a soul was, everyone deserved a last request, a final statement before dying.

Jack entered the basement cell to find Cristos sitting on the bed, his legs and arms chained. He was dressed in a deep blue suit, no tie or belt, and wore a pair of black Gucci loafers, looking as if he was about to go out for a fancy dinner. While the condemned were usually put to death in their prison uniform, Cristos had asked and was granted the right to die in his favorite suit.

He made no move as Jack sat in the chair across from him, their eyes settling on each other. The silent moment held; each could hear the other’s breathing, the committer and the committed.

“How’s the weather today?” Cristos asked in his low, accented voice.

Jack was surprised at the question. “Sunny, clear, a warm fall day.”

Cristos nodded. “Did it occur to you what is happening here today?”

Jack said nothing, letting the condemned man say his last words.

“Jack, you accused me of murder, of ending lives, yet you are doing the same.”

“This is your sentence for the lives you have taken.”

“I asked you before, could you pull the trigger, Jack?”

Jack remained silent.

“I understand many years ago, your partner died and that you killed two people, children, I believe.”

Jack felt his heart fall in his chest.

“Were you condemned for that? Did anyone hold you accountable for their deaths?”

“It wasn’t like that,” Jack hated that he was explaining himself to this man.

“Was it more like collateral damage in doing your job?”

“The Bonsleys weren’t collateral damage.”

“Oh, yes, they were. In order to stop a very wicked man. Even you have to admit after learning about that general that he deserved to die, that his death saved countless others. I bet you would have loved to put him on trial in your courts after all of the murders he committed.”

“Is this how you wanted to spend your last moments? Imparting some kind of guilt?”

Cristos smiled, although his dark eyes stayed emotionless. “You should hold tightly to your family.”

“Is that a threat? Is somebody after my family?”

“No, Jack. I have spoken to no one. But sometimes we lose sight of what is precious to us.”

“Do you have family?”

Cristos paused. “I did.”

Jack didn’t respond. He had not thought of Cristos as anything but a murderer; his actions spoke nothing to the contrary. Jack wasn’t sure if he was being played or seeing a glimpse of the man’s soul.

“Is this what you wanted to see me about?

Cristos shook his head.

“What do you have to say, then?” Jack finally asked.

“Nothing is as it seems.” Cristos looked Jack directly in the eye and whispered, “Remember this, death is not always final, not always permanent; death is never the end.”

With Cristos’s words ringing in his ears, Jack watched through the plate-glass window as the man he had convicted of murder was strapped down to a black leather gurney. The room was small, covered with lime-green tiles and taken up by several medical monitors. Cristos’s Zenga suit jacket had been removed; the white sleeves on either arm were rolled up, exposing his thick forearms. Cristos lay on the gurney, staring straight up, his eyes focused elsewhere. There was no emotion on his face, no fear or anxiety in his body language. He appeared calm, as if awaiting a simple medical procedure.

Beside Jack in the viewing room, seated in the rows of chairs, were Peter Womack, Carter Dorran, the two grown children of the Bonsleys, members of a Pashir delegation who had flown in from Asia, and various members of the federal and state law-enforcement community. Not a word was spoken; a prayer-like silence had fallen over the room as if awaiting the start of some religious ceremony.

Within the execution chamber, two medical technicians entered and stood on either side of the gurney. Each swabbed Cristos’s arms, inserted a needle in a vein in each arm, and a saline drip commenced, ensuring a proper flow into Cristos’s system.