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foot-thick walls jutting out into the prison’s enormous central yard from the otherwise blank facade of a much larger structure at the annex’s western end. Its roof was sheathed in metal, and the only features that broke its drab monotony were the two high rows of glass blocks whose function was to allow a certain amount of natural light to come into the cells during the daytime hours, while at the same time preventing the inmates from obtaining any view at all beyond the confines of the building.
    Inside, the cell block seemed to have been specifically designed to reflect the bleak connotations of the phrase “Death Row,” for its interior was nearly as featureless as its exterior. There were two rows of cells, six on each side, each cell ten feet square, the two rows facing an eight-foot-wide corridor that ran the full length of the structure. Though the one-man cells were barred in front and on top, they were separated from each other by walls of solid steel plate, so although the prisoners could talk among themselves, they couldn’t see one another. Each cell was equipped with a bed, a chair, a table, a toilet, and a sink. All the cells were harshly lit by long fluorescent fixtures hung from the high ceiling in three rows: one above each of the rows of cells, and one above the passageway. Completely overwhelming the few glimmers of daylight that made it through the glass blocks of the windows, the fluorescent fixtures threw a harsh glare into every corner of every cell, creating a shadowless world that totally confined without providing the slightest sense of shelter.
    The cell in which Richard Kraven had lived for the last two years differed from the others in the block in only one way.
    It was occupied.
    The others, all eleven of them, sat empty and silent, for Richard Kraven was the only man Connecticut had deemed worthy of execution in nearly forty years. Indeed, until Richard Kraven’s sentencing, the building had been scheduled for demolition, but when the warden, Wendell Rustin, was informed that Kraven would be delivered into his hands for safekeeping until such time as the legal processes finally and irrevocably approved the killer’s sentence, Rustin stayed the cell block’s own execution. Before the prisoner’s arrival, Rustin himself spent a night in one of the cells, to emerge the next morning convinced that the harsh reality of living in the building would be nearly as terrible as the specter of death, for the warden had found that the cell block itself induced a feeling of abandonment and loneliness that nearly overwhelmed him during the eight silent, empty hours he had forced himself to endure.
    Yet, if Richard Kraven had experienced any terror in his two years in the otherwise empty cell block, he had never given any sign or uttered any complaint. He had endured the waiting the way he had endured his trial, maintaining a silence that his guards found arrogant but which his supporters thought of as dignified, and granting interviews only in attempts to convert people to his cause.
    “They may execute me,” he would repeat over and over again, “but they cannot punish me, for it is impossible to punish an innocent man.”
    Now, on the day of his execution, Richard Kraven was—as always—sitting impassively in the chair in his cell. Today a book of Victorian poetry lay open in his lap, and to a casual observer it would have appeared as if this morning were no different from any other. When the heavy clang of the bar on the door at the far end of the corridor echoed through the cells, Kraven finished the poem he was reading, closed the book and looked up, his handsome face expressionless. His line of sight restricted by the cell’s heavy steel side walls, he waited, motionless, staring straight ahead until he saw Anne Jeffers appear within his field of vision. Then, deliberately, he placed the book on the table and rose, moving toward the front of the cell and extending his hand through the