As our faithful readers have no doubt noticed, the Cheap Seats have been empty for the past few days. There's a good reason for that.

Until yesterday, April 8 was scheduled to be the day Edward Nathaniel Bell was going to die, receiving the sentence given him by a jury in Winchester. And I was on my way to Jarrat to watch the end of this drama play out.

Why is the political reporter witnessing an execution? Reporters are sort of like White House operatives in the sense that we often develop a "portfolio" of stories that follow us from posting to posting around a newspaper. And the single-biggest story in my portfolio is the Bell case, which I picked up just a few weeks after I arrived in Virginia in early 2003.

As such, I've followed this case from the Virginia Supreme Court's chambers on 9th Street all the way down to a federal courthouse in Abingdon, over to Harrisonburg for more arguments, and back to Richmond to hear the U.S. Court of Appeals hear the case at the foot of Capitol Square.

For all the headlines, there's something that never comes through in print, and I don't think really can: the awful, gut-wrenching emotional nature of this case and life-shattering impact it has had on all involved.

I've watched the Timbrook family on several occasions weep silently and not so silently as lawyers from the attorney general's office describe Sgt. Timbrook's death in vivid detail. I've seen a look of powerless, frustrated anger overtake the eyes of his colleagues when they talk about it.

It's the kind of raw agony that really defies description.

I've also seen Edward Bell's children light up like Christmas morning when they see their father, shackled and under guard, smile and wave to them from the front of a courtroom, and even more recently heard what could only be described as rapturous relief in the voice of family members upon being told of Kaine's decision to stay.

There is a terrible intimacy that comes with reporting a story like this for the long term. You wind up in elevators with family members of the victim, waiting in line for the courthouse water fountain behind the children of the convicted. Over time, the names on court filings start to become real people, with thoughts and joy and pain and lives all their own.

And for all but the most burned-out shell of a human being, you can't help but to absorb more than a little bit of the pathos that hangs so thick in the room.

Now, Bell's case has taken on a political aspect once again. Capital punishment will always be in the realm of politics.

But make no mistake, there's more going on here than headlines and talking points. The shot that was fired in late October 1999 is still resonating, bringing unimaginable sorrow and heartache to two families in Winchester.

It will apparently do so for quite some time to come.