will.”
I gave Dillard another pat on the shoulder. Then I drove home, taking the freeway down through San Rafael, winding under the high brown hills and the oak trees and all those houses with their glass windows, their redwood decks and their great big view of the world.
7.
Absent death, the attention flags. Every newspaper editor knows this, as does every writer of lurid tales.
Those of you who do not know my story—who missed it as it ran through the tabloids—may find yourself impatient.
Of what am I accused?
What are my crimes, you wonder, and what is my motive for this so-called confession?
To deceive.
This is what my enemies would say. To place the blame outside myself. To charm and seduce. And along the way take yet further pleasure in my deceptions.
As you have already seen, though, my charms are limited. There is a darkness in me I cannot easily conceal, and in the end such concealment is not my intention. I have my moments of compassion, of tenderness, but I do not mean to suggest this makes me an innocent, without ulterior motive. Even so my intention is to tell this story as straightforwardly as I can. Patiently, without rushing ahead. Because we learn from the telling, as they say, and there are pearls hidden in the meanest tale.
Still it’s not easy. Like anyone, I want to be understood. I want sympathy. So I am tempted to jump ahead of myself.
To the evening of the Wilders’ party, when I saw my wife from across the room, elegant and beautiful. Or to the instant later that evening when I ran from the arbor and pursued Sara across the soft grass. Or to the moment the next day when Milofski the homicide detective and Minor the prosecutor slid the photograph across the table and I closed my eyes, knowing what I was about to see.
I turned my head but my eyes were drawn back to that picture, just as my memory is drawn to it now.
To the figure splayed out on the bed. Strangled, in the way that Angela had been strangled. Other women, too, as it happens. I felt Detective Milofski’s eyes boring into me.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
8.
Since the beginning of the Dillard trial, I had kept my distance from Sara Johnson. We met once quite by accident in the halls of the Civic Center, and this encounter ended up in one of the atriums of that odd modernist building, with its turrets and long, sloping halls. She wore a yellow shirt dress, belted at the waist.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” she said.
“No,” I said. “That’s not true.”
I was lying of course. One of those small lies that everyone tells, but I was trying to do the right thing. I wanted to drift out of her life without making a fuss. At some point, without really thinking about it, I had made this decision. Not quite consciously maybe, but I had made it. Even so, I dallied a moment there in the hall. Her eyes held a certain vulnerability, and a wildness, too.
“Are you feeling better?” she asked.
“More embarrassed than anything,” I said. “What happened, that’s not like me. It’s not usual.”
She touched me then and kissed me on the cheek. Despite my inclinations to the contrary, I might have responded more intimately, but we were in a public hall. The courts were down one end, the building department on the other, and there was a clerk walking by. As it was, I put my hands on Sara’s waist and felt her body soft through the yellow dress.
“We need to talk,” she said.
For some reason, I thought of Angela Mori. The victim has a role in the crime, too, some psychologists say. Or so I had read lately, studying for the Dillard case. Because even action is an interaction, and the criminal seeks a certain consent. Communicated through gestures. A turn of the head. An open door.
The clerk gave us a glance and I let my hands go from Sara’s waist. It was for the best, I told myself—and I was grateful now for the passerby.
“I’m on my way to court,” I said, though this wasn’t quite true. In fact I was
I gave Dillard another pat on the shoulder. Then I drove home, taking the freeway down through San Rafael, winding under the high brown hills and the oak trees and all those houses with their glass windows, their redwood decks and their great big view of the world.
7.
Absent death, the attention flags. Every newspaper editor knows this, as does every writer of lurid tales.
Those of you who do not know my story—who missed it as it ran through the tabloids—may find yourself impatient.
Of what am I accused?
What are my crimes, you wonder, and what is my motive for this so-called confession?
To deceive.
This is what my enemies would say. To place the blame outside myself. To charm and seduce. And along the way take yet further pleasure in my deceptions.
As you have already seen, though, my charms are limited. There is a darkness in me I cannot easily conceal, and in the end such concealment is not my intention. I have my moments of compassion, of tenderness, but I do not mean to suggest this makes me an innocent, without ulterior motive. Even so my intention is to tell this story as straightforwardly as I can. Patiently, without rushing ahead. Because we learn from the telling, as they say, and there are pearls hidden in the meanest tale.
Still it’s not easy. Like anyone, I want to be understood. I want sympathy. So I am tempted to jump ahead of myself.
To the evening of the Wilders’ party, when I saw my wife from across the room, elegant and beautiful. Or to the instant later that evening when I ran from the arbor and pursued Sara across the soft grass. Or to the moment the next day when Milofski the homicide detective and Minor the prosecutor slid the photograph across the table and I closed my eyes, knowing what I was about to see.
I turned my head but my eyes were drawn back to that picture, just as my memory is drawn to it now.
To the figure splayed out on the bed. Strangled, in the way that Angela had been strangled. Other women, too, as it happens. I felt Detective Milofski’s eyes boring into me.
But I am getting ahead of myself.
8.
Since the beginning of the Dillard trial, I had kept my distance from Sara Johnson. We met once quite by accident in the halls of the Civic Center, and this encounter ended up in one of the atriums of that odd modernist building, with its turrets and long, sloping halls. She wore a yellow shirt dress, belted at the waist.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” she said.
“No,” I said. “That’s not true.”
I was lying of course. One of those small lies that everyone tells, but I was trying to do the right thing. I wanted to drift out of her life without making a fuss. At some point, without really thinking about it, I had made this decision. Not quite consciously maybe, but I had made it. Even so, I dallied a moment there in the hall. Her eyes held a certain vulnerability, and a wildness, too.
“Are you feeling better?” she asked.
“More embarrassed than anything,” I said. “What happened, that’s not like me. It’s not usual.”
She touched me then and kissed me on the cheek. Despite my inclinations to the contrary, I might have responded more intimately, but we were in a public hall. The courts were down one end, the building department on the other, and there was a clerk walking by. As it was, I put my hands on Sara’s waist and felt her body soft through the yellow dress.
“We need to talk,” she said.
For some reason, I thought of Angela Mori. The victim has a role in the crime, too, some psychologists say. Or so I had read lately, studying for the Dillard case. Because even action is an interaction, and the criminal seeks a certain consent. Communicated through gestures. A turn of the head. An open door.
The clerk gave us a glance and I let my hands go from Sara’s waist. It was for the best, I told myself—and I was grateful now for the passerby.
“I’m on my way to court,” I said, though this wasn’t quite true. In fact I was
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