Trader, at what point did you and the decedent have sex?
What?
The decedent tested positive for ejaculate. Vaginal and oral. When did that happen?
None of your business.
Oh it is my business, Trader. It’s my job. And I’m now going to tell you exactly what happened that night. Because I know, Trader. I know. It’s like I was there. You and her have the final argument. The final fight. It’s over. But you wanted to make love to her that one last time, didn’t you, Trader. And a woman, at such a moment, will let that happen. It’s human, to let that happen. One more time. On the bed. Then on the chair. You finished on the chair, Trader. You finished it. And fired the shot into her open mouth.
Two shots. You said two shots.
Yes I did, didn’t I. And now I’m going to tell you a secret that you already know. See this? This is the finding from the autopsy. Three shots, Trader. Three shots. And let me tell you, that wipes out suicide. That wipes out suicide. So Mrs. Rolfe upstairs did it, or the little girl in the street did it. Or you did it, Trader. Or you did it.
The space around him goes gray and damp, and I feel the predator in me. He looks drunk—no, drugged. Like on speed: Not hammered but “blocked.” I would understand, later, what was happening in his head: The image that was forming there. I would understand because I would see it too.
It was the look on his face made me ask him:
How do you feel about Jennifer? Right now? Right this minute?
Homicidal.
Come again?
You heard me.
Good, Trader. I think we’re getting there. And that’s how you felt on the night of March fourth. Wasn’t it, Trader.
No.
All the hours I have spent in the interrogation room, over the years, are stacking up on me, I feel, all the hours, all the fluxes and recurrences of the heaviest kinds of feeling. It’s the things you have to hear and keep on hearing: From your own lips, also.
I have a witness that puts you outside the house at seven thirty-five. Looking distressed. “Mad.” Riled-up. Sound familiar, Trader?
Yes. The time. And the mood.
Now. My witness says she heard the shots before you came out the door. Before. Sound about right, Trader?
Wait.
Okay. Sure I’ll wait. Because I understand. I understand the pressure you were under. I understand what she was putting you through. And why you had to do what you did. Any man might have done the same. Sure I’ll wait. Because you won’t be telling me anything I don’t already know.
With its tin ashtray, its curling phonebook, its bare forty-watt, the interrogation room doesn’t have the feel of a confessional. In here, the guilty man is not seeking absolution or forgiveness. He is seeking approval: Grim approval. Like a child, he wants out of his isolation. He wants to be welcomed back into the mainstream—whatever he’s done. I have sat on this same honky metal chair and routinely said, with a straight face—no, with indignant fellow feeling: Well that explains it. Your mother-in-law had been sick for how long without dying? And you’re supposed to take that lying down? I have sat here and said: Enough is enough. You’re telling me the baby woke up crying again? So you taught it a lesson. Sure you did. Come on, man, how much shit can you take? Give Trader Faulkner a reversed baseball cap, a stick of gum, and a bad shave, and I would be leaning forward over the table and saying, again, absolutely as a matter of routine: It was the tennis, wasn’t it. It was that fucking tiebreak. The lasagne was as lousy as ever. And then she rounds it all off by giving you that kind of head?
I cross myself inside and vow to go the extra mile for Colonel Tom—and give it a hundred percent, like I always do.
Take your time, Trader. And consider this, while you think. Like I said, we’ve all been there, Trader. Think it hasn’t happened to me? You give them years. You give them your life. The next thing you know, you’re on the street. -She used to tell you she couldn’t live without you. Now she’s saying you ain’t even shit. I can understand how it feels to lose a woman like Jennifer Rockwell. You’re thinking about the men who’ll be taking your place. And they won’t be slow in coming. Because she was hot, wasn’t she, Trader. Yeah, I know the type. She’ll fuck her way through your friends. Then she’ll get to your brothers. In the sack she’ll soon be doing them those nice favors you know all about. And she would, Trader. She would. Now listen. Let’s reach the bottom line. Dying words, Trader. The special weight, as testimony, of dying words.