What are you saying, Detective?
I’m saying the dispatcher’s call came through at nineteen thirty-five. We reached the scene minutes later. And guess what. She was still there, Trader. And she named you. Anthony Silvera heard it. John Macatitch heard it. I heard it. She gave you up. How about that, Trader? There. The cunt even gave you up.
We have been in here for fifty-five minutes. His head is down. As evidence, a confession will tend to lose its power in step with the length of the interrogation. Yes, your honor—after a couple of weeks in there, he came clean. But I am mentally ready to go on for six hours, for eight, for ten. For fifteen.
Say it, Trader. Just say it…Okay, I’m going to ask you to submit to a neutron-activation test. This will establish if you have recently used a firearm. Will you sit the polygraph? The lie-detector? Because I think you ought to know what the next stage is in all this. Trader, you’re going before a grand jury. Know what that is? Yes, I’m going to grand-jury you, Trader. Yes I am… Okay. Let’s start from the beginning. We’re going to go through all this a few more times.
He looks up slowly. And his face is clear. His expression is clear. Complicated, but clear. And suddenly I know two things. First, that he’s innocent. Second, that if he wants to, he can prove it.
As it happens, Detective Hoolihan, I do know what a grand jury is. It’s a hearing to establish whether a case is strong enough to go to trial. That’s all. You probably think I think it’s the Supreme Court. Same as all the other befuddled bastards that come through here. This is so… pathetic. Oh, Mike, you poor bitch. Listen to you. But it’s not Mike Hoolihan talking. It’s Tom Rockwell. And the poor sap ought to blush for what he’s just put you through. It’s also kind of great—I mean, this whole thing is also kind of great. Last week I sat down with maybe ten or twelve people, one after the other. My mother, my brothers. My friends. Her friends. I kept opening my mouth and nothing happened. Not a word. But I’m talking now and let’s please go on talking. I don’t know how much you’ve told me is just plain bullshit. I’m assuming the ballistics document is not a hoax or a forgery and I’ll have to live with what it says. Maybe you’ll be good enough to tell me now what’s true and what isn’t. Mike, you’ve tied yourself up into all kinds of knots trying to make a mystery of this thing. It’s garbage, as you know. Some little mystery, all neat and cute. But there’s a real mystery here. An enormous mystery. When I say I feel homicidal, I’m not lying. On the night she died my feelings were what they always were. Devoted, and secure. But now…Mike, this is what happened: A woman fell out of a clear blue sky. And you know something? I wish I had killed her. I want to say: Book me. Take me away. Chop my head off. I wish I had killed her. Open and shut. And no holes. Because that’s better than what I’m looking at.
If you peered in now, through the meshed glass, it wouldn’t seem such a strange way for things to end, in this room. Glimpsing this scene, a murder police would nod his head, and sigh, and move on.
Suspect and interrogator have joined hands on the table. Both are shedding tears.
I shed tears for him and tears for her. And also tears for myself I shed. Because of the things I’ve done to other people in this room. And because of the things this room has done to me. It’s pulled me into every kind of funny shape and size. It has left a coating on my body, everywhere, even inside, like the coating I used to expect to see, some mornings, all over my tongue.
March 14
I slept late and was woken around noon by another delivery from Colonel Tom. A dozen red roses—”with thanks, apologies, and love.” Also a sealed binder. Expedited, and very probably edited, by Colonel Tom, this was the autopsy report. I’d seen the movie. Now I had to read the review.