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Driving back to his motel, he wonders what Preston Applewhite will want for his last meal.

Wednesday morning. It’s getting on for noon, and Applewhite has clearly been anxiously awaiting his arrival. They shake hands, and he lets his left hand cup Applewhite’s shoulder.

He’s no sooner seated in the white chair than Applewhite says, “I’ve been thinking about what you said yesterday.”

“I said a number of things,” he says, “and I rather doubt any of them is worth thinking about.”

“About the theory you proposed to Humphries. That a man can be guilty but truly believe himself innocent.”

“Oh, that.”

“The one thing I’ve been sure of, from the first moment on, is that they were all making a horrible mistake. I knew I didn’t kill those boys.”

“Of course you didn’t.”

“But if what you say is true—”

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51

“For some people. Sociopaths, men with something missing inside them. You’re not like that.”

“How do you know?”

“I know.”

“Well, how do I know? Believe me, I’d like to take your word for it, but failing that, how can I be sure? You can see where logic leads. It’s a co-nundrum. If I’m innocent, I’d know I was innocent. But if I was guilty, and had managed to convince myself I was innocent, I’d also know I was innocent.”

“Look at yourself, Preston.”

“At myself?”

“At the sort of man you are, the sort of man you always have been.

Have you ever committed a violent act?”

“If I killed those boys—”

“Before. Did you abuse your wife?”

“I shoved her away from me once. It was when we were first married, we’d argued and I was trying to leave the house. I wanted to go for a walk and clear my head, and she wouldn’t let go of me, you’d have thought I was on my way to Brazil, and I pushed her to make her let go. And she fell down.”

“And?”

“And I helped her up, and we had a cup of coffee, and, well, it worked out.”

“That’s the extent of your history of spousal abuse? How about your children? Did you beat them?”

“Never. We didn’t believe in it, either of us. And I never felt the kind of anger toward them that you’d want to express physically.”

“Let’s look at your childhood, shall we? Ever torture animals?”

“God, no. Why would anyone—”

“Ever set fires? I don’t mean Boy Scout campfires. I mean anything ranging from mischief to pyromania.”

“No.”

“You wet the bed as a kid?”

“Maybe, when my parents were toilet training me. I don’t honestly remember, I was, I don’t know, two or three years old—” 52

Lawrence Block

“How about when you were ten or eleven?”

“No, but what does that have to do with anything?”

“The standard profile of the serial killer or lust murderer. Bedwetting, fire-setting, and animal abuse. You’re batting oh-for-three. How about your sexual orientation? Ever have sex with young boys?”

“No.”

“Ever want to?”

“The same answer. No.”

“Young girls?”

“No.”

“Really? When you approached middle age, didn’t teenagers start looking good to you?”

Applewhite thinks it over. “I won’t say I never noticed them,” he said,

“but I was never interested. All my life, the girls and women I’ve been attracted to have been around my own age.”

“And the males?”

“I’ve never had relations with a man.”

“Or a boy?”

“Or a boy.”

“Ever wanted to?”

“No.”

“Ever found a male attractive, even without having any desire to act on it?”

“Not really.”

“ ‘Not really’? What does that mean?”

“I’ve never been attracted to a man myself, but I might notice that a man is or is not generally attractive.”

“You sound awfully normal, Preston.”

“I always thought I was, but—”

“How about sexual fantasies? And don’t tell me you never had any.

That’s too normal to be normal.”

“Some.”

Ah, he’d touched a nerve. “If you’d rather not go there, Preston—”

“We were married a long time,” he says. “I was faithful. Sometimes, though, when we made love—”

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53

“You entertained fantasies.”

“Yes.”

“That’s hardly unusual. Other women?”

“Yes. Women I knew, women I just . . . imagined.”

“Did you ever discuss your fantasies with your wife?”

“Of course not. I couldn’t do that.”

“Were there men in the fantasies?”

“No. Well, sometimes there were men present. Sometimes the fantasy was a party, all our friends, and people would take off their clothes, and it would be sort of a free-for-all.”

“Would you have liked to transform that fantasy into reality?”

“If you knew the people,” he says, “you’d know how inconceivable that is. It was hard enough to make them act like that in my own mind.”

“And you never had sex with another man in these fantasies?” He shakes his head. “There was nothing like that. The closest was sharing a woman with another man.”

“And you never did that outside of the world of your imagination?”

“No, of course not.”

“Never suggested it to your wife?”

“Jesus, no. I wouldn’t have wanted to do it, but in fantasy it was exciting.”

“Any children in those fantasies?”

“None.”

“Neither girls nor boys?”

“No.”

“Any violence? Any rape, any torture?”

“No.”

“Any forcing a woman to do something she didn’t want to do?”

“Never. They didn’t have to be forced. They all wanted to do everything. That’s one way you could tell it was a fantasy.” They join in laughter, perhaps more than the line calls for.

He says, “Preston? Have you been listening to yourself? It’s inconceivable that you could have done what they said you did.”

“I’d always known as much, but—well, I’m relieved, Arne. You had me worried there, or perhaps I should say that I had myself worried.” He 54

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manages a smile. “Of course the bad news,” he says, “is that the day after tomorrow they’re still going to give me the needle.”

“It’ll be around noon,” Applewhite says. “I always assumed midnight. I mean all my life, when I thought of executions, which wasn’t something I thought about often, I must say, I thought they happened in the middle of the night. Somebody throws a switch and lights go dim all over the state. I must have seen a movie at an impressionable age. And I seem to remember newsreel footage outside a penitentiary, with one crowd there to protest the death penalty and another bunch having tailgate parties to celebrate that some poor bastard’s getting the shock of his life. You can’t have parties like that in the middle of the day. You need a dark sky so everyone can get a good view of the fireworks.” The words are bitter, the tone lacking in affect. Interesting.

“The judge who sentenced me never said anything about the time, just the date. The particulars are up to the warden, and I guess Humphries doesn’t want to keep anybody up late.”

“Have they told you what to expect?”

“More than once. They don’t want any surprises. They’ll come here sometime between eleven and eleven-thirty to collect me. They’ll walk me to the chamber and strap me to the gurney. There’ll be a physician in attendance, among others, and there’ll be some spectators on the other side of a glass wall. I’m not sure what the purpose of the glass wall is. Not soundproofing, because there’s going to be a microphone, so they can hear my last words. I get to make a speech. I don’t know what the hell I’m supposed to say.”

“Whatever you want.”

“Maybe I’ll stand mute. ‘Mr. Chairman, Alabama passes.’ On the other hand, why miss a chance to deliver a message? I could come out for national health insurance. Or against capital punishment, except that I’m not so sure I’m against it.”