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 approvaclass="underline" 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.
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.