'And she let you in?'
'I showed her my shield. And I reminded her that she knew me from the day-care center, that I was Danny's father. She let me in.'
'And?'
'I don't want to talk about it.'
'Are you sure of that?'
I guess he thought it over. Then he said, 'We were in the kitchen.
She was making me a cup of coffee, she had her back to me, and I put one hand over her mouth and jabbed the icepick into her chest. I wanted to get her heart right away, I didn't want her to suffer. I kept stabbing her in the heart and she collapsed in my arms and I let her fall to the floor.'
He raised his liquid brown eyes to mine. 'I think she was dead right then,' he said. 'I think she died right away.'
'And you went on stabbing her.'
'When I thought about it before I did it, I always went crazy and stabbed over and over like a maniac. I had that picture in my mind. But I couldn't do it that way. I had to make myself stab her and I was sick, I thought I was going to throw up, and I had to keep on sticking that icepick into her body and-' He broke off, gasping for breath. His face was drawn and his pale complexion was ghostly.
'It's all right,' I said.
'Oh, God.'
'Take it easy, Burt.'
'God, God.'
'You only stabbed one of her eyes.'
'It was so hard,' he said. 'Her eyes were wide open. I knew she was dead, I knew she couldn't see anything, but those eyes were just staring at me. I had the hardest time making myself stab her in the eye. I did it once and then I just couldn't do it again. I tried but I just couldn't do it again.'
'And then?'
'I left. No one saw me leave. I just left the building and walked away. I put the icepick down a sewer. I thought, I did it, I killed her and I got away with it, but I didn't feel as though I got away with anything.
I felt sick to my stomach. I thought about what I had done and I couldn't believe I'd really done it.
When the story was on television and in the papers I couldn't believe it. I thought that someone else must have done it.'
'And you didn't kill your wife.'
He shook his head. 'I knew I could never do something like that again. You know something? I've thought about all of it, over and over, and I think I was out of my mind. In fact I'm sure of it.
Something about seeing Mrs. Potowski, those pools of blood in her eyes, those stab wounds all over her body, it did something to me. It made me crazy, and I went on being crazy until Barbara Ettinger was dead. Then I was all right again, but she was dead.
'All of a sudden certain things were clear. I couldn't stay married anymore, and for the first time I realized I didn't have to. I could leave my wife and Danny. I had thought that would be a horrible thing to do, but here I'd been planning on killing her, and now I'd actually killed somebody and I knew how much more horrible that was than anything else I could possibly do to her, like leaving.'
I led him through it again, went over a few points. He finished his beer but didn't get another. I wanted a drink, but I didn't want beer and I didn't want to drink with him. I didn't hate him. I don't know exactly what I felt for him. But I didn't want to drink with him.
HE broke a silence to say, 'Nobody can prove any of this. It doesn't matter what I told you. There are no witnesses and there's no evidence.'
'People could have seen you in the neighborhood.'
'And still remember nine years later? And remember what day it was?'
He was right, of course. I couldn't imagine a District Attorney who'd even try for an indictment. There was nothing to make a case out of.
I said, 'Why don't you put a coat on, Burt.'
'What for?'
'We'll go down to the Eighteenth Precinct and talk to a cop named Fitzroy. You can tell him what you told me.'
'That'd be pretty stupid, wouldn't it?'
'Why?'
'All I have to do is keep on the way I've been. All I have to do is keep my mouth shut. Nobody can prove anything. They couldn't even try to prove anything.'
'That's probably true.'
'And you want me to confess.'
'That's right.'
