His expression was childlike. 'Why?'
To tie off the ends, I thought. To make it neat. To show Frank Fitzroy that he was right when he said I just might solve the case.
What I said was, 'You'll feel better.'
'That's a laugh.'
'How do you feel now, Burt?'
'How do I feel?' He considered the question. Then, as if surprised by his answer, 'I feel okay.'
'Better than when I got here?'
'Yeah.'
'Better than you've felt since Sunday?'
'I suppose so.'
'You never told anybody, did you?'
'Of course not.'
'Not a single person in nine years. You probably didn't think about it much, but there were times when you couldn't help thinking about it, and you never told anybody.'
'So?'
'That's a long time to carry it.'
'God.'
'I don't know what they'll do with you, Burt. You may not do any time. Once I talked a murderer into killing himself, and he did it, and I wouldn't do that again. And another time I talked a murderer into confessing because I convinced him he would probably kill himself if he didn't confess first. I don't think you'd do that I think you've lived with this for nine years and maybe you could go on living with it. But do you really want to? Wouldn't you rather let go of it?'
'God,' he said. He put his head in his hands. 'I'm all mixed up,' he said.
'You'll be all right.'
'They'll put my picture in the papers. It'll be on the news. What's that going to make it like for Danny?'
'You've got to worry about yourself first.'
'I'll lose my job,' he said. 'What'll happen to me?'
I didn't answer that one. I didn't have an answer.
'Okay,' he said suddenly.
'Ready to go?'
'I guess.'
On the way downtown he said, 'I think I knew Sunday. I knew you'd keep poking at it until you found out I did it. I had an urge to tell you right then.'
'I got lucky. A couple of coincidences put me on St. Marks Place and I thought of you and had nothing better to do than see the house where you used to live. But the numbers stopped at One-three-two.'
'If it wasn't that coincidence there would have been another one. It was all set from the minute you walked into my apartment. Maybe earlier than that. Maybe it was a sure thing from the minute I killed her.
Some people get away with murder but I guess I'm not one of them.'
'Nobody gets away with it. Some people just don't get caught.'
'Isn't that the same thing?'
'You didn't get caught for nine years, Burt. What were you getting away with?'
'Oh,' he said. 'I get it.'
AND just before we got to the One-Eight I said, 'There's something I don't understand. Why did you think it would be easier to kill your wife than to leave her? You said several times that it would be such a terrible thing to leave a woman like her, that it would be a contemptible act, but men and women leave each other all the time. You couldn't have been worried about what your parents would think because you didn't have any family left. What made it such a big deal?'
'Oh,' he said. 'You don't know.'
'Don't know what?'
'You haven't met her. You didn't go out there this afternoon, did you?'
'No.'
('I never see him … I never see my former husband … I don't see my husband and I don't see the check. Do you see? Do you?')
'The Potowski woman, with her eyes staring up through the blood.
When I saw her like that it just hit me so hard I couldn't deal with it. But you wouldn't understand that because you don't know about her.'
