it’s not the color but the expression in those eyes that has faded. The thousand-yard stare, the unfocused gaze into the middle distance, and on into the abyss.
When he speaks, his voice is flat, uninflected. “I hope this isn’t a ruse, Dr. Bodinson. I hope you’re not from the media.”
“Certainly not.”
“I’ve turned down their requests. I don’t want to be interviewed, I don’t want a chance to tell my story. I don’t have a story to tell. My only story is 26
Lawrence Block
that I’m innocent, that I’m living in a nightmare, and that’s not a story anyone wants to hear.”
“I’m not from the media.”
“Or from the boy’s parents? They want to know where their son is buried, so they can dig him up and bury him again. For the love of God, don’t they think I’d tell them if I knew?”
“They think you’re unwilling to own up to knowing.”
“Why? Friday they’re going to pump a mix of chemicals into me, and what little life I’ve got is going to come to an end. That’s going to happen no matter what I do. I don’t deserve it, I never harmed anyone in my life, but that’s beside the point. Twelve men and women looked at the evidence and decided I was guilty, and then they thought it over and decided I deserved to die for it, and I can’t really blame them for either of those decisions. I mean, look at the evidence.”
“Yes.”
“Child pornography on my computer hard drive. Little envelopes of hair from the dead boys in my desk drawer. A bloody handkerchief found at the burial site, and the blood’s mine. There was even a file on my computer, an elaborate obscene third-person account of one of the murders. It had been erased, but they managed to recover it, and only a monster could have written it. It contained details of the crime that could only have been known to the person who committed it. If I’d been on that jury, I wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment. A guilty verdict was the only verdict possible.”
“They didn’t spend much time in deliberations.”
“They didn’t have to. I read an account, an interview with one of the jurors. They went around the room, and everyone said guilty. Then they discussed the evidence, trying to find arguments refuting some of it, and they voted again, and it was unanimous again. And then they discussed it some more, just to make absolutely certain they were all on the same page, and then they voted formally, and it was twelve for conviction and none for acquittal, and there was really no reason to waste any more time.
So they filed back into the courtroom and announced the verdict. Then my lawyer insisted the jury be polled, and one by one they said the same thing, over and over. Guilty, guilty, guilty. What else did he expect them to say?”
All the Flowers Are Dying
27
“And the penalty phase?”
“My lawyer wanted me to change my story. He’d never believed me, although he wouldn’t come right out and say so. Well, why should he have believed me? To take my story at face value would have been evidence of incompetence on his part.”
“He thought you’d have a better chance at escaping a death sentence if you said you’d done it.”
“Which is nonsense,” he says, “because the sentence would have been the same either way. He wanted me to express remorse. Remorse! What remorse could possibly match the enormity of those crimes? And how could I express remorse for something I hadn’t done? I asked him as much and he just looked at me. He wouldn’t come right out and tell me I was full of shit, but that’s what he was thinking. But he didn’t push it, because he knew it wouldn’t make any difference. The death sentence didn’t take them any more time than the guilty verdict.”
“Did it surprise you?”
“It shocked me. Later, when the judge pronounced sentence, that shocked me, too. Shock’s not the same thing as surprise.”
“No.”
“The idea of it. ‘You’re going to die.’ Well, everybody’s going to die. But when someone sits there and tells you, well, it has an impact.”
“I can imagine.”
“Remorse. Could you express remorse by proxy? Because I couldn’t be sorry that I’d killed those boys, because I hadn’t, but I was damn well sorry that someone had.” He frowns, a vertical line in his forehead forming to match the ones at the sides of his mouth. “He told me it would be a great help if I could tell them where to find the third body. But how could I do that if I’d never set eyes on the Willis boy and had no idea where he might be? I could tell him, he said, and he could say I let it slip while still maintaining my innocence. I told him I couldn’t quite see the logic of that. I’d be sticking to a lie while admitting it was a lie. He hemmed and hawed, and I said it hardly mattered, because I couldn’t tell what I didn’t know.
You know, I didn’t care if he believed me, or if anyone else believed me.
My wife didn’t believe me, she couldn’t even look at me. She’s divorced me, you know.”
28
Lawrence Block
“So I understand.”
“I haven’t seen her or my children since I was taken into custody. No, I take that back. I saw her once. She came to the jail and asked me how I could do such a thing. I said I was innocent and she had to believe me.
But she didn’t, and something died in me, and from that point on it didn’t really matter what anyone else believed or didn’t believe.” Fascinating, just fascinating.
