“You wrote that you believed me.”
“Yes.”
“I suppose that was just a way to get me to approve the visit. Well, it worked.”
“I’m glad it got me here,” he says, “but it wasn’t a ruse. I know you didn’t commit those barbarities.”
“I almost think you’re serious.”
“I am.”
“But how can you possibly be? You’re a rational man, a scientist.”
“If psychology’s a science, and there are those who’d argue that it’s not.”
“What else could it be?”
“An art. A black art, some would say. There were those, you know, who wanted to give Freud the Nobel, not in medicine but in literature. A backhanded compliment, that. I like to think there’s a scientific basis to what I do, Preston, but—I’m sorry, is it all right if I call you Preston?”
“I don’t mind.”
“And my name is Arne. That’s A-R-N-E, the Scandinavian spelling, though it’s pronounced like the diminutive for Arnold. My parents were English and Scots-Irish on both sides, I can’t think why they thought to give me a Swedish name. But that’s off the point, and I’m afraid I’ve lost track of what I was saying.”
“A scientific basis to what you do.”
“Yes, of course.” He hadn’t lost track, but is pleased to note that Applewhite’s been paying attention. “But even pure science has an intuitive element. Most scientific discovery comes out of intuition, out of an inspired leap of faith that owes little to logic or scientific method. I know you’re innocent. I know it with a certainty that leaves no room for doubt.
All the Flowers Are Dying
29
I can’t explain how I know it, to you or to myself, but I know it.” He treats Applewhite to a gentler version of the rueful smile. “I’m afraid,” he says,
“that you’ll have to take my word for it.” Applewhite just looks at him, his face soft now, defenseless. And, unbidden and quite unexpected, tears begin to flow down his cheeks.
“I’m sorry. I haven’t cried in, hell, I couldn’t even guess how long it’s been.
Ages.”
“It’s nothing to apologize for. Perhaps I’m the one who should apologize.”
“For what? For being the first person to believe me?” He laughed shortly. “Except that’s not strictly true. I’ve received letters from half a dozen women over the years. They just know I couldn’t have done such things, and their hearts go out to me, and they want me to know how strongly they support me in my hour of need. I’m told everyone on Death Row gets letters like that, and the nastier and more publicized your crimes, the more mail you get.”
“It’s a curious phenomenon.”
“Most of them sent their pictures. I didn’t keep the photos, or the letters, for that matter, and I didn’t even think about answering them, but a couple of them kept writing all the same. They wanted to visit me, and one just wouldn’t give up. She wants to marry me. Now that my divorce is final, she explained, we can get married. And it’s my constitutional right, according to her. It’s a right I’m somehow not tempted to exercise.”
“No, I wouldn’t think you would be.”
“And I don’t really think for a moment that she or any of the others really believed I was innocent. Because they don’t want a romance with some poor bastard who’s going to die for no reason whatsoever. They want an affair, or the fantasy of an affair, with a man who’s the very personifi-cation of evil. Each of them wants to be the one selfless woman able to see the good in this worst of men, and if there’s a chance I might wring her neck, well, the danger just adds spice to the mix.” They talk some more about the vagaries of human behavior. Applewhite is intelligent, as he’d known he would be, with an extensive vocabulary and a logical mind.
“Tell me again why you’re here, Arne.”
30
Lawrence Block
He thinks for a moment. “I guess because you meet the criteria for what seems to be my interest these days.”
“And that is?”
“There must be a better phrase, but what comes to mind is ‘doomed innocence.’ ”
“Doomed innocence. You and I are the only two people on earth who think I’m innocent. The doomed part, that’s pretty clear to everyone.”
“I’m interested,” he says, “in how a person in your position faces the inevitable.”
“Calmly.”
“Yes, I can see that.”
“When I think about it, everybody with a pulse is under a death sentence. Some of us are under more immediate ones. People with terminal illnesses. They’re as innocent as I am, but because some cell went haywire and nobody caught it in time, they’re going to die ahead of schedule. They can beat themselves up, they can say they should have quit smoking, they shouldn’t have put off that annual physical, they should have eaten less and exercised more, but who knows if that would have made any difference? The bottom line is they’re going to die, and it’s not their fault. And so am I, and it’s not my fault.”
