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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 approval: 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.