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## The Real Meaning of Life

By Robert Trainor

Copyright 2007

By Robert Trainor

Smashwords Edition

Thank you for downloading this ebook. This book remains the copyrighted property of the author and may not be redistributed to others for commercial or non-commercial purposes.

## INTRODUCTION

I've decided to publish this book even though many people have advised me that it's not in my best interests to publicize various incidents from my past. At the time the events in this book occurred, I was keeping a record of my reactions to these events, but this record is sometimes tainted by self-interest—particularly in the first half of the book, where I was sometimes motivated by a desire to present myself, despite all appearances to the contrary, in a favorable light.

But after discussing this carefully with a woman that I trust, and have trusted with my life, I feel that a full disclosure of—shall we say?—the ugliness of my own being may be of benefit to others. So this is, for lack of a better phrase, a cautionary tale, and you can make of it what you will.

## CHAPTER ONE

For a couple of months, I'd known that my father was dying of pancreatic cancer. A few days before he died, he phoned me and said that he wanted to talk to me about something important, so after I left work around four, I dropped by my parents' house. After I had spent about fifteen minutes trying to calm down my mother, I went into the front room where my father was now sleeping. "Patrick," he said, with a wan smile, "it's so good to see you."

"Likewise," I said, as I pulled up a chair and sat down near him.

"I guess we've all seen better days," said my father. "Dying can be kind of depressing—it's so hard to imagine not being around anymore." My Dad sighed and took a sip from a glass of water that was on a table next to the bed. "I suppose I shouldn't say things like this, but when I talked to the doctor yesterday, he was kind enough to let me know when I can expect to be executed—about a week from today, in case you're interested."

My father was noted for his gallows humor, but I had no idea how to respond to him. Even so, I took a stab at it. "I guess there's not much hope—is that what they're telling you?"

"Not unless you believe in miracles...anyways, the reason I wanted to talk to you is that I know you've been writing a lot of novels lately—at least that's what your mother tells me."

"That's true," I said. "Nowadays, it takes me three or four months to write one."

"Even with your job at the factory? Don't tell me you've given up a steady job for writing?"

"I'm still working a forty-hour week, Dad."

"I hate to be a nuisance and make a lot of complaints, but I hope you haven't gone back to slumming it with that crowd you used to hang out with."

"No, of course not." I figured there was no sense in telling a dying man a truth that he didn't want to hear.

"Because those guys...that Nick Flaherty was nothing but a dope addict in a suit."

"Haven't seen him in ages," I said.

"Good, because people like him will drag you straight into the gutter, and after they've taken every last penny you have, they'll leave you there until a ten-ton truck runs over you."

Nick, who was my roommate, had been my best friend for over ten years—ever since senior year at high school. So even though my father was dying, he was beginning to annoy me because I hate it when people start to run down Nick.

"So, listen," said my father, "the reason I wanted to talk to you is because I read one of your books the other day."

"You downloaded it from Kindle? Which one?"

" _The Danson Murder Case_."

"Did you like it?"

"It wasn't all that much different than _The Seventh Clue_."

"You read that one too?"

"Along with a couple of others. After all, you are my son, and I always thought writing and reading were the most refined of the arts. How many books have you written? Eight?"

"Nine—I'm just finishing the tenth."

"And they're all murder mysteries?"

"That's right."

"Whatever possessed you to write such stuff?"

"It's what sells, Dad. If you don't write about murder and/or sex, you might as well not bother because you won't sell anything."

"Patrick, I used the word stuff on purpose because the four novels I read by you could best be defined by that word. They're stuff—stuff that you stuff into people's minds because most people can't be happy unless their minds are stuffed. That's why everyone runs around from the computer to the TV like chickens with their heads cut off. So when they pick up a book, they want a story that has a lot of stuff in it, and murders, rapes, explosions, kidnappings, terrorist attacks, vampires, werewolves, and aliens are all considered topnotch stuff."

"Actually, I've been thinking that I might like to do a novel where some terrorist organization steals a nuclear bomb and is threatening to blow up a major city."

My father took another sip of water, but when he put the glass down, it tipped over. After I had wiped up the mess and brought him another glass of water, he said, "Why don't you write something that you can be proud of?" he said.

"I am proud of my books, Dad. It's not as if I knock them off in a couple of weeks like some people do."

"I wish you would grow up--it's discouraging to listen to you sometimes, especially when you begin to sound like a commercial for toothpaste. You were never like that before you met Nick Flaherty. Basically, to be honest with you, your novels aren't going to make much of a mark on humanity. All you're doing is appealing to, and encouraging, the tendency of readers to feed on gore and sex."

"Dad, my books are not gory."

"You don't think murder is gory?"

"I do murder like mainstream TV, Dad—the dead people are just lying there. It isn't like I spend time describing what their wounds look like."

"In other words, you sanitize the murders?"

"If you want to put it that way."

"Why?" said my father.

"Why what?"

"Why bother sanitizing them? If you're going to go in for murder, why stop halfway?"

"I don't know...describing a murder is a little bit beyond me. I've never even seen a dead body except when grandpa was lying in his casket."

"That's where I'll be shortly, and you can gawk at me. Maybe you can write me up in one of your books—you know, the corpse looked cold, and I thought I could detect a sinister smile on his face."

"No, I wouldn't do that."

"So let's see," said my father. "As far as I can tell, you're feeding your readers one murder after another, but before you stuff these murders into your reader's minds, you sanitize them. What a ghastly way to live!"

"Dad, it's what people want to read."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

My father could be a really cranky guy. You would think that someone on his deathbed would be a little more humble. "Dad, there's not much point in writing if no one is going to read what you've written."

"And there's even less point to writing if all you're trying to do is cram another murder into people's heads. How many murders are there in your nine novels?"

"I guess...I think it would be...maybe fifteen."

"That's about a murder and a half a novel. Aren't you just the busiest little thing? And how many copies have you sold of these murderous masterpieces?"

I was getting fed up with the old guy. "I don't know, Dad—maybe about 8,000 copies total. Actually, there was one book that I posted under a pen name—it was called _The_ _Moonlight Song_. Unlike my other books, it was a love story. And you know what? It's only sold thirty-five copies, so that's why I write murder mysteries."

"Why'd you publish _The Moonlight Song_ under a pen name?"

"I didn't want to ruin my brand—if people are looking for an author who writes murder mysteries, they don't want to stumble over a love story."

"Do you realize how commercial you've become, Patrick? You don't really write anymore—all you do is crank out books that are made to order by your readers. What a stupid way to live. Writers, in case you haven't heard, are supposed to write. All you've managed to do is become a slave to your readers. When they snap their fingers, good old Patrick jumps. Give me a murder, my man, and because, deep down, murder repulses you and just about everybody else, you sanitize it so that you can keep at least a little bit of your self-respect."

"So what do you think I should write about?"

"The first thing to do if you're serious about this is to understand what the role of the writer is. You're either completely clueless or you decided a long time ago to sell out to the demands of the crowd, but either way, it's not a pretty picture."

"I always thought the goal was to be successful."

"Ultimately," said my father, "that may be true, but the word successful is a trap that has devoured many writers who at one time had some real talent. A much better way of looking at it is that you, as a writer, should commit yourself to taking your readers to a better place. In other words, when they finish your book, they'll be happier or wiser than they were before they started your book."

"Dad, that's just...no one wants to be lectured to. Besides, what do I know? I'm only twenty-seven, and it's not like I have any earth-shattering wisdom to impart."

"And so, to make up for your lack of wisdom, you serve up sanitized murders? That doesn't make much sense. Couldn't you aim a little higher than all this inane claptrap that's being published nowadays? Murder this, murder that, and murder anything else that comes along. And when I read one of these things—I won't dignify them with the word novel because the word novel means something new and original—when I get done with books like yours, I just feel that I've wasted another few precious hours of my life. Where did your book take me, Patrick? The answer to that question is simple: Nowhere."

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Dad, but you still haven't answered my question: What, specifically, should I write about?"

"Kick the murders out of your mind, Patrick, and write about something that takes your reader to a better place."

"I don't have any idea what you mean by a better place, Dad."

"Start by eliminating things that don't do anybody any good: Murders, rapes, and graphic sex."

"So should I write some heroic tale where a guy dies to save his girlfriend or something?"

"That would be very trite. Not as trite as a murder mystery, but even so, that theme has been done thousands of times. Why not strive for something that's truly original?"

"Such as?"

"You're the genius around here, Patrick. Go figure it out."

Later, when I had time to think it over, I figured that I might as well try to please my father. But I kept coming back to the same old problem: If there wasn't a murder in my new book, what was I going to write about?

"OK," I said to myself in a determined voice, "I'll take the pledge—no matter what, my next novel won't have any murders in it."

But before I had a chance to make good on my promise to my father, real life threw me a monster curve ball, and all my good intentions went out the window. I mean, what are you supposed to do if you're actually involved in a real-life murder mystery?

## CHAPTER TWO

To tell you the truth, everything that happened from here on out was definitely very bizarre. That's why I decided to start writing it all down. I wasn't intending to make anything out of it—such as turning it into a primetime novel—but I needed to keep track of everything that was going on because...but there's only so much that I can commit to paper. Let's just say that for my own protection, I knew it would be wise to put some things down in writing—otherwise I would have to rely on my memory, and in a case like this, no one in their right mind would do that. But enough! Enough with all the introductions and the various tricks, schemes, and camouflages that words can create. Much as I might like to avoid it, I need to set the scene, and since I might read this twenty or thirty years from now, I can't afford to omit details that I could easily recite from memory now.

After I left my father's, I went back to the apartment that I shared with Nick and his current girlfriend, whose name is Teresa Hamblin. I say current girlfriend because Nick never remains in a relationship with a woman for very long--a year is about the outer limit for him. He was one of those guys who become uncomfortable when a relationship begins to turn serious—like, for instance, if his girlfriend starts talking about marriage or, even worse, having a family. Kids! They were like a swear word to Nick. Sometimes, when he and I were alone, he'd go into these rants about how the only things women could think of were food and babies. "Like I'm going to sit around changing the diapers of some little jerk who has to dump it in his pants all day long." Nick also professed to be very concerned about overpopulation, and how it was the duty of "self-aware" people to hold back from giving birth to a bunch of bratty munchkins who would grow up and ravish the earth with all their unbridled appetites.

He'd now been with Teresa for about nine months, so it was getting near crunch time. Teresa was an attractive, friendly woman, and I don't think she had a clue that Nick was probably already hatching a plan to ditch her—a plan that wouldn't leave him looking like a total scoundrel. Don't get me wrong—I liked Nick except for the way that he treated woman. Maybe, if I'm going to be really honest here, I was just jealous of Nick because, unlike him, I had a lot of trouble finding a woman that would even give me the time of day. It wasn't that I looked awful or drooled when I was nervous, but there seemed to be something about me that repelled women. Maybe repelled is too strong a word—I don't want anyone to think that I don't shower for days on end or anything. It just seemed like I didn't have that magical ingredient or quality that turned women on and made them putty in my hands.

But Nick, with his casual sexual swagger, his magnetic social charisma, his vaguely sociopathic ideas that at first seemed more like professions of coolness and non-violence, his undoubted movie-star looks, his gentle, well-modulated voice—here was the man that women tripped over and practically dragged into their bedrooms.

By the way, just to make the record complete, Nick had diagnosed my problem with women. It wasn't like we talked about it much—hardly at all, in fact—because Nick wasn't a big fan of personal conversations and other people's problems. But one time, when he was a little bit soused on vodka, he told me that the reason I had so much difficulty finding a woman was because I focused on the ones who were unavailable or "out of my league."

Nick was sprawled out on the couch in our TV room when I returned from my father's. "Where's Teresa?" I said.

"She had to go to an art class that she's just signed up for—according to her, it will help her to, quotes, 'learn the art of painting.' Women are so funny that way—they seem to think that you need to have an instructor to learn something. If it was me, which it isn't, I would just get out a sheet of paper and start drawing stick people as they tried to climb up a mountain. Where have you been?"

"Talking to my Dad."

"Is he really going to die?"

"That's what they say, and I guess it's going to happen soon."

"What a terrible thing," said Nick. "I wish you hadn't told me he had cancer because now every time I get a twinge, l begin to think it's the first symptom. He must have had a first symptom, and I'll bet that for a couple of days or maybe even a week, he just thought it was nothing. Does he look really awful?"

"Not that bad—not as bad as I thought he would."

"What'd you talk about? I can't imagine what I'd say to a person who was dying. It must be so weird to have no future."

"He doesn't like the kind of books I'm writing."

"What? The murder mysteries?"

"He thinks that I should aim for something higher, but when I asked him for a suggestion, he couldn't come up with one."

"Is he religious or something?" said Nick.

"No, not really—he never went to church."

"So what's his problem?"

"I guess he's one of those people who thinks that literature is meant for a higher purpose."

"A higher purpose than what?" said Nick.

"Than making money or becoming famous. According to him, a novel should take you to a better place."

Nick laughed. "That is just so nineteenth century. The poor guy—he's living in a dream world if you ask me. To tell you the truth, Patrick, I think books are boring. I can't even remember the last time I read one." Nick reached over to the table, opened a drawer, and pulled out a joint. "Here's what takes me to a better place," he said, as he lit up the joint. After he had taken a hit, he passed the joint over to me, and it wasn't long before we had completely converted it to clouds of smoke.

"Did you ever think about the meaning of life?" I said.

"I hope you're not turning religious on me, Patrick. That would be a real bummer. My aunt used to tell me that if I didn't change my ways, I'd be going to hell. Repent now, my lad, or you'll be tossed into an eternal cauldron of fire."

"No, seriously, don't you ever wonder about it all? I've been thinking about that a lot lately. For instance, when I'm downtown walking around, I'll just lean against a building and watch people for five minutes or so."

"And what have you observed, Patrick?"

"From what I can see, there are basically two types of people—floaters and achievers."

"I'm definitely a floater," said Nick. "In fact, we're both floaters unless you begin to take yourself too seriously—you've always been susceptible to that. You and about five billion other people."

Ignoring Nick's criticism, I said, "The floaters are mostly young and many of them probably don't work because they never look like they have to get anyplace. They just float around in an aimless kind of way and often look discouraged or disillusioned. Meanwhile, the achievers scurry around like ants as they hustle from one place to another."

"Patrick, you've forgotten about another class of people, and they make up way over half of the population. They're called shoppers."

"That's interesting," I said. "Shoppers are kind of like a crossbreed—half floater, half achiever."

"I think the meaning of life for most people is to go shopping."

"Nick—"

"No, I'm totally serious. Take away shopping and most people would be lost. What would they do when the work week was over if it wasn't for shopping? Read a book? Pitiful!"

"But Nick, don't you think that we must have been put here on earth for some higher purpose?"

"Than shopping? Well, I suppose there's the whole regeneration thing, otherwise known as sex."

"But that just puts off the question, Nick. So we have kids, but what's the meaning of their lives?"

"Why does life have to have some deep and mysterious meaning? I'm beginning to get worried about you, Patrick, because you're talking like someone who's about to say that they just found God, and if that ever happens to you, it will be the end of a beautiful friendship—I just couldn't take listening to all that schmoozing-with-God stuff."

"But I'm not talking about religion, Nick. It just seems to me that life must have a purpose."

"Why? Why do you think that?" said Nick.

"Because the other choice is that it has no purpose, and if it has no purpose, then...then it all becomes totally confusing."

"So to avoid that feeling, you're searching for the purpose of life. Don't you see what a scam that thought is? Next thing you know, you'll be joining a church or signing up for the army so that you can go off to a foreign country and kill some unacceptable people who are caught on the wrong side of some irrelevant issue. Or your downfall might be much more mundane—maybe you'll find some job where you get all caught up in the power struggle that goes on in most work places. When I was working at the shoe store in the mall, there was this colossal fight between two people over who would run the cash register. Imagine a mind that's sunk to that level, and the way you're going, what with all your meaningful thoughts, you're going to find yourself battling for control of the cash register."

"Religion is like a stumbling block for you, Nick."

"I'd say it's more like Mount Everest—no way am I climbing that rock to nowhere. Maybe you should consider becoming a televangelist."

"Nick—forget about religion. All I'm asking you is whether you've ever thought about the meaning of life."

"OK, Patrick, I can see you're going to be a pit bull about this, so I'll play along for a while. First of all, I don't really understand the concept of the meaning of life. The word 'meaning' is kind of bizarre—I guess it means to have some kind of intention. I was meaning to clean up my room but then I smoked some weed and forgot about it. So when you say 'meaning of life,' I begin to suspect that you're going all religious on me because it doesn't sound like you're talking about your own intention of life. Right?"

"Well, if I could understand the meaning of life, then I'd be able to have some kind of intention. The way it is now, I'm completely clueless. I keep having this sense that there should be an intention to my life, but I have no idea what this intention should be."

"And you're searching for some kind of counselor, better known as God, who will give you this intention?"

"No, I wouldn't say that. It's more like I think there must be an overall purpose to life."

"How did you ever come to that conclusion?"

"Everything in nature has a purpose, so—"

"There you go, Patrick. When I hear statements like that, I feel like throwing up. Are you going to tell me that cockroaches have a purpose? I suppose somebody could claim that the universe needs scavengers like cockroaches to survive, but that's a faulty argument because if there was actually someone who was intelligent enough to create the universe, this being could have created a universe that cleaned itself up automatically. Insects are a real problem, Patrick. If you really want to discover the meaning of life, they're one of the two things that you should investigate."

"And what's the other thing?"

"Injustice, but let's talk about insects first. If we cut out all the scientific gibberish about how they serve a purpose, we could just admit that they're gross, useless creatures. Except for maybe spiders because they kill other insects. Meanwhile, ants, cockroaches, and mosquitoes are definitely the holy trinity of the absurd and the atrocious. If you're really serious about finding the purpose of life, you'll have to explain the role of insects and how those critters fit into the picture."

"I don't understand what they have to do with it," I said.

"Because insects contradict all our ideals about the meaning of life. What you're searching for is some guiding principle that will help you live your life. And then a mosquito lands on your arm, bites you, and a few days later, you come down with West Nile disease, and a week later, you're dead. It happens! And when you say you're searching for the meaning of life, you have to include mosquitoes and ticks. They're part of the meaning of life—you can't just exclude them because they're small, vicious, ugly, and useless. If you stop and think about it, all the monster movies are based on blown-up insects. So before you tell me that living in divine contemplation is the purpose of life, I need to know what your position on insects is."

Before I could develop a public position on the almighty subject of insects, Teresa walked in with her usual high spirits and sense of enthusiasm. Teresa was somewhat tall and thin with brown wavy hair that fell a couple of inches below her shoulders. Her face was much more long than wide, her eyes were brown, and she tended to move about in an excitable and nervous way.

As she deposited her handbag and a large tablet of drawing paper on a chair, she said, "Man, oh man, this class is really something. Next week, we're going to start in on nudes. It wouldn't be so bad if the model was a woman, but it's going to be a man. Gross! Who wants to sit around for sixty minutes looking at a man with no clothes on? Professor Ambois—I don't think he's a professor but that's what he calls himself—wanted to know if anyone would be offended by the nudity. Offended? How about throw-up repulsed? All I wanted was some pleasant little course where we would do a few landscapes and paintings of flowers, and now I've blown five hundred dollars on perversion posing as art."

"What's so wrong with naked men?" said Nick. "You and I couldn't very well do it unless we were naked."

"Very funny," said Teresa. "But as far as I'm concerned Professor Ambois is a jerk. Listen, do you all mind? I'm all stressed out, so I'm going to take one of my little power naps."

"Go for it," said Nick.

After she left the room, Nick said, "Just between you and me, Patrick, I'm going to have to cut her loose."

"Nick—it's not right to treat her that way. Teresa is..."

"Is what?"

"She's a really decent, honest person."

"What's that got to do with anything?" said Nick.

"That's not important to you?" I said.

"Most woman are decent and honest, Patrick. That's really nothing special, and anyways, I don't place it all that high on my list of priorities. I guess you do because you're obsessed with this meaning-of-life trip lately, but I like interesting women, and Teresa is kind of boring...so predictable...and really, the sex isn't all that good anymore. Besides, I met this woman the other day who came into the dealership and was looking at our most expensive cars. Such a looker—the long straight blond hair, the dazzling green eyes, the short skirt, the way she would sometimes brush up against me. I was like half out of my mind and that was before she told me that she had just gotten divorced. Believe me, at that moment, I practically vaporized Teresa. I mean, who wouldn't?"

I stared at him but refrained from saying anything.

"You don't approve, I suppose?" said Nick.

"It just seems...how would you feel if someone did that to you?"

"Patrick, that's the way the sexual game works. Take my word for it—it's far better to be the one doing the dumping than to be the one dumped, which means that at the first sign of trouble—and boredom is a big sign of trouble—then you have to get your dump truck out, load your lady into it, and ditch her at the mall." Nick laughed—his sarcastic laugh. "The mall is my favorite place to ditch a woman," he said.

"Why's that?" I said, as I tried not to show my annoyance with Nick's sociopathic chatter.

"Because there are so many stores around," said Nick. "That way, when I dump them out of the dump truck, they can go buy themselves something. It's a good sedative for them, and much as you may dislike my attitude towards women, I do have a sense of chivalry. I would never, for instance, dump a woman off in the woods. And also, I always dump women on sunny days. What could be worse than dumping a woman in a pouring rainstorm—even if you are at the mall?"

I was tempted to say, "Good for you!" but I kept my mouth shut. I'd lived with Nick long enough to know that it was useless to argue with him about things like this. Actually, he wasn't as bad a guy as he made himself out to be—it was just that he had this weird idea that it was dangerous to stay in a relationship with a woman for very long. "Before you know it," he told me after his last break-up with a woman, "they'll be sinking their claws into you and dragging you to the altar in front of their mother and father. And then you'll have to do the ultimate kowtow and say, 'I do.'"

On the couch, Nick yawned. "Me and Lacy are going out on a date Sunday night."

"Who's Lacy?" I said.

"The blond—the one I was just telling you about. And I've got the feeling that she's kind of a swinger, so I don't think I'm going to have to spend a fortune on her before we dispense with the formalities—the formalities being, of course, our clothes."

"When are you going to break the news to Teresa?"

"Next week sometime. First of all, I have to make sure that the thing with Lacy is going to go down, but even if she turns out to be a dud, Teresa hasn't got much time left in this world—not in my world, anyways."

## CHAPTER THREE

A couple of days later, on a Saturday, Nick had to go to work—Saturday was a big day at the car dealership, so he almost always worked that day. Supposedly, at least according to him, he was their best salesperson—except for Annette Wilkerson "who made half her sales by wearing short skirts and showing off her legs."

Nick had already left the apartment by the time I got up and went downstairs to fix my breakfast. Teresa was in the kitchen brewing up some coffee. "I'm making an omelet," she said. "Would you like me to make one for you?"

"Sure—I love those things. Just make sure that you put plenty of cheese in it."

"Aye, aye, captain," said Teresa, in a friendly tone.

Teresa was a sincere, kind of old-fashioned woman, and I often wondered what she saw in Nick because he wasn't one who particularly tried to hide his past. I'd been around the two of them a couple of times when Nick was in one of his moods and was regaling us with tales that related to one, or sometimes many, of his various past girlfriends. Once, when Teresa and I were alone, I had asked her whether it bothered her to listen to these tales, but she was of the opinion that Nick was exaggerating. "Nick is like a lot of men," said Teresa. "He just likes to blow off steam sometimes and try to prove how masculine he is. I'd be willing to bet that most of the ladies he talks about are figments of his imagination."

"But you've met Angela," I said. That was Nick's previous girlfriend.

"Sure, but she was a total witch—did you know that she used to rifle through his wallet at night when he was asleep and empty out a twenty or two?"

Now, sitting at the kitchen table with my omelet, I couldn't help but feel sympathy for Teresa. She was so confident that her relationship was on solid ground, but obviously, I knew that the rug was about to be pulled out from under her feet—probably on the next sunny day. If I had been a less chivalrous guy, I would have taken this opportunity to plot out some way where maybe I could become her boyfriend after the ax fell. But instinctively, I knew that wouldn't work—she'd undoubtedly be devastated when Nick told her that it was over.

Was there any way that I could soften the blow for Teresa? Kind of like warn her that Nick was, as the dreadful expression goes, "moving in another direction." No! It was a fool's errand, and most likely, she'd shoot the messenger.

"Patrick, I know it's a crazy question, but what do you think the meaning of life is?"

"You're kidding," I said. "Did Nick tell you what he and I were talking about a few days ago?"

Teresa seemed puzzled. "No—what were you talking about?"

"I asked him that very same question the day before yesterday."

"And what did he say?" said Teresa.

"Oh, you know how Nick is. He thought I was trying to turn religious, so he kind of blew the whole thing off."

"He's not a very serious person, or at least he doesn't like serious conversations. But he's not here, so we can talk about it. Sometimes, I think we're all just running around in circles and not going anywhere. We think we're going somewhere because we're running around, but it's like we're trapped on this circle that always brings us back to where we started from."

I laughed. "It sounds like you're saying that we're rats on a treadmill."

"Exactly!" said Teresa. "It's so depressing sometimes. Anyways, let's take our coffee and go into the TV room and talk about this some more because for once in my life, I'd like to have a meaningful conversation."

As we walked out of the kitchen, I said, "Whatever you do, don't talk to Nick about the meaning of life."

"Oh, I know—anytime I say anything even remotely serious to him, he accuses me of being a nun."

We sat down in a couple of old, beat-up stuffed chairs that faced a TV. "So!" said Teresa, in an amused tone. "Do you have any clue? Any clue as to the meaning of life?"

"I wish I knew, Teresa, but I don't."

"Not even a teensy-weensy little clue?"

"All I can tell you is that we're born, eat a lot of food, have some good and bad experiences, and then we die."

"It's so stupid!" said Teresa. "Nothing anyone does really makes any difference because in the end, it's all swept away. A couple of years ago, I read this book by some supposedly advanced soul who said that we were put here to love people and that love was the purpose of life."

"I guess that would be a good way to live, but I don't see what difference it would make."

"Neither do I," said Teresa, in a somber tone. "I loved my mother, loved her a lot, but then she died. I'm glad I loved her while she was alive, but...in the end, I always end up face-to-face with the big, everlasting question: So what? I loved my mother—isn't that special! But now she's in the graveyard and what good did all my love for her do?"

"It probably made her life happier knowing that you loved her."

"No doubt, but now she's dead, so it all seems like such a waste. And then I could go on and love somebody else, but eventually, either I'll die or the other person will die. It's like, at the end of it all, it adds up to a big fat zero. That's why, basically, I don't think it matters whether you're alive or dead."

"I'd rather be alive," I said.

Teresa shrugged her shoulders. "What for?"

"It's kind of fun—like drinking this coffee. It gives me a rush, and I feel like I can do just about anything."

"But...there's always this thing lurking behind it all," said Teresa. "Sometimes, I can sense this Being up above us somewhere, and all He's doing is laughing at us. And the reason He's laughing is because we're all like race car drivers who are zooming around the track on the jet fuels called coffee and alcohol. And we're so sure that we're getting someplace, so sure that we're getting ahead of the next person, but in reality, it's nothing but a sham—a mirage that we've created in the hope that life isn't totally meaningless."

"So you think that life has no meaning?"

"It's the only answer that makes sense, Patrick. Don't you think that if life had some real meaning, then someone would have discovered it by now?"

"That's not true—some people think they've found the meaning to life."

"What? The religious people? I'm not talking about delusions, Patrick. Just because you're passionate about something doesn't mean that it has any real meaning. I was reading this magazine article the other day, and it was about these teenagers in South Korea who go to internet bars and play video games for days on end. Not hours on end—days on end. Some of them even died because they became so dehydrated that they collapsed. But obviously, while they were playing the game, it had a lot of meaning to them. But that's just an obsession—just like the religious fanatics and the car fanatics and the food fanatics and the sex fanatics all have their particular obsessions."

"Yes," I said, "I agree with you—just because you believe in something doesn't make it meaningful. In fact, it's probably quite the opposite."

"In what way?" said Teresa.

"Well, Hitler found it meaningful to murder fifty million people."

"Don't let's get too simplistic, Patrick. There are a lot of people in this world who give of themselves to others and find that meaningful. But my point is this: After it's all over, after the giving is done, what's left? A good feeling? I suppose...but eventually, you get a disease and die and where have all the good feelings gone then?"

"But it's better to do good things than bad things," I said.

"Sure it is, but if that's what the meaning of life is, then our lives aren't worth much. There's got to be more to it than that. For a while, I thought the meaning of life was to learn about existence, but then one day, I realized learning is just like money and material possessions—you can't take it with you."

"Maybe we live again," I said. "In that case you could take it with you."

Teresa gave me a long stare with her inquisitive dark eyes. Finally, she said, "That's the usual rationalization of those who can't face facts. Nick gets frustrated when people talk about religion, and I get frustrated when people talk about life after death."

"Why's that?" I said.

"First of all, even if we live again, it just prolongs the whole chain of meaninglessness. So I'm born again in 2090, and I spend another life running around in circles and always coming back to the same place. It isn't like I'm evolving—I'm just circulating. I hope you get the pun. But seriously, when I look at my life, I'm chained to a circle. It may not be quite an exact circle—some days, it's like a square or a triangle, but it all amounts to the same thing. I leave here, run around in the outside world for a while and then come home. Wow! And there's meaning in that? I hate to say it, but when I look at my grubby food prep job, the only words I can think of are boring and disgusting. There's not any meaning there—even if I do come home with a paycheck. And as for art class...it's basically a waste of time that's masquerading as a Michelangelo experience."

"What about the time you spend with Nick?"

"It's fun as long as our interests don't clash. The other night we got really down on each other because he wanted to go out to a bar and dance and I wanted to go to a movie, so after arguing about it for a half hour, we ended up staying here. At least we didn't do the circle trip."

"But don't you find it fun to be around people?" I said.

"Fun? That's not the word I would use. Mostly, if anyone would like to be honest about it, people don't really connect with each other. They talk a lot, but it always seems to be about I, me, mine, and then, when it's your turn, it's you and yours."

"So why do you...what's the point in having a relationship then?"

"Love!" said Teresa. After a pause, she said, "I hope you realize I was joking when I said that."

"But seriously, Teresa—why do you have a relationship with Nick?"

"I just fell into it, and besides, I was different back when I met him. I know it was only nine months ago, but I've changed a lot since then. Back in those days, I still believed in things, still believed in love, apple pie, Mom, and the American dream. It's certainly not Nick's fault, but all the air has gone out of those tires. As far as I'm concerned, relationships are good for paying the rent since you get a bedroom for half price, but otherwise, all that love stuff is just a stage prop that's used to hide the underlying futility of it all. Sure, you might love a person for a while, but like everything else, that eventually fades...I just got it! I just realized what I actually am."

"What's that?" I said.

"I'm a leaf that's fallen off a tree, and I'm just being pushed around willy-nilly by the wind. No direction, no place to go, all alone in this meaningless world. If I'm lucky, the wind will blow me into some safe port where I can exist in relative comfort before I get cancer, have a heart attack, or drift away with Alzheimer's. But no matter where the wind takes me, death will catch up with me and suck the life out of me. And then, just like the billions of people who have lived before me and gasped their last gasp, I'll be gone—and gone forever."

"Teresa, you're painting a rather bleak picture of reality."

"Don't blame me—I'm not the painter. I'm just the tiny leaf that is blown around for a while by the winds of eternity."

Suddenly, the front door opened and Nick appeared. "Hello!" he shouted.

"Well, look what the wind blew in," said Teresa as she winked at me. "Guess what, Nick—Patrick and I have been discussing whether life has any meaning."

"Patrick must be going through an identity crisis. Let's just hope and pray that he doesn't discover God."

"So how come you're back?" said Teresa. "I thought you were working until four."

"Five o'clock, actually. I just wanted to tell both of you that Jana and Everett Dixon are going to be in town tonight."

"Who in the world are they?" I said.

"Everett was someone I met at college during my freshman year, and Jana is like this blond goddess he picked up before he moved out west. We're going to meet downtown for dinner and drinks at Emerson's around five-fifteen—you're all welcome to come, if you like. Anyways, I have to run—just thought you'd like to know. Also, I'm planning to come back home for lunch. Do you think you'll be here then, Teresa?"

"I have no idea—I guess so."

"Ok, I'll be back by a quarter to twelve unless some customer gets their hooks into me. Maybe we could go upstairs and fool around for a while."

Teresa blushed but didn't say anything.

Nick laughed and said, "That's where I find my meaning of life."

After he left, Teresa said, "He's just so crass sometimes. I don't like it when men talk that way. And anyways, sex isn't all that it's built up to be. Maybe men get more out of it than women, but there are times when it's just a big bother to me."

"That's just Nick being Nick," I said.

"Patrick, there's something that...it's just a feeling that I get sometimes. Please tell me the truth—is Nick about to dump me? I know I might have made it sound as if it wouldn't bother me but...where would I go? I don't know what I'd do, so it would be good to have some advance warning. Has he said anything to you about me?"

How was I supposed to answer that question?

"Tell me the truth, Patrick. You're hesitating, so that's not a good sign."

"Maybe." I didn't know what else to say.

"Oh God—what did he tell you?"

What would you have done if you were in my position? I certainly didn't want to be the one to land the crushing blow, but I had already gone too far, and it was difficult to retreat. "Teresa, do you have any idea of his history with women?"

"I know he's had a few girlfriends, if that's what you mean."

"He's had a lot of girlfriends, Teresa. More than I can count, and it seems like...I don't know what it is—maybe it's a fear of commitment, but usually...I mean, he's never had a relationship that lasted for more than a year."

"And we've been together for nine months. But I don't put any pressure on him or anything, and it's certainly not like I've ever asked, or even hinted, that I'd like to be married. Is it that he just likes to play the field?"

"I think so—I think that's what it is."

"That's so juvenile," said Teresa. "So has he found some other woman?"

"I don't know, Teresa. It isn't like he talks to me about you. I'm just telling you what I know from my experience of living with him for the past seven years."

"So what happens to a woman after he ditches her? Does she have to move out?"

"He gives them a couple of weeks," I said.

"A couple of weeks! I'm sure you remember how I gave up my apartment to move in here."

I was really tempted to offer Teresa the convenience and comfort of my bed, but that seemed almost contemptible under the circumstances. Sure—if she asked, but I wasn't going to be the one to make the proposition. If I had, Teresa would have been within her rights to wonder if this was some kind of scam that Nick and I pulled off where I was the one who got to pounce on Nick's rejects.

"And..." Teresa was on the verge of tears. "And to get an apartment, you've got to put down a deposit and the first month's rent and the last month's rent. And it's December, and I've just spent three hundred dollars on Nick for Christmas, and all I've got in the bank is four hundred dollars. That's it! I couldn't even rent a glorified pigpen for that."

"Do you know anybody you could move in with?"

"Not really. But...maybe it's just a bad fantasy. He hasn't actually told you that he's going to dump me, has he?"

Long pause. It seemed bad to lie to Teresa because she'd probably be better off knowing beforehand than hearing a lot of comforting lies.

Teresa must have seen the look on my face because she put her hands over her face and started rocking back and forth in her chair. "It's so unfair," I heard her say to herself.

"Listen," I said, "if you need some help with money—I mean if it comes down to that—I can loan you some."

"No, no—don't bother with me." Sobbing, Teresa got up from the chair and left the room. Seconds later, I heard her go up the stairs to the bedroom that she shared with Nick.

## CHAPTER FOUR

It was now almost eleven, and since Nick would be returning within an hour, I got out of there—the last thing I wanted to do was be around if Nick and Teresa had some big blow-up. After giving it some thought, I decided to drive over to my parents' house—not only did I have the time to spare, but also, to be honest, I couldn't think of anything better to do.

As I soon as I walked into the room where my father had his bed, I could tell that he wasn't feeling very well—he looked pale, and it was obvious that he was in a good deal of pain. "Well, Patrick, it's good to see you, but I'm probably not going to be much fun to be around today. Although your mother doesn't like to hear me talk about it, the end...I don't think it will be long now."

It made me uncomfortable to be in the same room with him—there's something about the presence of death that bothers me. I don't know what it is, but I don't like being around it.

"Still writing your novels?"

"Yes," I said, "but I'm taking your advice, and my next one isn't going to be a murder mystery."

"Good for you," said my father, without a great deal of interest. After taking a sip of water, he said, "What's it going to be about?" His voice was raspy, and his eyes looked weird—almost as if he had been crying.

"I don't know yet—it's been difficult for me to think of a plot that doesn't have a murder in it."

"Maybe you could write a story about cannibalism—except that the people who are eaten wouldn't have been murdered. They'd have just washed up on the shore of some deserted island where a bunch of shipwrecked people were trying to survive."

I assumed my father was joking, so I didn't say anything.

"Or maybe you could write about the last days of a dying man. That would be me, of course, but you wouldn't have to jazz it up with all that family stuff where people are crying and carrying on as they try to decide whether to pull the plug and send the old beggar into oblivion. Don't laugh, Patrick—for the last week, your mother has been having all these hush-hush discussions with your sister. And then, yesterday, your mother came in here and told me that I could have all the morphine I wanted. What do you suppose that means?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know? Aren't there any detectives in your murder mysteries?"

"Sure—I've got to have them because someone has to solve the murder."

"Righto! Anyways, when people tell you that you can start swallowing morphine like chocolate candy, it means that you're right near—I mean real near—the end. That's the way they do things now when you have incurable cancer—they just give you a bagful of morphine so that you can depart this vale of tears in a cloud of narcotics. Probably, if you do the dosages right, you'll die without even knowing it. For all I know, this might be my last day of really being alive—after this, I'll just be a morphine cloud who bears some vague resemblance to a person."

What a day! From Teresa to my Dad—I couldn't even begin to pick out who was worse, but it did kind of aggravate me that Teresa was so down on life. After all, when you compared what she was going through to what my father was going through, it was small potatoes.

"You're not saying much, Patrick—usually, you're so chatty that it makes me want to put on earmuffs."

Thanks, Dad. Maybe it hadn't been such a smart idea to come over and listen to the old coot. It was terrible to call him a coot—whatever that word might mean—but with the way he was carrying on, I couldn't help it. Finally, after not being able to figure out what to say, I said, "I know it must be real hard for you right now."

In reply, my father coughed and clutched his side. After gasping for breath for at least a half minute, he said, "I can't take it anymore—here, help me put this morphine patch on." My father shoved a two-inch square of something that looked like a bandage into my hand. After he held out his arm, I placed the patch near his shoulder. "There," he said, "it's some kind of time-release thing, so in another five or ten minutes, the pain won't be so bad. But what do you say? Why don't we get to work, and we can start your next book. It'll be called _The Last_ _Words of a Dying Man_."

I doubted very much that I would be writing a book that had anything to do with my father, but to keep the old geezer happy, I said, "OK, that sounds like a good idea." And once again, I apologize for using a word like geezer.

"Don't just sit there, Patrick—get yourself a pen and a pad of paper. You can't afford to miss anything I say because it's a one hundred percent certainty that I won't be around to repeat myself."

My Dad handed me a pen, but we couldn't find any paper, so I went out to the kitchen where I found my mother talking to my sister, Mary Beth. They were standing close to each other and seemed startled when I entered the room—almost like conspirators who had been caught in the commission of some nefarious deed. "Patrick," said my mother, "would you mind closing the door?"

After I closed the door, my mother said, "As long as you're here, I might as well tell you that Mary Beth and I have come to a decision about your father."

"Mother," said Mary Beth, "this is not the type of thing that you should be discussing with Patrick."

"Why not?" said my mother.

"Because, as we all know, he's a confirmed blabbermouth. Telling a secret to him is like broadcasting it to the whole world."

"Mary Beth, please don't say things like that. The fact is that I trust Patrick just as much as I do you."

Mary Beth laughed sarcastically. "Mother, that's...never mind—you can talk to Patrick alone because I have to be downtown for an appointment in thirty minutes, and it will take me at least fifteen minutes to find a parking spot. It's getting to the point where I wish that they'd just raze the whole downtown area and start all over again."

"I know," said my mother, "it's a colossal mess."

"Anyways," said Mary Beth, "it was good to see you, Patrick, but for God's sake, don't you dare utter a word to anyone about what Mom is planning. And if they end up bringing her to trial, I'll deny that I ever heard a thing about it."

"Stop being so dramatic, Mary Beth," said my mother.

"It's just that I have three children, and I'd rather not have them visiting me in prison."

With that, Mary Beth picked up her coat and left the room. Before my mother could say anything, we heard my father from the other room. "Patrick, where the devil are you?" he said, in a loud grating voice. "In case you haven't noticed, I'm not going to be able to wait a week for you to return."

My mother left the room, and I could hear her say, "Darling, I just need to talk to Patrick for a minute."

"What are you going to talk to him about? The funeral arrangements? Who cares? He certainly doesn't."

"Darling, it'll only be a minute or two."

"Well, hustle it up, Nancy, because a minute of your time is a lot different than a minute of my time."

My mother reappeared in the kitchen and closed the door behind her. "I'm so glad that you came over today, Patrick, because now I can put my plan into action."

"This has something to do with Dad?" I said.

"Of course. He's been on my mind for a month straight now. And as you can see, he's suffering something terrible. Sometimes, the pain is so bad that he can hardly breathe. Do you have any idea what it's like to watch a person go through something like this?"

"No, I can't even begin to imagine."

My mother sat down at the kitchen table, and after grabbing a Kleenex, she began to sob. Finally, after a long, awkward minute where I just stood there not knowing what to do, she said, "I never thought it would ever come to this. I mean...you get married, go on the honeymoon, have kids, work all your life, and retire—and then THIS. When your father and I were bringing you and Mary Beth up, it always seemed like we were working and striving towards something, and now THIS...It's the end, Patrick—no matter what we do, your father will be dead within a week or so, perhaps even much sooner. And everything we worked for, everything we did—people can spout off all the platitudes they want, but all I have left of your father are the dying remnants of the man I used to love. It's so horrible that I can't even describe it—not really."

I sat down at the table—I had never been that close to my mother when I had been growing up, but I could certainly sympathize with her now. She and my father had always had a lot of genuine affection and love for each other, but now, as my mother would say—THIS.

"Anyways," said my mother, "neither your father nor I can put up with this anymore, so I'm going to put an end to it."

"An end to it?" I said. My father was now an it. I couldn't help but feel depressed when I heard my mother talk about my father this way.

"Yes," said my mother, "I was going to call you this afternoon and ask you to come over tomorrow, but now that you've had a chance to talk to your father, I'm going to do it tonight."

"You're going to...what are you going to do?" It was obvious what she was going to say, so the finality of it all was really beginning to hit home.

"I'm just going to...the sleeping pills, you know. He'll just die a peaceful death in his sleep—it'll be a lot better for him than waking up in the middle of the night and screaming for the morphine."

"Of course," I said.

"And naturally, you're not to say a word of this to him. Not that it would matter all that much—a couple of days ago, he asked me how many sleeping pills it would take to kill a person. I think that was his way of giving me a hint."

"I suppose it was." It was such a discouraging conversation that I was responding more like a robot than a human being.

"So...why don't you go back there and talk to him for a while—it truly will be your last goodbye with him."

My mother began to sob, and after I found a pad of paper, I left the room and returned to my father.

"God's sake, Patrick, what were you doing out there? Don't you realize how precious every minute is right now?"

"Sorry, Dad—Mom was...she's having a difficult time of it right now."

"She's having a difficult time? What about me?"

To district him, I said, "I found a pad of paper."

"Good. Now you can do something useful for once in your life. OK, like I said, this is going to be called _The Last Words of a Dying Man_. Got it?"

I scribbled the words down on the pad and said, "OK, I'm ready."

After taking a gulp of water, my father said, "Life is never what it seems. When you're young, you feel oppressed, but the future is always rosy. The sky is the limit. But there are many perils that need to be avoided. Traps lurk along the way for those who are fledging their wings and learning to fly in the world. There are predators out there who lurk behind unexpected corners. But the predators are not only located outside—some of them are also hidden within the mind, and if they are not confronted and tamed, a life can be ruined. Because, with one bad action based on one bad thought that is allowed to prevail, a whole life can be ruined.

"I know I'll be laughed at for saying this, but the primary essence of a person is sexual. Everything depends on how the sexual river runs through a person. Everything depends on having that river...it isn't necessary that the river be clean and pure like the religious people are always striving unsuccessfully for, but when you get to the end of your life, you'll thank yourself if you've been able to maintain a certain amount of sexual honesty in your life. Wayward paths lead to wayward events that lead to wayward lives. And so--"

Here, my father broke into a violent coughing fit that lasted for over a minute. My mother came into the room, but my father waved her away. "Let me be with Patrick, will you? As soon as I'm done with him, you can have your turn."

Once my mother had disappeared, my father said, "But enough with the youngsters--the real test of life comes when you become older and are faced with your own mortality. Death—your death--makes you question everything. It's bad enough when others die, but there's nothing like your own death to bring you up to speed on the fundamental reality that underlies everything in this universe. Everything, absolutely everything, dies. It's beyond frightening when you realize that your time is coming. It's very hard to describe—it reminds me somewhat of when I was a child, and I went running to my mother in the middle of the night because I had seen the boogeyman. And my mother took me in her arms and told me that there was nothing to be frightened of—it was just a shadow. So now, when I'm on death's doorstep, I'd like to run to my mother, but unfortunately, she's dead, but even if she were alive, there's nothing that she could tell me that would comfort me."

My father sighed—a long, slow, painful sigh. "Patrick, for the life of me, I don't understand why we're born. It makes absolutely no sense. We all come dashing into the world with spunk and high spirits, but then, seventy or eighty years later, we leave as a discouraged, dilapidated mess. It's an appalling thing, if you put down the rose-tinted glasses and look at it honestly. Believe me, if God walked into the room right now, I'd have some choice words for Him. The first thing I'd say is: Why did you create this mess, and why did you drop us humans into it? Couldn't you have figured out something better than this? What about all the young women who are raped and murdered? What about all the victims of wars—billions of them now. What's the point of it all? Is it some gigantic torture chamber that You invented for Your amusement? Couldn't You have created something better than this abysmal horror show where everyone is eventually annihilated?"

My father peered at me for some moments. "Have you got any theories about this, Patrick?"

"Maybe there's no such thing as God. That's the one that makes the most sense to me."

"Don't be ridiculous—that's just modern hogwash. If you don't like the word God, you can use Creator, but something created all this, Patrick. Everything in existence was created by something—if I put a computer in front of you, you would never say that it had no creator and was just a chance arrangement of atoms that happened to come together. Existence, any existence, always implies a creator, which means that the question we're faced with is why were we created and what is our purpose in existence. Gravity, for instance, was created to make things stable and hold things together—otherwise, the earth would never orbit the sun. So it's easy to see the purpose of gravity, but even though I'm almost seventy, I couldn't even begin to tell you what the purpose of a human being is. As far as I can tell, we're just overgrown ants with a huge ego problem."

"Not only that--" but here, my father had to stop as the coughing became violent, and then, once that had finally subsided, he was wracked by pains that made him scream. After putting another morphine patch on him, I backed out of the room without even remembering to say goodbye.

## CHAPTER FIVE

Before I left my parents' house, I spent a few minutes with my mother. She went out of her way to explain to me that she wasn't going to spike my father's dinner with sleeping pills but was merely going to leave a full vial of pills beside his bed. From what my mother told me, Dad had been asking her to leave the vial by the bed, but she had kept it in a secret place because she was pretty certain what he intended to do with it. But now...well, there was no sense "prolonging the agony." Amen to that.

It was now about one-thirty, and I still had almost four hours to kill before I was supposed to meet Teresa, Nick, and his two friends downtown. With nothing better to do, I drove out to Peterson's Mall, which was about five miles from downtown. I was definitely in a "rowdy" mood—that's the word I use when I'm feeling sorry for myself because I don't have a girlfriend. Man, does that bother me sometimes. I probably shouldn't have gone to the mall because, it being a Saturday afternoon, there were a lot of stud guys walking around with a lot of gorgeous superhot chicks. I know I shouldn't use the word chick, but it kind of represents something sexual to me. Ladies and gals and women are...they're not the ones I want to go to bed with. That's what chicks are for—they're in their early twenties, wear real tight jeans, have these fantastic, otherworldly faces, and look as if they'd like nothing better than to spend the night between the sheets with a guy like...I guess not like me, so there were times, like most every hour of every day, when my sexual status aggravated me.

I guess I must have been in the mood to torture myself because I got a cup of rocket fuel from Starbucks and sat on a bench inside the mall and watched all the "stuff" strut by. What was wrong with me? Why didn't I have one of them? I wasn't a movie star by any means, but I looked OK—almost as good as Nick. But he had this whole suave approach to women that seemed to bowl them over. So slick and smooth, while I bumbled around for words and made a fool of myself. I could just sense the way chicks thought about me—"He's such a loser." Or maybe it wasn't that bad—maybe it was: "He's nice enough, but he's not my type." I'd had a couple of chicks tell me that I wasn't their type, and it kind of made me angry. Especially when they began to schmooze all over Nick like he was God's special gift to them.

And then—I know I've already complained about this but I can't help repeating myself—Nick lands a real nice chick like Teresa, and he's all set to dump her for some new blond fantasy. Was that going to be the story of my life? Just some loser guy who always came in second place and lost the smoking hot chick to a guy who really didn't have all that much going for him.

Lately, I'd been real down on Nick, and I think it must have had something to do with Teresa. He hadn't changed in any significant way, but there were a lot of times lately when I'd been around Nick and Teresa and he had just kind of brushed her off as if she wasn't very important. And I'm sitting here in the mall watching all the hot chicks go by and thinking to myself that if I ever had a chick like Teresa, I'd be waiting on her hand and foot. Sorry for the cliché, but sometimes, a cliché can describe things perfectly.

Disgusted with beating up on myself, I got up from the bench and went into a bookstore. Those places also tend to aggravate me—the reason being that I'm a poor struggling author who's breaking his back to turn out ninety-nine cent books that have some real merit—even if they are murder mysteries—and then, the first thing I see in the book store is a large round table piled with novels by Mr. I'm So Famous that I Positively Reek. Nevertheless, just to torture myself again, I go over and open one of the dude's books, and after I've read about five sentences, I'm about ready to puke up my coffee all over his rotten display of books. Not that I'm jealous or anything, but facts are facts. If you think the number one bestseller is worth reading—at $19.99!!--then you might be better off getting on a rocket ship and moving to another planet—preferably, not in this galaxy. It's true that I might feel different if one of my books ever manages to crack the bestseller list, but until then, my opinions, attitudes, and observations are set in stone.

Anyways, Mr. Positively Reeks was trying to write a coherent sentence, but he wasn't quite pulling it off, so I took his lousy book down to the back of the store and defaced it with a small pocket knife that I carry around. The main reason I carry the knife is to slash the inside pages of a book that annoys me—and most fiction does annoy me—but this is only something I do when I'm in one of my "rowdy" moods. Fortunately, I've never been caught because I don't think that my mother or father would understand that one. Not that my father matters anymore—poor guy, he was definitely taking the long train out. Catastrophe City!

After putting my slashed book back on the table—buy that one, you sucker—I breezed back out to the bench I had been sitting on before, but I had to leave after a few minutes because a mother with two squalling brats who were like three and four years old sat down on the bench that was next to me. Waa! Waa! Waa! I want my this and I want my that. Stuff like that can definitely get on your nerves when you're trying to ogle women.

After floating around the mall and checking out some tunes and DVD's, I looked up at the clock in the store and saw that it was quarter to five, so I drove downtown to meet Nick. Naturally, it being a Saturday night, the streets were jammed, and it took me a few minutes of cursing and driving around before I found a parking space that was a good ten minutes' walk from Emerson's, the place where I was supposed to meet Nick. Emerson's was a swanky restaurant/bar where up and coming hotshots like Nick often went when they were in the mood to get fleeced—seven dollars for a beer may excite you, but it leaves me wishing I could use my knife to slash some of the upholstery in the booths. The only reason I haven't done it is because I've only been inside Emerson's once, and Nick, in one of his overwhelming fits of occasional generosity, had paid for the beers. But that probably wouldn't be happening tonight, so maybe my knife would be taking the leap from rancid bestsellers to rotten upholstery. When you're in the mood, many things become possible. And, technically speaking, not all of them are noble.

Inside Emerson's, the place hadn't filled up yet, and I saw Nick sitting in a large booth near the back. "Where is everybody?" I said.

"Everett called me a couple of minutes ago—he and Jana should be here any minute. But I don't understand what's going on with Teresa. You know how she is—she's always on time."

"Have you tried calling her?" I said.

"Twice."

Maybe she didn't feel like hanging out with a guy who was about to dump her, but naturally, I didn't tell Nick that. I sat down at the table, and when the waitress came up, I ordered vodka on the rocks with "filtered" ice cubes, which was a mere ten bucks (plus tip), but at least you get a lot bigger bang for your buck than you do with the seven-dollar beers.

Just as the waitress brought me my drink, Jana and Everett arrived. Nick and I were sitting opposite each other, and when Everett sat down next to Nick, Jana had no other choice but to sit down next to me. Man, what an electric, steamy chick. Hot! And when she took off her jacket, I just about lost it. I suppose, if anyone else ever ends up reading this, you'll think I'm some sort of aspiring lecher, but when you don't have a woman, it can really send you for a loop when a gorgeous, really gorgeous—as in super-gorgeous—chick is sitting about six inches away from you. And after shifting a bit in my seat, the distance was down to four inches. Just four inches of subtle maneuvering to go. Because Jana was like a humongous magnet to me. Of course, I knew I had to be cool about it. Also, it would be a good idea to wait until she was liquored up a bit. I mean, it wasn't like I was planning something awful—all I wanted to do was cop a feel.

Nick and Everett were jawing away about old times when Jana turned towards me and said, "How long have you known Nick?"

Her long straight blonde hair, vivid blue eyes, and beautiful face were what most people would have noticed, but I was obsessed with her tight jeans and, by inference, her legs. So tempting. You have no idea. I'd spent the whole blasted day listening to my father and Teresa go on and on about the meaning of life, or the lack thereof, and now, from out of the blue, I'd found it. Jana's legs! How they did so perfectly stuff her jeans. God, when a woman wears jeans that are probably a size too small and definitely take some wriggling to get into—what a turn on! Maybe all the moralists and purists and naysayers would castigate me, but it wasn't like I was the only guy in the world who had gone through the intense sensations that are aroused when one is near, very near, a beautiful woman.

Here, at least for the moment, was the meaning of life. I was totally consumed. And I was getting closer and closer to her—I was now maybe only an inch and a half away from her. Maneuvering...pretending to move away from her only to readjust myself so that I was a quarter inch closer to her. The first touch...ah, what a moment that would be.

It happened by "accident," and the best part was that she was the one who had touched me. It probably wasn't that she wanted to, but I had managed to move my leg so close to hers that I could actually feel her body heat, so when she moved, just slightly, her leg touched mine for an instant. Sparks! Flames! My whole heart was beating in a kind of wild, tempestuous way. But when another minute passed with no physical interaction between us, I began to fret. Was it over? My sad little surreptitious fling in a ritzy good-for-nothing bar.

But moments later, her leg brushed up against mine again, and this time, Jana prolonged the moment for a second, maybe even two seconds, as she sensuously moved her leg along my leg. Discreet, but not that discreet. Now I knew—knew that if I played it cool, I'd be getting more of what I wanted. Don't be too aggressive I warned myself. Let her come to you.

Jana was now talking to Nick about something or other, but my hearing had pretty much failed me since her leg was now lightly touching mine. And before long, as Nick yapped away, the pressure from Jana's leg wasn't so light anymore. Sometimes, she would withdraw a bit, but then, seconds later, she would be back. If only we were alone in the back seat of a car...but here in the bar, it wouldn't really be possible to take it to the next level unless...I could try to place my hand on her leg, but I sensed that would be going too far. The standard rules of the cop-a-feel game don't allow that, so there wasn't much I could do. True, my head was swimming in a tidal wave of sexual fantasies that all involved Jana. Maybe she and Everett would have a big fight, and I'd be her savior. So unrealistic, but it was a nice thing to dream about.

Unfortunately, my dreams were interrupted by Nick. He'd tried to reach Teresa, but she still wasn't answering the phone. "I'll tell you what," he said, "let's go back to my place. Teresa's probably taking a nap, and anyways, the prices here are a bit much."

"What about dinner?" said Everett. Already, I didn't like him, but that was probably because he had the inside track when it came to Jana.

"We have plenty of food at my place," said Nick. "I'm sure Teresa and Jana can fix something up for us."

"I'm sorry," said Jana, "but I don't do cooking." I couldn't tell whether she was joking or not.

"That's alright," said Nick. "Teresa's a fabulous cook."

"Well, what are we waiting for?" said Everett. "Let's go!"

NO! I didn't want to leave my cozy leg-pressing seat next to Jana and go back to my grungy apartment. So depressing. I suppose my "feelings" would seem laughable to many, but from what I've noticed, an awful lot of men who like to pretend they're sexual saints wouldn't mind engaging in some under-the-table shenanigans with a hot chick who has some real life in her.

It also makes a difference whether you're sex-starved or are like Nick, who has all the sex that he can handle. Naturally, he probably wouldn't bother to engage in a grope fest because he and Teresa had an active sex life. I know this for a fact because my bedroom is just down the hall from theirs, and there was many a night where I attempted to go to sleep to the discordant symphony of their orgasmic violins—to put it as elegantly as I possibly can.

But as we stood outside Emerson's before we headed back to the apartment, that was neither here nor there. Jana was avoiding my gaze because, obviously, she had a boyfriend to attend to and couldn't possibly acknowledge me in any way, and so, dejectedly, I took part in the conversation although I don't have the slightest memory of what I or anyone else said.

Despite the fact it was cold out, Nick and Everett and Jana seemed to be in a festive mood and were chit-chatting away like the world was a happy and meaningful place that was filled with glorious moments, if only you had the wherewithal to experience them. I was fed up with the whole stupid charade, and after telling them that I'd meet them back at the apartment, I trudged off. Grimly, as I took the ten-minute walk to my car, I realized that my night was basically finished and that the best I could hope for was to be able to mentally drool at Jana while we all got plastered or bombed or pickled at the apartment.

Surprisingly, I was the first one back, but I didn't feel like going in before the others, especially since there were no lights on, which meant that Teresa must not be there. As I sat in the car, I became more and more depressed. What was I doing with my life? Selling cheap murder mysteries for the whopping price of ninety-nine cents had propped my shaky ego up for a while, but lately sales had begun to shrink significantly, and my stupid little book empire, which I had once been so proud of, was pretty much road kill on a platter.

My job, my stupid brain-dead utterly worthless job, was certainly nothing to get the bugles out for unless it was to play Taps. Nowadays, I worked on an assembly line where we churned out teddy bears and toy animals, and I was paid a whopping three dollars over the minimum wage. I'd worked there two years, which was a long time for a dump like that, so I was now an assistant shift foreman on the day shift. What was that old Dylan song? Twenty years of schooling and they put you on the day shift. Well, I only had twelve years of schooling, so that's probably why I was just an assistant foreman. But nobody who worked on the line at Animals Unlimited could pretend, even in their wildest flights of fantasy, that their job had any meaning. Except, of course, for the fact that it brought in the bucks that paid for rent, food, drugs, and all the other necessities of life. But standing on an assembly line and stuffing stuffed animals into cardboard boxes was enough to make anyone question the meaning of life. What in the world am I doing here? Am I caught in some kind of nightmare that I'll eventually wake up from? Or is this it? The sum total of my existence—yes sir, I'm an up-and-coming stuffer at Animals Unlimited. (And just to be fair and lay all my cards on the table, I had slashed a few of the teddy bears with my pocket knife when no one was looking and I was in a "rowdy" mood.)

None of this would have bothered me if I had someone like Teresa to snuggle up to at night. Snuggling being the polite word for something else. Chicks like Jana were, as Nick would say, totally out of my league, but I could see myself making it with someone like Teresa. She was...when I first met her, I thought she was a little on the plain side, but the more I was around her, the more I began to appreciate her...whatever you want to call it. It was kind of like she exuded a quiet but intense sexuality. She wasn't glamorous or anything like that, but I would gladly have settled for someone like her.

Of course, she wasn't available, so—

Just then, Nick pulled up, and right behind him were Everett and Jana—they must have followed Nick from downtown. As we walked up the stone path that led to our apartment, Nick said, "Welcome to my humble abode. One of these days, like maybe when I hit the lottery, I'll be able to afford a house."

"I like it!" said Everett, in an obnoxiously cheerful voice. "And it looks like a nice neighborhood."

"That's true," said Nick. "All the crime occurs on the other side of town—not counting, of course, the crimes that I commit."

Har-de-har-de-har. Nick was such a comedian that it was enough to make you puke. By now, Nick had taken out his key, but when he went to put it in the lock, he found that there was another key in the lock. Puzzled, he looked at me and said, "Is this your key, Patrick?"

I was standing behind Nick but hadn't seen the key until he took it out of the lock and showed it to me. "Couldn't be," I said. "I haven't been here since eleven o'clock this morning—didn't you say that you were coming back here for lunch?"

"I know, but there was no key in the lock then, so this must be Teresa's key. She's so forgetful sometimes." Looking at Everett, Nick said, "She's a real space cadet, if you know what I mean."

Nick opened the door, flipped on the light switch in the hallway, and we all walked into our rather large TV room. After turning on a couple of table lamps, Nick pointed to a cabinet behind the TV and said, "That's where Patrick and I store our booze, so you all go ahead and help yourselves."

"Where's Teresa?" said Everett.

"Yes, we've been looking forward to meeting her," said Jana, in a strange, almost sarcastic tone of voice. My leggy relationship with my former heartthrob was now definitely over as she stood next to Everett and gazed at him with a starry-eyed expression.

"I don't know where she is," said Nick. "I haven't been able to reach her all afternoon. She must be upstairs taking a nap because her handbag is on the table."

"Well, wake her up!" said Everett. "We can't have a real party unless everyone is here."

"Oh, by all means, she should join the party," said Jana in the same sarcastic tone.

"OK," said Nick, "that's a good idea. I'll go upstairs and roust her."

Everett had poured Jana a drink--I think it was whiskey on the rocks--and as he was mixing himself a gin and tonic, he said, "So how come you don't have a girlfriend, Patrick?"

Because, unlike you, I'm a stupid loser who's going through another monstrous streak of bad luck. But I didn't say that, of course. Trying to sound casual, I said, "I'm just playing the field right now."

"I guess so!" said Jana. I wondered if this enigmatic comment referred to our groping session at the bar.

"It's not a bad way to go," said Everett.

"What's that supposed to mean?" said Jana, who looked at me with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes.

Everett cleared his throat and began to backtrack. "All I meant was—"

Suddenly, from upstairs came a scream—a strange, bloodcurdling scream that froze the three of us. The scream clearly came from a man, but it was such an odd scream—high-pitched and distorted—that I couldn't say whether it came from Nick.

Everett and I locked eyes for a moment, and then both of us headed for the stairs. Just when we reached the bottom of the stairs, Nick appeared at the top. Rushing down towards us, he appeared to be hysterical, and as soon as he pushed past Everett and myself, he flung himself on the couch and began crying in a loud and convulsive way.

"Is this some kind of joke?" said Jana, who was nervously looking towards the stairs.

Nick, facedown on the couch, was pounding his fists into the cushions. I had never, not in all my life, seen him so much as cry before, so I was completely baffled. But that scream! I knew it wasn't a joke, and I knew that something awful had happened when he went upstairs. But what?

Everett, who was obviously a go-getter, went up the stairs to see what had upset Nick. "Be careful, Everett," said Jana. Walking over to Nick, she put her hand gently on his back and said, "What's the matter, Nick?"

He had stopped pounding his fists into the cushions, but he was sobbing and moaning. By now, Jana realized that this couldn't be a joke, and she looked at me with an expression of real concern. "What could it be?" said Jana.

Everett was now literally running back down the stairs. When he reached the bottom, he dashed over to his coat and yanked out his cell phone. "Yes," he said, after he had punched in some numbers on the phone, "you have to come quickly—I think she's dead, but I don't know for sure. I don't know...just a second." Everett handed me the phone. "Tell her the address, Patrick—they want someone to stay on the phone."

"Who is this?" I said into the phone.

"This is 911."

Shocked, I gave the woman the address of the apartment. Meanwhile, Everett had gone out to the kitchen, flung open a couple of drawers, and was racing upstairs with a kitchen knife. "Patrick," he said, "give the phone to Jana and come with me."

"Everett," said Jana, "what is going on?"

Without answering her, Everett ran up the stairs with me a few feet behind. Nick and Teresa's bedroom was only a short ways down the hallway, and...I didn't, of course, have any idea of what I was going to see in the bedroom, but I knew that it wasn't going to be good. And why was Everett carrying the knife?

Within seconds, I had the answer to my questions.

## CHAPTER SIX

Awful thing...About five feet in front of me, Teresa was hanging from the base of a chandelier. The rope that was around her neck had twisted her head to one side—her face was a ghastly purple, her eyes were bulging out, her whole expression was like something out of a nightmare. I wish I could describe it better, or maybe I'm glad that I can't, but I really only saw her for a moment or two because I turned my head away. Too horrible.

There was a tipped over wooden chair close to where Teresa was hanging, but Everett grabbed one from a nearby desk, climbed up on it, and was about to cut the rope. "Hold her, Patrick. We've got to get her down from here."

I knew she was dead—anybody could see that, but obediently, I went over to where Teresa was and grabbed her around the waist. Everett was having difficulty cutting through the cord, but when the cord finally snapped, the weight of Teresa's body nearly overwhelmed me, and I staggered back with her in my arms until I fell backwards on top of the large bed that she and Nick slept in. She was so cold and clammy, so lifeless. How would you like to be lying on a bed with a dead body on top of you? I quickly wriggled free, and Everett and I placed her on the bed. Everett put his fingers to her neck to check for a pulse, but I said, "She's dead, Everett."

He backed up from Teresa, and without saying anything, he moved towards the door. "Let's get out of here," he said. "There's nothing that we can do for her."

We had just reached the bottom of the stairs when the paramedics arrived. Everett and I went into the TV room where Jana was sitting next to Nick on the couch. He had put his head on her shoulder, and she was rocking him back and forth in a gentle way. "I...who could have done this to her?" said Nick.

"What are you talking about?" I said. "It's obvious what happened—she took her own life."

"Do you really believe that, Patrick? I don't."

"You're saying that someone came in here and hung her from the chandelier?"

"It had to be—she would never...she was happy."

"And there was that key in the door," said Everett.

"I'd forgotten about that," said Jana.

I didn't know what to say because I felt partially responsible, in a small way, for Teresa's death. What if I hadn't told her that Nick was about to leave her? That had seemed to completely alter her mood—it would, of course, have altered just about anybody's mood. But besides that—and this had happened just before I told her that Nick was leaving her--she had seemed obsessed with the meaninglessness of life. Put the two things together, and it was obvious that something bad could happen. However, it didn't seem like the time or the place to bombard Nick with things like that. It was, at least for the moment, best to let him hang on to his delusions. "When was the last time you saw her?" I said to Nick.

"It was like I said when I came home earlier in the morning—I was able to get away from the car dealership and come back here for lunch. We spent...we were together for a while—long enough that she wasn't able to go to her art class."

"But she must have gone out afterwards," I said. "Otherwise, the key wouldn't have been in the door."

"That's true," said Nick indifferently.

Just then, a policeman and a person who was introduced to us as Detective Steven Hobbs arrived. He wanted to interview each of us separately, and Nick told him that the kitchen would be a good place to do that. He began with Jana, and after spending only five minutes with her, he took Everett into the kitchen.

As we waited for Hobbs to finish with Everett, Nick had slumped back on the couch and was staring at the ceiling. The only thing I heard him say was "I can't believe this happened to her." Jana was also quite disturbed by the whole chain of events that we had just experienced. "I don't know anything," she said to me in a gloomy way. "What could I tell him? Everything I know about it, I found out from Nick while you and Everett were upstairs."

Everett was in the kitchen for around fifteen minutes—Hobbs was undoubtedly asking him questions about what he had seen and done after he entered Teresa and Nick's bedroom.

I was the next one up and sat down opposite Hobbs at the kitchen table. He was, to be frank, a bit of an annoying person, and it was difficult for me to relate to him. He was probably thirty-five and somewhat below average in terms of both his height and stature. He wasn't exactly a shrimp, but the word does fit, so I guess it's as good as any. Hobbs had light brown hair, a crew cut that gave him a military look, and he seemed to pride himself on his efficiency. I know I'm kind of mocking him, but I don't want to give off the wrong impression—he was a member of the police force who was investigating the death of a twenty-six-year-old woman, and I afforded him the respect that he deserved. Or at least I tried to.

During the time that Jana and Everett had been talking to Hobbs, I tried to decide what I was going to tell him. Basically, I was about evenly divided on whether Teresa had committed suicide or whether Nick had murdered her. It was obvious that I possessed two pieces of information that could be quite damaging to Nick—first, he had told me that he was intending to break up with Teresa; and second, he had said that he was coming home for lunch. Jana or Everett had probably already told Hobbs that Nick had come home for lunch because Nick had said that in front of all of us, but it was always possible that, for one reason or another, they hadn't told Hobbs. Maybe they had been trying to protect Nick; maybe they had, with everything else that was going on, not noticed or remembered that Nick had admitted to coming home; maybe Hobbs hadn't asked them a question about anything Nick had said after Teresa's body had been found.

What was I to do? I decided the best thing was to tell the truth—the whole truth and nothing but the truth because I also possessed some information that would be helpful to Nick. There had been the long conversation that Teresa and I had about how meaningless life seemed to her. If that isn't an obvious prelude to suicide, I don't know what is. And also, the fact that she had just found out about how Nick was probably going to dump her, as well as how upset she had been when she learned about that, was another thing that could have led to her desire to take her own life.

So the truth it would be—and let the chips fall where they may. It's also, as just about everybody knows, so much easier to tell the truth since you don't have to worry about contradicting yourself or coming out with something that could easily be disproved. And then who would the cops come down on? One thing was for sure—I wasn't going to try and destroy Nick, but neither was I going to try and save him. Speaking truthfully, I didn't really care whether Teresa had committed suicide or was murdered—either way, Nick deserved the lion's share of the blame.

Hobbs gave me a long look before he asked his first question—most likely, this was his way of attempting to intimidate the people that he interrogated.

"Alright," he said, "let me just get some background information. How long have you and Nick lived together?"

"About seven years."

"Seven years—so I guess it's fair to say that you know him well?"

"Yes."

"Was it more like you were roommates or more like you were friends?"

I thought about this for a few seconds before I said, "Both."

Hobbs gave me a puzzled expression. "I don't quite understand what you mean by that, Patrick. Would you say that you were friends?"

"Yes, but over the last couple of years, we'd drifted apart a little bit, and sometimes, it began to seem like we were more roommates than friends."

"Any reason for that?" said Hobbs.

"I guess the main reason was that his attitude towards women started to bother me." Like I said, I wasn't going to lie, and if that meant casting a few aspersions on Nick, then so be it.

I knew Hobbs would jump all over what I had just said. "What was it that you found objectionable in his attitude towards women?"

"I don't know...it was kind of like he treated them as if they were pawns in his game. Once he got bored with a woman, he just kicked her out of the apartment and found a new girlfriend. Or, to be exact, once he found a new girlfriend, he kicked the old one out."

"How did he and Teresa get along?"

"Up until two days ago, I thought they got along fine, but then Nick told me that he was going to have to dump Teresa. I don't know whether he was joking or not, but he told me that he always broke the bad news to his girlfriends at a mall—that way, after he booted them out of his car, they could do some shopping, which should, according to him, help ease their pain."

"To your knowledge," said Hobbs, "had he told Teresa that he was going to leave her?"

"It wouldn't have been that he was going to leave her—that's not the way Nick did things. The more accurate way to say it is that Nick would tell them that they would be leaving both him and the apartment. But to answer your question, I pretty much know for a fact that Nick hadn't told her yet."

"How so?"

"Because Teresa and I had a fairly long conversation this morning—this was around...somewhere between nine and ten. It was after Nick had left to go to work, and...maybe I should tell you about this conversation because I think it might be relevant to your investigation into Teresa's death."

"Please do."

"Well, first of all, we began—actually, it was Teresa who brought it up—we began to discuss whether there was any meaning to life. And the more we talked about it—and we must have talked about it for a good fifteen minutes—the more apparent it became to me that Teresa felt that life had no meaning. She kept talking about how her life was nothing but a big circle—how she'd just run around in a circle during the day and come back home at night. I can't remember her exact words, but if I had to paraphrase it, I'd say that she thought all human beings lead meaningless lives—even though, from time to time, they fall in love with people and forgot about the fact that at the end of it all, they're going to die miserable deaths. And—"

"Let me just interrupt you here, Patrick. Did she mention anything about taking her own life?"

"Not right then, but maybe she did a little bit later—I'll explain what I mean. The talk about the meaning of life was more like an intellectual conversation—it really didn't have much emotional content to it. But then--I can't remember how we began talking about Nick—when we started talking about him, Teresa became much more emotional. What she did was she asked me if Nick was going to leave her. I was really caught in a difficult position because, naturally, when Nick had told me that he was going to dump Teresa, it was told to me with the understanding that I wouldn't mention anything he said to Teresa. On the other hand, I really felt bad for Teresa because when Nick kicked you out of his bedroom, he also kicked you out of the apartment, and Teresa didn't have hardly any money saved—at least that's what she told me. So I tried to stay in the middle, which was probably a mistake, and hint around to Teresa that Nick was about to cut her loose. But once you start going down that road of giving hints, it isn't long before the truth comes out."

"So it's fair to say that Teresa knew she was about to be thrown out of the apartment?"

"For sure. And what happened was that it wasn't long before she started crying—she'd bought Nick all these Christmas presents and didn't have much money and didn't know where she was going to go. Eventually, after putting her hands over her face and crying for a minute or so, she went upstairs to her bedroom—her and Nick's bedroom."

"But she never specifically mentioned anything to you about suicide?" said Hobbs.

"No, she didn't, but I would say...I really regret that...I never should have told her that Nick was planning to leave her."

"Is it your opinion, then, that she committed suicide?"

"I guess so—I mean, you don't think she was murdered, do you?"

"I have no idea—all I'm trying to do is gather information. OK, there are a few other points that I wanted to ask you about. First, when you entered the house after returning from the bar, who opened the door?"

"Nick."

"And apparently, he found that the key to the lock was still in the lock?"

"Yes."

"Now, did you actually see this key?"

"Yes, Nick took it out of the lock and showed it to us."

"You were standing directly behind Nick?"

"Yes."

"And behind you were Jana and Everett?"

"That's right."

"So let me rephrase the question that I just asked you. Did you actually see the key while it was in the lock or did you only see it after Nick took it out of the lock?"

"I...no, I didn't see the key while it was in the lock. It was dark in the entranceway, and there's no light over the door."

"And there were no lights on inside the house when you entered?"

"No—once we walked in, Nick flipped the light switch in the hallway."

"How long was it after you entered before Nick went upstairs to check on Teresa?"

"Not long at all—maybe three or four minutes. Somebody, it was either Everett or Jana, told Nick that it was high time for Teresa to join the party."

"What happened next?" said Hobbs.

"Nick had only been gone for a minute or so when we heard this dreadful scream from upstairs. I'd never heard anything like it in my life, and then, just as Everett and I started up the stairs to see what was going on, Nick came down the stairs with the most awful look on his face, and there were tears...and he just—everybody knew that something terrible had happened."

"Did Nick say anything?"

"Not that I can remember, and since we still didn't know what had happened, Everett went upstairs. Seconds later, he came running down the stairs, got a knife from the kitchen, and told me to come with him."

"And so you went upstairs with Everett and cut Teresa down from the chandelier?"

"Yes. Everett wasn't really acting rationally. I don't know anything about medicine, but I would have bet a million dollars that Teresa was dead. Just the color of her face and the way her neck was twisted was enough to see that she was dead."

"After Everett cut her down, what happened?"

"I was going along with what Everett was telling me to do, so I had my arms around Teresa's waist, and when Everett sliced through the rope, Teresa kind of collapsed onto me, and we both—Teresa and I—fell onto the bed, which was a couple of feet behind me. After that, Everett came over and we laid her out on the bed."

"Did you notice anything unusual or out of place in the room?"

"Near where Teresa was hanging from the chandelier, there was a wooden chair that had been knocked over."

"OK, Patrick, there's just one other thing that I want to ask you. Can you give me a timeline of your day?"

"I got up around eight-thirty—Nick had already left for work. Teresa was in the kitchen, and after we had eaten breakfast, we went out to the TV room and had the conversation that I told you about. Probably about nine-thirty or a quarter to ten, Nick came back for about five minutes. He wanted to tell us that he was planning to meet Jana and Everett downtown after work around five-fifteen and that he'd like us to join them. He also told Teresa that he'd be coming home for lunch—I think he said around noon. It was--"

"Wait! You heard Nick say that he was coming back to the apartment around noon?"

"That's right," I said. Apparently, Hobbs hadn't discovered this yet.

"Do you know if he returned then?"

"Yes, I think he did because just before you arrived, he told us that he had come home around noon and spent some time with Teresa."

"But you weren't here when he returned?"

"No. Since I had kind of told Teresa that Nick was going to dump her, I didn't want to be around when he returned, so I left the apartment around eleven."

"Where did you go?"

"Over to my mother and father's house—my father has incurable cancer and doesn't have much longer to live. I probably stayed there until two or two-thirty and then, since I had some time to kill before I was supposed to meet Nick downtown at five-fifteen, I went over to Peterson's mall and hung out there until about a quarter to five."

"OK, Patrick, that's all the questions I have for now—you've been quite helpful."

## CHAPTER SEVEN

Nick was the last one to go into the kitchen to talk to Hobbs, and not surprisingly, he was in there for quite a while. Meanwhile, Jana and Everett were keeping themselves occupied by downing one drink after another—it was lucky they had talked to Hobbs first because they wouldn't have made such a hot impression on him now. The two of them were sitting on the couch and Jana was tickling him, which seemed bizarre under the circumstances. It was difficult for me to believe that two short hours ago, I had been obsessed with Jana—right now, she didn't strike me as being all that attractive. Finally, after about twenty minutes of alternating between my seat and the booze cabinet, I because disgusted with Everett and Jana's antics and went outside for a walk.

It was only a week before Christmas, but it was a fairly warm night for this time of the year, with the temperature in the low thirties. I had a lot to think over, and I mostly walked down side streets where I wouldn't feel distracted or threatened by cars. What a strange day...somehow, a feeling that something bad was about to happen to me crept into my mind. I could _feel_ it. My insides were a mess—my stomach was churning, and I felt like I might throw up. Of course, it was probably just a reaction to everything that happened after we had all returned to the apartment. I can tell you right now that there's nothing worse than seeing a dead body. I suppose that's an exaggeration, but offhand, I can't think of anything worse. I suppose if the person dies peacefully, like in their sleep, it wouldn't matter so much, but when I had gone into Teresa's bedroom, I had caught a glimpse of her face. The look on her face seemed to be permanently embedded in my mind—it seemed like a combination of horror and condemnation, condemnation for all the things that had caused her to commit suicide. Or, if Nick had murdered her, the condemnation was directed at Nick. But the condemnation really didn't have any particular focus—it was just _there_ —etched on her face. And that look seemed to spread out in a vast panorama and encompass everything. Now, walking along the street, I suddenly had a shuddering fit—just uncontrollable shaking from head to foot that lasted for at least twenty seconds.

I had to try and get it together. Everything passes, I told myself. What I had seen in Teresa's bedroom was a real-life nightmare, but nightmares, no matter how bad, eventually lose their power. Other events begin to intrude, and sooner or later, the past—and everything in the past—is washed or melted away. Maybe I'd have nightmares about Teresa's face; maybe I'd have lots of nightmares about Teresa's face, but eventually, they'd subside and go away. But the shuddering—that was something that had never happened to me before, and suddenly, I felt dizzy and extremely nauseous. Grasping onto a light pole, I heaved up a mess of stuff that went splattering onto the pavement.

"Come on!" I shouted at myself. "What's the big deal about Teresa dying? I mean, I liked her as a person and all, but it wasn't like we were sleeping together or anything." I guess the terrible feeling inside me came from seeing her face, with its ghastly purple hue and twisted, distorted features. "That's all it is," I kept telling myself. And then, imitating Poe, I said, "Merely that and nothing more."

It was quite a while before I went back to the apartment—somewhere along the way, I went into a bar and had a couple of drinks, which seemed to settle me down some. By the time I returned home, everyone except for Nick was gone—when I say everyone, I'm including not only Everett, Jana, and Hobbs but also Teresa's body. Nick was sitting on the couch in the TV room, and as soon as I walked inside, he started in on me.

"What do you think you're doing?" he shouted at me.

Now what? Between Teresa's rant about the meaningless circle of life, my father's bitter ravings, and Teresa's bloated face as she hung from the chandelier, this had been, by far, the worst day of my life.

"Why did you lie to the cop?" said Nick, who had gotten up from the couch. He took a step towards me, and I saw that his fists were clenched.

"What are you talking about?" I said.

"You know what I'm talking about. Why did you tell him that I was breaking up with Teresa? That's a lie, and you know it."

"Nick, calm down." I could understand his frustration with me for blabbing to Hobbs, but on the other hand, I had not told Hobbs any lies. However, faced with an enraged Nick, I had no other choice but to try and weasel out of it. "I didn't tell him that," I said. "Is that what he told you?"

"Don't lie to me, Patrick. He told me flat out that you said I was about to dump Teresa. Where did you ever come up with that idea?"

"Nick, that's not true—I never told him you were breaking up with Teresa."

"So the cop is lying to me and just making it up out of thin air?"

"I guess so."

"What are you trying to do to me? Why would you tell him something like that? You know it's not true."

"Hey, listen, Nick—I know it's been a tough day and all, but you don't have to take it out on me. You're not the only one who's feeling like it's the worst day of his life."

"And you just made it ten times worse by lying to the cop. Get out of here! You're nothing but a traitor."

Nick began coming towards me, and I decided the best thing to do was to back off. He was obviously in shock, and apparently, the only way I could help him was to let him chill out by himself. I had just left the house and was walking towards my car when I heard Nick, who was standing in the doorway. "And don't come back," he said as he slammed the door with a loud and dramatic bang.

Man, what was the matter with him? Luckily, I had my car keys on me, so I was able to get into my car and drive away without any trouble. The problem now was where to go? It wasn't like I had a ton of friends that I could barge in on at ten-thirty at night and ask them if I could crash on their couch. Sure, I knew some people, but I didn't know them well enough to do that. So the only options left were either my parents' place or my sister's. Actually, my sister's was probably out—her husband was a real picklehead who had never given me the time of day, and Mary Beth always acted like I was some grizzled tramp who needed a change of clothes and a long hot shower. Miss Ritzy-Ditzy was what I called her—not to her face, of course.

So that left my parents' place as my only real option. My mother was an OK person—in fact, I even liked her because she wasn't all stuck up and full of herself like so many other people are in this world. My father was a different story—he wasn't stuck up or anything, but he was very opinionated. And one of his favorite opinions was that I could get a lot further in life if I would just apply myself (like writing nine murder mysteries wasn't applying myself). No, I wasn't ever going to be President, but who wants that job anyways? Strutting around in a suit and tie and ordering a lot of up-and-coming goofballs around while Hail to the Chief plays. I'd sooner be a garbage collector than do something like that. But since my father was dying—since he was probably dying tonight—it didn't really matter what he thought about anything. It wasn't a case of good riddance or anything like that because I kind of liked his sense of humor and some of his observations about life, but still, all of his criticisms could become a little annoying. Here's a tip in case you're on your deathbed: Try and be nice to the people who are around you because if there is life after death (highly unlikely, but the possibility still needs to be accounted for) then you might be around your deathbed after you die—hovering up above, near the ceiling or something. And it's probably going to be awfully depressing if everyone down below is celebrating your departure with a lot of smart, sassy, and sarcastic remarks. Just sayin...

Fortunately, my mother was still up. "Patrick," she said, "It's so good of you to come over tonight. Come on in."

I was kind of caught in a dilemma. It was obvious that my mother thought I had come over so that I could help her through what was likely to be a long, difficult, and painful night for her. It would only be tactless to tell her that I was fleeing my apartment because my deranged roommate's depressed girlfriend had committed suicide by hanging herself from a chandelier. So after I came into the kitchen, I took the easy way out and said, "I figured you'd be lonely tonight."

My mother had obviously been crying—her eyes were red and swollen, and there was a pile of used tissues next to her seat at the table. "I didn't want to do it, Patrick, but I left the vial of sleeping pills on the table next to his bed."

"It's probably the best thing," I said. I had no idea whether it was the best thing or not, but under the circumstances, it sounded like the best thing to say.

"The thing is," said my mother, "I'd rather not be the one to find him after...you know—after he's taken...probably in the morning. Do you think you could be the one to do that?"

I could see that I'd be earning my keep. Think about it—who wants to be the one to discover a dead body? And how many people want to discover two dead bodies within a space of twelve hours? "OK," I said, "but let's do that in the morning."

"That's what I just said. I doubt he's even...you know...he was awake until about an hour ago. He was so sweet to me tonight, talking to me about all these pleasant memories of us being together and..."

My mother grabbed a handkerchief, put it over her face, and burst into tears. Meanwhile, I was totally exhausted—the whole day had been nothing but death, death, death. Nobody in their right mind wants to deal with that all day. And so, once my mother got over her bawling fit, I excused myself and went up to my old bedroom for what I hoped would be a long, peaceful winter's nap.

Unfortunately, although it started out that way, with me falling asleep fairly quickly, I was awakened with a start by a vivid and somewhat unpleasant dream. In the dream, Teresa was wandering around our apartment. Actually, I can't positively say it was Teresa because all I could see of her was a ghostlike presence—almost exactly like someone who goes out for Halloween with a sheet over themselves.

But I knew it was Teresa because she was talking, and it sounded just like her voice. I remember her saying, "The world is such a cruel place, and in the end, it often turns out that your friends become your enemies." She then went around the apartment and started throwing one thing after another out the window. "Teresa," I said, "don't do that—there's no need to be so upset."

But she merely continued to spook around in her ghost suit and kept picking things up and tossing them out the window. It wasn't like she was mad or anything—her attitude seemed kind of fatalistic, maybe even despairing. "We won't be needing these things anymore, Patrick."

"Maybe you don't need them, but I do," I said.

"Ah, we'll see about that, Mr. Devlan."

She had never called me by my last name before, and by now, her voice had an almost threatening tinge to it. But before I could ask her what she meant by calling me Mr. Devlan, I woke up. For some reason, even though I had two blankets over me and the house was plenty warm enough, I was shivering and felt somewhat nauseous.

The next morning was a Sunday, and I woke up around half-past seven. What, I wondered, should I do? On the whole, I was inclined to lie in bed until nine and hope that my mother finally got up the courage to go into my Dad's bedroom and discover the remnants of what he had once been. But then, while I was musing over what my father was going to look like now that he was no longer among the living and was, in fact, a corpse, I suddenly realized that it might look pretty weird to the cops if I was associated with two corpses, in completely different locations, in a span of a little over twelve hours. But that was, obviously, just paranoia. Teresa had committed suicide, and my father had been cut down by cancer, so anybody with any brains would view my presence when their bodies had been discovered as nothing but a coincidence.

Finally, by eight-thirty, I was bored with lying in bed, so I got up and crept down the back stairs to the kitchen. Anything to avoid the room where my father was. And 'was' is certainly the right word. As soon as I reached the bottom of the stairs that led into the kitchen, my mother was all over me. "I've been waiting since six-thirty for you, Patrick. Come on—we can't put it off any longer. Go into your father's bedroom and make sure that...I don't know how they do these things. Aren't you supposed to put a mirror under the person's nose or something?"

Resigned to my fate, I left the kitchen and went down the hall to my father's bedroom. Peering in, he appeared to be asleep, but obviously, it was the sleep of the dead. Creeping cautiously forward, I approached the side of the bed, and just as I reached out to grab his wrist (which would probably be cold—ever so cold), my father suddenly opened his eyes and said, "Patrick, what are you doing here?"

Shocked, I lurched back. "I...I just wanted to see if you needed anything."

"Morphine—that's what I need. The patches are in the drawer."

After I put the patch on his upper arm, my father said, "Why are you here so early? It's not even nine o'clock."

"I just dropped in to check up on Ma—you know how she is." I looked over to the table by the bed and saw the vial of sleeping pills. The cap was off, and I could see the vial was almost full. I really didn't have a clue as to what to say. What does one say in a situation like that? Something like: "Hey! I thought you were going to put an end to yourself last night. What happened? Did you chicken out?" I know that sounds irreverent and cruel, but that's what I was thinking. "So how are you feeling, Dad?"

"Just great!" he rasped out. Sarcasm, of course. "Anyways," he said, "I'm glad you're here because—"

"What's going on in there?" shouted my mother from the kitchen. My father grabbed me by the arm, pulled me down close to him, and whispered, "Tell her I need to talk to you, and then she can come in here."

I walked out towards the kitchen where I found my mother standing near the door of the hallway that led down to my father's room. "I thought I heard voices," she said, with a puzzled frown on her face.

"Dad is still alive," I said.

"He's what?"

"Mom, he's still alive, but he wants to talk to me for a few minutes."

"Well, if that isn't the strangest thing," said my mother, in a barely audible voice. "He's been begging me to leave the sleeping pills by the table—I even opened up the vial for him."

"I know—I saw the vial, and it was almost full."

"He must be trying to torture me. Actually, I would have stayed up with him last night, but when I went in there a little after midnight, he threw me out of the room. Alright, Patrick, go in and talk to him—how's he doing?"

"He looks terrible."

My mother sat down at the kitchen table, and it was only then that I noticed the colossal pile of used handkerchiefs on the table. The poor thing—she'd probably gotten about an hour's sleep as she imagined that my father was taking his last breath.

My father really did look ghastly—a pale white color with a tinge of purple thrown in. "OK," he said to me, "the first thing I want to say to you is that when your mother or your sister writes out my obituary, you are to tell them very specifically not to say that I died peacefully. There's nothing at all peaceful about this—it's more like being put on the rack and stretched out and stretched out some more." My father reached out for the vial of sleeping pills and popped a pill into his mouth. "Maybe this will help me to just sort of snooze through the day. But getting back to that peaceful thing I was talking about—naturally, when I take my final breath, I'll probably be peaceful, assuming I'm not struggling and gasping for air, but other than that, these last few days have been the most unpeaceful of my life. How would you like to be in extreme pain, like the most awful pain of your life, and all the while, mostly in the background because the pain is so bad, you know that at the end of it all, you're going to croak? Your mother and sister will probably try to censor it, but if you can sneak it into the obituary, please say that my death was a real horror show. Got it?"

"Sure." My mother wouldn't go for the horror-show remark in a million years, but there was no harm stringing the old guy along since there was no way he could possibly verify whether I had followed his instructions.

I noticed my father was eyeing me warily as he popped another sleeping pill in his mouth. "This might work better than the morphine if I can get the dosage just right—and if I overdo it, so what? Right?"

Just then, there was a scream from the kitchen. "Oh my God," said my mother. A few seconds later, she burst into the room with the newspaper in her hand. "Patrick! You never told me. This is terrible—you must be in a state of shock."

"What are you talking about, Nancy?" said my father, in an irritable tone.

"One of Patrick's roommates was murdered last night."

"Murdered?" I said.

"I think that's what the article said—or maybe she committed suicide. Here, Patrick," she said, thrusting the paper towards me, "you can read the article for yourself. I wish you had told me about this. No wonder you seemed so out of it last night."

I took the paper from my mother and began to read the article, but my father said, "Read it out loud, will you?" At the same time, he made a dismissive motion with his hand towards my mother—she took the hint and left the room.

"Read it," said my father, who had a strange gleam in his eye.

After reading the headline, LOCAL WOMAN DIES UNDER MYSTERIOUS CIRCUMSTANCES, I continued with the rest of the article.

Teresa Hamblin, a twenty-six-year-old woman who lived on 136 Waitsfield Avenue with Nick Flaherty and Patrick Devlan was found by Mr. Flaherty in the bedroom he shared with Ms. Hamblin. Although the initial indications seemed to point to suicide, Detective Steven Hobbs said that it is too early to come to any definite conclusion as to how Teresa died. In a press release that was issued around midnight, Detective Hobbs said that some of the clues found at the scene were not consistent with suicide and that the investigation might take a few days.

That was the end of the article, which had probably been written hastily just before the paper went to press. "That's it?" said my father.

"That's it," I said.

I was still trying to deal with the idea that Teresa might have been murdered. What were the clues that pointed to murder instead of suicide? I never would have thought that Nick was capable of doing such a thing. So depressing...he and I didn't always get along, but there was no way that I wanted to see him arrested for murder. There was a black feeling in the pit of my stomach.

My father was popping another sleeping pill. "That whole thing sounds like one of your murder mysteries," said my father. "It looks like life is really beginning to imitate art. I thought you told me that you were done with Nick."

How was I going to squirm out of that one? "It was just out of necessity, Dad—I was broke when I moved in with him, and he let me stay there for practically free." I was lying my head off, but what difference did it make?

"So it sounds like Nick murdered her," said my father.

"I thought she committed suicide," I said.

"Why? What do you know about it?"

"I know she was discovered hanging from a chandelier in her bedroom."

"That's a mighty odd way to commit suicide," said my father.

"Not really."

"Patrick, there's something about this that you're not telling me."

Where did he ever get that idea? Before I could answer him, he said, "I can always tell when you're lying—it's something in the tone of your voice."

I was glad to see him popping another sleeping pill—that made four. "OK," he said, "I guess it doesn't make any difference—not now, anyways. What I wanted to tell you...but I'm getting so sleepy—I better take a few more because I don't want to wake up again. I hope you don't mind being a witness to a real suicide." This time, he took two pills. "Lovely," he murmured, "maybe I will die peacefully. But before I go, I wanted to tell you this, Patrick: Life isn't all that it's cracked up to be. When you're younger, life dazzles and delights you, but when you become older, or old enough, the thrill isn't there anymore. We're just like fireflies, Patrick—we light up our little sphere for a few seconds of celestial time, and then, POOF, and it's over. So the lesson to all this is don't take yourself seriously because you, along with everything you do, are going to be utterly demolished by the cancer of time. And murder, which seems to fascinate you to the point where it now follows you around—murder is something that can only happen when a person takes himself and his thoughts far too seriously. Learn to back off from life and don't embrace it too much because it always—always, always, always—ends badly."

With that, my father gulped down a whole handful of sleeping pills and sank into the pillow. And then, just as I was about to leave the room, I heard him say, in a weak and raspy voice, "Goodbye life—it was nice knowing you."

## CHAPTER EIGHT

Two days later, on a Tuesday evening, I left my parents' house and ventured over to my apartment. I had called Nick the evening before and arranged to meet him around six. From the tone of his voice on the phone, I could tell that he was still angry at me, but at least it didn't seem like he had done anything crazy—like throwing all my belongings out onto the front lawn.

Nick was sitting in the TV room when I arrived, and he sure didn't look happy. Man, with the way he was acting, I was really beginning to wonder whether he had murdered Teresa. Shouldn't a guy who was innocent be acting a little more carefree and not be using his roommate and longtime friend as a scapegoat?

"I don't get it," said Nick. "Why did you tell that detective guy I was about to break up with Teresa? Do you know how much trouble that's gotten me into? I can tell by the questions the cops are asking me that they think I murdered Teresa."

"Nick, I just...they're grasping at straws. All I told Hobbs was that you've had a lot of girlfriends since I've been living with you, but I never told him that you were about to break up with Teresa."

"Then how come he told me that you said that?"

"That's what detectives do, Nick. Haven't you ever watched a cop program? If they're trying to get a guy to crack, then they'll feed him a bunch of lies. Next thing you know, they'll be telling you that I saw you murder her."

"You really didn't tell him I was planning to dump Teresa?"

"No!"

Nick pulled a joint out from a drawer in a table that was next to him and lit it up. After taking a long reflective puff and then handing the joint to me, he said, "OK, Patrick, I believe you. But you have to understand that I'm under a lot of stress here. I didn't think anything could be worse than having Teresa...I don't know—what do you think? Do you think she was murdered, or do you think she committed suicide?"

"I think she took her own life, Nick. I haven't had a chance to tell you this, but that morning, the day she died, she and I talked for about an hour, and—"

"Sure—that was when I came back from the car dealership."

"Right, and...I don't know how to say this, but at the time, when Teresa was talking, I never even remotely connected it to anything suicidal, but now, after what's happened, it's clear that she was thinking about it."

I passed the joint back to Nick and before taking a hit, he said, "What did she say?"

"She kept asking me if I thought life had any meaning. She seemed obsessed with the fact that everyone's life was just a meaningless circle—you start out from someplace in the morning, run around in the outside world, and then come back home. And on a bigger level, you start out your life somewhere, run around for fifty or seventy or ninety years and then return to the nothingness from whence you came. And naturally, since neither Teresa nor you nor I believe in God, she wasn't able to come up with any answer to her questions."

"It's so sad, Patrick—I feel the same way myself, but that's no reason to commit suicide. Not really. I mean, so what if life is meaningless? At least, if that's the case, you don't have to worry about whether you're successful or not. You can just float along, and who knows? Maybe, when you're reached some point...like when you're really stoned, you'll discover the reason for existence. How's your father doing?"

"He died on Sunday."

"The day after Teresa died?"

"That's right—he took about twenty sleeping pills, and that was it."

"Wow! I guess death is everywhere. Did he say anything interesting before he died? Any sensational deathbed revelations?" For the first time, Nick laughed.

"Just that he didn't want his obituary to say that he died peacefully. According to him, the obit should say that his death was a real horror show."

Nick burst out laughing. "Are you really going to put that in there?"

"No, my mother would never permit that, but my father wasn't lying—his death was a real horror show. And then, right at the end, he was telling me that life was overrated and that we shouldn't grow too fond of it because it always ends badly."

Nick reflected on this for quite some time before he said anything. "Death is something that TV doesn't cover very well. They almost always like to present it as some heroic event with everyone struggling to be courageous in the face of overwhelming adversity. And the poor critter who's dying is trying to keep up a brave front—I suppose that's what happens most of the time, but it's only because death is the ultimate nightmare. And so everybody, the victim included, buries their head in the sand and pretends that behind all the blood and carnage, something mysteriously wonderful is going on."

After taking a hit on the joint, I said, "And Dad's gone off to a better place where he's singing hymns of praise with the angels."

"Nobody—and I mean nobody—has ever figured out death," said Nick. "But if anyone manages to figure out death, then at that moment, they would have also figured out the meaning of life, assuming there is such a thing."

"It might be easier to approach it the other way around," I said. "Figure out the meaning of life first and then that would lead you to the meaning of death."

"I suppose that's true," said Nick. "But...it's like running into a big black wall. I can't even begin to come close to figuring out either question—not really, not without bringing in a lot of religious malarkey. And the trouble with the religious malarkey is that even if it's true, which seems about as likely as hitting the lottery, I don't have any emotional or intellectual connection to it."

"I know—it's just a lot of words that people tell you to believe."

"Belief is not the way," said Nick, emphatically.

"No, it has to be experienced."

"If only we knew what 'it' is," said Nick. With a laugh, he said, "Oh what I would give for a transcendent experience."

Nick and I were having fun now—it was like the good old days when we used to banter about religion, God, and the cosmos.

Nick finished off the joint and said, "If Teresa really did commit suicide, I can't help but feel responsible. I mean it doesn't look very good when your girlfriend goes and hangs herself from a chandelier."

I didn't really want to talk about Teresa—I'd been around too much death in the last few days. It was beginning to seem like death was everywhere lately, but of course, Teresa's death and my father's death were just a coincidence. For the most part, if one is honest, it has to be admitted, unless you live in a war zone or something, that death hardly ever intrudes on life. But when it does! Man, oh man—what a showstopper death is.

"I wouldn't worry about it," I said to Nick. "People aren't going to blame you for her death."

"The cops seem to be."

"Blaming you for her death?" I said.

"They've pretty much told me that they think I murdered her."

"So they actually think she was murdered?"

"Hobbs and this other guy interrogated me for three hours last night. And what they told me was that the whole scene in the bedroom was staged—somehow or other, they've figured out that Teresa was strangled to death before she was hung from the chandelier."

"So...somebody must have used the key that Teresa left in the door to enter the apartment."

"No, there's a problem with that—Teresa's key was found in her handbag. The key that was in the door was the one that we keep under the front doormat."

"Nick, there's not that many people who know we keep a key under the doormat—is there anyone that you can think of?"

"Jana and Everett know."

"How do they know?"

"About a week ago, I talked to them on the phone. They told me that they were coming in two separate cars because Jana was on a business trip somewhere south of here, but the airport where Everett's plane was landing was north of town. You would think that Jana could have just picked him up at the airport instead of them having two rented cars, but that's the way those two operate. When you're as beautiful as Jana, you can call all the shots. Anyways, I told them that instead of meeting downtown, it might be easier for them to meet here because then they wouldn't have to worry about finding a parking space. I knew I would be working that day, so I said that if no one was here when they came, the front-door key would be under the doormat. They were on speaker phone, so both Jana and Everett knew about the key."

"But you don't suspect that either one of them murdered Teresa, do you?"

"No...but it's difficult for me to get past the fact that they knew we kept a key under the doormat."

"You're sure that the key in the door wasn't Teresa's key?"

"No," said Nick. "While you were talking to Hobbs, I checked under the doormat, and the key wasn't there. And anyways, Hobbs told me that Teresa's key had been found in her handbag."

"Wait!" I said. "I just remembered something that Teresa told me when we were talking on the day that she died. What she told me was that she thought someone was stalking her. She didn't tell me his name—all she said was that it was someone at school. I don't think he was in her art class—more like someone who was in one of her courses last spring."

"But he wouldn't know there was a key under the doormat."

"Lots of people keep spare keys under the doormat—he might have just looked under the doormat and found it."

Nick thought about this for some seconds. "You didn't tell Hobbs about the stalker?"

"No, it's not until now that I remembered it."

"You need to tell Hobbs about it," said Nick. "Did she describe him or anything?"

"No—all she said was that this guy from school had been following her around and she was worried about it."

"Patrick, you've got to go to the police station and tell them about that."

"OK, I'll go down there sometime tomorrow."

"And while you're at it," said Nick, "you should tell them that I wasn't about to break up with Teresa."

About noon the next day, during my lunch break, I walked into the police station and told the guy at the front desk that I had some information that might be helpful in the Teresa Hamblin case. Ten minutes later, Hobbs walked out into the waiting room and took me back into his office, which looked like a pigpen that had been hit by a mini-tornado. After tossing me some pleasantries about the weather being so mild for this time of year, he said, "I understand you have some information about Teresa Hamblin?"

"Yes, it's something that I forgot to mention when we were talking back at my apartment. You may remember that I told you Teresa and I had a fairly long conversation on the day that she died."

"Yes, I think you said that it was in the morning."

"It was around nine o'clock, and at one point in the conversation, she said that she was becoming nervous about this guy who was following her around."

"Did she tell you his name?"

"No—all she said was that it was a guy she went to school with, but I don't think it was someone connected to the art class she was currently enrolled in because Teresa said he had been following her around since last spring. Teresa was taking more classes back then—like three or four, so the guy who was stalking her was—"

"Did she use the word stalking?" said Hobbs.

"Yes, she did. The reason I forgot to tell you about this the other day was that I was under the impression that the key that was left in the front door was Teresa's key, but yesterday, Nick told me that the key came from under the doormat."

"What difference does that make?" said Hobbs.

"I...I just thought that if it was her key, then it didn't mean much of anything, but when I heard that the key came from under the doormat...I don't know why, but that's when I remembered what Teresa had said about the stalker."

Hobbs gave me a puzzled look as he tapped a pen on the desk reflectively. "And you're thinking that this person may have used the key that was under the doormat to gain access to the apartment?"

"I have no idea what happened, but I thought I should tell you about it."

"You wouldn't be telling me this to protect Nick, would you?"

I stared at him in astonishment. "Look," I said, "I think we're done here. I don't have the least desire to help Nick. In fact, he was very upset at me for telling you that he was about to break up with Teresa, and after the way that you've been hassling him, I wish I hadn't told you that. But the fact that he had decided to break up with her doesn't matter because he would never have harmed her."

Hobbs gave me a dour look—he was probably trying to frighten me, and I have to admit that he was succeeding—at least a little bit. "OK," he said at last, "but if I were you, I wouldn't be changing my story around by adding bits of information that really don't assist us in the investigation."

"Forget it!" I said. "I don't need the aggravation. I was only trying to help, but I can see that you're not really interested."

Afterwards, when I was outside the building, I couldn't stop scolding myself for the way I had acted when I was talking to Hobbs. Not very bright on my part—I'd seen enough detective programs on TV to know that when they're questioning people, detectives invariably look on defensive emotional reactions as an admission of guilt. But what if the person having the emotional reaction was just annoyed at the attitude of the detective? Looking back on it, I probably shouldn't have volunteered any information because it was fairly obvious that Hobbs thought I was just trying to protect Nick—he'd even accused me of doing that. Of course, I had been trying to protect Nick, so...no more protecting Nick since Hobbs seemed to see right through it.

Anyways, I'd done what I could for Nick, and my conscience was clear. Just then, my cell phone rang—it was Nick. He told me that Everett and Jana were coming over to the apartment that evening and that he'd like for me to be there. "I know they probably had nothing to do with what happened to Teresa," he said, "but it's mighty weird that less than a week after I told them about the key, the key ends up in the door."

Nick must have been really frightened out of his wits because it seemed senseless to accuse Jana or Everett of murdering Teresa. What possible motive could they have? But at least Nick didn't seem to be angry at me anymore, so I agreed to meet him at the apartment around seven—that would give me time to see my mother and sister who wanted me to help with the funeral arrangements for my father.

I won't bother going into all the things I went through at my mother's. My sister was carrying on like God Almighty had just kicked the bucket and left the whole world dangling by a microscopic thread. I mean, in reality, what difference did it make if my father had been ushered through the crematorium and was now just a rather small pile of ashes in an urn? I can't believe the way people carry on when someone like their mother or father dies. All I can say is that if you think the deaths of your parents are bad, wait until you're the one on the chopping block and are struggling valiantly, but ever so futilely, to draw in your last useless breath.

We wrote out the obituary while I was there, but I stayed out of it. And what do you know? It turns out that my father "died a peaceful death and was ushered into eternity on the wings of all his good deeds." Need I say more? The whole obit was a colossal sham that didn't paint an even remotely honest picture of my father, and so as my mother and sister battled over the right superlatives that would adequately express the awesome and practically unparalleled majesty of my father's noble life, I spent the time daydreaming on an obit that he might have found to be more fitting. I'd write it down here, but if anybody besides me were to ever read this, they'd probably consider my imaginary obit to be so revolting that only an ill-tempered fiend could have written it.

At any rate, once that onerous chore was done, we had a small battle over where Dad's ashes would be kept. My sister wanted them because she was planning on buying some bizarre glass enclosure that would hold the urn in which the ashes had been placed. But my mother wanted the urn to be in her bedroom, and naturally, she had the final say, although it was agreed that my sister would still buy the glass case (at $799.99). My mother suggested that we split the cost of the case three ways, but before I could even begin to restrain myself, I blurted out, "No thank you." I got a cold stare from my sister and a sigh from my mother, but I stood my ground and didn't let myself be scammed out of nearly three hundred bucks for a piece of nonsense.

It's all so funny when you stop and think about it. Let's just follow the glass case down through the years. After my mother died, my sister would, of course, take control of the case, and when she died, her children would be going through her possessions and come upon it. They'd know that it contained the ashes of their grandfather, so undoubtedly someone would step up and volunteer to take possession of the thing. "Grandpa's ashes!" But when the grown-up grand kid got home with it, they'd probably store it in some obscure place—like the attic or the basement. After all, it was kind of big and clunky and macabre, so it wasn't likely, what with space being at such a premium nowadays, that it would end up being parked on prime real estate. But then, when that generation died off and got themselves turned into ashes, the great grandkids probably weren't going to have much tolerance for some ashes from a century before. No one would exactly want to throw the case away because there was always the superstitious fear that something bad might happen if you didn't treat a dead person's ashes respectfully.

So one of the great grandkids would step up to the plate and cart the monstrosity off, but this time, the glass case would go out to the garage—right behind the busted vacuum cleaner and the balky snowblower. Finally, Junior, a card-carrying member of the fifth generation, who was trying to smoke some marijuana in his room, would be rousted out by his mother who needed to have the driveway plowed. Of all the things! Just when he was getting into some really good top-notch sexual fantasies. But Mom is going bonkers, so Junior staggers downstairs, starts the blasted snowblower up, and zigzags his way through the driveway before charging into the garage with the snowblower. Needless to say, he's exceedingly peeved. What gives his mother the right to boss him around like he's some scruffy orphan from the third world? Who is she anyways? Just another useless turkey who think she's smart because she gets to boss him around. Grrrrr...

In the midst of his nasty little temper tantrum, Junior slams the snowblower into the wall, and he hears the sound of breaking glass. Investigating, he sees that some kind of glass case has been shattered, but he knows that it couldn't have been anything important because the garage is where his brain-dead parents throw all their junk—the stuff they're never going to use but don't have the heart to throw away. So Junior, still half stoned, picks up the biggest shards of glass and throws them in the trash container that they keep in the garage. He's about halfway through the shard trip when he sees that there's a broken vase amidst the rubble. Undoubtedly, his mother's—she's got vases all over the place, so she'll never miss it as long as he throws all the major pieces in the trash. Goodbye world! It was nice knowing you. A fitting epitaph for us all—even if we're not currently located inside an urn.

That, I guess, is the human condition—just a lot of avoidance mechanisms when it comes to death. We'll save your ashes for posterity, but the ashes are just lousy stage props in a play called Before I Got Incinerated at the Crematorium, I Always Thought I Was Going to Live Forever.

So that was the scene at Mom's, and although Nick still made me a little nervous, I was glad to return to my apartment. When I walked in, Everett and Jana were already there. Jana was looking particularly fetching in a short blue skirt and low-cut black blouse—I couldn't help but wonder if she had just come from a job interview at a strip club. Meanwhile, Everett was all dressed up—fancy tweed slacks, a white shirt, and a brown sport coat. Maybe he was the manager of the strip club because that's the way those dudes dress sometimes.

Everybody was drinking gin and tonics, and before I sat down with them, I poured about four ounces of vodka over a glass full of ice cubes. "How are you doing, Patrick?" said Everett in a pleasant tone as if we were at a company Christmas party.

"So-so," I said. "Did you know that my father died the day after Teresa died?"

"Yes, Nick just told us about it. I'm so sorry—this must be a very difficult time for you."

Everett and Jana were sitting together on the couch, and I sat in a stuffed chair that was close to where Nick was sitting. I mention the seating arrangements as if they were important and exceedingly meaningful, but as far as I was concerned, the main feature of the room were Jana's legs—she was showing a lot of skin, which made it difficult for me to focus on much of anything else.

"Everett, darling," said Jana, "would you make me another drink? You're such a divine bartender."

Everett dutifully got up and went over to the little bar that Nick and I kept at the other end of the room. "Everett and I are thinking of moving to the area," said Jana.

"Jana," said Everett from the bar, "I thought we agreed that we wouldn't say anything about it until our plans get firmed up a little bit. It's all very hazy to me right now."

Jana had her back to Everett, and I could see her smirk. And then, after looking at me, she pointed in the direction of Everett and gave a big thumbs down.

"It's a rotten city," said Nick, "but if you can afford the suburbs, you'll probably be glad you moved east."

Everett returned with Jana's drink. "This is such a sad time," he said. "I never told you, Nick, but I used to hang out with Teresa."

"You did?" said Nick.

"This was about five years ago—just before I moved west. Teresa and I had a little romance—I actually had quite a crush on her at one time."

I knew this comment by Everett was likely to make Nick even more suspicious that Everett might have had something to do with Teresa's murder. "This must have happened before you met Jana," said Nick, in an offhand tone.

"Well...Teresa and I were beginning to quarrel a lot, so..."

"So then you met me!" said Jana.

"Did you ever meet Teresa?" said Nick to Jana.

"A couple of times when a few of us were clubbing around town. It was obvious that she was really in love with Everett."

"That's an exaggeration," said Everett.

"An exaggeration?" said Jana, with some annoyance. "Nick, Teresa would literally cling to Everett's arm, and then, once she had him corralled, she'd give him this look that would have melted a stone. It doesn't matter now, of course, and besides, we were all in our early twenties. I'm glad I'll never have to go through that age again—I was constantly becoming involved with jealous men or having to deal with women who were jealous of me because their boyfriends couldn't stop staring at me."

"Was Teresa one of those jealous women?" said Nick, in a seemingly friendly tone.

"I believe she was," said Jana, "but I don't really want to talk about her—it wouldn't be fair now that she's gone and can't speak for herself."

Everett cleared his throat in an ostentatious way and said, "Teresa's lucky that Jana and I weren't together back then—you should have seen what Jana did the last time a woman tried to hit on me."

"Everett—"

"But it was quite funny, my dear. Pouring her drink down the inside of her blouse was unique—at least in my experience. And then tripping her when she got off her bar stool was really overdoing it a bit, I'd say."

"Everett, she was rubbing her leg against yours." At the moment Jana said this, her eyes flashed onto mine for a second, and I could sense...was it a warning? Or some kind of bizarre mirth?

"But people are always flirting with their legs," said Everett. "Don't tell me that you've never done anything under the table. That goes on all the time."

"I wonder why?" said Nick.

"It's kind of like pseudo sex for those who are sexually deprived," said Everett.

"Not necessarily," said Jana. "It's just kind of erotic."

"So you have flirted with your legs!" said Everett.

"Yes, but that was a while ago, and besides, I wasn't trying to steal any guy away. And that woman I poured the drink on—"

"Jana," said Everett, "you didn't pour the drink on her—you yanked the top of her blouse out and poured the drink down inside her blouse. It was doubly embarrassing because the poor woman wasn't wearing anything underneath her blouse and that all became very apparent as she was trying to wrestle away from you."

"Serves her right," said Jana. "People have a right to their property, and you belong to me, so I don't have much tolerance for some lonely interloper who's trying to snatch you away from me with a wink and God knows what else."

## CHAPTER NINE

Time passed, and as is often the case, things went from bad to worse. Six weeks after my father was incinerated at the crematorium, my mother had a really bad heart attack. When I say really bad, I mean really bad. She had collapsed in her bedroom and was found by my sister about twelve hours later when she had gone to check on my mother because she wasn't answering her phone. Mary Beth was very distraught about the whole thing, and I found it impossible to be around her for more than three minutes at a time, what with all the weeping and gnashing of teeth. "She's dying of a broken heart, Patrick. That happens more than people realize—one spouse dies, and the other one follows shortly after."

The prognosis for my mother wasn't at all good--in fact, it was very dire, and about a week after her heart attack, she had a quadruple bypass operation. Mary Beth and I had been called into the hospital a couple of days before the operation, and it had been explained to us that it was my mother's only hope. The explanation had been given by the surgeon, who was not someone I felt at all attracted to. He was tall and gaunt with a sallow face and beady eyes, and as he droned on about odds and probabilities, I couldn't help but have some bad thoughts. His name was Dr. Hugo Braxton, and he looked like someone you might dream about when you were having a mini-nightmare that was about to turn or twist its way into a full-blown nightmare. To be frank, he looked like a ghoul to me. I had no idea what the word ghoul meant, but it kept going through my mind as Dr. Braxton waded through his dreadful presentation. Later, I looked the word up in the dictionary and discovered that a ghoul was a monster who liked to roam through graveyards and consume human flesh. That was undoubtedly overdoing it, but still...

Anyways, I was happy to hand over all the life-and-death decisions about my mother to Mary Beth. Not that I had a choice because she was one of those persons who takes hold of the reins and boots you off the horse whether you like it or not. Competency rules, and I was deemed to be incompetent by the powers that be. I noticed that during our conversation with Sir Hugo, he hardly even acknowledged me—undoubtedly, he could see which way the wind was blowing and made his calculations accordingly. He was really pushing for the operation, even though there was "some chance" that my mother might go kaput on the operating table. There followed a longwinded dance between Hugo and Mary Beth over what the term "some chance" meant, but I can't even come close to remembering what they said because I had phased myself out of the conversation by indulging in a sexual fantasy, hardly my first one, about Jana. As I sat there daydreaming in the doctor's office, I was able to do much better with Jana than I ever had in real life. Half naked, she'd been unable and unwilling to resist me any longer, and I—

"Patrick!" I had a dim awareness that this was the second time my name had been called by Mary Beth. I looked at her with an inquiring expression and said, "What?"

Mary Beth gave the doctor an exasperated look that pretty much said, "You see what I have to deal with?"

"Patrick," said Mary Beth, in an officious, almost legal tone, "we'd like to know what you think about all this."

I wanted to say, "About what?" but I knew that wouldn't cut it. The problem was that I didn't have any idea what they had just been talking about—it was obvious that it had something to do with my mother and the quadruple bypass operation, but I didn't dare jump into the conversation without receiving a little hint as to how I was supposed to respond.

Taking a stab at it, I said, "I just...I don't know much about these things, so I'm willing to go along with whatever you think is best." How's that for diplomacy? Meanwhile, Jana had totally succumbed to my ardent advances, and—

"It's a very serious decision, Patrick."

"I'm aware of that, Mary Beth." Couldn't these people just get on with it, so I could get out of there and live my life in peace?

"Alright," said Mary Beth, "I think we're going to follow your advice, Dr. Braxton."

Two days later, my mother was operated on, and Mary Beth and I both held my mother's hand as she was being wheeled down to the operating room. It was somewhat like a scene out of TV—only a bit worse. My mother was barely conscious and couldn't say anything, so there were no last words or anything like that, but I could feel the pressure from her hand increase as we neared the swinging doors that led into the execution chamber. I say execution chamber not because I had any great premonition that my mother was about to depart this wretched vale of tears, but the whole scene reminded me of some movie I had seen where an innocent man was being taken down to the execution chamber. Meanwhile, Mary Beth was sobbing, which is something that you're not supposed to do in situations like this. What's the victim or specimen or patient or whatever you want to call a person in my mother's situation supposed to think if she's got tears raining down on her from above?

The operation was going to take hours, so after my mother had disappeared behind the swinging doors, Mary Beth and I settled into some chairs in a large waiting room. What to do? Stupidly, I had forgotten to bring a book, so unless I wanted to stare at the walls for hours on end, the only thing left were the magazines that were strewn across the tables in the waiting room. However, the vast majority of them were entirely feminine—how to cook all these ridiculous specialty items, how to decorate your house, how to take care of your baby when he was bawling his blasted little head off, how to deal with a cranky husband, how to choose a good wedding present, etc. etc. Finally, I found a sports magazine, but I was quickly disappointed because it was mostly commercials. But at least the commercials, as stupid as they were, had a lot more going for them than the women's magazines because they often featured twenty-something women who were showing off their hot young bodies as they hawked some idiotic workout machine.

Finally, in desperation, I gave up on the magazines and began to think of a plot for my next book. What could I write about? Since my father had now gone crackers and wasn't breathing anymore, I didn't feel bound to my previous pledge to avoid murder mysteries. I mean, in reality, what else is there to write about? Some sappy story about a mother who's trying to bring up two kids while she works a minimum wage job? Just so trite and predictable—the mother struggles heroically, takes one beat-down after another, wades through a couple of abusive boyfriends, struggles with her drug and alcohol demons, but then, one day, something wonderful happens. It's a tiny kind of wonderful, but it's enough to help her turn the corner, and then right after that, she meets Mr. Wonderful. Except, of course, he doesn't appear to be Mr. Wonderful at first because he's kind of scruffy and drinks a bit too much. But as is often the case, at least in fiction, love will find a way, and when the boyfriend saves one of her children from an oncoming car by risking his own life (during which event he gets his leg broken), our self-made heroine finally rises up out of the muck and mire of her life and rules triumphant over this miserable, unfair world.

I'm sure there are some people who want to read that kind of stuff, but as a writer, you're much better off writing about things that you'd like to read—especially since the book has to be proofread a few times—so that's why I like to write murder mysteries. Of course, some, many, most, or almost all murder mysteries (take your pick) are rather trite and predictable, and an experienced, or even semi-experienced reader, is rarely going to be surprised, and when they are, they often don't like it. For instance, no one is going to pat you on the back if the heroic mother, just when she's beginning to make something of her life, is run over and squashed to death by a twenty-ton truck or shot to death in a drive-by shooting. Even though these things happen in real life far more than we care to admit, it's not the type of ending that will have readers pounding their fist on a table and demanding a sequel.

In the waiting room, the clock was ticking, but it was ticking very slowly—like a tortoise on some very serious drugs. Even though I wasn't sleepy, I began to have a yawning attack as I started to ponder the complexities of writing a murder mystery that was at least mildly original. All the main ideas, plots, and themes had been tried a million times, and all the minor ideas were just offshoots of the main ideas. It was, to put it mildly, a gold field that was pretty well tapped out, and all one could hope to find was a small nugget under a wayward rock and hope that it wasn't fool's gold.

Maybe it would be better if I didn't worry about creating a masterpiece and just tossed off some regurgitated mush. The words regurgitated mush seemed funny to me—maybe they'd be a good title for my next book: Regurgitated Mush by Patrick Devlan. My father, who was now trolling around in the stratosphere, would probably not be surprised—he seemed to think that everything I had ever written was regurgitated mush. But maybe I could get a few copies printed up in paperback and surreptitiously drop them on the table in the book store where they put all the best sellers by the Reek Master. I started to laugh but had to stop because Mary Beth, who was dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief, gave me a scathing look. No, I suppose the hospital wasn't the best place to be telling absurd jokes to oneself, but it sure beat any other alternatives that I could think of. I mean, generally, laughing does feel better than crying—at least to me.

Mercifully, I must have dozed off because the next thing I was aware of was Mary Beth poking me in the arm and saying, "Patrick! Wake up! Ms. Grimes wants to speak to us."

Who, I wondered, was Ms. Grimes? It turned out that she was an older woman, probably in her fifties, who had a kindly face and a motherly manner. She led Mary Beth and I down a long corridor and took us into a small room that had four stuffed chairs in it. Otherwise, there was nothing else in the room—no table, no pictures or paintings on the walls, no nothing. Casually, I observed to myself that the whole scene did not lend itself to optimism, but at least it looked like our conference with Ms. Grimes would bring an end to our ordeal of having to sit in the waiting room for another few hours while I pondered the always entertaining concept of regurgitated mush.

Ms. Grimes, after looking at us compassionately for a couple of seconds, said, "I'm afraid that I have some unpleasant news."

"Oh my God," said Mary Beth, "No, no—it can't be."

"I'm afraid it is," said Ms. Grimes. "Your mother put up a very brave and courageous fight, but in the end, the heart attack she had last week was too much for her to overcome, and despite the best efforts of Dr. Braxton, she passed away during the operation."

Talk about regurgitated mush!

Naturally, to make matters worse, Mary Beth broke down completely and began wailing in a most unpleasant way, while I fazed myself out of the whole scene and began to daydream about Cora Moore—she was now competing with Jana to be my number one sexual fantasy.

## CHAPTER TEN

Cora Moore worked on the assembly line that I supervised at Animals Unlimited. She was, at twenty-two, about five years younger than me, and as one might expect with someone of that age, she was somewhat immature. Granted, I'm not one to talk, but there are different levels of immaturity, and Cora was still trapped in a range of activities that caused her a constant succession of problems. For one thing, she seemed to attract guys who were jerks—a couple of them had stormed into the place and practically manhandled her in front of me before dragging her out into the parking lot. After the second incident, I had to talk to her about it because it was getting to the point where I felt that if it happened again, I would have to call the cops.

Cora was an attractive woman but not that attractive. She could have been real attractive, but she didn't take care of herself very well—her brown wavy hair, which fell to her shoulders, was rarely combed and was littered with tangles and knots. Neither did she wear anything but faded hand-me-down clothes, which she had probably picked up at a thrift shop. But there was something about her that I liked—her eyes could be soft and warm, and she had a pleasant voice. Besides that, she was kind of alluring, or maybe sexy is the right word. Cora had a way of walking that was slow and sensuous and inviting, and also, the jeans she wore were very tight and provocative. And what with Cora's collection of obnoxious boyfriends, I began to think that if I played my cards right, I might have a chance with her.

However, she never, as far as I could tell, looked at me in "that" way. With her, I never seemed to move out of the boss category and into the guy category. It was frustrating to me, so I made some attempts to engage her in conversation, especially during our lunch breaks when I would often sit across from her at the table. After a while, I could tell that other people on the shift were beginning to eyeball us and wonder whether something was going on between us. Surely, Cora must know that I was interested in her because it wasn't like I was devoting my attention to any other woman. But she always maintained a kind of cool distance between us—nothing I said seemed to enthuse her or arouse her interest, and after a month of being politely rebuffed, I gave up on her. Good riddance, I thought to myself—you can go hang out with another one of your loser boyfriends.

But then, about a week after I had stopped paying any attention to her, I went to a bar in the downtown area called Benton's Pub and ran into Cora. She was sitting at the bar, and since no one was sitting beside her, I quietly, almost surreptitiously, sat down next to her. At first, she didn't notice me, but eventually, she turned in my direction, started to turn away, and then did a double take. "Oh, hi!" she said, in a cheerful voice. "I didn't know you were sitting there."

"I just parachuted in a minute ago." I was trying to stay cool and not let her see how excited I was. True, Cora had never given me a reason to get excited, but it was somewhat like when I had been sitting next to Jana at Emerson's. The fact that I was so close to Cora, so close to what I really wanted, was a real turn on. She wasn't anywhere near as beautiful as Jana, but at this point, that didn't matter to me. All I wanted to do was take Cora in my arms and put my hands all over her.

Cora wasn't exactly acting like she wanted to be sitting next to me, but she wasn't trying to push me away either. "Do you come down here much?" she said to me.

"It's been a while," I said.

"I guess so!" said Cora. "I come down here a lot, and I don't ever remember seeing you."

The reason I hardly ever went into Benton's was because the place was a total dive, with restrooms that looked like they were reserved for those who had entered the last ring of hell. In fact, they were so bad that I always relieved myself behind a dumpster that was in an alley next to the bar. But naturally, I kept these feelings to myself as I pondered how to break through the ice with Cora. I wasn't Nick, so this wasn't my strong suit, but I gave it a shot. I noticed that she was just about finished with her beer, so I said, "Can I buy you a beer?"

"OK," she said, after a moment's hesitation. My nasty, irreverent mind rolled out a real witticism after she accepted my offer—I imagined myself saying to her that she could pay me back later, only I didn't accept cash but would need to be repaid with a "preferred commodity." Ho, ho, ho. It's too bad that I can't share my jokes with anyone else because some of them are kind of funny if you have the stomach for them, which most people don't.

Anyways, one thing led to another—after a while, I was buying her shots instead of beers, and by closing time, Cora was pretty well soused, and since she didn't have a car but had walked down to the bar from a mile away, I gallantly offered to give her a ride home. Once there, I helped Cora out of the car and walked with her up to the door of her small two-room efficiency apartment. There was some hesitation and verbal fumbling at the door as I managed to weasel my way inside with a promise that I'd make her some coffee and scrambled eggs. Cora must have been really looped because not many people have coffee and scrambled eggs at two in the morning, but I guess she hadn't eaten since three in the afternoon or something, and what with all her drinking, she really did need to put some food in her stomach.

When it comes to scrambled eggs, I'm a crackerjack chef, and the two of us chowed down on her couch while we watched a rerun of MASH on TV—for those who don't know, MASH is a comedy about some goofy medics who served during the Korean War. We were about halfway through the second rerun when Cora put her plate down on a table and rested her head on my shoulder. Naturally, I took advantage of the situation, and after some awkward maneuvering around on the couch, I was able to begin kissing her.

Finally, after about ten minutes of that, we began to move on to bigger and better things. She was half naked by the time I carried her into the bedroom, closed the door, and fell into bed beside her. I had been afraid that she was going to fall asleep, but the coffee had rejuvenated her somewhat, and she began to respond to me sexually with at least a little bit of enthusiasm. And so, at long last, after a three-year exile into the sexual Sahara, I was able to power my way through to the land of milk and honey.

The next morning wasn't so hot. I awoke to the sound of Cora puking in the bathroom, and I wasn't feeling so great either. When I tried to sit up, the walls began to spin around, which made me feel extremely nauseous, so I had to lie back down on the bed and go totally immobile since it obviously wouldn't be cool to heave up in Cora's bed. When Cora returned from the bathroom, she didn't seem to be in a very good mood, although I suppose that was understandable under the circumstances—not many people have a smile on their face after barfing up their innards.

She came into the room and just kind of gave me a _look_ —it's difficult for me to put a word to that look. Maybe withering is the best one—as if everything we had done the night before was now repulsive to her. After giving me the look for a few seconds, she said, "Maybe you should leave now." How's that for romance?

I was really caught in a predicament—on the one hand, I was being pressured to move by a woman who clearly couldn't stand the sight of me, and on the other hand, I was being pressured not to move by a stomach that clearly couldn't tolerate anything. But Cora was still giving me the look, which was beginning to frighten me somehow, so I lurched out of bed and headed straight for the bathroom because I knew what was coming (up) next.

Is there anything more wretched and disgusting than vomiting? I suppose there is, but I'd rather not go there right now. Anyways, after five minutes, I went back to the bedroom, put on my clothes, and headed for the exit. I had to pass Cora along the way, but she avoided eye contact, and since I couldn't think of what to say, I just opened the door and trudged out to my car on a cold February morning.

The whole thing left me with a bad feeling—I realized that I had been too aggressive with Cora and had basically forced myself on her. It wasn't like I had raped her or anything, but neither had she been at all enthusiastic about our bedroom adventure. Why? I was certainly a lot better guy than the losers she hung out with. What was so bad about me? The more I thought about it, the more it annoyed me, and on Monday, when we returned to work, I sat down with her at lunch and tried to talk to her. But I had hardly begun, when she said, "Would you mind leaving me alone?"

"Cora—"

"Just leave me alone," she shouted, as she bolted up from the table and left the room, leaving the rest of her lunch behind her. I noticed that quite a few people in the room were looking at me in a disapproving way, and I began to get a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach as if something awful was about to happen to me.

A couple of hours later, I was called into the manager's office and informed that Cora had filed a sexual harassment claim against me. Because there was some corroboration of her claim from the people who had been in the lunchroom when Cora and I had been there, I was being suspended for a week—without pay--while the company investigated the matter. During the previous year, Animals Unlimited had been sued twice for sexual harassment, but these suits were brought against managers in the company and had been serious enough that they found their way into the local newspaper. So it was easy for me to see that I was about to become a scapegoat for the faults of some rich chumps who liked to chase their secretaries around a table in the office. But then, before I could even leave the manager's office, he told me that another woman I supervised had recently made a complaint against me.

Up to this point, I thought I had behaved in a professional manner—Cora's complaint was obviously just a sour-grapes thing that I didn't have to take seriously. Apparently, she resented the fact I had slept with her and was determined to take it out on me, but at work, I had always treated her with respect. Sure, I sat down with her a few times in the lunchroom, but that's hardly grounds for a sexual harassment claim. So I hadn't reacted very strongly to Cora's claim except to deny it, but when I heard this new accusation, which was either an outright lie or a gross exaggeration, I totally lost it. I shouldn't have, but I did. Turning back from the door, I approached the manager, who was a chubby little geek with glasses and a toupee. Before he could even begin to defend himself, I gave him a shove that sent him flying backwards until he crashed into his fancy swivel chair, lost his balance, and tumbled to the floor. I then proceeded, with one great sweep of my hand, to clear everything off his desk and send it flying onto the floor. "Devlan!" he screeched. "Get out of here before I call the cops."

With that I took out my knife, my little but effective all-purpose knife. Now, I could see real fear in his eyes. "Here's something you better remember," I said. "You have to walk the streets of this town just like I do, and my advice to you is that you had better cross to the other side if you see me coming because when we're out on the streets, I'm the boss. As for my job, you can find someone else. I'm sick of this place—it's nothing but a dump for rats with the bubonic plague."

I have to admit that in terms of my career path, this was a suicidal tantrum, but in terms of my self-respect, I felt much, much better. And anyways, when you're dealing with morons, sometimes it rubs off and you end up saying something that isn't quite right. Or as the ladies would say, "Patrick said something that wasn't appropriate."

## CHAPTER ELEVEN

While all this stuff with my mother and Cora had been going on, I was still living with Nick, which presented me with another whole set of problems. Had he murdered Teresa? Was I now living with a murderer? It wasn't a pleasant thought, and I tried to put it out of my mind by rationalizing it away. Nick, I thought to myself, didn't seem like the type of person who would murder anybody—I could still remember the time when he had told me that if a chick dumped him, he would send her flowers. So what possible motive could he have had to turn on Teresa with such a murderous rage? I thought about it often, and finally, I came to the conclusion that if he had murdered Teresa, it was an accident. Nick had told me that he and Teresa had sex when he came home from work on the afternoon of the day she died, so...had they engaged in some kind of sex play that had caused her death, and then, afterwards, he had tried to stage the scene so that it looked like she had committed suicide? This scenario seemed somewhat improbable, but I thought it was much more probable than Nick murdering Teresa in cold blood over something like jealousy or a desire to dump her. But then it hit me--maybe Teresa had been pregnant. Now there was a motive for murder, at least when it came to Nick. I'd lost count of the times that he had told me he never wanted to have a kid. He always claimed that his antagonism to having a child came from a sense of social responsibility—not wanting to overpopulate the earth and all the rest of that stuff. But I was convinced his real motive was that he had no desire to be tied down to a woman. And a kid tied you down to a woman for a long, long time.

I didn't dare ask Nick whether Teresa was pregnant at the time of her death because he was so touchy about anything to do with her. When he did talk to me about it, he continually complained about the police investigation, which seemed to be focusing on him. There wasn't a week that went by where they didn't have him down at the station for another round of interrogation, and not surprisingly, Nick was becoming infuriated with all the questions he was being asked.

The day after I had my big blow-up at work and got myself fired, Nick and I talked about his latest interrogation. I hadn't told Nick that I had been fired because I knew he would be all worried about the rent money and start hassling me about getting another job. Naturally, I wasn't in the mood to listen to that kind of parental yip-yap about making your own way in life and all the rest of the nonsense that the older generation is constantly trying to stuff down your throat so they can lead their fat, dumb, and happy lives—driving around in their sleek, zillion-dollar smart cars and splashing down-and-out pedestrians in the face for the fun of it.

Anyways, Nick was alternating between fear and braggadocio. "Patrick," he said to me, "you mark my words—I've decided to get a lawyer, and before this is all over, I'm going to sue the police department for five million dollars. For what they've put me through, I certainly deserve it. Yesterday, they tried to get me to take a lie detector test. Can you believe it? They must think I'm stupid—lie detectors are notoriously unreliable contraptions that don't prove anything."

"So you're not going to do it?"

"Never! I'd flunk the thing for sure because I'd be totally paranoid with all those wires attached to me."

"Nick, I would think that you'd be the type of person who wouldn't have any trouble passing a lie detector test. You're about the coolest guy I've ever met—I think you'd just breeze right through the thing."

"Maybe, maybe not," said Nick. "The funny thing is that I think you're right in a way—if I had murdered her, I probably could trick the lie detector because I'd feel like I wouldn't have anything to lose and that would relax me. But since I'm innocent, I feel like I have everything to lose, and that makes me real nervous. And from everything I've heard, lie detectors are just machines that pick up whether a person is nervous."

"They're more sophisticated than that," I said.

"Maybe so, but I don't think a person who's sweating and dying a thousand deaths inside is going to come up smelling like a rose on his lie detector test. I mean, come on! What else do they measure but the fear and stress that's created inside you when you hear a particular question?"

"I suppose that's true, but they're going to think you're guilty if you don't take it."

"They think I'm guilty anyways. Tell me the truth, Patrick—you don't think I killed her, do you?"

"No, it's not like the type of thing that you would do. For one thing, what would be your motive? You're hardly the kind of guy who's going to murder a woman if you get angry at her and have an argument. You'll just do what you've always done—throw her out of the apartment, and that will be the end of it."

Nick pulled out a joint, lit it up, and said, "They've come up with a pretty good motive, Patrick. Teresa was pregnant, so—"

"She was pregnant?" Instantly, my heart sank—this was the very thing that I had been afraid of. "I thought she was on the pill."

"So did I," said Nick. "She must have stopped taking it, but she never told me, and she also never told me that she was pregnant."

"Then how did you find out about it?"

"That Hobbs guy told me—he was gloating so much that he was like foaming at the mouth when he told me. He kept saying that I should come clean—man, how I do hate that expression. At first, I didn't believe him when he told me that Teresa was pregnant, but then he showed me part of the autopsy report—apparently, she was about three months along."

"So they're thinking that you murdered her because she was pregnant?"

"Exactly," said Nick. "So now, they're threatening to charge me with two murders, and in this state, two murders make you eligible for the death penalty."

I felt a kind of weird fear pass through me. I couldn't even begin to imagine what it would be like to be on death row, and to think that my best friend might end up there was a truly horrible thought that I could hardly bear.

"Nick, you've got to get a lawyer."

"I already have—I just told you that."

"What did he tell you?" I said.

"He thinks that the cops are just wrapping up some loose ends and that they're going to arrest me within a week or two."

Nick had been so distracted that he had almost smoked the whole joint up. "How about sharing some of that, partner?"

Nick looked down at the joint and said, "Man, I've been so out of it lately. There aren't many things in life that are worse than being falsely accused of murder. To tell you the truth, Patrick, I've never been so scared in my life. Imagine—they could come down here any minute and arrest me, so these might be my last free moments on planet earth. Hobbs was really going all in on me yesterday—he told me that if I didn't confess, the best I could hope for was life in prison without parole. I think he's a sadist because at one point, he shut off the tape recorder and began to tell me what a lethal injection is like and all the things that can go wrong when they inject the drugs into you. How would you like to have all that hanging over your head?"

"Not so much," I said. Nick was really beginning to depress me—it wasn't his fault, of course, but I could think of a lot of places that I'd rather be.

"Think about it," said Nick. "Strapped to a gurney with the needles in your arms, and they're asking you if you have any last words. What are you supposed to say? 'Please, please don't do this to me.' And then...who knows what happens? And I didn't do anything! But Teresa's whole family will be there, and they'll probably be clapping and cheering as I begin to gasp and writhe around on the gurney. I've had some bad nightmares in my life but nothing as bad as what I'm going through right now."

Two days later, while he was at work, Nick was arrested and charged with two counts of first degree murder.

## CHAPTER TWELVE

With Nick's arrest, my whole attitude towards him changed. Before, I had been rather distant to him because of the almost sibling rivalry that had developed between us. So his problems with the cops hadn't really bothered me, especially since it was impossible for me to believe that he would actually be arrested for Teresa's murder. I wondered what the evidence was against him. Was it just that Teresa was pregnant? That wasn't proof of anything—all it made for was a very flimsy circumstantial case.

Because of various court proceedings and conferences with his lawyer, Nick wasn't able to see visitors until Saturday, which was four days after his arrest. We met with each of us sitting on opposite sides of a glass partition. Never in my life had I seen Nick look more dejected—I suppose anyone reading this will think that I'm a cold, kind of heartless person, but it was difficult for me to keep my composure while I was talking to him.

"How's it going?" I said. It was a very stupid question, but I couldn't think of anything else to say.

"Have you been reading the newspaper?" he said.

"I've been following it," I said. I knew what Nick was going to say next.

"They're making me out to be a monster, Patrick. All that stuff about how I murdered Teresa because she was pregnant. Baby killer! I've had guys in here give me some real weird looks lately. I may not even make it to the execution chamber."

Just looking at Nick...just listening to him—all I wanted to do was get out of there and run away to a foreign country where I wouldn't have to be faced with the agony that my best friend was going through. "What's your lawyer telling you?" I said.

"He thinks that if I admit to it, they'll probably go for a plea deal."

"And what would the plea deal be?"

"Life in prison without parole," said Nick. "There's an attractive offer!" For once, Nick's sense of sarcastic cynicism came back, and he was like the old Nick. "Patrick," he said, in a stern but comical tone, "we're all faced with choices in life. Some of us have to decide which TV program to watch or where to go for dinner. But me? I'm the lucky one—I get to choose between life in prison without parole or being strapped to a gurney and injected with a bunch of lethal drugs. I'm feeling so lucky that it's a wonder I'm not down on my knees thanking God for all the gifts that he's given to me."

"But...does your lawyer give you any chance if it goes to trial?"

"He's not all that enthusiastic about it," said Nick. "I'm beginning to realize that he thinks I'm guilty, so all he wants to do is wash his hands of the whole thing. The whole thing, in this case, being me. That's what I am to him—a thing, so I don't get a lot of sympathy from him—I can tell you that. But to answer your question, he doesn't give us much chance if it goes to trial, so he thinks that I should take the deal. But I didn't do it! And if I take the deal, assuming it's offered, I'd have to agree not to make any appeals—not next year, not in ten years, not ever. How's that for a life? Sit in a jail cell and rot away until the day I die. That would be a bad enough fate if I had murdered Teresa, but when I'm innocent? Patrick, when I'm faced with it, I'm beginning to think that lethal injection may be better than spending the rest of my life in prison. I mean, what am I going to do here? Not only that, the food is disgusting and some of the people around here are even more disgusting."

"Don't think that way, Nick. Where there's life, there's hope."

"That's just another worthless cliché," said Nick. "When you're crammed into a jail cell for the rest of your life, there is no hope."

What could I say to him? Nick was right—about the only thing I could offer him were clichés, and for a guy in his position, clichés were worse than useless.

That night, after I got home from work, I drank four or five beers as I sat in front of the TV and watched something or other. Actually, at some point, I muted the sound because another wave of commercials had arrived, but I was so distracted by the catastrophe that had befallen Nick that I forgot to turn the sound back on and just sat there for I don't know how long as I grappled with all the thoughts that were going through my mind.

I had never thought that Nick would be charged with murdering Teresa—maybe I should have realized that was a distinct possibility, but it had never really occurred to me. Or if it had, it was just a kind of subconscious thing. But now it had happened, and it didn't look at all good for him. So depressing...what was I going to do? What could I do? I could think of one very obvious thing, but no—I wasn't ready for something like that. So...if it came down to it and they sentenced him to death...or even if it was "just" life in prison without parole...maybe I should just buy a gun, put it to my head, and blow my brains out.

A couple of weeks later, Nick told me that he was probably going to turn down the plea deal. "It's my only hope, Patrick. Life in prison without parole is just another kind of death sentence, so I might as well go down fighting. My mother and father have hired a new lawyer for me, and I like him a lot. As far as I can tell, he really thinks that I'm innocent. We're both suspicious of Jana and Everett, and we're going to make them testify at the trial. All we have to do is create reasonable doubt in the mind of one juror, and I think we have a shot at that."

"But that still wouldn't mean that you'd go free."

"I know," said Nick, "but it would be a start—and who knows, maybe we can create reasonable doubt in a lot of jurors' minds."

"Nick, other than the fact Teresa was pregnant, which isn't really evidence, I don't understand what they have against you."

"It's all circumstantial evidence, Patrick. Besides Teresa being pregnant, there's the fact that I came home for lunch and had sex with her. From one point of view, it would seem very odd for me to have sex with her just before I murdered her, but the theory is that Teresa didn't tell me she was pregnant until after we had sex."

"How do they even know she didn't commit suicide?"

"The autopsy showed that she had been strangled to death before someone hung her from the chandelier."

"OK, but is there any physical evidence that connects you to her murder?"

"My fingerprints were on the rope that was used to hang her. That's not a surprise because the rope was mine—it was in one of the closets in the bedroom." Nick laughed. "Do you remember why I got the rope?"

"I remember you buying the rope, but I don't remember why you got it."

"It was because of Mona, that dingbat girlfriend I had a couple of years ago. She was very paranoid that the place would catch on fire and that we'd be trapped upstairs, so she made me buy the rope—that way, we could escape from the bedroom without having to jump out a window. And now, because of a fluke thing like that, it's turned into a key piece of evidence against me."

"But...they can get fingerprints from a rope?"

"The prints weren't actually on the rope but on a piece of plastic that was attached to the end of the rope."

"But that's just more circumstantial evidence," I said.

"I know—it doesn't really prove anything. But then, there's Teresa's diary. I never knew she kept a diary, but the cops found it under some clothes that were on the top shelf of her closet. And in the diary, she talks about how afraid she was to tell me that she was pregnant. She's got all these quotes in there from me about how much I hate babies. Like, for instance, the time when I said that maybe the best thing would be to drown half the babies that are born so the earth will have some chance of surviving through the next century. She's got a whole bunch of quotes from me—I think she made some of them up, but I do remember that one about drowning half the babies. Of course, I didn't really mean it—what am I going to do? Be the czar of baby drownings? You know how I am—I was just trying to make a point that the earth is way overpopulated. It certainly wouldn't be like I would drown my own baby."

"What would you have done if she had told you that she was pregnant?"

"Good question—what with all my current life-or-death problems, I haven't really thought about it. I guess I would have told her that from my point of view, an abortion would be the best option."

"So that's all the evidence they have?"

"Well, that and the fact that you told the cops I was about to dump her."

"Nick, I already told you that I never said that to them, and anyways, Hobbs came to the apartment yesterday and asked me if I'd be willing to testify at the trial, but I told him there was no way that I would ever do that. He started to get all threatening and everything, but I told him that it wouldn't go well for the prosecution if I was forced to take the stand."

"But why would he even ask you to testify unless you had told him that I was about to ditch Teresa? Look, there's no point in lying to me about this, Patrick, because—"

"I am not lying to you—I don't know how many times I have to tell you that."

"Sure—whatever you say. But my lawyer told me that Hobbs is going to testify that when he interrogated you at the house on the day Teresa died, you told him I was about to break up with Teresa. So I guess, if you're telling the truth, Hobbs is going to commit perjury."

"I guess so."

Nick laughed, but it was a nasty, sarcastic laugh. "Man," he said, "it's so weird that you won't tell me the truth about this, and it's also very weird that you ever told Hobbs something that clearly wasn't true. I had no intention whatsoever of breaking up with Teresa, and I don't know where you ever picked up that impression."

"Like I said, Nick, I think he asked me...it was something about whether you had a lot of girlfriends during the time that I had been living with you, and when I told him that you'd had a few relationships, I think he twisted that around to what he came up with. I mean, who are you going to believe—me or him?"

"Forget it, Patrick. What's done is done—at least you're not testifying at the trial."

"No, I would never do that."

"OK, OK—whatever. I know I'm complaining a lot, but I don't think you realize how bad it is for me in here."

"It's not that I don't think about what you're going through, Nick. There are lots of nights when I lie in bed and imagine what it must be like to be trapped inside a prison cell all day long."

"Do you include the part where I'm on death row? Actually, I'm not there yet, but that's where I'm heading."

"I think about it all, Nick—including, especially, the death row part."

"You don't really believe that I murdered her, do you?"

"No—I know you didn't do it."

"So there's not even a shadow of doubt about it in your mind?"

"Not a shadow of a doubt, Nick."

"Because this is going to be a rough ride, Patrick. A very rough ride, and I don't think it's going to end well. It's just a feeling that I have, and...well, for one thing, I'm going to need all the friends I can get, and right now, you're the only real friend I have. At least I hope you're my friend."

"Absolutely—that's never going to change."

"Patrick, you're the only connection I have to the life I used to lead, to the life that's been taken away from me. And pretty soon, they're not just going to take away my home life—in another few years, they may very well be taking away my breathing life, so I need...I need a human being who really cares about me. You understand what I'm talking about? I know all this must sound crazy coming from me, but you've got to put yourself in my shoes a little bit. This is way beyond horrible—this is like being stuck in the middle of the worst nightmare that you've ever had in your life."

To hear Nick talk like this affected me beyond what words can describe. Ever since I had known him, he had been so cool, dispassionate, and comically sarcastic, but now, he was reduced to a kind of emotional groveling for affection. It was, to me, very, very depressing. What if they did put Nick on death row? What then? Answer me that one, I said to myself.

Back at the apartment, things weren't going so well. With Nick gone for the foreseeable future, I had to find a roommate to share the $1,400 a month rent plus all the utilities. At least, by this time, I had found another job, but as is usually the case with me and my life, it was nothing to brag about—a second-shift job at a soap factory where I was surrounded by washed-up people and dangerous chemicals for eight hours a day. I'd already, out of total frustration with everything that was going on in my life, used my trusty pocket knife to slash a few things—like the seats in the break room. It was a stupid thing to do, but it did make me feel better for five or ten minutes.

Anyways, I was having difficulty finding a roommate, but the problems were all self-inflicted because what I was looking for was a roommate who had the potential to graduate from her bedroom to mine. She should be single, unattached, around my age, and good-looking. So when guys came by, I stalled them off as I waited for a chick that fit my requirements. A couple of them did apply, but as soon as they took one look at me, it was all too apparent that they couldn't make it to the exit fast enough. What was it with me? Why wouldn't a chick even give me a chance? I couldn't figure it out. But eventually, with time running out, I chose a guy named James Rawley—he was a student who turned out to be mostly a recluse and a bookworm, but at least he paid me the rent money on time, which, I suppose, is the name of the game.

About a week after I took James in, I received some unexpected good fortune. My sister phoned me and said that she was present when my mother's will had been opened at her lawyer's office, and much to my surprise (and undoubtedly to the surprise of my sister) all my parents' assets were to be divided equally between the two of us. I wondered why Mary Beth had never mentioned anything about the will to me until now, and I figured that she was expecting, what with her overinflated ego, to scarf up the whole inheritance and didn't want to ruffle my feathers by making any allusions to the will. In an annoyed and rather supercilious tone, she informed me that since the will wasn't a contested one, I could expect to receive my share when the whole thing was approved by the probate court, which should be in about two to three months. When I asked her what I could expect to receive, she said, "Whatever it is, it's more than you deserve, Patrick. The way you waste money is disgraceful, and it's a shame that Mom and Dad's hard-earned money is going to be swallowed up by all your extravagant shenanigans."

Thanks for the compliment! Eventually, after Mary Beth gave me a lecture on how a penny saved is a dollar earned and a lot of other senseless malarkey from the modern catechism of money grubbing, she told me that I would probably be receiving around fifty thousand dollars. Mary Beth droned on for another couple of minutes, but my mind was far away as I imagined the nice one-year vacation I was going to give myself from work. Once the money came in, it would be so much fun to start loafing off at my job until they started to threaten me, at which point, I could take one of their rotten, foul-smelling bars of soap and try to stuff it down my boss's throat. That would, of course, be another poor career move on my part, but I was never going anywhere in the corporate world, so it didn't make any difference if I insulted a few turkeys as I was booted out of the dump.

## CHAPTER THIRTEEN

The next time I met Nick, we talked about Jana and Everett and whether they could have murdered Teresa. "Have you ever found out who left the key in the door?" I said.

"I think that key was left there by Jana or Everett and that Teresa was already dead when they came in."

"So they did come into the apartment that afternoon?"

"Supposedly," said Nick, "they were both there around three—I think Jana got there first. Unfortunately, neither one of them is talking to me anymore. I still think they might have been the ones to murder her."

"Don't you think it more likely that one of them murdered her? They didn't get there at the same time, did they?"

"You're right—they wouldn't have arrived together," said Nick. "That's why I think it more likely that Jana might have murdered her. You heard how jealous she can be, but I admit that it seems odd she would murder Teresa. I suppose Teresa could have said something that provoked Jana, but for her to murder Teresa? It just doesn't seem all that likely to me, but if it wasn't her, who else could it have been?"

"Maybe it was an accident," I said.

"Patrick, she was strangled to death. People don't get strangled to death by accident."

"Not necessarily," I said. "I looked this up on the internet the other day because I'm trying to come up with anything that can help you, and—"

"I know you are, Patrick, and I appreciate it more than you'll ever know. Anyways, what did you find out about strangulations? Such a pleasant subject, but I guess we don't have much choice."

"When you strangle a person, it isn't always like what they show on TV. It's true that most of the time, the person being strangled puts up a huge fight, but sometimes, if the pressure is put on the neck in just the right place, the person can die very quickly."

"Like a martial arts thing?" said Nick.

"Sort of, I guess—only the person doesn't necessarily have to know martial arts. I think what happens is that the person's neck is snapped, which can lead to almost instant death."

Nick thought about this for a few seconds. "But it would still require a strong and deliberate intention—you just can't snap a person's neck without applying a lot of force."

"But the force could come from both sides, with the person being strangled snapping their head to the side while the person doing the strangling snaps the head in the opposite direction."

Nick shook his head back and forth in a negative way. "It's just so hard for me to imagine Jana or Everett doing something like that. Everett doesn't have any motive at all and—"

"But like you just said, Jana would have been the one to do it. Somebody had to have murdered her Nick, and there aren't that many suspects."

"Actually," said Nick, "what with the key being in the door, it could have been almost anybody, but the problem with the random intruder idea is that he probably would have raped her, and the autopsy report shows that I'm the only one who had sex with her."

"But maybe she was resisting someone who was trying to rape her," I said. "And then, while they were struggling, he snapped her neck."

"Right! I hadn't thought of that. So this person could have murdered Teresa and left before Jana or Everett got here."

"Exactly," I said. "And so the reason that the key was in the door is that Jana or Everett just forgot to take it out when they came into the apartment."

"None of it makes sense," said Nick in a dejected tone. "It's like hoping that you hit the lottery—Jana comes storming into the place and snaps Teresa's neck. No one is going to believe that, not with the way she looks. And as for the random intruder...that's like total desperation because they haven't found a shred of evidence that points to anyone else being in my bedroom except me. By the way, did you know that Teresa was murdered downstairs and then dragged upstairs to our bedroom?"

"She was? How do they know that?"

"Apparently, Teresa chipped a tooth on the banister while she was being dragged upstairs, and the cops found the part of the tooth that was missing on the staircase."

"That's kind of weird," I said. "Why would somebody drag her upstairs?"

"Isn't it obvious?" said Nick. "If Teresa's body is found in our bedroom, then even the most moronic detective in the world is going to consider me the number one suspect. But if her body had been found downstairs, then that at least gives me a little wriggle room because—are you listening, Patrick?"

I had been distracted by this new piece of information as I tried to decipher what it might mean. "I'm sorry," I said. "What were you saying?"

"Since I'd already told Hobbs that Teresa and I had sex in the bedroom, it makes sense, at least to them, that she died there."

"But she didn't die there—that's what you just said."

"Yes, she died downstairs, but someone tried to frame me by dragging her body upstairs. You see what I mean?"

"OK," I said, "but if someone was trying to frame you, then obviously, you weren't the one who murdered her."

Nick looked at me for a few seconds before he replied. "I hadn't thought of that."

"So how do the cops explain that?"

"Explain what?" said Nick.

"Explain why you dragged her upstairs. It makes no sense if you stop and think about it."

"I'll have to mention that to my lawyer, Patrick, because it's a really good point."

"I think, in a way, it just about proves that you're innocent. I suppose in the movies someone might attempt to deflect suspicion by trying to frame himself, but it never happens in real life."

"That's the thing about this case, Patrick. Like I said, what you brought up is a really good point, but I don't think it's the kind of thing that would sway a jury. It's too small a thing when it's matched up with all the other evidence. And I'm sure the prosecuting attorney will have an explanation for it—I met him the other day, and believe me, he's no dumbbell."

"You met him when you were talking over the plea deal?"

"Yes, I was hoping that I could persuade him into giving up on the death penalty, but he was all fired up like some macho soldier who's about to jump out of a trench and charge a machine gun. I don't know how many times he said that this was the worst crime he had ever prosecuted. It was kind of frightening, actually—I mean to be around a person who really wants to see you die. Man, if they let him, I'm sure he'd be happy to be the one to inject the drugs into me."

We were silent for what seemed a long time but might have been only thirty seconds. Finally, Nick said, "I'm so scared, Patrick—I can't even begin to tell you how scared I am. A lot of nights I can't go to sleep until almost dawn, and since I'm not allowed to turn on the light or anything, I just toss and turn and imagine what the last day of my life is going to be like. And naturally, when I'm led into the execution chamber...I don't know if you can see the witnesses or not, but if I can, I'm sure they'll all be gloating as that hideous monster named me is strapped down on the table where they inject you. I hear some guys are brave when the end comes, but I don't think...I mean the only award I'll win is the one for cowardice. And I know for a fact what my last words are going to be."

"What?" I said.

"As loud as I can, I'm going to shout, 'I didn't do it—you're murdering an innocent man.'"

"I know," I said, "I can't imagine anything worse than what you're going through."

"It's almost like what your father went through," said Nick. "He had the pain and all, so I'm much better off that way, but I'm young and I don't want to die and I don't deserve to die. There's a monster pain for you—try living through that one and see what's left of you."

Nick wasn't handling his death row experience very well but hardly anyone does. I'm not one given to a great deal of empathy for others because I lead a hard, miserable, and mostly useless life, but when it came to Nick, it wasn't hard for me to walk in his shoes, and there had been many times since he had been arrested when I could at least begin to imagine what it must be like to be on death row. What can you possibly say to somebody in that position? And I knew that everything he was going through was made ten times worse by the fact that he was innocent. "Hang in there, buddy," I said. Such a totally pathetic thing to say, but it was all that I could think of.

"I must be a real bummer," said Nick. "I can't remember the last time I talked about anything except my own horrible problem. It's the nightmare that not only doesn't end, but also, it keeps getting worse."

"I miss you, Nick—my roommate is just a nerd who hardly ever talks to me. It was so much different when you were around...So what's your new lawyer think?"

"He thinks that if they end up offering me life in prison without parole, I should give serious consideration to taking the plea deal. Until he said that to me, I was under the impression that he thought I was innocent, but when a lawyer tells you to accept life in prison without parole, it isn't exactly an expression of trust. I'm done for, Patrick. There's really no hope at all. And this place is enough to drive anyone loco. Three months ago, I was leading a nice life—when I look back on it, I had it all. I kind of even realized that back then. I liked my job, I liked my roommate, and I loved Teresa. And now? Now I'm penned into a cement cage that I have to spend twenty-three hours a day in. The guy in the next cell is totally crazy—he's always yelling and screaming in the middle of the night, and sometimes, he goes into these rants about how he'd like to slash the throat of his ex-girlfriend."

"I think I'd go crazy if I had to sit in a cell all day long," I said.

"I'm about halfway there," said Nick. "And the worst part is that I have absolutely no future. I mean, most people, if you ask them where they'd like to be in twenty years, will at least have a right to be optimistic. They can dream, you know? Maybe they'll hit the lottery, win three hundred million dollars, and retire, with two babes, to a beach on a tropical island. Me? I'll either be sitting here in twenty years, or I'll be a legal piece of road kill."

"It's always possible that you'll be acquitted," I said. "I still think the evidence isn't really there."

"That's because you know me, Patrick. But the jurors won't know me, and all they'll hear is that I was the last one to be with Teresa, that she was hung from a chandelier in our bedroom, and that she was pregnant and I have a long history of hating babies. You know how the people in this town are—I'm as good as fried. At least they don't have the electric chair here, but from what I've heard, lethal injection is no picnic. And that's pretty much what I've got to look forward to."

## CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The trial of Nick for the murder of Teresa began on a warm and pleasant June day. Since I was still working second shift at the soap factory, I was able to attend the trial. As I said earlier, the prosecutor had tried to get me to testify, but I had refused. Even though I had, in fact, told Hobbs that Nick was about to dump Teresa, there was no way that I would testify to that publicly. I have to admit that it was really stupid of me to tell Hobbs certain things concerning Nick, but at the time, I wasn't thinking right.

As far as I know, Nick was not planning to leave Teresa, but when I had been interviewed on the day of Teresa's death, I was feeling a good deal of resentment towards Nick. Back then, I had kind of assumed that he was going to ditch Teresa because that's what he always did with women after he had been with them for a while, but to be honest, Nick never told me that he was going to leave Teresa. For "legitimate" reasons of my own, I wrote down that conversation where he told me that he was leaving Teresa as if it actually happened, but it never really happened. And then, when I was talking to Hobbs, I didn't realize that by telling him...it wasn't like I told him an outright lie—it was more like I was stretching the truth because I was actually very annoyed by Nick's way of dealing with women. Unfortunately, I never realized how much my words might come back to damage Nick. But if I'm going to be totally honest here—and I might as well be—then the real reason I was aggravated with Nick is because he always seemed to have a woman and I always seemed to be left high and dry.

And since I seem to be in a mood to tell the truth, more or less, I might as well admit that on the day Teresa died, she never asked me if Nick was about to leave her when we were having our conversation about the meaning of life. The reason I tossed all that into my narrative was because, back when I wrote that, I was thinking...I mean it was written a couple of days after Teresa died, so I was feeling a little defensive about what I had said to Hobbs.

Anyways, I attended the trial. Mostly, it was very boring, but I felt like I had to be there for Nick's sake. I know they make trials interesting on TV, but in real life, not all that much happens. First, the prosecution makes an opening statement, and when I listened to it, I had to admit that it was depressingly convincing. Had I been on the jury, it would have taken a whopping revelation by the defense attorney, whose name was Evan Richter, to convince me that Nick was innocent. However, when it was examined carefully, the opening statement was merely a demonstration of something that I had said to Nick a few times: All the evidence against him was circumstantial—Teresa had been his girlfriend; her body had been found in their bedroom; the piece of black plastic attached to the rope that was around Teresa's neck had Nick's fingerprints on it; Nick had not only admitted to being with Teresa just before she was murdered, but also, he had admitted to having sex with her then; Teresa was pregnant, and Nick had expressed, on many occasions, his aversion to having children; and finally, a witness would be brought forward who would describe Nick's ridiculous, even atrocious, attitude towards any girlfriend of his who became pregnant.

The prosecution opened its case with a number of forensic experts whose testimony, based on Nick's DNA and fingerprints, covered the physical evidence. A few strands of Nick's hair had been found on Teresa's body, and his semen was, of course, found in her body. But the most damning piece of DNA evidence was that Nick's skin cells had been found underneath Teresa's fingernails, which apparently indicated that Teresa had put up a struggle with Nick before she was strangled to death. I cringed in my seat when I heard this because I could see the reaction of disgust on the juror's faces. However, in all probability, Nick's skin cells had ended up under Teresa's fingernails as a result of their lovemaking, so in reality, this revelation by the prosecutor was just another piece of useless circumstantial evidence.

The fingerprint evidence against Nick was just as compelling and just as useless. Besides the fact that his fingerprints had been found on the end of the rope that Teresa was hung with, Nick's fingerprints, and only Nick's fingerprints, had been found on the chair that was found near Teresa's body. This was the chair that Teresa's murderer had used to stage a suicide—Everett would later testify that the chair had been lying on its side and was about three feet from Teresa's dangling legs. The fingerprint experts (there were two of them) also testified that the only fingerprints found in the bedroom belonged to either Nick or Teresa. It was amazing to me that the prosecutor presented this evidence as if it had some real value because if Teresa had been murdered by a random intruder, then it hardly seemed outlandish to assume that he might have been wearing gloves since the murder occurred in mid-December.

The prosecutor, a young and aggressive buck named Marlin Penderson, eventually called Everett to the stand. Dressed to the nines, Everett answered all the questions put to him in a calm and sickeningly suave voice. Basically, the key part of his testimony was just a sophisticated smear campaign directed at Nick that focused on Everett's recollection of a phone call they had about two months prior to Teresa's death. During their conversation, Everett had said that he and Jana were thinking of having a baby, and Nick had responded by going into his usual rant about how foolish it was to have children. Everett repeated something Nick had said that was also found in Teresa's diary—this was where Nick put forth the absurd idea that the best thing would be to drown half the babies that are born so that the earth would have some chance of surviving through the next century. That one drew a wave of gasps in the courtroom, and it also became the headline on the front page of the local newspaper the next morning. Evan had repeatedly objected to this line of questioning on the grounds that the conversation Nick and Everett had was irrelevant, but the objections were all overruled.

Listening to Everett was really annoying—it was like he was going out of his way to stick a knife into Nick. Everett was almost undoubtedly telling the truth about the phone call, but what harm could there have been if he had simply failed to mention it to the prosecutor? Later, from his comments in the local paper after the trial, it became obvious that Everett thought Nick had murdered Teresa, and since at one time, he had been in some kind of relationship with Teresa, I suppose it wasn't surprising that he tried to help the prosecution's case. But I still thought he overdid it, and anyways, why was he so sure that Nick murdered Teresa? He didn't really _know_ anything—he was just following along with the prosecutor's version of events.

But the next witness would be the one who really pounded a few nails into Nick's coffin. Her name was Andrea King, and she had been Nick's girlfriend before Angela Spears came along. Angela was the girlfriend who had immediately preceded Teresa. Andrea was an attractive blond with a very good figure, but she had only lasted about six months before she had been kicked out of the apartment. I remembered her, of course, and had always been puzzled by her sudden dismissal. At the time, Nick had explained to me that it was a mutual decision between him and Andrea, and I had no reason to doubt him since there had been, at least in front of me, no big fight or argument or anything like that. But as I was about to find out, just because you don't know about something doesn't mean that it has no existence.

"Andrea," said Marlin in a friendly tone, "can you tell us whether you were ever involved in a relationship with Nick Flaherty?"

"Yes, I was," said Andrea, in a pleasant voice.

"When did this relationship occur?"

"We broke up about two years ago"

"How long were you together?"

"About six months."

"Can you please tell the court why you broke up with Mr. Flaherty?"

"It was all rather unfortunate, actually. What happened was that I became pregnant—I hadn't...I wasn't intending to become pregnant. In fact, I was on the pill at the time, but nevertheless, I became pregnant, and..."

"Please continue, Andrea."

Andrea shot Nick a look as he sat at the defense table—it was difficult for me to tell whether it was a hostile look, but no one would have called the expression on her face friendly.

"So of course I told Nick that I was pregnant. And...well, he was very upset about it. He'd always treated me respectfully—in fact, he'd been a perfect gentleman at least up to that point in our relationship, but in a matter of seconds, his whole attitude towards me changed and he said, 'What did you go and do that for?' Even though Nick had mentioned on a couple of occasions that he didn't want to have any children, I was really shocked by his attitude. He could have at least held my hand and said something comforting, but instead, he began shouting at me and said—and this is a quote because I remember it well—'You better get an abortion because I'm not bringing it up.' At that point, I kind of lost my temper and said, 'Well, give me the money for the abortion, and I'll go get one.' Not that they're easy to come by in this state."

"And what was Nick's response when you asked him for the money for the abortion?"

"He refused! He said, 'Why should I have to pay for your mistake?' So we went back and forth on that one for a while, and finally, after a lot of haggling, he agreed to pay for half, but he also made it clear to me that he expected me to move out of the apartment because he didn't want to have a relationship with me anymore."

Sweet! The jurors, most of whom were middle aged and looked rather conservative, were obviously appalled by Andrea's testimony. And eventually, when it came time for Marlin to give his closing statement, he repeatedly referred to the fact that Teresa was pregnant when she died, along with Nick's reaction to Andrea's pregnancy. In my mind, the trial was essentially over after Andrea's testimony, but the defense went through the motions and made the attempt to create reasonable doubt in the mind of at least one juror.

Evan Richter, Nick's defense attorney, did the best he could with what he had to work with, which wasn't much. The prosecution had failed to mention that Teresa had been murdered downstairs and then dragged upstairs, so Evan called Detective Hobbs to the stand and after eliciting this information, he asked him a number of questions as to why Nick, after supposedly murdering Teresa, would have dragged her upstairs to his bedroom, but Hobbs parried these questions by asserting that Nick undoubtedly felt that the room Teresa slept in was the best place to stage her suicide and that Nick probably hadn't even considered the fact that it might point suspicion at him.

Naturally, the key being found in the lock of the door played a significant role in Nick's defense strategy. Jana and Everett were called by Evan to testify, and both of them admitted to being inside the apartment on the afternoon of Teresa's murder. According to their testimony, Jana arrived first, around two forty-five, while Everett claimed to have arrived just minutes later—around three. One didn't have to be a rocket scientist to understand that these times could have been altered in order to give Jana less time alone in the apartment. Perhaps she had arrived as early as two or perhaps Everett hadn't gotten there until three-thirty. It was even possible that they had reversed the times they arrived and that Everett had been the first one to arrive. But that scenario did nothing to help Nick because Jana was the only one who had a motive to murder Teresa. Unfortunately, it was a very flimsy motive—a romance that had existed five years previously between Everett and Teresa.

During his questioning of Jana, Evan attempted to ask her whether she had, at one time, been jealous of Teresa, but Marlin had objected to this line of questioning, and the judge had upheld Marlin's objection on the grounds that Everett's relationship with Teresa had occurred over five years ago. Having being blocked there, Evan turned to the key that had been found in the lock of the door. Interestingly—and this was good for Nick's defense—both Jana and Everett were adamant that they had not left the key in the lock. During Marlin's cross-examination of Jana, he asked her more than once if she could have forgotten to take the key out of the lock, but she said she actually remembered taking the key out of the lock after she opened the door and then placing it underneath the doormat. Further, Everett testified that by the time he arrived at the house, Jana had phoned him and told him that she was there, so Everett had not searched for the key but had simply opened the unlocked door. "Had the key been in the lock," he said, "I would certainly have noticed it." Everett also remembered locking the door when he left the apartment with Jana and then closing the door as they stepped outside the house. Since the only way to close the door was by using the handle that contained the lock, he would certainly have noticed the key then.

Neither Jana nor Everett had heard anything while they were in the apartment—no noises from upstairs, for instance, but neither had they gone upstairs. In fact, they had only stayed very briefly since their only reason for meeting at the apartment was to avoid the hassle of trying to hook up with each other downtown. But since there was nothing to do in the apartment, they had left shortly after they arrived and gone downtown together so that they could do some shopping before they went to meet Nick at Emerson's.

The testimony from Everett and Jana left some wriggle room for the defense because now anyone could see that it was at least a possibility that Jana or Everett had murdered Teresa. But also, the puzzling fact that someone had left a key in the door after Jana and Everett left around three left more than wriggle room. Who had left the key there? And why had someone entered the apartment after Everett and Teresa left, unless it was to murder Teresa?

The problems presented by the key might have been enough to exonerate Nick, but the time-of-death estimate did much to negate this issue. During the prosecution's case, the medical examiner had testified that Teresa died between twelve-thirty and two-thirty. This clearly put Nick in the crosshairs because he had told the police he came home around noon and left to go back to work around one-fifteen. (It was known, because of the videotape surveillance cameras that were at Nick's workplace, that he had left there at 11:45 and returned at 1:26. Since at that time of day, it was at least an eight minute drive from his apartment to the car dealership, Nick's estimate of the time he had spent at the apartment was probably quite accurate.) When the noon to one-fifteen time span was matched up with the time-of-death estimate, it was obvious that it coincided almost perfectly with Nick's involvement in Teresa's murder: Make love from twelve-fifteen to twelve-thirty; murder her at a quarter to one; and then stage the suicide and leave the apartment by one-fifteen. On the other hand, the time-of-death estimate didn't match up with Jana or Everett at all unless one or both of them were lying about the time they arrived. And so, in the end, the combination of Jana's testimony, which was based on information that she had provided to Hobbs much earlier when she had no idea what the time-of-death estimate would be, along with the absence of any real motive did much to diminish her as a suspect.

In order to bring in the relevance of the key, Evan attempted to widen the time-of-death estimate considerably. As part of Nick's defense, he had recalled the medical examiner to the stand and grilled him for over thirty minutes on this issue, but he was unwilling to concede that Teresa's death could have occurred after two-thirty. It was, he said, relatively easy to make an accurate time-of-death estimate when a person's death had occurred so close in time to the discovery of the body. Sure, if Teresa had been found two days after her murder, she could, conceivably, have died anywhere between 10 A.M and 6 P.M., but because of the fact that Teresa had only been dead for a very few hours, he was quite confident that she had died between twelve-thirty and two-thirty.

The sum total of all this was bad news for the defense. Nick had told me that Evan had talked to a half-dozen medical examiners around the country in the hopes that one of them would be willing to extend the time-of-death estimate to three-thirty or even four o'clock, but all of them concurred with the prosecutor's medical examiner when they were given Teresa's body temperature when she was examined at the scene. Body temperature declines at a steady and fairly reliable rate after death, and there was no realistic possibility, they told Evan, that she could have died before twelve-thirty or after two-thirty.

And as for the key in the door? That was a mystery no one could explain. It seemed irrelevant, but when a person is murdered, an unexplained key could certainly be the clue that leads to a solution of the crime.

## CHAPTER FIFTEEN

The defense was required to go first when it came time for the closing arguments, and Evan spent his entire allotted hour on trying to create reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors. However, he also explained a legal point to the jurors that applied to all cases that were based, as this one was, on circumstantial evidence. Speaking to the jury, Evan said, "At the conclusion of these closing arguments, it is the judge's duty to instruct the jury, and in a case where all the evidence is circumstantial evidence, there is a special instruction that the judge is required to read to the jury. The part of the judge's instruction that I hope you will remember during your deliberations is this: Before you may rely on circumstantial evidence to find the defendant guilty, you must be convinced that the only reasonable conclusion supported by the circumstantial evidence is that the defendant is guilty. If you can draw two or more reasonable conclusions from the circumstantial evidence and one of those reasonable conclusions points to innocence and another to guilt, you must accept the one that points to innocence."

Evan then went on to claim that it was hardly unreasonable to suppose that Teresa could have been murdered by someone other than Nick. "I will grant you," said Evan, "that it may be more reasonable to assume that Nick, instead of some other person, murdered Teresa, but according to the law, you are not here to decide which possibility is more reasonable than another. Rather, your task is to examine whether it is reasonable to assume that someone other than Nick murdered Teresa. Of course it's reasonable! And I'll tell you why. First of all, we know that Nick left his apartment no later than one-fifteen, and the medical examiner has placed Teresa's death as sometime between twelve-thirty and two-thirty. So that leaves seventy-five minutes during which time some other person could have murdered Teresa.

"Is it reasonable to assume that either Jana or Everett Dixon could have murdered Teresa? We have, after all, only their own say-so as to when they arrived at the apartment, and isn't it interesting that the time Jana said she arrived at the apartment, which was two forty-five, is very conveniently placed just outside the time-of-death estimate.

"But beyond the legitimate doubts that one might have about the Dixons, there is the curious matter of the key that was found in the lock of the door. The Dixons have both testified that they are positive they did not leave the key in the lock, so the natural question is: Who did? And I am going to answer this question, and I hope you will think over what I say carefully. Obviously, the key was left in the door by the person who murdered Teresa Hamblin. But, you will say, that's impossible because if the Dixons are to be believed, they didn't leave the apartment until three, and by that time, Teresa was already dead. But what no one has considered is that the murderer must have returned to the apartment after the Dixons left. Bear in mind that there is a long gap in time between the time the Dixons left the apartment—three o'clock—and the time the Dixons, Nick, and Nick's roommate returned from downtown, which was approximately seven-thirty. So it's obvious that the person who left the key in the lock did so between roughly three-thirty and seven o'clock.

"The next question is why did this person enter the apartment? Isn't it obvious? This person, the murderer, must have realized that something wasn't quite right at the scene of the crime. Maybe he had dropped something of his while he was dragging Teresa up the stairs and didn't realize it until later in the afternoon. It's true that he was taking a terrible chance by returning to the apartment, but bear in mind that on the day Teresa was murdered, December 16th, it becomes dark by a quarter to five, so he could have seen that there were no lights on inside the apartment. It's still a risky proposition to reenter the apartment, so he was undoubtedly nervous, and that's why he forgot to take the key out of the lock."

Evan concluded his argument by once again reminding the jury of the rules surrounding a circumstantial evidence case. "Do you mean to tell me that there is only one reasonable explanation for the evidence in this case? I can, right off the top of my head, think of three: 1/ Nick committed the crime; 2/Everett and/or Jana committed the crime; and 3/ some other person, as yet unknown, committed the crime. Please remember that between the time Nick left the apartment to return to work and the time when Jana supposedly entered the apartment, there was a gap of ninety minutes. The prosecutor has not offered a single shred of physical evidence that would disprove the possibility of an unknown person entering the apartment between one-thirty and two and then murdering Teresa."

It was now the prosecution's turn to speak, and after a few preliminary remarks, Marlin brought up an important point that Evan had failed to mention. "It was certainly good of the defense attorney to quote the circumstantial evidence rule to you, but unfortunately, he very conveniently forgot to quote the entirety of the rule to you. Yes, as Mr. Richter noted, in a circumstantial evidence case, if there are two reasonable explanations for the crime and one of them points to guilt and the other to innocence, you are required to acquit the defendant, but the final sentence of the jury instruction is this: However, when considering circumstantial evidence, you must accept only reasonable conclusions and reject any that are unreasonable.

"By now, it should be obvious to you why Mr. Richter failed to include the final sentence of the circumstantial evidence instruction. It's true that he gave you a number of scenarios where the defendant didn't murder Teresa, but the question you have to ask yourself is whether any of these scenarios are reasonable. Is it reasonable to assume that Jana Dixon murdered Teresa? In her testimony here, she said that she arrived at Mr. Flaherty's apartment at two forty-five, so for her to have committed this murder, you would have to assume that she was lying because the medical examiner places Teresa's death at no later than two-thirty. But besides that problem, consider the absurdity of turning Jana into a suspect. She has no motive at all, and the only reason she went to Mr. Flaherty's house was to meet her husband. So to presume that Jana murdered Teresa, you have to conclude that she entered the house at two-fifteen, immediately strangled Teresa, and then dragged her up the stairs, possibly with her husband's help, and then staged the suicide. I'm sure we can all agree that far from being reasonable, this is simply a desperate attempt by the defense attorney to pawn the crime off on someone else, someone who had at least entered the apartment even if it was too late to fit into the medical examiner's time-of-death estimate. But hey! If you're a defense attorney, you've got to come up with something, and Mr. Richter did the best he could.

"However, he probably knew this scenario wouldn't fly, so he came up with another one. Here, we have an unknown intruder entering the apartment around one-thirty. This guy sure did have his timing right, didn't he? Consider: He dashes into the apartment at one-thirty, murders Teresa almost immediately, drags her upstairs and strings her up from the chandelier, and then he leaves the apartment before Ms. Dixon arrives at two forty-five. But again, as in the previous scenario, we are faced with the problem of motive. Nothing of value was taken from the apartment, and the only person that engaged in sexual activity with Teresa that day was Mr. Flaherty. So what was this unknown person's motive? Can you think of one? I can't, which means this is just another attempt by the defense attorney to deflect blame from his client.

"But wait, you might say. What about the key that was found in the lock of the door? The defense has practically made this the linchpin of their defense, so I'll offer you a reasonable explanation for the key in the door. The explanation is this: There was no key in the door. No one actually saw the key in the lock of the door except Mr. Flaherty—it's true that Mr. Flaherty held up the key so that Jana and Everett Dixon, along with Mr. Flaherty's roommate, could see the key, but it's fairly obvious that as Mr. Flaherty went to open the door, he could have had his own key in his hand, made a motion towards the door as if he were about to unlock it, and then held up the key that was in his hand and announced that he had found it in the lock of the door.

"Now, after listening to all these far-fetched, unreasonable theories of the defense, let's consider a theory that makes sense. Mr. Flaherty was known, by his own admission, to be with the victim at the time of her death. In fact, he even had consensual sex with her that afternoon, but something obviously went wrong just afterwards, and I don't think we have to be geniuses to figure out what went wrong. Teresa must have assumed that after having sexual relations with Mr. Flaherty, this would be a good time to tell him that she was pregnant. How wrong she was! And it cost Teresa her life. Because, as you all heard here, Mr. Flaherty could not tolerate the prospect of having a baby. Horror of horrors! I hope you remember the testimony of Andrea King; I hope you remember how angry Mr. Flaherty was with Andrea for becoming pregnant; I hope you remember how he didn't want to pay any money for the abortion that he demanded for her to have; and I hope you remember how he threw her out of his apartment after learning that she was pregnant.

"Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I don't know how much more evidence you need to convict a man, and I hope you will see that justice is done so that Teresa Hamblin and her unborn baby did not die in vain."

As I sat there listening to the prosecutor, I could see there was a serious flaw in his argument when it came to the key. It had been established that the key had come from under the doormat, so for the prosecutor's theory to be true, Nick would have had to bend down and take the key from under the doormat, which is something that he certainly didn't do since I was standing behind him and would obviously have noticed something like that. The only way that the prosecutor's argument could have been valid is if Nick had taken the key under the doormat with him to work after he supposedly murdered Teresa, but this was impossible because Nick left the apartment at one-fifteen, and when Jana arrived at two forty-five, the key had been under the doormat.

The jury began its deliberations at three o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon and came back with a verdict around noon on the following day. I had spent the previous night tossing and turning in my bed as I tried to come to grips with the fact that Nick really might be found guilty and sentenced to death. On the surface, the rule about circumstantial evidence seemed to favor Nick, but during the trial, I had done some research on a number of trials that were based on circumstantial evidence, and I discovered that juries really didn't understand the rule, or if they did, they tended to view alternative scenarios to the crime as being unreasonable. In other words, juries decided circumstantial evidence cases just like they did a normal case that was based on eyewitness testimony and forensic evidence.

It was really shocking how little actual evidence there was against Nick. The only two things that I could think of were that he had been in the apartment during a portion of the time that was covered by the medical examiner's time-of-death estimate, and also, there was the fact that his fingerprints had been found on the rope that was used to hang Teresa. But it was Nick's rope! So that was no surprise. And as for him being in the apartment around the time she died, he had been there for only forty-five minutes of the two hour time-of-death estimate—twelve-thirty to one-fifteen. Otherwise, the case against Nick was just a smear campaign based on his dislike of having a child.

So what was I going to do if the jury, which to my worried eye seemed to be packed with conservative middle-aged moralists, came back with a guilty verdict? That was the elephant in the room, and that elephant was sitting on my chest and squeezing the life out of me. Second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day—for a long, long time now that elephant had been squeezing the life out of me. There was no getting around it—in all probability, the day of reckoning was very near, and if it came—if that day of reckoning came—I was going to have to make one of the most difficult decisions that a human being could possibly face. Or maybe some people would know what to do, but I certainly wasn't one of them.

When the jury came in with the verdict, I was in the courthouse. I had hung around the place all that morning as I nervously sat on a bench in a hallway and drank one cup of coffee after another. The phrase day of reckoning kept going through my mind like a broken record. I had probably only slept a couple of hours, and with all the emotional stress I was going through, I was beyond exhausted.

Suddenly, I saw a group of people coming down the corridor, and I heard one of them open the door to an office and say, "The verdict is in." Reluctantly, almost like I was being dragged to my own execution, I walked like a zombie into the courtroom and took a seat that gave me a good view of Nick. He looked pale to me, and I could see that one of his hands was shaking. As the jury walked into the room, my heart started to skip beats in a really unpleasant and frightening way—like once every seven or eight seconds. I was perspiring and felt extremely warm, probably because the temperature in the courtroom was at least seventy-five.

After a lot of bustle and commotion and an incessant wave of legal formalities, the clerk of the court read out the verdict: "We the jury find the defendant, Nick Flaherty, guilty of two counts of first degree murder." I can't tell you what happened next because I was overcome, amidst my wildly beating heart, with a wave of acute dizziness. I remember trying to steady myself—I had a feeling that I was falling out of my chair and then everything went black. The next thing I knew I was on the floor by my chair and was being attended to by somebody who must have been a physician. I can remember thinking to myself, if only I had died right then and there and didn't have to wake up to this nightmare. But my death would only have doubled down on the sum total of all my sins.

## CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Two days later, Nick was sentenced, but I couldn't...I just couldn't go and watch the whole thing. The victim impact statements...Teresa's mother begging the judge to sentence him to death...Nick's rather pathetic statement where he repeatedly claimed that he had nothing to do with Teresa's murder...the judge, all righteous and full of himself, sentencing Nick to death.

And me? I didn't know what to do...called into work and told them I was sick, which was certainly no lie...feverish and vomiting and dizzy...lying in bed looking at the spinning walls...couldn't hardly eat anything...couldn't even watch TV...just felt like crying...and crying and crying.

Finally, six days after Nick was sentenced, I went in to see him. The dizziness and nausea had gone away, but I still felt somewhat feverish.

"I was wondering where you were," said Nick. "What happened to you in the courtroom?"

"You mean when I fainted? That was just...I haven't been feeling well lately. That trial made me sick."

"You and me both."

Nick was calmer than I expected, but I could tell that he was depressed—there didn't seem to be any life in his eyes. "Well," he said, "it can't get much worse than this. How does it feel to be staring at the monster who cold-bloodedly murdered his pregnant girlfriend?"

"Don't talk that way, Nick. They'll think you're confessing."

"I don't know what difference anything makes now, Patrick. You know, the thing that gets me...I wonder who did murder her? Somebody did, and the more I think about it, I just can't picture Jana or Everett doing something like that. Can you?"

"No, there'd be no reason for them to."

"But somebody murdered her—somebody must have come into the apartment after I left that afternoon and before Jana got there."

"Must have," I said.

"And they would have had to know that the key was under the doormat, or maybe Teresa didn't lock the door."

"But didn't you lock the door when you left the apartment to go back to work?"

"I think so, but maybe Teresa opened the door to see if there was any mail in the mailbox and then forgot to lock the door after she closed it. I almost think we have to assume that the door was unlocked, in which case, it could have been a random killing."

"Your lawyer is appealing—right?"

"He has to whether he likes it or not," said Nick. "In a death penalty case, appeals are mandatory, and Evan told me that it will probably be at least six years before I'm executed."

"Isn't that exciting?" I said, sarcastically.

"Yes," said Nick, "that's my good news for the day. At least it's not like the old days where they drag you from your cell and string you up from the nearest tree. But I wanted to tell you—at the end of the month, they're going to move me."

"To where?"

"To the state prison in Morrisville—that's where the death penalties are carried out. I'll be placed on death row, so at least I'll be with people who are in the same boat that I'm in."

Morrisville was almost two hundred miles away. "Man," I said, "this is..."

"What's the matter, Patrick?"

"This is like such a horrible nightmare."

"Tell me about it. God, you look horrible, Patrick—you're as white as a sheet. What's the matter with you? I'm the one going to death row."

"I know, I know. It's just a whole bunch of things, Nick. I'm sorry to be this way in front of you—your problems are about a million times worse than mine." That wasn't true, but I had to say it.

"Do you think that you can come visit me out in Morrisville?" said Nick.

"Sure, I'll come visit you."

"Other than my family, you're the only real friend I have. And if you come, we can do all sorts of great things like reminisce about those times when we used to sit around and talk about the meaning of life. And to think that I made fun of you for asking questions about the meaning of life. Nowadays, I think about that a lot. I mean...are we really just the victims of circumstance? Am I sitting here now simply because I had a run of stupendously bad luck? There's got to be more to it than that--otherwise, I'll go crazy."

"The meaning of life...I can't come up with anything, Nick. It's like we're thrown into our lives and propelled through all these experiences and some people get everything—the beautiful woman, millions of dollars, the whole shebang. And then others..."

"End up on death row for a crime that they didn't commit. Why? What in the world did I do to deserve this? It's like some great force has decided to punish me. And it wouldn't be so bad if I had actually done something...sure, now that I've had the time to look back on it, I didn't treat women very well. But I was never violent to them—just kind of cold and unsympathetic a lot of times. Do you think there's such a thing as karma?"

This was not the kind of question that I wanted to be answering. "I guess so," I said. "But...some people do get away with murder, and who knows if they ever get punished at all."

"And then some people didn't murder anyone and end up taking the fall."

"If karma exists," I said, "then it must be a thing that comes from past lives. So maybe in one life, you pay for the crimes of a past life."

"I don't know," said Nick, in a disinterested tone. "That strikes me as a not-so-clever rationalization for all the injustices that happen in the world. So now, with karma as a crutch, people can look at me and say, 'Too bad, buddy, you shouldn't have offed your 1880 girlfriend with the pickax.' See what I mean?"

"Remember that time when we were talking about the meaning of life and you said that there were two things that people have never really explained?"

"Yes," said Nick, "and the two things were insects and injustice. And now that I'm caught in a massive web of injustice, I realize how right I was. No one, and I mean absolutely no one, has ever really explained the reason for injustice. I remember seeing this photo once—it was taken in like 1941 in Poland or Germany, and it was a bunch of Jewish men who were being separated from their wives because each group was being sent to a different concentration camp. And the men were reaching out with their hands to touch the hands of their wives as they were being pulled onto a train. God! Where were You then? Try to rationalize that one away with some platitude about karma. Because even if it was karma, why do we have to have karma? What's the point of this big horror show called earth? No wonder they call it a vale of tears."

After I left the prison, I wandered around the streets for a while. Actually, it was quite a while because when it started to get dark out, it meant that I had been wandering for a little over two hours. Finally, I went into a supermarket, bought a half-gallon of ice cream, and after leaving the store, I walked down a side street and found some stone steps to sit on. The steps led up to a back entrance of a church, and the street was mostly deserted, so I found a stick, opened up the ice cream and pretty much wolfed it down. Man, was I ever feeling sorry for myself.

I was just sitting there sighing and whimpering when this woman, who must have been about twenty, came walking by with a fairly large backpack in her hand. "Hey!" she said, "Don't tell me that you ate that whole half gallon of ice cream with the stick you've got in your hand."

In reply, I licked the stick, and she started to laugh. "You're a real style setter. What's your name, anyways?"

"Patrick."

"That's kind of official. What do your friends call you? Pat?"

"No, I don't like Pat—I'm Patrick. So what's your name?"

"Carol. Do you mind if I sit down next to you?"

"Not at all."

After she had sat down next to me, she said, "You look a little down, Patrick. What's the matter?"

"It's a long, long story."

"Sometimes, it's good to...you know, tell people about your troubles."

Carol wasn't really all that attractive, but she had a pleasant, sincere face. "How old are you?" I said.

"Twenty-four, but I've seen a lot of the world. I'm not trying to brag or anything, but I've been in a lot of situations."

"How come?" I said. "Are you homeless?"

In the dusky twilight, she turned and looked at me for a moment. "Ah!" she said. "You guessed. It must have been my backpack—right?"

"I guess so," I said. I figured she was probably making a pitch for a couch to sleep on, but I didn't mind. I couldn't ever remember feeling so lonely in my life.

"I've been homeless for over five years," she said. "It's not an easy life--have you ever been homeless?"

"Can't say that I have."

"You're lucky—being homeless is really tough, especially if you're a woman. But I'm beginning to develop a sixth sense about the type of man I should avoid."

"So why'd you sit next to me?"

"You just looked so down, Patrick. I'm drawn to people like that."

"Why's that?" I said.

She didn't answer for what seemed like a long time. "I really don't know why—it's just an instinct I have, and when you're living on the streets, about all you have are your instincts."

"How did you end up homeless?" I said.

"My father...he was...he didn't treat me like a father should treat one of his daughters."

"So you just ran away?"

"I didn't have a choice, Patrick."

I don't know why, but I felt some genuine sympathy for Carol. Homeless people usually frighten or annoy me, but Carol didn't seem hard-edged and mean-spirited like some of the homeless people I had seen lately. Of course she was still very young—give her another ten years on the street, and her faced would be lined and her voice would have lost its pleasant, innocent lilt.

"You need a place to stay tonight?" I said.

Carol looked a little shocked and backed away from me slightly—we were sitting about a foot apart. "Oh, I don't know," she said. "I wish you hadn't asked me so quickly."

"You can sleep on the couch downstairs. It won't be a big bother—my roommate and I sleep upstairs."

"Maybe...but I can't really do anything...I just can't...you must know what I'm talking about."

"Sure," I said. "I understand."

"Because...it's not anything personal, but I've been through a lot lately, and actually, I just got out of the emergency room because they had to stitch me up down there."

"Looks like we're both a little bit down tonight," I said.

"I'm not really down," she said. "I just have to be cautious--that's all."

We walked back to my place without saying much, but just before I opened the door to the apartment, I said, "Don't worry, Carol, I won't hurt you or force you to do anything that you don't want to do."

She didn't say anything but walked in after me and put her backpack on the couch before she sat down next to it. "Could I have a glass of water, Patrick?"

I got her a large glass of water and sat down across from her in one of the stuffed chairs. Carol brought out something in me that I had never really felt before—it was like I wanted to protect her. After drinking the full glass of water, she used the bathroom and then sat down again on the couch. "It's nice in here," she said. "What's your roommate like?"

"He's a student, but he's away until the end of the summer."

"What do you do? You must work somewhere—right?"

"It's just a lousy second-shift job in a soap factory."

"My brother worked in a factory for a while—he said it was like hell on earth. He told me it was so boring that he thought he might lose his mind."

"Carol, listen...do you want to know what I'm so down about?" For some reason, I felt I could talk to her, even confide in her. That was probably a crazy thought, but time was running out, and I was running out of options.

"Tell me about it," she said, in a sympathetic tone.

"My last roommate—he and I lived together for seven years—has just been put on death row and..."

"Death row? You mean like in a prison?" said Carol.

"Yes--in a prison."

"What did he do?"

"He didn't do anything," I said. "Here," I said, as I handed her the newspaper, "you can read about it."

Carol took the newspaper from me and read the headline story from the day that Patrick—I meant to say Nick--had been sentenced to death. Carol read the article very slowly, and when she was done, she said, "So Nick Flaherty was your roommate, and he lived here with Teresa?"

"That's right."

"Where were you when it happened?"

"I was...I was at the mall."

"So why do you think Nick wasn't the one who murdered her?" said Carol.

"I just know—that's all."

"But...how come he was convicted?"

"I think it was mostly just because Teresa was pregnant, and then they found a former girlfriend of Nick's who came into court and told everyone how much he hated babies."

"Did he tell you that he didn't murder her?"

"He didn't have to because I know for a fact that he didn't murder her."

"But how can you know that?" said Carol.

"It's just...are you hungry? There's plenty of stuff in the frig."

She looked at me for a few moments before she went out to the kitchen and made herself a couple of peanut butter sandwiches. Man, did she ever wolf those things down—she probably hadn't eaten in a day. When she came back, I said, "I think I'm going to call it a day. I'm exhausted."

"OK," she said. "Do you have an extra couple of blankets and maybe a pillow—it's alright if you don't. I almost feel like I'm sleeping in the Taj Mahal."

Before I went upstairs, I got her a couple of blankets and a pillow that Nick had used. "Good night," I said.

"Good night, Patrick—I'll see you in the morning."

The day after I met Carol, I received my inheritance, so I didn't have to work anymore—me being me, I didn't even bother to call in to the dump and tell them that I was dropping out of their pathetic dog-and-pony show. With a lot of time on my hands and not much to do except worry about myself, I began to hang around with Carol. It was a new experience for me because although I liked being around her, I didn't have any real sexual desire for her. Partly, it was because she wasn't, as I said before, all that pretty, and partly, it was because she kind of made it clear that she didn't want to engage in anything like that. And anyways, at that point, I had far bigger things on my mind than sex. I never thought I would ever have said that a month earlier, but nowadays, I was stuck in a vise that was gripping me tighter and tighter as each day passed.

Nick had been shipped out to Morrisville three or four days after I met Carol, and it was kind of an awful scene during our last visit together, which was the day before he left for Morrisville. At one point, Nick actually broke down and started crying and saying that if there was a way for him to take his life, he would do it. I was pretty sure he was exaggerating, but still...

So to try and get my mind off things, I often traipsed around with Carol, who seemed to find me interesting. Although she was mostly a serious and reflective person, Carol could sometimes be quite goofy. She was particularly fond of handing out nuts to squirrels—at first, she would just leave the nuts near the bench where we always sat in a park that was about a mile from my apartment, but it wasn't long before she'd leave the nuts next to her on the bench, and the squirrels would hop up beside her. Sometimes, they would eat the nut, but more often, they would grab the nut and race off, and Carol and I would watch them as they buried the nut in the ground. "Squirrels are such lovely creatures, Patrick. How they ever survive the winters around here is beyond me."

Later, when it began to get dark, we'd have a contest to see who could discover the first star—according to Carol, discovering the first star brought you luck, and it didn't surprise me that Carol was always the one to discover the first star. "You see it?" she'd say, as she pointed to where it was in the sky. Even with her guidance, I could never find it until another five minutes of darkness had settled in. "I bet you don't know why I can find the first star so easily."

"No," I said, "Probably, you've had a lot of practice at it."

"In a way, that's true," said Carol, in a serious tone. "It just so happens that in one of my previous lives, I was an Indian tracker."

"What's an Indian tracker?" I said.

"We were the ones who led our tribes to safety. Didn't you ever imagine that you were an Indian?"

"No, never."

"Hmmm..." She tapped me lightly on the shoulder--that was something she liked to do when she thought she was about to say something important. Around us, a warm and dreamy twilight was settling over the land. "I can see into people, Patrick, and I can tell that there's some deep dark secret lurking in your soul."

Beneath her plain face was a kind of simple, peaceful beauty. I stared at her for a few moments before I said, "You can tell things like that about people?"

"Yes," she said in a serious tone. "I can see into people's souls."

I figured she was half joking because she had a kind of whimsical look on her face. "I don't believe in the soul or any of that religious stuff."

"Hmm..." she said. "Patrick doesn't believe in the soul. So I guess he doesn't believe in God?"

"No, not really," I said.

"So what do you believe in? Everyone has to believe in something, even if it's only themselves."

"I don't think I believe in anything."

"That's so sad," said Carol. She turned away from me for a few moments before she turned back to me and said, "I think we're all put here for a reason."

"By who?" I said.

"Oh, I don't know. It's like we're all on this path that's taking us somewhere, and...we've chosen to be on the path because we know we can help the other people who are on the path with us. Not so much humanity as a whole, but the people who are near and dear to us. That's why family is so important—they're the ones who are closest to us on the path."

It was, I thought, a nice sentiment, but it didn't match up to reality. Gently, because we were speaking in very gentle voices, I said, "But what about a person who murders someone—that's not helping anyone."

"No...but everyone makes mistakes sometimes, and even if a person is murdered, their soul continues. Nobody can ever harm a soul because a soul goes on forever."

"But you can't really know this," I said. "It sounds nice, and I wish it was true, but it's all kind of imaginary to me."

"Patrick, in this world, your soul is the part of you that dreams at night. And that part of you has always existed and will go on forever. It's actually the part of you that created you—this you, the one that's living now. But there are lots of other versions of yourself. And everybody is on the path, body and soul, to a place where there is only peace."

I laughed. "Have you been going to church or something?"

Carol was obviously hurt by what I had said. "Never mind, Patrick. I was only trying to help you."

"I know that, but—"

"Let's not talk about it anymore, Patrick—I don't like to argue about things like this."

She got up from where we were sitting, and we began to walk back to my apartment. I had the feeling that I had lost her—that I had failed some test that was important to her. Here she was, a kind of sincere spiritualist, while Nick and I were sarcastic philosophical sociopaths. And never the twain shall meet!

During the ten minute walk, we hardly said a word. "Maybe I shouldn't stay around here anymore," said Carol, after we were sitting in the TV room. "Am I bothering you?"

"No, not at all. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings back there in the park—I'm sorry."

"Patrick, you really should tell me what's wrong. You look so down most of the time. It must be because of Nick—right?"

"Kind of," I said.

"Kind of?"

I tried to put it into words—was I really ready to leap into the river? "It's something to do with him, but maybe not exactly what you think."

"Would you like to tell me about it?"

"Maybe...I don't know."

"Why don't you come and sit next to me on the couch—I think that would help you."

I left the chair I was sitting in and sat down next to her. We were close to each other but not touching. Gently, but precisely, she tapped me on the shoulder. "Patrick, you have nothing to fear from me. I know you're really upset about something, and when that happens, it helps to tell another person what's troubling you. Remember, we're all here to help each other—that's the real meaning of life. Because the path is sometimes hard, and everybody needs a helping hand from time to time."

I couldn't take it anymore. I put my hands over my face and started to sob. And sob some more. Long, dreadful sobs. That must have gone on for at least two or three minutes as Carol sat patiently and quietly beside me. "What happened?" she said.

" _I did something horrible."_

"OK," said Carol. "Why don't you let me help you deal with it?"

"There's no helping me—not now."

"No one is ever beyond help, Patrick. Always believe that because it's true. The help is there—all you have to do is turn towards it."

There was only one light on in the room—a dim 40 watter—and through my tears, I could hardly see Carol, except like when you're driving in a car and you're looking through a windshield in the middle of a torrential thunderstorm. After using my shirt to wipe my eyes, I said, "But you can't really help me—you really can't."

"I can help you carry the pain, Patrick. You really shouldn't try to carry it all by yourself."

"You'd never want to help me if I told you...you just wouldn't."

"You've helped me," she said. "Why shouldn't I help you?"

"But you hadn't done anything wrong, and...it isn't you—it's just that...I just can't do it."

Once again, she tapped me on the shoulder, and I gazed into her placid eyes. "Tell me!" she said. "Your life may depend on it. Because if you try to keep carrying around all this darkness and despair, it will destroy you. Tell me!"

Sooner or later, I had to take the step. And who better to talk to than this woman? But..."It's really an awful thing, Carol. And...and...I mean, you can leave anytime...or, I know you don't have a place to go but..."

"Did you harm someone, Patrick?" Somehow, her voice carried no condemnation and seemed almost reassuring.

"I...yes." I was about to cross the Rubicon.

"How? How did it happen?"

"It wasn't like I meant to, but it was all my fault."

"When did this happen?" said Carol.

"Last winter...and it was Teresa, the woman who was murdered here."

"You harmed her before she was murdered?"

"No...I was the one who murdered her."

Carol drew back a couple of inches from me, and I could hear her gasp. A quiet gasp—like someone who has been surprised by something. After that, she kind of bowed her head and clasped her hands in front of her. Maybe she was praying or something.

Finally, she turned towards me and said, "It's good—it's good that you're telling me this. So...you said that you killed her by accident?"

"Maybe it was an accident—I don't know."

"Patrick, I'll be honest with you. What you say does scare me a little bit. Would you ever...I mean this isn't something like—you wouldn't harm me would you?"

"No, what happened with Teresa...it really was kind of an accident. It's not like—I mean I've never harmed anyone else in my life."

"I just want you to realize that I value my life."

"Like I said, Carol, if you'd like to leave, I'd certainly understand."

"No, I'd rather stay because I can't help you if I leave, but it's just that we kind of have to establish trust in each other. I've known a few violent men in my life, and it seems that once you fall into that cesspool, the cesspool only makes you more violent."

"I suppose it can," I said, "but this thing that happened with Teresa was like a one-time thing. It's not like—if I tell you about it, maybe you'll understand."

She was staring at me in a kind and compassionate way. "Go ahead," she said.

" _This was the person I was then_ ," I said. "It's not the person I am now."

"I understand what you're saying, Patrick. What you're telling me is that you've learned from the past."

"That's true, but nothing can change the fact that a person died because of me."

"How did it happen, Patrick? Or do you not want to talk about that part?"

"No, I'll tell you about it because if I don't, you won't really understand what I'm dealing with. To begin with, I was always kind of jealous about Nick and all the girlfriends he had. When you want something really bad and someone else has it, then it's hard not to think about it all the time. Nick always had what I wanted, and it really annoyed me that he'd find one beautiful woman after another, but then, after he found one, he'd toss her away for what seemed like the flimsiest of reasons. It's hard living without a woman, you know."

Carol smiled, tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Don't take this the wrong way, Patrick, but when you're homeless, the problems that come from living without a mate seem like the problems of the rich and the famous."

I still wanted to back out of it, still wanted to run away from it. If only I hadn't opened my mouth, I might have been able to make it with Carol, but once you've admitted to a woman that you've murdered someone, that's pretty much the end of the relationship. "So what happened?" said Carol. "Did you begin to want Teresa?"

"Kind of, I guess. It wasn't like a real conscious thought. But sometimes...she was around a lot, and I liked her, so it was hard for me not to put two and two together. And I began to think, maybe it was began to hope, that Nick would break up with her and that she and I could start a relationship. That was a totally stupid idea, of course—I mean what are the odds that when your roommate kicks a woman out of his bed that she's going to move over to yours? It might happen with some people, but Teresa would never have gone for something like that. Besides, she had never shown any interest in me sexually. I wish I didn't have to talk about this, Carol—I know you're going to hate me afterwards."

"Patrick," she said, "just think of it this way: We're walking down the road together, and you're carrying a burden that's too heavy to bear. You know it is! Otherwise, you wouldn't have said the things that you've already said. I'm here to help you, but the only way I can do that is if you share the burden with me. I'm not going to hurt you—I'm not going to run out of here and tell anyone what you've said to me. This is totally between you and me."

"But...you know—it's weird. When I'm talking to you, I'm more ashamed of the thoughts I had just before Teresa died than of what I did to bring about her death."

"Why?"

"Because her death really was an accident, but it was caused by the thoughts and feelings that I had about her. It wasn't like I tried to rape her...well, almost."

"Things happen, Patrick—no one is perfect."

"Carol, what I did to Teresa is about as far from perfection as you can get. Anyways, on the day she died, I came back here after I had been visiting my parents because my father was dying of cancer. The cops never knew about this because I told them that after I left my parents, I went to the mall. But I really came back here, and when I got here, Teresa was sitting right where you're sitting now. We'd had a really interesting conversation that morning...it was about the meaning of life. It's so ironic, really. Carol, you don't know how many times I've gone back through my mind and wished that I could go back and change what happened."

"Yes," said Carol, "it's too bad that we're not granted that power. I think just about everyone could use a dose of that medicine."

"This is bad...what I did was so bad. But all these feelings were suddenly stirring up inside of me—it wasn't like any of this was planned. In fact, as I left my parents, I had been thinking that I would go to the mall, but then I changed my mind and decided to come here. That was the first bad thought because the reason I changed my mind was because I was hoping that Teresa might be here, and by the time I walked in, I was beginning to have...it was kind of like almost subconscious sexual thoughts about her. And...so I sat down next to her and began to talk about my father because I wanted her to have sympathy for me. And she did. So I talked some more about the agony that my father was going through and...Teresa—she was such a sweet and innocent and kind woman. _And she died because of a_ _few ugly thoughts that I had_."

"Yes, it is sad, isn't it?" said Carol.

"It's a whole lot more than sad, Carol. I don't think they've invented a word that can describe how I feel now about what I did. And so, at some point, Teresa put her arms around me to comfort me, and when she did, her head was kind of on my shoulder. So I turned...it was too much for me to resist...I think because her body was against mine, and I was getting aroused...so I tried to kiss her...actually did kiss her for a couple of moments, but then she pulled back and gave me this really shocked look and said, "Patrick, what are you doing?" But I was like too far gone to pull back. I just wanted her, wanted any woman, so bad. So this time, I tried to push her back down on the couch with me on top of her, but she fought back, and without even thinking about it...I mean it all happened so suddenly—all I wanted to do was scare her, so I put my hands around her neck. I wasn't going to strangle her or anything—all I was trying to do was scare her, but when I did that, she started to scream, or maybe she was screaming before I put my hands around her neck, and then she made like this violent movement to get away from me and...I was all freaked out and everything because I knew I had gone way, way over the line. So in that moment, the moment that decided her life, I squeezed even harder and she...she jerked her head to the side or something, and I heard this loud snap. And in the next instant, she went totally limp. I must have broken her neck. 'Teresa! Teresa!' I kept yelling. It was like...I can't describe it—maybe like I had broken the most precious thing in the world. But for the first couple of minutes, I thought she was still alive and must have just passed out. I hadn't done that much to her...she couldn't be dead. Finally, I shook her a little bit and kept yelling her name, but she was so...I don't know what it was, but I began to realize that she was dead. _It was an accident—it really was._ "

"I believe you," said Carol. "And the fact you feel so much remorse about it proves your worth as a human being."

"To be honest, Carol, if there's anyone who deserves to be called worthless, it's me. I took another person's life! And she was completely innocent, as innocent as innocent can be. Not that it would have justified what I did, but Teresa had never even remotely hinted to me that she was interested in me sexually. And...even if she hadn't died that day, what I tried to do to her was just...there isn't a word that can even begin to cover it. Despicable is the best one that I can think of. So don't try to cheer me up by saying that I still have a soul or something like that because I am just a despicable, rotten human being."

Suddenly, unexpectedly, Carol began to cry. She wasn't sobbing, but I could see tears running down her cheeks. "Yes, she said, "what you did was despicable, but..."

"But what?"

"But now it's going to be your task in life to help others because that's the only possible way that you can make amends for what you've done. It will take a while, but eventually, you'll come to think of yourself in a better way."

"I doubt it very much."

"So...how come Nick was arrested for her murder? He wasn't here when this happened, was he?"

"No, he's another innocent person whose life I destroyed. As soon as I realized that Teresa was dead—it was easy to tell that she wasn't breathing—I felt an overwhelming sense of panic. I was like a child who had done some horrible thing that had to be covered up or else my father was going to beat the living daylights out of me. All these thoughts were racing through my mind about how I would probably end up being the prime suspect, so I came up with this plan that I hoped would confuse the cops, which I guess it did, but the whole thing backfired and just made everything worse. The way I reasoned it was that if Teresa's body was found downstairs, I'd be considered a suspect, so my best hope was to have her found in the bedroom she shared with Nick. I knew that this would make it seem like Nick had murdered her, but I tried to make Teresa's death look like a suicide by hanging her from a chandelier that was in the bedroom."

"You hung her from the chandelier? That's awful, Patrick."

I was tempted to say that it wasn't nearly as awful as trying to rape her or snapping her neck. Instead, I said, "I told you that I'm a despicable person."

"Have you done anything...I mean have you hurt anybody else since this all happened?"

"No, no, no. Didn't I already tell you that? Believe me, I've learned my lesson when it comes to things like that."

"It's just that...I've never...I've had people tell me about some terrible things that they've done, but nothing can compare to this."

"Carol, I...what can I say? I did one of the most horrible and unjustifiable things that a person could ever do. There's no doubt about that."

"I just can't believe you would hang a person like that—it's so gruesome! How could you even tell if she was really dead?"

"Well, her mouth was closed, so I put my hand under her nose, and I could tell she wasn't breathing because if she had been exhaling, I would have felt it on my hand."

"OK, OK...I just can't imagine someone doing something like that to another human being. It just took me by surprise, that's all. It's not my role to judge you because that's not what this is all about. I've felt for a long time that most, if not all, of our problems would go away if we just tried to help each other. But what happens is that we kind of look at other people fearfully, and when we fear someone, we can't help them anymore. To be honest, some of the things you've said have frightened me, but I guess I have nothing to fear from you. Right?"

I looked at her tear-stained face and said, "Nowadays, I'm way past doing something that would hurt another person."

"But Nick! You're still hurting Nick. He's sitting there on death row because of something that you've done."

"He certainly is."

"Don't you think that you should do something to correct that situation?"

"Yes, I do but..."

"Patrick, you have to stop thinking about yourself so much. A life really hasn't been lived unless it makes another life better. It doesn't matter where you are or who you are or what you're doing--the whole point of life is to help others."

"You really think that's the meaning of life?"

"Of course it is. Haven't you noticed that the people who think life is meaningless are the ones who don't know how to give to others? There's an old saying—into the hands of those who give, the gift is given. And you need to give Nick the gift of freedom."

"I know all that, but it's harder than you think. How would you like to go to prison for what might be the rest of your life? Or maybe they'll even execute me. When you're sitting where you are, it's easy to tell a person to do that. You have to be sitting where I am before you realize what's really involved. It's great to come out with a lot of noble platitudes, but sitting in a jail cell until the day you die is a very heavy commitment. And you have to remember—it's not like I can hope that I'll be acquitted at a trial. The only way I can save Nick is to confess to everything."

"Yes, it's like asking another person to walk through the fire when you know that you won't have to do it yourself. But are we really going to sit here and ask Nick to walk through the fire?"

"No, no—I'll never let him be executed. I couldn't go that far—then I'll have murdered two people."

"But...you're hesitating, aren't you?"

"It's so hard to bring myself to walk into a police station and tell them what happened. Everyone is going to hate me. Imagine what Nick will think."

"I think he'll be happy to get off death row," said Carol.

"I'm sure he will, but he's not going to be happy that his best friend murdered his girlfriend and then sat by and watched as he got sent up the river to death row."

"You're thinking about yourself too much, Patrick. Don't worry about what Nick will think of you—that's selfish. Just imagine the look on his face when they tell him that he's being released from prison."

"The look I see on his face is the one when they tell him what I did."

"Patrick, you can't expect to murder someone and not pay some kind of price. What goes around does come around in some fashion or another. And when you think about spending the rest of your life in prison or being put on death row, you're just obsessing over the price you have to pay. The root of all this was an unwillingness or an inability to help other people. All you could think of was taking, and in the end, you took Teresa's life. But now you have a chance at redemption, Patrick. You can't bring Teresa back, but you can give Nick his life back."

Carol reached over and took both my hands in hers and said, "Let our lives be changed from this day forth. Before, we were blinded by our self-centered desires and made many mistakes, but now, our only desire is to give our lives in the service of others."

I stared at her, but her head was lowered as she gazed at her hands. In another few seconds, I felt her tears as they dropped down onto my hands. Slowly, she looked up at me and said, "They're tears of mercy, Patrick--tears of mercy for you."

## CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

It wasn't really like Carol's words changed my mind about anything. I know I'm a despicable scoundrel, but I'm not so despicable that I would have let Nick be put to death. That was beyond even my warped set of values. But as I lay in bed that night, I spent hours thinking about what it would be like to spend the rest of my life in prison. Carol could talk all she wanted to about living a life of giving, but spending my whole life in prison...that was giving up just about everything except the ability to breathe. And the people I would have to associate with...

Of course, I might be thinking too optimistically—maybe the prosecutor would be so infuriated with me that he'd go for the death penalty. I knew enough about the law to know that, at worst, I should only be charged with second degree murder, which meant I might get out of prison in thirty years. Great! But I didn't have a good feeling about it—instinctively, I knew there was a chance that I could end up on death row. Oh, those final days! With the clock ticking remorselessly away as you counted down the weeks, then the days, then the hours, then the minutes, then the seconds that you had left before they injected you with the drugs that would put an end to your life. Just another sorry critter who made a lot of bad choices and ended up on the wrong end of it all.

_Why had it happened?_ Honest to God—I never meant to cause Teresa any harm. I guess...I mean...would I really have gone through with it and raped her? I've thought about that one a lot because...just because. I don't expect anyone else to understand this, but I have to make some sense of it for myself. I'll never really know the answer to my question, but I like to think I wouldn't have gone so far as to rape Teresa. I think I would have come to my senses in time, but maybe I'm just trying to prop myself up so that I have some kind of thing to stand on. But regardless of what I would or wouldn't have done, Teresa's death was just a colossal piece of bad luck for both her and myself. People don't usually die when...maybe I didn't realize how strong a grip I had on her neck—it must have been stronger than I imagined. At that moment, everything was all mixed up with my sexual passion and aggression, so...it's probably stupid of me to try and justify, even a little bit, what happened. I did it, so I should own up to it.

But still...the rest of my life in a jail cell? That's a lot of giving.

Carol had gotten a job as a dishwasher a couple of days after our long conversation, and I noticed, or maybe imagined, that she seemed to be wary of me. I wonder why. (That's a joke.) When the guy you're living with admits to attempting to rape a woman and she dies in the attempt, it would be enough to make anyone fearful. In fact, I was really surprised that she hadn't disappeared.

As I floated around like a zombie in limbo, time began to pass, and about a week later, Carol and I went out for a walk and ended up on the park bench where we had talked before—it was like our favorite bench because it gave us a good view of the stars. During all this time, we hadn't mentioned my "little" indiscretion with Teresa, but there was no doubt that it hung like a threatening cloud around us. We had been silent for a couple of minutes when Teresa—I meant to say Carol--said, in a low, barely audible voice, "So what are you going to do?"

Naturally, I knew what Carol was talking about, but I didn't really want to reply because it seemed like anything I said would just be drawing me into the quicksand, the quicksand of a lifetime in prison.

"All this time, Nick is suffering." Carol's voice didn't have any judgment in it—it seemed more soothing than anything.

I picked up a stick that was on the ground near the bench and began to peel the bark off it. What a dismal life! Nothing but a bunch of atrocious choices. I'd never thought of suicide before, but over the last month, it had occurred to me a couple of times. But even that option wasn't any good because if I did take my own life and left a note where I took responsibility for Teresa's death, nobody would believe it. They'd just think that I was trying to leverage my suicide into Nick's get-out-of-jail ticket.

Carol put her hand on my arm and said, "I know it's really difficult for you, Patrick. That's why I haven't said anything, but you can't let it linger too long. It's not only Nick who is suffering--look how much you're suffering. You have to ask yourself if it's worth living this way."

"You're right," I said. "I'm just procrastinating. It's like I keep thinking that tomorrow, I'll get a lawyer and tell him everything. And then I begin to realize that if I do that, this will be the last day of my life that I won't spend in a prison cell. No more walking outdoors, no more chance of leading a normal life, no more chance of having a relationship with someone, no more nothing."

"You can still have relationships while you're in jail."

"Oh sure, and what great relationships they'll be."

"Would it help you to know that you could have a relationship with me?"

"Carol..." I was still peeling the wood off the branch—by now, it was almost totally bare.

"What?" she said.

"You can't really have much of a relationship with a person when the guy is stuck in a jail cell for the next umpteen years."

"I'm not so sure about that, Patrick. Don't they have conjugal rights in this state?"

I looked at her in amazement. "What are you talking about?"

She avoided my gaze and said, "It would be something that I would consider."

"Carol...that's...I don't know what to say. I mean—why? Are you trying to bribe me or something?"

"Patrick, what a mean thing to say—you know me better than that. It's just...listen, we're walking down the path, the path of life, together right now. You and I, as long as you let me, are in this together. It's not just your problem—it's our problem. I could never respect a man who let his best friend be put to death, but I could really respect a man who admitted to his mistakes and took the punishment he deserved—no matter how hard that punishment might be. But if you do the right thing, I'm going to continue to walk down the path of life with you."

"But...things can happen. You've got a whole life to lead. I know you're sincere in what you say, but..."

"You're going to need a friend to get through this, Patrick. I don't think you can do it alone, but I think together we can."

"But how can I be sure—I know that's a selfish thing to say, but how can I be sure?"

"Sure of me?"

"Yes."

Carol thought about this for a few seconds before she said, "Nothing is ever guaranteed, but...that's the way I feel now."

"Wouldn't you get tired of me or wouldn't you want to lead a normal life with someone else some day?"

"I'm not a bargain hunter, Patrick. And neither am I someone who is always looking around and thinking that the grass is greener somewhere else."

In spite of myself, I had to laugh. "No," I said, "my grass isn't very green at all. More like a scorched brown."

"But we can make it greener, Patrick," said Carol with a kind of subtle enthusiasm to her voice. "I know you've hit rock bottom, and look at me! I'm sleeping on a couch in an apartment where the guy murdered a woman. So in some ways, we're really suited for each other. Believe me, I could never go for some rich guy who had it all. In case you haven't noticed, material possessions don't mean anything to me."

"So we would like be...if we wanted to have conjugal rights, we'd have to be married."

"I suppose we would—we can do that while you're in prison."

"It's such a big step," I said. "Once, I turn myself in, there's no going back."

"Look at it this way," said Carol. "Even if I am some nefarious, scheming woman, you'd still be doing the right thing if you freed Nick from death row. But in all honesty, have I ever given you a reason to suspect that I'm a nefarious, scheming woman?"

"No...you seem more like...I know it doesn't sound like a compliment, but you seem plain and simple to me."

"Like what you see is what you get?"

"Something like that."

She tapped me on the shoulder and said, "Patrick, if you let me, I'll be your anchor, and I'll see you through this."

I started to cry a little bit—here, in a roundabout and kind of awful way, was the love that I had always been seeking from a woman. "OK," I said, "tomorrow morning, I'll go see a lawyer."

The legal machinations were more complicated than I expected. To begin with, Carol and I had a minor argument on what to do with my inheritance money. She wanted me to use it on a high-priced lawyer, while I wanted to get a cheap attorney and give almost all my money to Carol so that she could use it as a kind of jumping-off point for her new life. Carol thought that the police might be able to trace my inheritance money back to her, and if they did, that would only be another black mark against me. We finally decided that no one would miss five thousand out of the fifty thousand of my inheritance, and early the next morning, she opened up a bank account and put the five thousand dollars into it.

I then spent the rest of the day researching lawyers on the internet, and after making about a dozen phone calls, I ended up choosing the only one I could find who had an open space on his schedule within the next couple of days—his name was Terry Ring. In fact, when I told him that I knew who had murdered Teresa Hamblin and that it wasn't Nick, he offered to see me that evening around seven o'clock.

As Carol waited in the outer office, I was shown into a large room that was presided over by a huge desk that was littered with piles of folders. Terry came up to me, shook my hand, and after he took a seat behind his desk while I sat in a fancy wooden chair that was placed slightly to the right side of the desk, he said, "I'm familiar with the Teresa Hamblin case, Patrick. I thought it was interesting because the evidence, at least from what I could gather, was a bit on the thin side."

"Yes," I said, "it certainly was."

"You said that you know something about the case that might be important?"

"It's definitely important. I know who murdered Teresa, and it wasn't Nick Flaherty—he didn't have anything to do with it at all."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I was the one who caused her death."

Up to this point, Terry hadn't really been acting like he was paying attention, but now, he looked at me carefully. It was obvious that he was surprised, but before he said anything, he took out a tape recorder and put it on his desk. "Patrick, I think it would be best for both you and me if I tape this conversation. Bear in mind that since you have come to me seeking counsel, I am not allowed to share this tape with anyone except any lawyer that I might choose to help with your defense. Is that agreeable to you?"

"I don't mind, but I don't know if I have anywhere near enough money to pay you, so I think we should talk about that first."

"Let me call the shots on that one, Patrick. But before I can do that, I need to know how it came about that you murdered Teresa."

From here, I told Terry pretty much everything that I had told Carol on the night when I confessed to my awful deed. I was especially careful to phrase the pseudo-rape in a way that would be most favorable to myself. "It wasn't like I wanted to rape her, Terry, although I guess many people or even the law might look at it that way. When it happened...this was all happening with my roommate's girlfriend, and if she wasn't going to let me have sex with her, then I at least wanted her to promise that she wouldn't tell Nick. But she was screaming and thrashing around, so I put my hands around her neck to get her to keep quiet for a few seconds. Maybe, if she let me, I could apologize, but she became...it was like she was overwhelmed with panic, and when she jerked her head to one side to try and free herself from my grip, that's when I heard something snap."

After that kind of confusing admission, which had even me wondering, I went on to describe how I had been wearing gloves when I dragged Teresa up the stairs and staged the scene in the bedroom to make it look like a suicide. There was also one point that I hadn't talked about with Carol—just after I had strung Teresa up from the chandelier, the downstairs door opened. I just about had a heart attack because I figured it was Nick, but then, almost immediately, I heard the door close and the person leave. I went over to a window and saw that the person who had been in the apartment was a blond woman. She had only gone out to her car to get something, but when she returned, I could see her face and figured that it must be Jana because I remembered that Nick had said that she was a gorgeous blond. I couldn't figure out what was going on—I knew we were all supposed to meet downtown at five-fifteen, but at that point, I didn't know that Nick had invited the two of them to hook up at the apartment. Minutes passed, and during that time, I crept down the hallway to my bedroom and left the door open a crack so that I could hear someone if they started up the stairs. I made up my mind that if that happened, I'd have to jump from my second story window—if I hung by my hands, it would only be a six or seven-foot drop.

About five minutes later Everett arrived, and after he and Jana spent a few minutes talking with each other, they both left. I went back to Nick's room, the one where the corpse was hanging, and watched them leave in Jana's car. That was enough for me—I couldn't get out of there fast enough. But as I was about to close the front door, it occurred to me that it might be a good idea to leave the front-door key in the lock. The key and the staged suicide didn't go together, of course, but I figured that if the cops didn't go for the suicide and ruled that Teresa had been murdered, the key in the lock would help Nick. I wasn't really trying to frame Nick when I hung Teresa in their bedroom—for one thing, there was only one other chandelier in the apartment, and that was in my room. So the choice was obvious, but like I said, if the cops determined that Teresa was murdered, then the key might be Nick's salvation. It wasn't, but that was my idea when I left the key in the lock of the front door.

Terry listened to all this impassively until I was finished. "And so," he said, "you're planning on turning yourself in?"

"That's the plan."

"I suppose you don't have much choice—not with your best friend on death row."

"I know that it took me a long time to come around to doing this, but at least I'm finally doing it. Are you willing to represent me?"

"I guess so," he said with a laugh that seemed kind of peculiar under the circumstances. "But you'll need to come up with ten grand to begin with and probably another fifteen or twenty grand later on."

"I can do that—I received an inheritance not so long ago. What do you think they'll do to me?"

"Well, that's the whole thing, isn't it? Technically, if what you told me is true, then there's a possibility that you could only be charged with manslaughter. The key issue for you is whether Teresa died while you were attempting to rape her. In that case, it doesn't matter whether you had any intention to murder her—you would be charged with first degree murder."

"Even if I had absolutely no intention of harming her, much less murdering her?"

"That's correct—it's called felony murder, and if you're charged with that, you could receive the death penalty. In fact, given that Nick was sentenced to death, it's a real possibility that you might be too. However, from what you've told me, you didn't have sexual intercourse with her, did you?"

"No!"

"Not even a little bit?"

"Terry, if I had, they would have found my semen, but the only semen they found was Nick's."

"Correct me if I'm wrong, Patrick, but if my memory is accurate, Nick was never charged with rape."

"No, they had consensual sex."

"And wasn't there something about her bring pregnant?"

"Yes, she was only two or three months along."

"This case could actually be very difficult, Patrick. I assume if the prosecutor offered you a deal for manslaughter, you'd take it?"

"Of course."

"What about second degree murder?"

"I don't know—I might have to take it if...what do you think?"

"I'd be surprised if we could do any better than second degree murder, and it's possible that we might not even get that. But if we are offered second degree murder, there's a lot of variances in the sentences that can be applied—worst case is life in prison without any possibility of parole and best case is twenty years to life, which means you'd have to serve two thirds of the twenty years."

"What's the most common sentence for second degree murder?"

"Usually, it's thirty to life. How old are you?"

"Twenty-seven."

"So with thirty to life, you'd be out of prison when you were forty-seven, but I have to warn you that thirty to life seems optimistic to me. If I had to guess right now, I'd say forty to life is about the best that you could do, which means that you'd be out of prison when you were fifty-four."

"Man," I said, "that's a long time."

"It sure is," said Terry. "I won't try to kid you, Patrick. You're up against some difficult odds. If this murder had happened without any of the things that are now attached to it, you'd probably get twenty years to life. But Teresa being pregnant, even though you didn't know about it, is kind of devastating for the public relations side of the case. And a lot of the sentences that are handed down nowadays are just public relations sentences. No judge wants to open the paper the day after he sentences you and have to read something like: Rapist, murderer, and baby killer let off with a twenty-year sentence. However, that's not the only problem you're facing: It's been eight months now since Teresa died and where have you been as your best friend was convicted of murder, sentenced to death by lethal injection, and is now on death row? That's going to be a really hard one to talk around, Patrick. Really hard."

"So it's hopeless? I mean—am I going to get sentenced to death?"

"I doubt it, but you're going to have to do exactly what I tell you, and I may need even more money than what I talked about before."

"OK—I can probably do that. I'm not a millionaire, but...how much do you think you're going to need for the whole thing?"

"It may be as much as fifty grand," said Terry.

"Can we make it forty? I don't know if I can come up with the last ten."

"OK—here's what we'll do. You give me twenty grand tomorrow morning, and we'll put the other twenty into an escrow account—that means neither of us can touch it until your case has been decided, at which point the money reverts to me. You have the cash on hand, right?"

"Yes—tomorrow morning, I'll bring you over two checks, each of them for twenty thousand."

"OK, we're in business. Meet me here at nine, and I'll deposit my check and set up the escrow account. After that, we'll come back here because there are a number of things that I need to impress on you."

## CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The next morning, after getting all the financial stuff squared away, Terry and I went back to his office. We spent about fifteen minutes drinking coffee in a small break room while he chatted me up—it was obvious that he was trying to discover what kind of person I was by asking me a lot of questions about sports, politics, and the modern scene, along with what my interests were. These were harmless enough questions, so I answered them honestly.

Back in his office, we got down to brass tacks. "As I told you yesterday, Patrick, your fate is mostly going to depend on whether you tried to rape Teresa. It's certainly to your benefit that your semen was not found on her, but...OK, I'm getting ahead of myself. In a case like this where you're pleading guilty, there almost undoubtedly won't be a jury trial to determine the sentence—the only circumstance where that would occur is if the prosecutor seeks the death penalty. If that were to happen, it would be to our advantage to have a jury determine the sentence because in this state, the judge can reduce a death penalty sentence—so that would give us two chances to avoid the death penalty. But my preferred option is this: If the prosecutor will agree to take the death penalty off the table, then I think it will be to our advantage to let the judge determine the sentence. Are you following me so far?"

"You think a judge would be more lenient than a jury?"

"I do—a jury is much more likely to be swayed by the fact that Teresa was pregnant, and also, your failure to report what you did while your best friend sat on death row will hardly work in your favor. But a judge, hopefully, will be more interested in the law, and the law is fairly clear in this case. If the judge believes that you were attempting to rape Teresa and that she died while you were attempting to rape her, then that's called felony murder. In other words, the murder was committed during the commission of a felony—in this case, rape. If he determines that you're guilty of felony murder, you may very well spend the rest of your life in jail, and if you don't, your sentence will be a very long one—like sixty years to life, which means you'd have to serve forty years."

Terry leaned forward and stared at me intently. "Y _our fate depends on convincing people that you weren't trying to rape her._ Now here's what I want you to do, Patrick. Go home and think this over for a day and come back here tomorrow at three, and what I want you to do when you come back is to convince me that you weren't trying to rape her. As it stands now, I'm not convinced, and if I'm not convinced, the judge will never be. Please bear in mind that I'm not interested in the truth of what you're telling me. If it is the truth, then so much the better, but the essential point is that what you tell me can't possibly be disproved by any physical evidence. You're absolutely positive, for instance, that you wore gloves from the time you began to drag her upstairs until the time you left the house—and this would include placing the key in the door?"

"Yes, I'm positive."

"OK, so it's up to you to come up with a believable story, and when I say 'story,' I don't necessarily mean it's a false story. I can help you with this story, but I need to hear it from you first. So I'll see you tomorrow at three."

That night, I talked to Carol about everything that Terry had told me. She considered it carefully before she said anything. "I think we have to sort through this a little bit, Patrick. Actually, I've never really been quite clear what you feel about this. Were you trying to rape her? Wait!" she said, before I could say anything. "You're not talking to your lawyer here, and I think you're probably afraid to tell me the truth, if the truth is that you were trying to rape her. Rape is a disgusting act for which there is no excuse, but as I've told you many times, we're on this road together, and I'll stay on this road with you as long as you treat me respectfully. After all, I've accepted the fact that you murdered a woman, but that doesn't mean I accept the person you were then. Wouldn't you say that you've changed a lot since the day Teresa died?"

"Oh yes—definitely."

"Do you think you would ever do something like that again?"

"No, never."

"Why not?"

"Carol, the moment I realized that Teresa was dead, everything inside me changed. I just felt like...evil. But meeting you has helped me to lessen that feeling."

"OK—so this is not a time for us to play around with words, Patrick. Were you trying to rape her?"

"Carol, in all honesty, it's one of those things that's difficult to answer with a yes or a no because it depends how you look on it and what your definition of rape is. First of all, I certainly had no intent to rape Teresa when I came home that afternoon—in fact, I didn't even think that she would be there. But then, when I was sitting next to her on the couch telling her about all the struggles my father was going through and she leaned over towards me and hugged me—that was when everything changed. I mean, I could feel the whole upper half of her body, and also, one of her legs was pressed against mine. And it was like...it was like a dam inside of me burst. I wanted her so bad at that moment, and I was holding her in my arms while my mind began to race with all sorts of sexual feelings."

I stopped and stared at the floor for a few seconds before I looked up at Carol and said, "This is so hard for me to talk about—how would you feel if you were telling someone about the worst thing that you had ever done in your life?"

"Patrick, this is the last thing in your life that we don't want to share. This, among all things, is what we have to share. I know it's gruesome and ugly, but we, you and I and all people, can't go through life attempting to carry our burdens of life alone. You can do that with a trivial incident, but if you don't share this burden with me—this incredibly monstrous burden—then it will break you. I only ask you to tell me the truth because if you tell me a fiction, then I'll be sharing a fictitious burden with you, and that has no meaning."

"I suppose what you say makes sense, but...OK, so while Teresa and I were hugging each other, I was able to move her head off my shoulder so that it was facing mine. She undoubtedly thought I was going to say something, but instead, I tried to kiss her. She immediately moved back, but I kept my lips pressed to hers until she jerked her head back. 'What are you doing, Patrick? No!'"

"Yes," said Carol, in a soft, somewhat dejected tone, "she did say no."

"But I wasn't taking no for an answer. I still had my arms around her, and I began to push her back on the couch. She wasn't anywhere near as strong as me, and I could see that she was frightened because at that point, I was like a crazed man."

"Why didn't you stop when she said no?" said Carol.

"The best way I can say it is that I heard her but didn't hear her. Somehow, I just considered what she said as being irrelevant because I was so obsessed with doing what I wanted to do."

"Which was what?" said Carol.

"Getting her to say yes, or...I knew she would never say yes, but I thought she might decide to give in—not out of fear or anything but just because she might, deep down, want to."

"Oh, Patrick—that's really bad. So what happened next?"

"She started to scream, and it wasn't...it was a loud, dramatic, piercing scream. Immediately, I put my hands around her neck, and if we're really going into every last detail about this, my intention was just to get her to stop screaming. That's all. And I think this is where both the judgment and the mercy come down. I definitely—absolutely--wasn't trying to kill her, but was I still hoping to force her into a sexual encounter? This is the key moment, Carol—at least as far as my intention goes. What was I thinking in that instant? I've thought about this a lot—more than you can imagine. I believe the kind of thought I had was...her screams had really affected me, so I think—all this was happening so fast—I think that I just wanted her to stop screaming and that when that happened, I could try and calm her down. And so I think when she started to scream, I gave up on the idea of having sex with her because her screams made it so obvious that when she had said no, she really meant no."

"Yes," said Carol, "it seems like her screams punctured your consciousness."

"I guess you could say that, but...my hands must have—I must have been squeezing her throat with a lot more force than I imagined. Must have. Because when I relive those next few moments, I can still feel my hands on her neck, but it doesn't feel like I'm hardly squeezing at all."

"She had stopped screaming?"

"Kind of—although she was making an odd noise—like gurgling, and then, completely unexpectedly, she lurched away from me. And when I say lurched, it was like a very violent lurch, and that's when I heard her neck snap. It was like a loud crack, and in the next instant, she fell backwards onto the couch."

"And so you assumed she was dead?"

"Carol, she was basically dead. I knew it—I could feel it. A few months ago, I looked this all up on the internet because it seemed impossible to me that a person could die so easily. But what happens...if your neck—actually, it's not your neck but your spinal column—if it's broken in the right place, you almost immediately stop breathing because it's like you've cut the electrical wires that keep your heart beating, and also it paralyzes your lungs. But I think what you're asking me is this: Was I really sure that Teresa was dead when I hung her from the chandelier."

"Were you?"

"Yes! Carol, more than anything, I wanted her to be alive. _More than anything_. But when I put my hand under her nose, there was nothing. Believe me, she was dead, and I was in panic mode as I tried to cover up what I did."

"This is going to be a really difficult thing for you, Patrick. This isn't something that you can get over in a year or two."

"For me, it's the nightmare that never ends—I'll tell you that. No matter what I do, Teresa is never coming back. And if you think that all my explanations for how she died mean much of anything to me, you're wrong. I realize they're just excuses. I'm so afraid that you're going to leave me."

"Patrick, it isn't going to do you any good to think that way."

"But why would you ever want to spend time with me once they put me in my jail cell? I know you like to give, but there are plenty of other people who are more deserving of your gifts. Don't try and deny it—I'm really kind of like the bottom of the barrel."

"Maybe that's why I like you—have you ever thought of that?"

"That doesn't make any sense, Carol."

"You know, when I was young—like fifteen—I came to the conclusion that every life would have easy times and hard times. And I thought it would be better to have the hard times at the beginning and the easy times at the end. Being homeless has been one of my hard times and meeting you has been another one of my hard times."

"But it's going to be hard times for us for a long, long time—perhaps until the day we die."

"You're completely forgetting something, Patrick."

"What's that?"

"You're forgetting that I've placed a lot of my hopes and dreams in you, and the reason I've done that is because I think you have the potential to be a lot better person than what you've shown so far. You're down right now—way down—but I think, with my help, you can do something with your life. And if you're worried about what good this will all do me, you still haven't understood that giving helps the giver at least as much as it does the receiver. Into the hands of those who give, the gift is given. So I just thank my lucky stars that I have someone I can give my love to. And!" she said with a smile, "it's beginning to look like I won't have to worry about you straying from the reservation."

Could a person really base their whole life on such idealistic notions? Carol reminded me somewhat of a doctor I had read about who had a very successful and lucrative practice in North Carolina but gave it all up to be a doctor in one of the poorest and most disease infested areas of Africa. Not much money there! When asked why he had done such a "peculiar" thing, he said, "It seemed like a truly religious thing to do. Not like what they talk about in churches, but rather, the giving of your life to those in need."

## CHAPTER NINETEEN

When I met with Terry the following afternoon, I repeated what I had told Carol the night before, but Terry didn't think that was anywhere near good enough. "It's too complicated and graphic, Patrick, and we really have to eliminate the parts where you were kissing her and trying to push her onto her back. And as for her saying no, that's completely out. I appreciate that you're trying to be truthful, but you need to understand the situation. This is a difficult game that we're playing—look, I think your basic point is that you weren't trying to rape her. Would you agree to that?"

"Yes...I guess so."

Terry laughed. "You're such a slow learner, Patrick. The judge will fall in love with that one: 'I don't think I was trying to rape her, but then again, maybe I was.'"

I was annoyed that Terry had laughed at me when all I had been trying to do was tell him the truth. "Patrick, from what you've told me, when you entered the apartment that afternoon, you had no intention of raping her. Correct?"

"That's right," I said.

"And even when she was hugging you, you had no intention of raping her. Correct?"

"Yes, that's true."

"But then, when she began to kiss you, it—"

"She didn't begin to kiss me—it was the other way around."

Terry slammed his hand down on his desk and said, "Will you please come down from your little moral cloud. Now listen to me because years of your life are going to depend on this. When Teresa began to kiss you, it was only natural for you to think that she was interested in having a sexual relationship with you. And also, when you began the conversation with her on the couch, that conversation was not about your father and his illness; rather, the conversation was about how dissatisfied Teresa was with Nick. Now, before I go on, please repeat what I just said back to me in your own words."

I could see how much better this was for me than what I had just told him, so I repeated his version back to him, but he wasn't all that happy about it. "Patrick, you've got to say this as if you mean it. You sound like a robot with a speech difficulty. God's sake, man—what are you trying to do? Get yourself locked away for the rest of your life because you're unwilling to say your lines with some conviction?"

It took me three more repetitions before Terry expressed some meager satisfaction with my performance. "OK, Patrick, we'll move on. The next step is what you're going to say after you get to the part where she began to kiss you. One thing you will not do under any circumstances is mention that you began to push her onto her back. Say that and you'll tack at least ten years onto your sentence. What you're going to say is that she suddenly pulled back from you and that when you tried to kiss her again, she at first let you kiss her, but then she pulled back and told you that she was terrified of what Nick might do to her if he caught the two of you together. Repeat please."

Patrick the parrot did as he was told, and it only took me two repetitions to gain Terry's approval. "Alright," he said, "now we come to the key part. I know you probably won't like this, but it's necessary for us to portray Teresa as a somewhat neurotic and high-strung woman. So what you're going to say next is that when you began to kiss her again, she suddenly broke away from you and started to scream. And to you, right then, it made no sense—the kisses had all been consensual, and it was difficult for you to understand how a person could go from kissing you to screaming at you in a matter of seconds. You became frightened—the neighbors might hear. And what had you done? All you'd been doing was kissing a woman who wanted to be kissed. But now, you might get into real trouble because if the neighbors heard her screams and told Nick, who knows what might have happened? So you—all you were trying to do was to get her to stop screaming, and once she did that, you were going to back right out of that apartment. Repeat please."

This time—I guess because the message was longer and didn't bear much relation to reality—it took me four times to get it right. "OK, Patrick, from here on, you can pretty much follow what actually happened, what with the snapping of her spinal cord and all—you'll just want to make sure you stress the fact that she moved very suddenly and forcefully to get away from you. So suddenly and forcefully and unexpectedly that you had no time to loosen your grip on her.

"The last thing we have to consider is the aftermath. The first thing you'll need to do is make a convincing case that Teresa was dead before you hung her from the chandelier. So what you'll say is that you found a small mirror and placed it under her nose, and when it didn't fog up, you knew, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she was dead. If anybody wants to know where you got the mirror from, say that you found it in the bathroom. And, of course, you can say that you checked for a pulse but couldn't find one. Also, you'll definitely have to stress that once you realized Teresa was dead, you completely panicked—that certainly isn't a lie."

"OK," I said, without a great deal of enthusiasm. It was discouraging to me that on top of everything else, I now had to be force fed lies in order that I might be partially saved from the wheels of justice.

"What's the matter?" said Terry. "You look like a whipped puppy dog."

Thanks for the compliment, I thought. It's alright to be sitting where you are and making a lot of snide remarks about me, but the fact is that a person in my position would have to be a sociopath to be feeling good about himself. "I don't know," I said. "Sometimes, I kind of feel like I deserve to spend the rest of my life in prison because of what I did to Teresa."

"Listen to me, Patrick. After you've been in prison for a couple of months or maybe just a couple of days, you won't be talking about how you'd like to spend the rest of your life there. Let me explain something to you that might help you. Personally, I don't think you had any intention of raping Teresa—neither when you first came into the house nor when you were kissing her. Teresa's death was an accident. Wouldn't you agree with that?"

"Yes, you're right about that. I never intended to even harm her, much less kill her."

"So that's what we have to convey to the judge, but he isn't like some father figure who can be swayed by your attempts to produce a truthful account of what happened. He'll just flip out and send you up the river if you say certain things to him. Like, for instance, how Teresa said no at one point—that's the textbook definition of rape. And so, if he has that to fall back on, he'll feel free to sentence you to a hundred years in prison. The trick is to convey the truth of the matter to him, and the truth is that you weren't intending to rape her, and you certainly weren't intending to kill her. But to convey that to him, you are going to have to avoid certain things, embellish other things, and create a kind of story that while it may contain factual inaccuracies, maintains the essential truth of the narrative. Do you understand what I'm talking about?"

"Sort of."

"Don't you want the judge to come to a fair decision?"

"I guess so, but I don't know what a fair decision is in this case."

"Actually," said Terry, "I think you're only guilty of manslaughter—that's the usual charge when someone dies as a result of the reckless actions of another, provided that the one who caused the death had no intention of causing that death. Unfortunately, in your case, there are way too many other things that complicate your chances of being paroled from prison within the next twenty years. First, the prosecutor already has someone on death row for the murder, and he's hardly going to be in a mood to let someone off with a comparatively light sentence. Second, Teresa was pregnant; third, Teresa died while you were engaged in some kind of sexual dispute; fourth, you tried to frame your best friend for the murder; and fifth, it took you eight months to come forward and admit to what you did.

"Now, in actuality, four of these five things should be completely meaningless when it comes to the sentence that ought to be handed down to you. Sure, maybe the judge could tack on a year because you obstructed justice by not revealing your role in the crime, but the only one of the five things I mentioned that has any real relevance is the fact that you may have been, in the judge's eyes, trying to rape Teresa. After all, it isn't every day that a man puts his hands around a woman's throat. So that is a real factor, and you have to be very convincing when you're questioned by the police about what went on just before Teresa died. It would help if you would cry when that time came. The more you cry, the better. And it's perfectly alright for you to say how horrible you've felt about Teresa's death. Do it up, man! Years of your life depend on it because it's going to be a tough sell since all those other factors that I mentioned are going to hang like a dark cloud over your head. Got it?"

"Alright," I said. "I'll do the best that I can--I understand how much is riding on it."

Shortly later, just before I left the office, Terry typed into his computer all of his verbal instructions to me and then printed the document out. After handing it to me, he said, "You'll need to memorize your lines well, Patrick. So practice this over and over again tonight. Please bring this document back to me at ten o'clock tomorrow morning, and then, from here, we'll be going to the police station. Enjoy your night—it will be many, many years before you have another one like it."

"Are you going to be with me when I give my statement to the police?"

"Yes, and if I think you're performing poorly, I'll stop the interview."

"OK, I think that's a good idea."

## CHAPTER TWENTY

When I got back to the apartment and told Carol about my conversation with Terry, I asked her what she thought about the morality of the whole thing. After all, I said, I was basically smearing Teresa by claiming that she was the one who initiated the kiss that led up to the whole tragedy. There was no doubt that was a lie.

"Yes, I was wondering about that," said Carol. "Personally, I think that's going too far. Teresa's family will undoubtedly attend the sentencing hearing, and you have to take that into consideration. I can understand the part where you leave out where she said no, but saying that she initiated the sexual conduct seems wrong to me. I also don't like the part where you've changed your story about what you were talking about just before it happened."

"You mean where I'm claiming that she was upset with Nick?"

"That's right. I've always thought it's dangerous to start creating lies because lies just don't have the same emotional conviction and impact as truth, and after a while it begins to show."

"The problem is that the truth will land me in jail for the rest of my life, or if everything goes wrong and the judge is some kind of self-appointed avenger, I could end up on death row."

"Maybe we can think of another way of explaining what you did—the main thing to me is that Teresa shouldn't be blamed for what happened."

"OK, but what's the other version? The whole problem with this is the sexual aspect of it—I know in my heart that I never meant to harm her physically, but I can't honestly say what I intended to do when I started to push her back on the couch. At that point, most people would say that I was intending to rape her, but to me, I think I wanted to convince her."

"Convince her?" said Carol, with doubt in her voice.

"Convince her that I really wanted to go through with it; that I wasn't just playing around; that I really did want to make love to her. But the more I think about it...I'm just about positive that I wouldn't have done anything like try to rip her clothes off or anything. In other words, if she had continued to resist, I would have backed off. I know that sounds bad, and it is bad, but that happens fairly frequently between men and women."

"I've had that happen a couple of times to me," said Carol. "I had to kind of fight the guy off of me, but after I did that, he backed down. Of course, there was another time where the guy didn't back down."

"And you were raped?" I said.

"Yes...let's not talk about that, Patrick. But I do believe you, and it's a good point that you're making—you were trying to coerce her into your point of view, but I don't think you would have gone on to rape her."

"It's such a fine line," I said. "And the whole thing...I mean if she hadn't died because of this coercion or whatever you want to call it—and if that's all it was—then nothing would have come of it except that I would have had to issue some kind of massive apology to Teresa. But she probably would have told Nick anyways, and then there would have been this big scene, but eventually everything would have blown over. But she died! And so this coercion thing turns into the hub of the wheel and everything else revolves around it."

We sat for a couple of minutes in silence—it was truly a bleak scene. Not only was I going to prison for maybe the rest of my life, but it looked like the best I could come up with was that while I hadn't been intending to rape Teresa, I had tried to coerce her into something that she had definitely not wanted to do. And that "something" was not about a trivial thing like which movie we should watch on TV; rather, this "something" was about whether Teresa should allow me to strip her naked and force myself into her body. In the end, I thought to myself, her death stood as a monument to my lust, selfishness, and stupidity, and now I was sitting here with another woman as I tried to figure a way to weasel out of it.

Carol didn't help my mood when she said, "If only you hadn't put your hands around her throat."

You're telling me? Yes, that was the beginning of the final act in the fatal chain reaction. Yes, that was the moment when my life began to end...the gloomy silence persisted—neither one of us could think of a thing to say. Finally, I said, "My life is ruined, Carol. But as long as we're talking about this, how many years do you think I should spend in prison for what I did to Teresa?"

"Oh, I don't know...twenty maybe."

If even Carol thought I should spend twenty years in prison, what was some blue-suit, black-robed judge going to think? Two hundred years? Don't laugh—there have been longer prison sentences handed out than that.

"I think I'm going to tell the cops the truth," I said. "The problem with Terry's version is that it isn't all that much better than mine. I agree with both you and him that it's better to leave some things out—that's just common sense. But there's really no innocent explanation for putting my hands around her throat. I kind of have an explanation—it's true that I just wanted her to stop screaming, but the reason she was screaming was that she had become afraid that I was going to rape her. And that wasn't an unreasonable fear. I mean there's just no real way to explain why my hands were wrapped around her throat with such force that I ended up killing her."

"No, I suppose there isn't," said Carol.

"One thing I've been thinking of is a suggestion that Terry gave me. What he said is that I should try to cry while I was describing to the cops how she died. The problem is that I don't know if I can cry on demand."

"Onions help," said Carol, with a faint smile.

"No, I'm serious," I said. "Because that would be me being really truthful."

"Oh, I get it," said Carol. "Yes, I think that's a good idea. It's hard for people to resist tears, or at least it's a lot harder to resist tears than it is to resist some liar who isn't willing to face the facts."

"Let's go look it up on the internet," I said. "They've probably got instructions on how to cry."

After I typed in How to Make Yourself Cry, there were all sorts of web pages that came up, along with a number of links to YouTube videos where various people, mostly actresses, demonstrated their own particular crying technique. The idea that appealed to me the most was a combination of thinking about something that made you sad, which certainly wouldn't be difficult for me, and then, interestingly, making an attempt _not_ to cry. Because, usually, people tried to hold back their tears, and this was actually a key part of the crying process.

"What don't you try it now," said Carol, after we had finished watching a few YouTube videos.

"OK," I said. Sitting by the computer, I began to think of Teresa...those moments when I had tried to kiss her...the horrified look on her face when I began to push her backwards...the cruel, monstrously cruel, hands that were placed around her throat...the look of shocked panic in her face...the—suddenly, I burst into tears. Not a whole lot of them, but enough so that they were running down my face.

Carol reached out and took my hand in hers. "Not too much, Patrick," she said in a soft voice, "better to save it for tomorrow."

That look on Teresa's face when I had my hands around her throat...anybody with a heart would have cried when they were faced with something like that. So cruel, so hideously cruel.

It took me another five minutes to really calm down. "You're right," I said. "Honesty is the best way—there was nothing fake about those tears that I just shed. They came straight from the heart."

The next morning was show time. Carol and I drove over to Terry's office and talked with him for about ten minutes. I told him that I had changed my mind about some things, and although I didn't mind him being in the room when I was being interrogated, I would prefer it if he didn't interrupt. "I'll be following a good many of your suggestions, "I said, "but there are some things that I'll have to do my own way."

"That's OK, Patrick," said Terry in a neutral tone. "It's your life that's at stake. Just remember that once you make your statement, it will be virtually impossible to take it back."

We drove over to the police station in separate cars, and Carol and I met Terry at the bottom of the front steps. "Do they know we're coming?" said Carol.

"No," said Terry, "I thought it would be better if we did this without any advance warning."

"OK," I said, "here goes. I guess these are my last steps as a free man."

Carol looked at Terry and said, "Tell him that's not true."

Terry shrugged his shoulders indifferently—he was probably irked by my announcement that I was doing this my way. "Who knows?" said Terry.

"Well, isn't this just the greatest thing," said Carol, in a sarcastic tone as we neared the front door.

"You're telling me," I said. "Imagine if you were in my shoes."

"No thank you," said Carol.

Once inside, Terry went up to the front desk and talked to a policeman who was sitting there. Walking back to us, Terry said, "Someone will be out in a minute."

Carol held my hand while we waited—I was real nervous and jittery, but I suppose almost anyone would have felt that way if they were in my position. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity but was probably only five minutes, Hobbs came out. Yuck! I had been hoping it would be someone else.

"Patrick!" said Hobbs in a jovial tone. "What brings you into the station?" You'd have thought he was my best buddy instead of the guy who was going to lock me up for the rest of my life. Terry stood up and walked towards Hobbs. "Terry!" said Hobbs, in the same jovial tone.

"Hi, Steve," said Terry. "The reason I'm here is that I'm representing Patrick. He has something that he wants to tell you about Teresa Hamblin's death—we'll need to go into an interrogation room."

Hobbs turned his gaze from Terry to me. "OK," he said after a few seconds, "what's this all about?"

Terry walked by Hobbs and said, "Which room do you want to use? I'd prefer the one with the video camera."

Hobbs looked annoyed. "You know, I'm real busy today so—"

"This is important, Steve," said Terry. "Real important."

"OK, OK, whatever," said Hobbs as he led Terry and me into a small interrogation room. Just before I entered the room, I turned and waved goodbye to Carol. Goodbye Carol! Goodbye world! Goodbye life! For me, it was all over but the crying.

We all sat around a small table—Terry was to my left and Hobbs sat across from me. "So you want this videotaped?" said Hobbs, in an incredulous tone.

"Yes, if you don't mind," said Terry.

Once the camera was rolling, Terry said, "You'd better read Patrick his rights, Steve, because he's about to make some incriminating statements."

Hobbs still had the look of a man who was impatient to be somewhere else, but he dutifully read me my rights. After I said that I understood them, Terry said, "OK, Patrick, the floor is yours."

My hands were clasped in front of me, and I was staring at the table—I think I picked that habit up from Carol. "Mr. Hobbs," I said, in a respectful tone, "you may not remember that when you asked me where I had been on the afternoon that Teresa was murdered, I said that I had gone over to my parents' house and that afterwards, I went to the mall for a couple of hours." Looking up at him, I said, "Do you happen to remember that?"

"No, to tell you the truth, I don't."

"Well, that statement was only half true, Mr. Hobbs. I did go to my parents' house, but around a quarter to two, I went back to my apartment."

"So?"

"Teresa was still alive then, Mr. Hobbs. And—"

"Wait a minute—what are you talking about? Teresa couldn't have been alive then."

"Why not?" I said.

"Because everyone knows that Nick Flaherty left the apartment at one-fifteen."

"Mr. Hobbs, Nick didn't have a thing to do with Teresa's murder—I was the one who caused her death."

Hobbs leaned back in his chair, studied me for a couple of seconds, and then laughed. "Patrick, don't be ridiculous. The last time you came in here, you were trying to save Nick with some crazy story about how Teresa was being stalked. This isn't smart what you're doing, and I really don't have the time to waste on a phony confession."

"You're wrong, Steve," said Terry. "I've talked to Patrick for many hours about this, and there is no doubt in my mind that Patrick was, as he just said, responsible for Teresa Hamblin's death."

Hobbs shifted his gaze back and forth between Terry and me. It was obvious that he respected Terry, but it was just as obvious that he didn't believe a word that I had said.

"Mr. Hobbs," I said, "it's true that the reason I came in here before and said that Teresa was being stalked was because I didn't want Nick to be convicted of murdering Teresa. But he was, and there is no way that I can let him be executed for something that I did. Believe me, I would rather be anywhere else on this earth than sitting before you today saying these things, but I can't...the truth of what happened that day needs to be told."

Hobbs sighed. "Alright, Patrick, we'll go through with this, but you better not be lying to me. I think you said that you came back to the apartment at quarter to two?"

"Yes, and when I got there, Teresa was sitting on the couch in the living room—I think she had just finished eating her lunch because there was an empty plate and glass on the table. I was kind of upset because I had just come from my parents' house where my father was dying of pancreatic cancer. He's dead now—he died the day after Teresa died. And...I remember this all very clearly, Mr. Hobbs. I know I'll never forget what happened that day as long as I live. It was...when I came back to the apartment that afternoon, I wasn't even expecting Teresa to be there—usually, she goes out in the afternoon. But when I saw her sitting on the couch, I sat down next to her and began to talk about all the things that my father was going through. It wasn't like my father and I were that close or anything, but it's definitely traumatic to see a person dying. At least it was for me because no matter what kind of relationship you've had with a person, you don't want to see them in pain. I mean my father was really, really suffering, and I think it affected me more than I realized. Anyways, I was kind of pouring my heart out to Teresa—telling her all these strange things that my father had been saying while I had been over to see him, and...you don't have any idea how difficult it is for me to talk about this, Mr. Hobbs."

Hobbs was giving me a strange kind of stare—I think, for the first time, he might have been beginning to believe me. "Go on," he said.

"So we were sitting on the couch and Teresa...she said that I must be feeling really depressed because of my father, and she gave me a hug. It was just meant to be a friendly hug—that's all. But I began to take it in a sexual way because...I guess it was because I hadn't had a girlfriend in a long time, but her body was pressed up against mine, and I began to feel this urge to kiss her. She had her head on my shoulder, and I used my hand to move her head off my shoulder so that our faces were only inches apart. That's when I began to kiss her—I think she was totally shocked that I would try something like that because we...I mean she was Nick's girlfriend, and she had never shown any sexual interest in me. And really, up to that point, I had never had any sexual interest in her—she was just my roommate's girlfriend."

I stopped and fidgeted around in my chair. I remember feeling that the room seemed strangely silent, almost dreadfully silent, as Terry and Hobbs waited for me to continue. "Like I said, Teresa was really shocked when I tried to kiss her, and she pulled back from me and said, 'Patrick, what are you doing?' There was a look on her face...I can see it now...almost like there was a look of anguish on her face—probably because I had crossed so far over the line. But I kind of...at the time, I hardly even saw her reaction—it was there, but it didn't matter to me, and I had this crazy thought that if I kissed her again, she would begin to enjoy it. So I leaned forward, and before she could move away from me, I began to kiss her again, or maybe I should say that I tried to kiss her again because she wasn't really kissing me at all...just trying to move her lips away from me. It was kind of like the more wrong I acted, the more I wanted to make it right...I mean I thought that if I kept kissing her, it wouldn't be wrong anymore because she would begin to respond to me. This is just so awful—I'm totally ashamed of myself. And so, once again, she drew back from me with this kind of frightened look on her face...I can see...it's like a photograph that will live inside me forever...but still, I wouldn't stop, but this time, instead of saying anything to me, she began to scream. I know she was really scared because I had my arms around her, and I was moving towards her and she couldn't really break free of me. Even then, everything would have been OK if I had just stopped. I mean...not really OK, but...but I didn't stop. Her scream was really loud and piercing, and it kind of frightened me, I think. Maybe the people who lived on the other side of the duplex would hear it and come running over and then what was I going to say because Teresa...it was really an hysterical scream—very high-pitched and loud. And I just felt I had to stop her from screaming—I couldn't stand the sound, and I didn't see what right she had to scream at me, although, obviously, she had every right to scream because I was acting so atrociously. But I just thought...I had to get her to stop...just for a few seconds...just so I could back off and figure out something that I could say to her, some apology that might make sense to her. And without even thinking about what I was doing...just thinking about stopping her screaming, I put my hands around her neck. Both hands...and all I wanted to do...I didn't want to hurt her or anything—it was just that the screaming was driving me crazy." Here, my effort not to cry began to fail, and I could feel a tear running down my cheek. One single tiny tear. "I...I...all I had to do was back off, and she would have stopped screaming immediately. That's...anybody should be able to figure that much out. And...so...I just put some pressure on her neck—I didn't...it wasn't like I was trying to choke her, but I did begin to, you know, I...I don't know what word to use...squeeze, I guess. And when I began to squeeze her neck, her face totally changed...and...and..."

Suddenly, I completely lost it and began to cry like I had never cried before in my life. Just an absolute deluge of tears. In a way it felt so good—it almost felt like I was really realizing what I had done to Teresa. Before, it had just been my sorrow because of all the consequences I was going to have to pay, but as I sat there weeping, I felt and I could see Teresa's anguish, the anguish of the last few seconds of her life. No punishment was too great for what I had done to her...that was all irrelevant now—my pathetic little attempts to squirm out of my fate. Because nothing could stand up to the face that I saw when my hands began to squeeze on her neck. There was no taking it back, no apologizing, no nothing. That single act would forever stain my soul—forever is probably too long a word, hopefully, but that stain would follow me until the day I died. Maybe that was one good thing about death—it washed the soul of its stains.

Gradually, I began to pull out of my weeping fit. Anybody who had been in that room would have seen that I wasn't acting—my face must have looked like a train wreck. "Alright," said Hobbs, in an official tone, "so you're saying that you strangled her to death?"

"No, no, no—I would never have done that. Teresa was just such a sweet person..." I had to stop because I was on the verge of losing it again.

"Then how did she die?" said Hobbs, in an accusatory tone.

"She was trying to get away from me, and...she must have been still screaming, but all I can remember is that she jerked her body to...she was trying to get off the couch and away from me and...there was this loud snap, and she just went totally limp. So...I mean I looked this up later on the internet, and her spinal cord must have snapped...and then I must have let go of her neck because she fell backwards onto the couch, let out a couple of weird gasps, and then—then there was nothing. It's like if a person's spinal cord breaks at a certain point, they can't breathe anymore, and that's what must have happened to her. I was all like...you couldn't even—I couldn't even begin to describe it. I can't...it was awful—like I had smashed some precious thing into pieces, and I knew that I would never be able to put the pieces back together again. And when I began to realize that she might be dead, I just totally freaked out. You have no idea. I was practically ready to kill myself—if there'd been a gun on the table, I think I would have shot myself in the head. I remember kind of pacing like a madman around the TV room as I tried to figure out what to do. I was gasping and hyperventilating something crazy. And from somewhere...it must have been the bathroom, I got a small mirror and put it under Teresa's nose to see if she was still alive. But she wasn't—she was dead...totally, totally dead." I had started to cry again and had to stop. For some reason, the room was beginning to spin, and I felt nauseous.

Hobbs was like a robot. "So why did you hang her from the chandelier?"

What a moron. Now it was like he was the one who had his hands around my neck, and he wasn't about to give up squeezing me. After trying to regain my composure, which I didn't exactly pull off, I said, "What could I do? I had done something so awful, so shameful, and I couldn't—I didn't want anybody to know about it. I guess—I think most people would want to hide up their most shameful act, the most shameful act of their lives. Just hide it up and try to forget about it. That's what...that's what I was thinking—that's what was motivating me. So I got this idea that I'd try to make it look like she committed suicide. I know! I know! I know! You don't have to tell me that I was just making everything worse. I could have owned up to it right there, and it would have been a whole lot better than owning up to it today. But that's what happened—I was in a total state of shock and wasn't really in control of what I thought or did. I'm not trying to say anyone should have sympathy for me or anything, and I'm not trying to...this isn't an excuse for what I did. It's just the way that it was. Me frantically dragging her up the stairs because the only place I could think to hang her from was either the chandelier in Nick's bedroom or the one in my bedroom, and obviously, I wasn't going to use the one in my bedroom. I mean they were the only chandeliers in the house, so that's all I could think of."

The room was spinning, spinning, spinning. "I...I..." Suddenly, I slid off the chair, fell onto my hands and knees, and began, through another wave of tears, to vomit all over the floor. I could hear Terry say, "You should get him a doctor, Steve. I don't like the way he looks—he's so pale."

After the puking stopped, I crawled into a corner of the room and sat there with my hands over my face as tears and vomit dribbled down me. I deserved it—I deserved every minute and second of it. I was nothing but an idiotic jerk who had destroyed Teresa's life and ruined Nick's life. As for my life—that didn't matter anymore.

## CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

There were other interrogations by all sorts of people. It took the prosecuting attorney three weeks to come around to the fact that I had murdered Teresa. Undoubtedly, he was reluctant, after all his bluster and nonsense at Nick's trial, to go before the public and inform everyone that the wrong man had been convicted.

I had been arrested and handcuffed as I sat on the floor of the interrogation room and brought to the hospital where they gave me a few pills for anxiety, and then I was shipped off to the county jail. It was three days before Hobbs and another investigator, a black guy named Carlos Torres, came to talk to me, and by then, I realized that if I was questioned about the truthfulness of my confession, the key that had been found in the lock of the door was probably the best proof of my guilt since Nick couldn't have put it there unless both Jana and Everett had been lying when they said that the key had not been in the lock when they left the apartment at three-fifteen. Hobbs and his sidekick still maintained a high degree of skepticism after I got around to telling them how I was the one who had left the key in the lock.

"Why would you do that?" said Carlos.

"Because...it was never like I was trying to frame Nick. The only reason I hung her from the chandelier in his bedroom was because there was no other place in the apartment to hang her from. At that point, all I was trying to do was escape the consequences. I don't think I ever told you, but I was upstairs in Nick's bedroom while Jana and Everett were there. They actually came in just after I had hung Teresa from the chandelier. When I heard them downstairs, I was all freaked out and crept down to my room and stayed there until they left."

"What would you have done if one of them had come upstairs?" said Hobbs.

"That wasn't very likely because—I mean why would they go upstairs? The only things up there were my bedroom and Nick's, plus the bathroom, but there was a bathroom downstairs. I suppose, if one of them had come up the stairs, I would have jumped from the window—if you hang by your hands from the sill it's only about six feet to the ground."

"Patrick," said Carlos, in a ponderous, overbearing tone, "how were you able to hang her from the chandelier? I don't see how it would have been possible to lift her three feet up off the floor and put the noose around her neck."

I wanted to tell him, "The same way Nick did it." Nobody was concerned about that problem at his trial.

"I used the bed," I said. It was...I don't know—the mattress was two and a half or three feet off the floor, so I dragged the bed over, took off my shoes, and lifted her up so that I could put the noose around her neck. And then I pushed the bed back to where it had been and placed a tipped-over chair near where Teresa was hanging to make it look like a suicide."

"Let's go back to the key," said Carlos. "You haven't really told us why you put the key in the lock."

"Because just as I was leaving the apartment, I realized that with Teresa being found in Nick's bedroom, he might become a suspect. So I thought that by leaving the key in the lock, it would take attention away from him."

"But you already said that you were trying to make it look like a suicide, while the key in the lock makes it look like a murder."

I was getting exasperated. "Look," I said, "you've probably never caused the death of anyone before, so you don't know what it feels like, especially when, as in my case, I had never, not even remotely, been intending to harm Teresa. It was all like boom, boom, boom—one thing and a thousand thoughts going through my mind at once. So the key was like insurance to me—if you discovered that Teresa hadn't committed suicide because of some evidence you found at the scene, then the key might lead you to think that a random intruder had entered the house. Or if it wasn't a random intruder, then at least it wasn't Nick or myself because, obviously, we had our own keys."

"So what made you come forward at this time?" said Hobbs.

I wanted to minimize Nick's death sentence as a reason because I knew the cops still thought there was a chance that I was on some kamikaze mission for Nick's sake. In reality, of course, they just didn't like to admit that they'd made a mistake by assuming that Nick had murdered Teresa. "OK," I said, "it's not exactly what you think. It's true that Nick being on death row was weighing very heavily on me—I mean there wasn't a day that didn't go by where I didn't think about him, but every time I thought of turning myself in, I took the coward's way out. But before you go judging me, I doubt that either one of you has seriously thought of what it must be like to spend the rest of your life in jail. It's a real big commitment, especially since there's no turning back. So...what happened was that I met this woman who had a big influence on me. She doesn't go to church or anything, but she's kind of religious in her own way. And when..."

I had been about to say that "when I told Carol about what I had done to Teresa," but suddenly, I realized that I could be getting her in all sorts of trouble because maybe Hobbs would say that she should have come to the police as soon as she knew that I had caused Teresa's death. Or maybe they'd question her for hours on end about what I had said to her. So I shifted gears and said, "I don't want to bring her into it except to say that because of the influence she's had on me, I decided to do the right thing. I would have anyway—it was just a matter of time because I would never have let Nick be executed."

"You realize that it's a possibility that you might be executed—right?" said Carlos.

"I know—my lawyer has talked to me about it. The only thing I will say in my defense is that I never had any intention of killing her."

"That probably isn't going to be the way that the judge will look on this when he decides your sentence," said Hobbs.

"I know, but it's the truth."

Three weeks and two days after I first confessed, Nick was released from prison, although his conviction for the murder of Teresa had not yet been officially overturned. The prosecutor was still nervous about the possibility that Nick and I were operating some kind of scam to save him and that I might recant my confession. But when I was brought into court a couple of weeks after I was arrested and pled guilty and said that I would like to have the judge determine my sentence, that seemed to ease the prosecutor's mind, and Nick's release followed shortly thereafter.

Carol came to visit me as much as she was allowed, which was twice a week, during the month between my arrest and the sentencing hearing. She had travelled to Morrisville twice and talked to Nick after the news of my confession broke. She had never met him before, so he was suspicious of her at first, but during their second meeting, he told her what he was really feeling. Mostly, it seemed that he was more upset that I had murdered (his word) Teresa than that I had let him be put on death row or that I had continuously lied to him during all our jailhouse visits.

I should mention here that when I talk about my own opinion of what happened to Teresa, I never say that I murdered her because, to me, that's not a fair description of what I did to her. I certainly caused her death and am entirely responsible for her death, but I didn't, at least in my opinion, murder her. Because, to me, murder implies intent. And that applies to even second degree murder where the person who commits the murder may have acted very impulsively and up until a few seconds before committing the act had no intention of murdering the person. But in second degree murder, there comes that moment when the person decides to murder the other person. That moment might have come only a second before the trigger was pulled, but the motive was there. I had talked to Terry about this during one of his visits to me in prison, and he told me that according to the law, there must always be the intent to murder before a person can be charged with murder. And I had never intended to murder Teresa, had never even intended to harm her in any way. Her death was just the result of a crazy set of circumstances that got way out of control and ended in catastrophe. I'm not disputing the fact that my actions were despicable and that I deserve to be severely punished, but I want to tell you straight from the heart that I never intended to cause any harm to Teresa.

In the end, I was charged with felony murder, which is kind of a juiced-up version of first-degree murder, but the prosecutor agreed not to seek the death penalty. The sentencing hearing was a bit unusual because Terry had to fight to get my original confession played in the courtroom, which was filled with many of Teresa's relatives. The prosecutor at the sentencing hearing was Marlin Penderson, who had also been the prosecutor at Nick's trial, and he, perhaps understandably, seemed to have a chip on his shoulder when it came to me—presumably, because I had made him look foolish after all his bombastic assertions of what a horrible person Nick was. Oops! Marlin fought hard to prevent the tape of my tear-stained confession from being played in court because it clearly showed that I had a deep sense of remorse for what I had done, which might cause the judge to mitigate my sentence. In the end, after privately viewing the three different confessions I had made, the judge ordered that my original confession would be the one viewed at the sentencing hearing.

It was, indeed, a powerful statement of my true feelings. In his final statement to the judge, Marlin would argue that my confession was nothing but an act brought on by the desire to evade punishment, but although it was a natural and perhaps necessary argument for him to make, it wasn't true. Originally, when I had been talking to Carol, we had discussed the possibility of enhancing my confession with tears, and it's true that I had gone so far as to look up How to Make Yourself Cry on the internet. But in the end, the actor, me, had become the part, or maybe a better way of saying it is that as I began to act the part, a door had opened up within me and I had come in touch with my real feelings, which had been hidden under a whole conglomeration of other considerations—such as my guilt, my fear of prison, my self-loathing, and on and on and on. And really, as my confession played, I could sense a small amount of sympathy for me in the courtroom.

After my confession had played, a number of Teresa's relatives made victim impact statements. There were her mother and father, two brothers, and her grandmother. The statement by her mother was quite long and rather venomous, but I could hardly blame her. At one point during her statement, she accused me of avoiding eye contact, but then, when I did lock eyes with her, she accused me of trying to intimidate and threaten her. So that wasn't exactly one of the great success stories of my life.

Eventually, when Teresa's family had finished pounding me into a disgusting pulp of road kill, I was given the opportunity to say something. Rather than speak from the defense table, I asked to be allowed to speak from the witness stand, and the judge granted my request. As I walked up to the stand, I realized that I was fortunate because all I had to do was tell the truth, which wasn't going to be hard. I was a little confused as to who I should address my statement to, but finally, after taking a few seconds to compose myself, I started in on my task of immolating myself on the funeral pyre of all my misdeeds.

"I'd like to speak," I began, "to all of those who have been affected by my actions, most particularly Teresa's family. I understand no words I can say now will really make a difference, but I feel I must make the attempt to apologize for my actions—no matter how feeble that apology may be in the light of the awful thing that I did. Although it isn't really my place to say it, Teresa was a wonderful woman—full of life, honest, and...she and I had so many interesting conversations and..."

I had to stop for a moment because, already, I could feel myself on the verge of losing it. "For whatever it's worth, I swear to God that I never meant to harm her, but through my own stupidity, I took her away from the ones she loved. I so wish there was some way to make it up to you, but as we all know that's impossible, and I will have to live the remainder of my life trying to come to terms with what I have done. I'm not sure that I'll ever be able to do that because there are some things that can never be justified."

Looking directly at Teresa's family, I said, "I hold no ill will towards you for the things you said today—I know I would I have felt the same way that you do if some wretched fool like myself took away the woman I loved." Here, unexpectedly, an image of Teresa's face appeared before me—it came from the morning of the day she had died when we had the long conversation in the TV room. And I had completely destroyed that face. The tears were coming now, and I didn't try to hide them. "I deserve nothing," I said. "I forfeited everything when I took away Teresa's life. You can take me out of here and stone me to death in front of the courthouse if you want."

I had to stop because I was sobbing now. "I'm so sorry...so everlastingly sorry for what I've done." My right arm was on the rail of the witness stand, and I put my head down on it and started crying hysterically. Made up, you might say? I think not—actually, it was the most honest moment of my life.

After my tear-drenched apology, both the prosecutor and Terry made statements. Marlin was gung-ho for life in prison without the possibility of parole, and he certainly had a lot of justifications for his argument. I had a hard time hearing it because once Terry had led me back to the defense table after my apology, I had mostly sat there with my hands over my face as I got this bizarre idea that if people saw me crying anymore, they might think I was acting. But the statements from Teresa's family had really affected me, and they had brought back all the shock and horror of what I had done to her.

I had a somewhat better time hearing Terry, who spent a good deal of his speech pointing out that not only was there no evidence that I had intended to kill Teresa, but also there was no evidence that I had even tried to rape her. None of my semen was on her, and she had been found fully clothed. I noticed that he omitted the part where I had put my hands around Teresa's neck, but all in all, he made a reasonable argument in my defense.

Two days later, I was brought back into court to hear my sentence. After a barrage of hostile statements about my conduct from the judge, he surprised me by saying that the only real evidence in the case was my confession and that the confession left open the possibility that I might not have been trying to rape Teresa. However, there was the fact that I had sat by passively while the state prosecuted Nick, and then, after he had been convicted, had let him sit on death row for two months. My remorse seemed genuine and profound to the judge, but it was obviously a case of too little too late. "Therefore," said the judge, in a very solemn tone, "I am sentencing you to forty years to life for the murder of Teresa Hamblin and a further five years for obstruction of justice. These sentences will be served consecutively."

Usually, sentences were imposed concurrently, which meant that one wasn't piggy-backed on to the other, but when sentences are consecutive, the first one has to be served before the second one begins. This meant that I had been effectively given forty-five years to life, so my earliest parole date would be when two-thirds of the combined sentences had been served—thirty years. If all went well, I'd walk out of prison as a free man when I was fifty-seven. Until then—goodbye world!

## CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

About two weeks after my sentencing, I was sent to Morrisville. This meant that Carol had to drive two hundred miles to see me. I had given her my car, but I had only been at Morrisville three weeks when the car, which was twelve years old, bit the dust. Carol was only making a couple of dollars over the minimum wage, so she couldn't afford to buy a car and could only visit me by taking a bus.

On her second visit to Morrisville, she laid an unpleasant surprise on me. After we had talked about a lot of trivial things for fifteen minutes, she said, "Patrick, I know this is going to upset you, but I've changed my mind about the idea of getting married and the conjugal visits."

I let out a kind of disgusted sigh, but what could I say? There wasn't a single thing that I could offer her. "That's OK," I said. Hanging around in the background—for both of us, I think—was the memory that she had kind of promised me the conjugal visits if I turned myself in. But now that I was behind bars, there wasn't much I could do to cash in my promissory note.

"It's just...it's just hard for me," said Carol. "I know it's a lot harder for you than me, but...I don't know how else to say this, but I don't think it's realistic to have a sexual relationship with a man who's going to be in prison for at least the next thirty years. I know some people can do it, but I don't think I can."

"I suppose...I'm just disappointed—that's all."

She looked at me sympathetically. "I don't feel good about this, Patrick, and it's not a decision I made lightly. I thought that...before, it seemed like a good idea, but when I'm actually faced with it...I want to have a family and everything—children, you know? And it would be awfully hard to bring up kids when the Dad is going to be in prison until they're well into their twenties."

I had to laugh. "Yes," I said, "I can see your point. Packing Peter and Jane into the car so they can visit their Dad in prison wouldn't be much of a life. Not to mention that I'd be flat broke all the time."

"It must be so bleak for you in here," said Carol.

You got that right! "I'm adjusting to it."

"What do you do?"

"Read a lot, watch TV, hang out with the guys—stuff like that."

"Such an awful life." She looked to be on the verge of tears. "I feel like I let you down, Patrick."

"Kind of—but you don't owe me anything."

"I know, but I did say—I mean I was the one who brought up the conjugal visits."

"But then you came to the jail and realized that you couldn't do it."

"I really wanted to help you, Patrick, and I still do, but thirty years of waiting for you to get out of prison is too much of a commitment for me."

I was tired of the conversation and wanted to be alone, so I gave her an exit line. "We can still be friends, can't we?"

"Of course!" said Carol. "That's never going to change."

But probably it would, somehow. She'd find some guy, have the kids she wanted, and then how much time was she going to have to visit a guy who had been sent to prison for strangling a woman to death? After five or ten years, I'd probably be getting Christmas cards and not much else.

"Carol...I just...I don't know. The only thing I can do is make the best of what I have, which is hardly anything. Eventually, I'll probably adjust to it better and get used to it. So don't worry about me--I'll be alright."

She stared at me for what seemed like forever. "OK, Patrick—I'm sorry that it's come down this way. Please don't hold it against me."

"I won't—like I said, I hope we can still be friends."

"For sure, Patrick. Believe me—you haven't seen the last of me."

After she left and I was back in my cell, I lay down on my bed, pulled the blanket over my head, and began to cry. Not a loud, dramatic cry—just a soft cry as I watched my life spiral down into massive uselessness and futility.

A couple of days later, I received a surprise visitor. "Nick!" I said. I had no idea who had wanted to talk to me when they sent me out to the visiting area—all I could think of was that maybe my sister had decided to acknowledge me. I hadn't heard from her since the day I was arrested. And as for Nick—it was no surprise to me that he hadn't shown up at my sentencing hearing or made any attempt to contact me.

"Hey, Patrick," said Nick, "how are you doing?"

I couldn't tell what his attitude was towards me—I was really hoping, what with Carol dumping me, that he wasn't going to lay some big moral trip on my head. I deserved it, of course, but even in prison, a man has a right to hope.

"I'm OK—how about you?"

"Better. Listen, your friend Carol came over to my place the other day and told me the whole story. I knew quite a bit about it by reading the newspapers, but it was good to have a first-hand account."

I still couldn't tell what his attitude towards me was. I wondered if he was about to start yelling at me. "So what do you think about all this?" I said.

"Man, you really did it this time, Patrick. Actually, in spite of everything you put me through, I kind of feel sorry for you. You're such an idiot sometimes—I can't think of anything more stupid than trying to put the moves on Teresa. She was definitely not the type of woman who would fool around with two guys at once."

"No doubt. I hope you believe me when I say that I was never trying to hurt her."

"Then you shouldn't have put your hands around her throat!" said Nick, in an angry voice.

"OK, Nick, I can understand you despising me and all, but if you don't mind, it's tough for me to listen to stuff like that right now. No one despises me more than I do." I stood up and was about to go back to my cell when Nick said, "Wait! Don't be that way, Patrick. You can't expect me to give you a hug after all you've put me through, but that doesn't mean I don't have sympathy for you. I understand what it's like to be in a jail cell and knowing that you're going to be there for the better part of forever."

I sat back down and said, "There's no doubt that I'm paying the price for what I've done, but Teresa is the one who paid the ultimate price."

"It's done," said Nick, with a sigh. "I suppose grudges are natural, but I've never believed that they do anyone any good. What a trip! I'm glad you coughed up before they stuck the needle in me."

"And the best part was I only made you wait eight months!" That was my attempt at a joke.

"That's what friends are for," said Nick, who seemed to have returned to his more normal sarcastic mode. "I guess I should thank you," he said. "You could have just kept your mouth shut and let them execute me. How come it took so long?"

"I was hoping that you'd be acquitted, so I decided to wait until after the trial. What would be the point of going to prison if I didn't have to?"

"You didn't have any feelings about what you'd done to Teresa or anything?"

"I sure did—more than you'll ever know. I still do, but...back then, I really didn't want to pay the price unless I absolutely had to. And then, after you were convicted, I began to have all these nightmares and daymares about what it would be like to spend the rest of my life in prison. I mean...suppose you had been in my position—what would you have done?"

Nick scratched his ear and looked perplexed. Finally, he said, "I see your point—that is a tough one. So what finally made you go to the police?"

"Nick, no matter what, I was never going to let you be executed. For a while, I had this crazy thought that I'd wait a couple of years because I know these death penalty cases can drag out for a decade, but Carol convinced me that I shouldn't wait."

"So I owe my freedom to her," said Nick, in a matter-of-fact tone.

"I still would have turned myself in, but it might have been a little while before I did it."

"But suppose," said Nick, "you had got run over by a car or something? What then?"

"I didn't think of that, to be honest with you."

"Patrick! Man, you sure did play with a lot of people's lives."

"I'm not denying...I mean if you don't want to see me again, I understand. The only thing I can say in my defense is that it was just a whole lot of crazy circumstances that happened all at once. But that's no excuse, I suppose."

"So how did Carol convince you to fall on your sword?" said Nick.

"Oh, you know—some kind of religious thing. It was like...you're going to laugh when you hear this one, Nick. But what she did was she kind of promised me that if I told the cops the truth, she'd marry me, and we'd have conjugal visits in prison."

"You're having conjugal visits with her?" said Nick, in astonishment.

"No," I said, with a smile. "A couple of days ago, she came up here and told me that she couldn't see having a relationship with a guy who was going to be in prison for thirty years."

"She dumped you?"

"That's a fact," I said.

"Patrick, I can't believe you fell for that one. When it comes to women, you're just a big clumsy oaf."

"I don't think so, Nick—not really. Carol meant it when she said it, but then she thought about what our life would be like and changed her mind. I don't hold it against her."

"Patrick, I just got this great idea. If I decide to dump my present girlfriend, which I might, I'll tell her I know this fantastic guy, and I'll send her up here."

"You have a girlfriend already?" Man, this guy was quick, at least by my tortoise-like standards.

"She's a reporter for this alternative newspaper that I'd never heard of, and after she interviewed me, we had a cup of coffee...and, well, you know how hard it is for a woman to resist me. Thank God you're in prison though because if you weren't, I'd have to tell her that it wouldn't be safe for her to be alone in a room with you. Patrick, you've really got to learn some class when it comes to women. Let me tell you something—very few women like to be groped by their boyfriend's roommate."

"I'm all over that now, Nick—plus, there are no opportunities like that around here."

"For the good of us all, you've been stashed away, Patrick."

"Sometimes, I think this experience has been good for me. For one thing, I've learned what the real meaning of life is."

Nick clapped his hand to his forehead. "Will you please get off that stuff. Here you are in jail for accidentally strangling someone because you were trying to get into her pants, and now you're going to talk to me about the meaning of life? What's it going to be? When in doubt, don't put your hands around a woman's throat?"

I had to laugh—Nick just had an instinctive and kind of comical antagonism to anything that seemed to be even remotely religious. "I'm serious, Nick—Carol told me what the real meaning of life is, and I've had a lot of time to think about it."

"And you agree with her?"

"I think so."

"So what is it?" said Nick. "Please don't keep this major revelation to yourself."

"It's helping other people."

"What are you talking about?" said Nick. "What's helping other people?"

"The real meaning of life comes from helping other people."

Nick looked at me in astonishment. "You're serious? You really believe that?"

"Consider the alternative," I said. "If you don't help anybody but yourself, then what meaning does life have? That's why I always thought life was meaningless."

"Because you didn't help anyone?"

"That's right, because then all you do is sit around and think about yourself. There's no meaning in that because...because..."

"Because why?" said Nick.

"I don't know why, but it's true. Maybe because when you're all wrapped up in yourself, there's...it's like we're looking to make a connection when we come into this world, and you can only make a connection with someone if you make their life better. Don't you want to love and be loved?"

"I don't know," said Nick. "Love is so complicated. This newspaper reporter I met is like some kind of demand machine. I want this, I want that, and I want the other thing. I think I'm going to send her over to you—maybe she'll fall for you if you give her the inside scoop on what happened to Teresa."

We talked for another half hour and had some fun bantering around with each other. By the time he left, I felt like he'd be coming back to visit me every once in a while—same as Carol. So at least I had a couple of friends, a couple of links to the outside world. And although Nick had made fun of my idea that the real meaning of life came from helping other people, in the coming days and months, I found that the time passed much more agreeably when I tried to be sympathetic to my fellow inmates. It was certainly much better than curling up in a ball and trying to withdraw from everyone.

And if only I had met Carol before the whole tragedy with Teresa went down. Because, obviously, I hadn't been trying to help Teresa on that dreadful day. What if I had tried to help her that day? What if I had thought of her instead of myself? Maybe you can argue—I don't know why you would—that helping others isn't the real meaning of life, but if you live your life to genuinely help others, then it sure will keep you out of a lot of trouble. Take it from one who knows.

## CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

Surprisingly, my saga doesn't have a completely atrocious ending. I suppose it should, but it doesn't. About two years after I began my prison sentence, Carol and I were married in the prison chapel. She had been visiting me twice a month like always, but nothing could have prepared me for the visit I received from her about two weeks before we were married. Up to that point, she had continued to be kind and sympathetic to me, but I never felt any romantic vibes from her and had long since resigned myself to being her "friend in prison." In fact, she had even told me, about a year previously, that she had married some cook at the restaurant she worked in. Great! I tried to act "appropriately" when she told me that news, and I think I kind of pulled it off, but the truth was that it depressed me for a few weeks. I didn't have much to hope for in prison, except for maybe waking up alive in the morning, so often at night, after the lights were out, I held pathetic little pity parties for myself.

The day everything changed seemed like any other. Carol made her expected visit—she came every other Saturday, and as usual, I was happy to see her. She always brought me food and books and things like that—little gifts, but they sure were appreciated and treasured.

"How are you doing?" she said to me. At Morrisville, we were allowed to meet in a room that had a table, a couple of stuffed chairs, and a few wooden ones that were placed around the table. We weren't allowed to sit within arm's reach of other, and from a corner of the room, about ten feet away, a guard stood and kept watch over us.

"I'm OK," I said. "Just trolling along—I'm almost to the end of year two now. How was the drive up here?" By now, Carol had bought an old junker car that she drove around in.

"Kind of rainy, especially the first fifty miles. Listen, Patrick, there's something that I'd like to talk to you about."

"Well, I'm available—the only other thing on my schedule is hanging out in my cell for eight hours or so."

Carol smiled. "Yes, you must feel rather confined sometimes."

I had to laugh at that one. "Very," I said. "It's so cramped around here."

"Patrick...I broke up with that guy I married."

"You did? What happened? I thought you liked him."

Carol gave me a long look and shook her head negatively. Finally, she said, "Gary wasn't who I thought he was. He was so mean-spirited. I can understand a lot of things, but I can't understand someone who's mean-spirited."

I think it was a mark of how much I had matured over the past couple of years that I wasn't thinking about how the ending of her marriage might help me. Rather, I could see that she was upset. "I can see...I guess you're having a hard time dealing with it," I said.

"Sort of." She looked away from me for a few seconds before she turned back towards me and said, "Nothing in my life ever works out for me when I do it for myself. Again and again...whenever I do something for my own benefit, it never comes to a happy ending. You would think I would know that by now—how many times do I have to learn that lesson?"

"Carol, I think just about everyone tries to do things that will be of benefit to them. There's no need to be so hard on yourself."

"I don't know, Patrick—I don't think so. A life has to be based on giving and not this everlasting taking that is going on nowadays."

"Sure," I said, "I think what you just said is true. I know when I sit around and think about myself for hours on end, it always come out badly."

"And look what I did to you," said Carol. "Sometimes, I just get so disgusted with myself. I talk a good game, but when the chips are on the table, I can't always do it."

"Do what?" I said.

"Didn't I promise you that we would spend the rest of our lives together? I didn't say it exactly that way, but when I was talking about us getting married and the conjugal visits and all that, I was kind of promising you that we would spend the rest of our lives together."

"I...but then you saw what my life actually was like in here—anybody would have changed their mind. I certainly don't hold it against you, Carol. Not at all."

"But...so I went out and tried to take out of life what I wanted. And what I wanted was a normal guy and a normal family. But nothing good ever comes from taking. Not now, not ever."

"Carol—all you wanted was what millions of people want. There's nothing wrong with wanting to have a family—it's natural."

"No, no—you don't understand. I had already met you and given you my promise. _I gave that to you._ And you didn't do anything—I mean, there was no reason for me to break my promise because of anything that you had done."

I didn't quite understand where she was going with this, so I was hesitant to say anything.

"Patrick," she said, "I believe that only in giving can a life have any meaning. I gave a promise to you, but then I broke it. I hope you will forgive me for that, and also, I hope you'll let me renew the promise that I made to you when we were sitting on that bench in the park."

She literally took my breath away for a moment. It was too much to hope for. "You mean..."

"Yes, I'd like for us to be married. Maybe...maybe I've hurt you too much and you don't want that anymore?"

"Oh no—please don't think that. I would be more than happy to give my life to you."

"Really?" said Carol.

"Really and truly."

"Then it's done," said Carol. "From this day forth, you and I will give to each other so that we might find the real meaning of life."

This is one of many books of mine that can be purchased on various web sites--currently, as of June 2020, there are 24 novels, 4 novellas, 9 anthologies, and 6 non-fiction books, so there is plenty to choose from!

I would like to emphasize that my novels are _very_ dissimilar from one another and have all sorts of different plots, themes, and attitudes. I've written a number of murder mysteries, four love stories, a gothic tale, a trial of a police officer for murder, a couple of unusual fantasies, a story about a homeless guy, a trial of a young guy who thinks that he's discovered the secret to life, a locked-room mystery, a book about a psychiatrist and a troubled woman, a tale about a student/teacher relationship, two satires, an unreliable narrator mystery, and three novels that are essentially political, sexual, and social commentaries.

