The Confession by Domenic Stansberry Read Free Book Online

“Honey, no,” and I pushed a little harder, feeling for the opening between the buttons in her blouse, touching her nipple, the aureole. She lay on her side, her back to me, and I cradled her buttocks with my free hand, and then I slid down the pajama bottoms “No, honey, please . . .” she said again, but that was all. She was on her stomach now. Her face was in the pillow. She began to breathe more heavily, panting more deeply. Not quite voluntary. I reached lower, between her legs. I spread her buttocks. “No,” she said, her fingers reaching, “no.” I pushed harder. She gasped as I entered from behind.

PART TWO
The Decision

6.
    I know, of course, the latest research suggesting evil originates in a particular part of the brain. Near the hippocampus, some say, beneath the memory center, in the old lizard part of the mind. In a neurological space where everything we pretend to be, ail our mores, disappear like stray thoughts into the abyss. Where the whisperings of the neocortex no longer matter and the blood impulses take over.
    But how does this happen? By what mechanisms? Under which conditions?
    Such questions are at the heart of every criminal case, I suspect, if not everything we do, and they were on my mind then, as I went once again to the Correctional Facility, to the little room with the plastic chairs and the panic button on the wall.
    I enjoyed my work. Though my role was a subversive one in many ways, and there were quite a few who did not like me—the prosecutors, the cops, the jailers—I enjoyed it nonetheless. Like all work, it was a form of self-exploration, but at the same time it gave me refuge from my self, and refuge, too, from my personal life, from certain things looming on the horizon of which I was aware—but there was a part of me (as there often is, I suppose) that did not want to acknowledge such concerns.
    I had to make a stand sooner or later, if only with myself, but I was not ready for that yet. So I immersed myself in my work.
    I had been called to the jail by Dillard’s lawyer, Haney Wagoner, a congenial-seeming man with oversized eyebrows whose wife was friends with Elizabeth. Elizabeth had introduced us, and though I had qualifications of my own—and experience as well—that introduction had helped get me the case. Wagoner was fond of Elizabeth, and asked after her wistfully, as men often did.
    “She’s fine,” I said. “Absolutely wonderful.”
    “Good, good. We used to see more of her, in the old days.”
    “She misses you both,” I said, though in fact she seldom mentioned either of them unless it was in regard to their increasing girth. “I’m afraid we all used to get together more often, in the old days.”
    “Yes, we used to see her quite a bit. When she was married to David. Not that it was a good marriage. No, no.” He leaned toward me confidentially, arching those large brows of his. “He had a charming manner, her first husband. He was the kind of guy you like to be around. At first. But there was a darkness underneath. I was glad to see him go.”
    “Me, too.” I joked, though in fact I had never met him. He laughed, and so did I, but there was awkwardness between us, something stiff and uneasy. Wagoner was in his early fifties and had a reputation among the public on account of a celebrity he’d helped acquit some twenty years before. Among his peers he was not so well regarded. He had a one-track mentality, people said, and his office was poorly run. I didn’t know if these things were true. Though my own dealings with him had been cordial enough, and his manner suggested he knew his business, it soon became apparent he was having trouble with his client.
    “I don’t want to do my defense this way,” said Dillard. “I didn’t kill her. I didn’t do it.”
    Wagoner wore a vest with a white shirt beneath, open at the collar, and no tie. He took off his vest, getting down to business, and sat across from his client. He seemed agitated, as