The Confession by Domenic Stansberry Read Free Book Online Page A

if he had been at this for a while. “If we don’t convince the jury there were extenuating circumstances,” he told Dillard, “they’ll give you the death penalty.”
    Dillard looked smaller since that last time I’d seen him, worn down by his time in the stir.
    “I didn’t kill her,” he insisted.
    Haney turned to me then, drawing me into the conversation. “Dr. Danser,” he said. “You’re familiar with the kind of tricks the mind can play on itself, in traumatic situations. You know the term. Anxiety-induced situational memory loss.” Haney spoke the phrase with a certain flourish, as if it held the key to his case.
    I knew the term. It was from Rudolf Kleindst, the man who wrote the book on memory blackout. It was a subject in which I found myself involved on occasion—partly, I suppose, because my own clinical history had prompted an interest in the subject. My interest was natural enough. People who suffer certain conditions tend to study them with a passion others might not possess. So I had some expertise.
    In the medical community, selective amnesia has long been known to accompany certain sorts of physical injuries and convulsive fits. The idea that such amnesia might accompany emotional trauma—this was a cloudier subject. Murkier still was the notion that suppressed memories of violence could spur violence by the victim himself, and this violence, too, would go unremembered. It was controversial stuff, but Kleindst’s forays into the subject had been enjoying a renaissance in the popular imagination lately, spurred by the media.
    “You’re the expert,” said Haney. “Explain this syndrome to my client here, this psychological condition. Explain it so a regular person can understand.”
    What Haney wanted to do, I realized, was coach his client: to prepare him to testify in such a way as to support the alleged mental condition. I had my doubts as to whether all the markers were there in regard to Dillard. Also I’d been following the case, and I knew that some irregularities had emerged regarding the hard evidence, particularly the DNA. One of the samples had been contaminated. Most attorneys would go after that flaw in the evidence. They would pull at it, then pull some more, doing what they could to unravel the prosecution’s case. In contrast, Haney remained focused on the psychological.
    It was a risky strategy, the land that had worked a decade before, when the insanity defense was popular. Now juries were different—and so were the laws.
    Looking back, I tell myself I should have been more forceful about my reservations, but I knew Haney had enlisted a number of well-known psychologists as expert witnesses. Among them was Madison Paulie, who’d made his reputation profiling serial killers. Those of you who work in the profession will recognize his name: a specialist in criminal deviancy, known for his objectivity, one of the few who worked both sides of the aisle, prosecution and defense, and had the respect of both. He’d taken the stand on behalf of the Vampire Killer, over in Sacramento, pleading for clemency, but he’d also testified against the Chinatown Rapist, laying out the accused’s irremediable psychopathy in no uncertain terms. I had met Paulie once in passing—at one of the Wilders’ parties, as it happened—and it appealed to my vanity, I confess, to be part of a top-flight team. I was flattered.
    “This kind of syndrome,” I said, “the one you’re talking about—the victims block out memories of their abuse. Things that happened to them in the past. Violent things. Unpleasant things. They block out those memories. And they block out their own abusive actions.”
    Wagoner turned once again to Dillard. The prisoner looked bewildered. The case was moving away from him—and away, too, from whatever had or had not happened that night between him and Angela.
    “Did your father ever abuse you?” asked Wagoner.
    “No.”
    “Did he ever hit you—you know, with