HCC 006 - The Confession

by Domenic Stansberry

  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 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 a strap, or a belt?”

  “Not that I remember.”

  Wagoner ignored the answer and returned his attention to me. “If Dillard suffered from this kind of memory loss, in regard to his father beating him, how would this affect his memory of those events.”

  “Well, any number of ways,” I said. “He could remember some of the incidents but not others. He might remember them to a certain point—say to when the beatings started to get intense. Or maybe the whole incident would float somewhere in the back of his head, and seem more like a dream than a memory. He could see his father looming over him . . .”

  “Please,” Dillard interrupted. “My father was a good man.”

  Haney sighed and shook his head. He knitted those unwieldy eyebrows together—they were a natural calamity of sorts, those eyebrows, thick and black, a line of charcoal across his brow—and his face furrowed. “Let’s approach this from another angle. You told me you had a special relationship with your Aunt Florence. You carry a picture of her in your wallet, don’t you.”

  “Yes,” said Dillard. “Aunt Flo helped take care of me growing up. She died when I was sixteen. In a car accident.”

  “She was a good-looking young woman.”

  “I guess so.”

  “She wasn’t so much older than you. Seven, eight years. Did you ever think about her?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “Well, maybe there’s things you don’t remember here as well. Auntie Flo—she had a temper? She was abusive, bossed you around.”

  “No.”

  “But on other hand, there was a kind of special relationship between you. Sometimes at night—”

  A light came into Dillard’s eyes. He realized where Wagoner was headed.

  I thought of my own childhood, once upon a time.

  “No. Not Aunt Flo.” He shook his head, emphatic. “Absolutely not Aunt Flo. I just can’t say what I think you want me to say. I’d rather die.”

  “Well, I think that can be arranged.”

  Wagoner’s tactic was apparent. The attorney meant to build a case that Dillard’s attack on his wife was rooted in revenge for years of abuse that had been suppressed. His relationship with Angela—the abuse alternating with sexual passion—had unleashed the anger, the rage, he felt for his dead aunt, and that had lay sleeping all these years. He had killed Angela, yes, but under severe duress, unconscious of his actions. This was evidenced in the way Dillard’s mind had disassociated from the awful event, creating a fictional intruder.

  “Not Aunt Flo,” Dillard said again, but when he looked up I saw the weakness in his eyes.

  I put a hand on his shoulder then, and our eyes met, and I reassured him the best I could, by looking into his eyes and smiling and giving his shoulder a gentle squeeze, the kind you give someone at a hospital, or a kid going off to war. I’ve reassured other prisoners the same way, guilty or innocent, sane or otherwise.

  “I don’t want to do my defense this way,” he said, “I want a new lawyer.”

  Wagoner crossed his arms. He’d heard this kind of thing before; so had every attorney.

  “Kaufman,” said Dillard. “Jamie Kaufman.”

  Wagoner let out small laugh. A smile tempted my lips as well, not that I blamed Dillard. Kaufman was a hot ticket these days, ever since she’d taken a death row case out at San Quentin and gotten the man released. It was just that everyone else wanted her, too. Every accused murderer and three-time loser up and down the coast knew her name, and half of them had written her letters, pleading their case. The truth was Dillard had already drained his wife’s estate to pay Wagoner’s retainer, and Queen Jamie wasn’t doing gratis work anymore. All her clients these days had plenty of money.

  “I need some time alone with my client,” said Haney. “I’ll give you a call at your office, to talk strategy.”

  “Sure.”

  “Say hello to Elizabeth for me.”

  “Yes.”

  “She’s a wonderful woman. You take care of her.”

  “I will.”


  I gave Dillard another pat on the shoulder. Then I drove home, taking the freeway down through San Rafael, winding under the high brown hills and the oak trees and all those houses with their glass windows, their redwood decks and their great big view of the world.

  7.

  Absent death, the attention flags. Every newspaper editor knows this, as does every writer of lurid tales.

  Those of you who do not know my story—who missed it as it ran through the tabloids—may find yourself impatient.

  Of what am I accused?

  What are my crimes, you wonder, and what is my motive for this so-called confession?

  To deceive.

  This is what my enemies would say. To place the blame outside myself. To charm and seduce. And along the way take yet further pleasure in my deceptions.

  As you have already seen, though, my charms are limited. There is a darkness in me I cannot easily conceal, and in the end such concealment is not my intention. I have my moments of compassion, of tenderness, but I do not mean to suggest this makes me an innocent, without ulterior motive. Even so my intention is to tell this story as straightforwardly as I can. Patiently, without rushing ahead. Because we learn from the telling, as they say, and there are pearls hidden in the meanest tale.

  Still it’s not easy. Like anyone, I want to be understood. I want sympathy. So I am tempted to jump ahead of myself.

  To the evening of the Wilders’ party, when I saw my wife from across the room, elegant and beautiful. Or to the instant later that evening when I ran from the arbor and pursued Sara across the soft grass. Or to the moment the next day when Milofski the homicide detective and Minor the prosecutor slid the photograph across the table and I closed my eyes, knowing what I was about to see.

  I turned my head but my eyes were drawn back to that picture, just as my memory is drawn to it now.

  To the figure splayed out on the bed. Strangled, in the way that Angela had been strangled. Other women, too, as it happens. I felt Detective Milofski’s eyes boring into me.

  But I am getting ahead of myself.

  8.

  Since the beginning of the Dillard trial, I had kept my distance from Sara Johnson. We met once quite by accident in the halls of the Civic Center, and this encounter ended up in one of the atriums of that odd modernist building, with its turrets and long, sloping halls. She wore a yellow shirt dress, belted at the waist.

  “You’ve been avoiding me,” she said.

  “No,” I said. “That’s not true.”

  I was lying of course. One of those small lies that everyone tells, but I was trying to do the right thing. I wanted to drift out of her life without making a fuss. At some point, without really thinking about it, I had made this decision. Not quite consciously maybe, but I had made it. Even so, I dallied a moment there in the hall. Her eyes held a certain vulnerability, and a wildness, too.

  “Are you feeling better?” she asked.

  “More embarrassed than anything,” I said. “What happened, that’s not like me. It’s not usual.”

  She touched me then and kissed me on the cheek. Despite my inclinations to the contrary, I might have responded more intimately, but we were in a public hall. The courts were down one end, the building department on the other, and there was a clerk walking by. As it was, I put my hands on Sara’s waist and felt her body soft through the yellow dress.

  “We need to talk,” she said.

  For some reason, I thought of Angela Mori. The victim has a role in the crime, too, some psychologists say. Or so I had read lately, studying for the Dillard case. Because even action is an interaction, and the criminal seeks a certain consent. Communicated through gestures. A turn of the head. An open door.

  The clerk gave us a glance and I let my hands go from Sara’s waist. It was for the best, I told myself—and I was grateful now for the passerby.

  “I’m on my way to court,” I said, though this wasn’t quite true. In fact I was headed for the law library, in the upper reaches of the building, but admitting that would have given me excuse to dawdle.

  “Call me,” she said. “Come see me.”

  I kissed her then. I meant it as a quick good-bye, but I was sloppy and let the moment linger. The feel of her so close reminded me of that moment in her bed, back in her apartment.

  I pulled myself away, avoiding her eyes, trying not to think of how she looked standing there in that yellow dress, leaning into herself, one foot tucked behind the other

  In the end, though, I didn’t go to see Sara. I didn’t call. I concentrated on my work and tried to put her from my mind. I wanted things under control. The business with the ambulance had rattled me—and I did not want Elizabeth to find out about us. (Or that is what I told myself. There was an edge I walked, a line between revealing myself and staving hidden. It excited me, if I admit the truth; part of me wanted to be discovered.)

  A few days later, Sara caught me on the phone. I was in my office going over my notes for the Dillard case.

  “Jake?”

  “Sara,” I said. “I’ve been meaning to call.”

  There was an awkward pause. I could feel her wanting something more from me, there on the other end of the line. She was upset with me for not having come.

  “Is it cold?” I asked.

  It was the first line of a game I had played with her on the phone a couple of times. I resorted to it now, I guess, because I didn’t want to face what was on her mind.

  “Not now, Jake. I don’t want to play that game. We need to talk.”

  “Is it breezy?”

  “No, Jake. I told you. I don’t want to play that right now.”

  “Oh. So it’s hot. That’s what you’re telling me. It’s hot. And I’ve just got on too many clothes.”

  Sara laughed, but it was a weary laugh, and I could feel things shifting between us. “Yeah, Jake. It’s hot. But I don’t know how much longer it’s going to stay that way.”

  “You’re wearing your summer dress?”

  She didn’t answer, and I felt the moment fade. My heart wasn’t in it, and neither was hers. Maybe she was wearing her summer dress, maybe she wasn’t. Ultimately that wasn’t the point of the game. We guessed at each other’s clothes, then took them off in our imaginations. The last time we’d talked like this, it had been a few weeks back, in the evening, while Elizabeth sat in her armchair in an adjoining room, reading one of her books.

  “I can’t do this anymore,” Sara said. Her voice was earnest and sad.

  “I can’t either.”

  “The incident—the other day at our apartment,” she said. “I know what was behind it, and so do you.”

  “You do?”

  “The stress, the infidelity. It’s too much. No matter how bold we think we are, how sophisticated. It’s not healthy.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “We have to make a decision. About us. Can you get away? Come talk to me.”

  “The Dillard case. It’s got me swamped.”

  “Jake,” she said. “I think it’s gotten to a certain point. Either we do something with what’s going on between us. Or we let it go. We end it.”

  Once again I was silent. In some ways I was surprised that she pushed things this hard.

  “Deceit, it causes tension,” she said. “It makes things build up inside. I pretend like I’m one way. Like I can do this kind of thing, but . . . Why don’t you come over, and we can talk.”

  “Sara . . .”

  I heard sorrow in my voice, and regret, and for a second I didn’t know what to say. I imagined Sara over me—that unfulfilled moment, when I had been reaching toward her—and though part of me wanted to go back to that moment, another part said no. Elizabeth was supposed to be home around five. She had gone off to another one of her academic conferences, but this one was nearby in Sonoma.

  “It’s not a good time,” I said. “I’ve got this report. I’ve got to prepare my testimony.”

  “All right. If that’s the w
ay it is.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, you don’t have to be. I should tell you. Bill—he wants to get serious.”

  Bill was Sara’s old boyfriend. A young attorney who lived in San Francisco’s Mission District and did a lot of pro bono work for the Hispanic population there. They’d dated for several years and been on the verge of marriage before I stumbled along. My sense of it—she half wanted him, and half didn’t. Her relationship with me was a fling, a way of escaping the decision. Flirting with the unknown. Underneath it all, she knew this as well as I.

  “Not tonight,” I said.

  “Fine,” she said, and hung up the phone.

  An instant later it started to ring. I heard her voice on the answering machine. I was tempted to pick it up but it was the kind of thing, you’re damned either way. In the end, I resisted. I gathered up my work and went home to see my wife.

  When I got home Elizabeth had not arrived yet. I did not think much of it. She often dragged in late—distracted by a student or a colleague—and I figured she would be along soon. In the meantime, I went to my bookshelf and pulled out my copy of Kleindst. I plunged into my work with a renewed energy. Whether I did so as a means of escape—as a way of forgetting Sara—or in earnest pursuit of a greater end, I can’t tell you. It may be that both things were true at the same time. Regardless, it had been a while since I’d read Kleindst, and I wanted to reacquaint myself with his ideas:

  Situational memory loss is an acute form of amnesia, a blackout of memory that has its roots in early abuse, and typically reoccurs after an incident in which the suppressed abuse has exploded into rage. After such incidents, the afflicted patient will not remember his own rage, or the attendant violence, until much later, >if at all.

  I thought about Dillard’s story. The locked door, the intruder, the gamma hydroxybutrate in Angela’s blood. I thought, too, about my moment with Sara, at her apartment.

  If the memory does return, it is often fragmented, and marked by severe disassociation, in which the core identity of the afflicted individual separates from his or her actions—and as a result he sees the perpetrator of the crime not as himself but as a shadowy other In such situations, the individual will go to great lengths to preserve this false view of events.