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right out and tell me I was full of shit, but that’s what he was thinking. But he didn’t push it, because he knew it wouldn’t make any difference. The death sentence didn’t take them any more time than the guilty verdict.”
    “Did it surprise you?”
    “It shocked me. Later, when the judge pronounced sentence, that shocked me, too. Shock’s not the same thing as surprise.”
    “No.”
    “The idea of it. ‘You’re going to die.’ Well, everybody’s going to die. But when someone sits there and tells you, well, it has an impact.”
    “I can imagine.”
    “Remorse. Could you express remorse by proxy? Because I couldn’t be sorry that I’d killed those boys, because I hadn’t, but I was damn well sorry that someone had.” He frowns, a vertical line in his forehead forming to match the ones at the sides of his mouth. “He told me it would be a great help if I could tell them where to find the third body. But how could I do that if I’d never set eyes on the Willis boy and had no idea where he might be? I could tell him, he said, and he could say I let it slip while still maintaining my innocence. I told him I couldn’t quite see the logic of that. I’d be sticking to a lie while admitting it was a lie. He hemmed and hawed, and I said it hardly mattered, because I couldn’t tell what I didn’t know. You know, I didn’t care if he believed me, or if anyone else believed me. My wife didn’t believe me, she couldn’t even look at me. She’s divorced me, you know.”
    “So I understand.”
    “I haven’t seen her or my children since I was taken into custody. No, I take that back. I saw her once. She came to the jail and asked me how I could do such a thing. I said I was innocent and she had to believe me. But she didn’t, and something died in me, and from that point on it didn’t really matter what anyone else believed or didn’t believe.”
    Fascinating, just fascinating.
     
     
    “You wrote that you believed me.”
    “Yes.”
    “I suppose that was just a way to get me to approve the visit. Well, it worked.”
    “I’m glad it got me here,” he says, “but it wasn’t a ruse. I know you didn’t commit those barbarities.”
    “I almost think you’re serious.”
    “I am.”
    “But how can you possibly be? You’re a rational man, a scientist.”
    “If psychology’s a science, and there are those who’d argue that it’s not.”
    “What else could it be?”
    “An art. A black art, some would say. There were those, you know, who wanted to give Freud the Nobel, not in medicine but in literature. A backhanded compliment, that. I like to think there’s a scientific basis to what I do, Preston, but—I’m sorry, is it all right if I call you Preston?”
    “I don’t mind.”
    “And my name is Arne. That’s A-R-N-E, the Scandinavian spelling, though it’s pronounced like the diminutive for Arnold. My parents were English and Scots-Irish on both sides, I can’t think why they thought to give me a Swedish name. But that’s off the point, and I’m afraid I’ve lost track of what I was saying.”
    “A scientific basis to what you do.”
    “
Yes, of course.” He hadn’t lost track, but is pleased to note that Applewhite’s been paying attention. “But even pure science has an intuitive element. Most scientific discovery comes out of intuition, out of an inspired leap of faith that owes little to logic or scientific method. I know you’re innocent. I know it with a certainty that leaves no room for doubt
.
I can’t explain how I know it, to you or to myself, but I know it.” He treats Applewhite to a gentler version of the rueful smile. “I’m afraid,” he says, “that you’ll have to take my word for it
.”
    Applewhite just looks at him, his face soft now, defenseless. And, unbidden and quite unexpected, tears begin to flow down his cheeks.
     
     
    “I’m sorry. I haven’t cried in, hell, I couldn’t even guess how long it’s been. Ages.”
    “It’s nothing to