Jess Walter: Land Of The Blind

Caroline leans across the table and puts her hands out, palms up, and thinks of the last car she bought and the salesman who struck this pose: What's it going to take for you to drive this car off the lot today? "There's something you want to get off your chest."

"Yes," the Loon says.

"You told the sergeant you wanted to confess."

"Yes."

"Then you need to tell me what you did. And who you did it to."

"Why?" he asks.

"Because that's what a confession is."

"I don't think so," he says, and cocks his head. "Isn't the confession separate from the thing being confessed? There's the crime, the action, which is crude and violent and without context. And then there is the confession of the crime, which is all context, all motivation and-" He looks at the ceiling. "I don't know. Cleansing. I mean, there must be millions of crimes every day. But a confession? A real confession? I'd guess those are pretty rare."

She stares at him, drawn in by his extravagant Loon logic and that nagging familiarity. Who is he? She mentally shaves him, trims the hair. Who does she know with an eye patch? "Look," she says, "you can't confess without naming a crime and a victim."

For the first time, he is engaged. "Of course you can," he says. "The victim is just a shadow, an expression of the idea of a specific crime. The crime is the real thing, the actual, the ideal, the light behind the shadow."

"Are we still talking about a confession?" Caroline asks.

"Yes," says the Loon. "A priest doesn't want to know whom you lusted after or what you stole; he wants to know whether you are sorry. God doesn't want names."

"Then maybe you should've turned yourself in to a priest," she says. "Maybe you should confess to God."

"I don't believe in God," he says. "I believe in the police."

This whole thing is getting away from her. They stare across the small table at each other and she thinks of college, of sitting up late at night after bottles of wine, in conversations just like this one, usually involving some horny sophomore poet or philosopher, just before he changed his major to business and got engaged to someone else. A couple of times, she found herself seduced by a young man's boozy rationalization of the shortness of life and the subjective nature of morality. She's always had three weaknesses when it comes to men: dark eyes, big pecs, faulty logic.

She considers the Loon and loses herself in his one dark eye, which seems to compensate for its missing partner by exuding twice the emotion. The eye floats in its socket like a deep blue Life Saver. "I'm just not sure what I can do with a confession that doesn't admit to a crime," she says quietly.

"I'm not asking you to do anything, Caroline. Just listen."

She checks her watch: 9:40 P.M. Maybe the desk sergeant is right. Cut this nut loose and she's home in an hour and twenty minutes watching TV. Still, this could keep her from filling the last of her shift with paperwork.

Apparently he sees her indecision. "Look," he says, "you probably get people admitting crimes all the time. But what are you getting, really? You know what the guy did or you wouldn't have brought him in. And he knows you know. He's not confessing. He weighs his options and tells you only as much as you already know, as much as he can get away with. You trick him into telling more, but you both know the rules. It's a formality… confirmation of what everyone already knows.

"But this thing" – he scratches at the table – "this thing I want to tell you… nobody knows about it. Nobody knows what I've done."

The quiet in the room is different from normal quiet between cop and suspect or even cop and loon, and Caroline shifts uncomfortably.

"Tell me this," he says. "When was the last genuine confession you heard? I don't mean excuses or plea bargains or justifications or extenuating circumstances or coerced testimony or the half-truths of confidential informants." His chin rests on the table and his arms are spread out. "When was the last time a man came in and opened himself up, unburdened his soul, when nothing was compelling him to do so? When was the last time someone gave you the truth?"

"I don't…" She feels flushed. "You want a confession without consequences?"

"If you mean prison, I know that's a possibility." He pulls back a bit, smiles sadly, and Caroline begins to think that maybe this Loon really did something, maybe there's more to this than delusions and skipped meds. "But this thing that happened," he says carefully, "was the result of a lifetime of harassment. Betrayals and pressures. It will never happen… it could never happen again. It was a radiator boiling over.

"Consequences?" He squeezes his eyes shut. "All I have left is consequences."

It is quiet for a moment. "Okay," Caroline says. "You want to… confess." She's used that word a hundred times and it never sounded like this. "You want to confess without incriminating yourself. And then what? Go home?"

He doesn't answer, just looks down.

"Well," she says, "that would certainly speed up the criminal justice system."

It is Friday night. There are no other detectives in these back offices. It is one of the idiocies of police work: the criminals work nights and weekends, while the detectives are home for the six o'clock news. The office behind her is dark. What harm can there be in indulging this Loon for an hour?

"Okay," she says. "I'll do it. I'll hear your… confession."

"Thank you." He looks around the room. "Okay."

They stare at each other for a few seconds more and he takes a series of deep breaths. Finally, he leans forward. "Do I start or-"

"There are a number of-"

"It's just, I've never… how do you go about this?"

"Well, usually we just talk. We can tape confessions. We can do it on video."

He looks uncomfortable with all of these options.

"Sometimes we have the suspect write out his version of events and sign it."

The Loon perks up. "Yeah," he says. "That's it. I'd like to write it. Yes. It should be written down. With context and meaning. That's the only way."

"I'll get you a pad and a pen," she says.

"And some more coffee?"

She grabs his cup and exits the interview room. She leaves the door unlocked; he's not under arrest. All around her, the Major Crimes office registers its indifference to the semantic games of Caroline and this crank. After all, she thinks, a confession is a confession is… Dark computer screens track her across the room, colleagues' family pictures watch from their perches on the soft cubicle walls. At her desk – no pictures – Caroline pulls a legal pad from the top drawer and grabs a pen. She walks out front and nods to the sergeant as she fills the Loon's cup with stale patrol coffee.

"So was I right?" The sergeant looks up from a snow-boarding magazine. "He a fuckin' wack job?"

"A shithouse rat," she says.

"Yeah, I figured." He returns to his report. "You gonna cut him loose?"

"In a minute."

When she comes back the Loon looks uncertain, as if he's having second thoughts. She sets his coffee down and he takes it gratefully.

"Can I ask you something?" he says.

She waits.

"Have you ever been responsible for someone's death?"

She notes the timidity of the words. Not Have you ever killed someone but Have you ever been responsible for someone's death. "Yes," she answers, to both questions.

"What was it like? For you?"

"Better than for the dead guy," she says. But he doesn't respond to the joke and she remembers the feeling, the smell, the gun in her hand, the man no longer moving toward her, finished. "It was bad," she says, more quietly.

"Afterward, it was hard… personally?"

She doesn't answer.

"I just wonder if it's possible to live with something like that," he says.