Lisa Scottoline: Moment Of Truth

'You mean you're waiving your right to counsel?' Kovich nodded again.

'Yes, I'm waiving my right to counsel.'

'Are you under the influence of drugs or alcohol at this time?'

'No. I mean, I had some Scotch earlier. Before.'

Kovich frowned behind his big aviators. 'You're not intoxicated at the present time, are you?'

'No. I only had two and that was a while ago. I'm perfectly sober.'

Kovich picked up another form, two pages. 'Fine. You gotta sign this, for your waiver. Sign the first page and then you have to write on the second, too.' He slid the sheets across the table, and Jack signed the top page, wrote 'yes' after each question on the second page, and slid both back. 'We'll start with your Q and A, question and answer.' Kovich turned and started to type numbers in the box on the right, CASE NUMBER. 'It's procedure. Bear with me, okay?'

'Sure.' Jack watched Kovich typing and had the sense that confessing to murder, even falsely, could be as mundane as opening a checking account. A bureaucratic occasion; they typed out a form in triplicate and processed you into prison for life.

'State your name and address, please.'

'My name is Jack Newlin and my address is 382 Galwith's Alley.' Saying it relaxed him. It was going so well, then the black detective cleared his throat.

'Forget the Q and A for a minute, Mr Newlin,' Detective Brinkley said, raising a light palm with long, thin fingers. He straightened and buttoned his jacket at the middle, the simple gesture announcing he was taking charge. Tell us what happened, in your own words.'

Jack swallowed. This would be harder to do. He tried to forget about the hidden video camera and the detective's critical eyes. 'I guess I should tell you, my marriage hadn't been going very well lately. For a year, actually. Honor wasn't very happy with me.'

'Were you seeing another woman?' Detective Brinkley's question came rapid-fire, rattling Jack.

'Of course not. No. Never.'

Kovich, taken suddenly out of the picture, started typing with surprising speed. Capital letters appeared on the black-ruled line: NO. NEVER.

'Was she seeing another man?'

'No, no. Nothing like that. We just had problems, normal problems. Honor drank, for one thing, and it was getting worse.'

'Was she alcoholic?'

'Yes, alcoholic.' For the past year Jack had been telling himself Honor wasn't an alcoholic, just a heavy drinker, as if the difference mattered. 'We fought more and more often, then tonight she told me she wanted to divorce me.'

'What did you say?'

'I told her no. I was shocked. I didn't want to. I couldn't imagine it. I love – I loved – her.'

'Why did she ask you for a divorce?'

'Our problem always came down to the same thing, that she thought I wasn't good enough for her. That she had married down, in me.' That much was true. The sore spots in their marriage were as familiar as potholes in a city street and they had been getting harder and harder to steer around.

Brinkley nodded. 'What started the fight tonight?'

'Tonight, we were supposed to have a dinner together, just the two of us. But I was late.' Guilt choked Jack's voice and it wasn't fraudulent. If he had gotten home on time, none of this would have happened, and that was the least of his mistakes. 'She was angry at me for that, furious, and already drunk when I got home. She started shouting as soon as I came in the door.'

'Shouting what?'

That I was late, that I didn't care about anybody but myself, that she hated me. That I'd let her down. I ruined her life.' Jack summoned the words from the myths in their marriage and remembered the details of the crime scene he'd staged. He'd found his wife dead when he came home, but as soon as he realized who had killed her and why, he understood that he'd have to make it look as if he did it. He'd suppressed his horror and arranged every detail to point to him as the killer, including downing two full tumblers of Glenfiddich in case the police tested his blood. 'I poured myself a drink, then another. I was getting so sick of it. I tried for years to make her happy. No matter what I did I couldn't please her. What happened next was awful. Maybe it was the Scotch. I don't often drink. I became enraged.'

'Enraged?' Brinkley cocked his head, his hair cut short and thinning, so that his dark scalp peeked through. 'Fancy word, enraged.'

'Enraged, yes.' Jack willed himself to go with it. 'I mean, it set me off, made me angry. Her screaming at me, her insults. Something snapped inside. I lost control.' He recalled the other details of the faked crime scene; he had hurled a crystal tumbler to the parquet floor, as if he had been in a murderous rage. 'I threw my glass at her but she just laughed. I couldn't stand it, her laughing at me like that. She said she hated me. That she'd file papers first thing in the morning.' Jack wracked his brain for more details but came up empty, so he raised his voice. 'All I could think was, I can't take this anymore. I hate her threats. I hate her. I hate her and want her to shut up. So I picked up the knife.'

'What knife?'

'A butcher knife, Henkels.'

Kovich stopped typing, puzzled. 'What's Henkels?'

'A fancy knife,' Brinkley supplied, but Kovich only frowned.

'How do you spell it?'

Jack spelled the word as Kovich tapped it out, but Brinkley wasn't waiting. 'Mr Newlin, where was the knife?' he asked.

'On the dining room table.'

'Why was a butcher knife in the dining room?'

'It was with the appetizer, a cold filet mignon. She must have used it to slice the filet. She loved filet, it was her favorite. She'd set it out for an appetizer. The knife was right there and I took it from the table.'

'Then what did you do?'

'This is hard to say. I mean, I feel so… horrible.' Jack's face fell, the sadness deep within, and he suddenly felt every jowl and furrow of middle age. He didn't try to hide his grief. It would look like remorse. 'I… I… grabbed the knife and killed her.'

'You stabbed your wife to death.'

'Yes, I stabbed my wife to death,' Jack repeated, amazed he could form the words. In truth, he had picked up the bloody knife, unaccountably left behind, and wrapped his own fingers around it, obliterating any telltale fingerprints with his own.

'How many times?'

'What?'

'How many times did you stab her?'

Jack shuddered. He hadn't thought of that. 'I don't know. Maybe it was the Scotch, I was in kind of a frenzy. Like a trance. I just kept stabbing.' At the typewriter, Kovich tapped out, JUST KEPT STABBING.

'And you got blood on your suit and hands.'

'Yes.' He looked down at the residuum of Honor's blood, spattered on a silk tie of cornflower blue and dry as paper between his fingertips. He had put the blood there himself, kneeling at her side, and the act had sent him to the bathroom, his gorge rising in revulsion.

'Did she scream?'

'She shouted, I think. I don't remember if it was loud,' he added, in case they interviewed the neighbors.

'Did she fight you?'

He tasted bile on his teeth. He imagined Honor fighting for her life, her final moments stricken with terror. Realizing she would die, seeing who would kill her. 'She fought hard, but not well. She was drunk. She couldn't believe it was happening. That I would really do that to her.'

Then what did you do?'

'I went to the phone. I called nine-one-one. I told them I killed my wife.' Jack caught himself. 'Wait, I forgot. I went to the bathroom and tried to wash up, but not all the blood came off. I realized there was no way I could hide what I'd done. I had no plan, I hadn't thought it out. I didn't even have a way to get her body out of the house. I realized I was going to get caught. There was no way out. I vomited into the toilet.'

Brinkley's eyes narrowed. 'Why did you try to wash up?'