The second time Pete Sunday interviewed Stefan, he’d been processed, allowed to shower and been given a huge pair of surgical scrubs and a robe to wear. He was shivering so fiercely that Sunday went to the nursing station to get him a blanket, which our son looped over his head like a Bedouin’s robe. Wearily, then, Stefan confessed to breaking down the door by kicking it and hitting Belinda with the golf club. He didn’t recall doing it but he had been told that was how she was hurt. He did remember getting into a physical fight and screams and blood. He remembered things that hadn’t happened, however. For one thing, upon examination, the door was in perfectly good order. Pete Sunday had written down what Stefan said. “He said, I guess I just went in and then I hit her. Why would I do that?”
I sat across from the detective, delicately deconstructing and reconstructing my egg salad sandwich, but my thoughts went to Stefan. Abruptly, the sight of my food, soft and soaking into the bread, suddenly revolted me. I got up to tip it into the trash.
“You see why he was so confused now,” I said.
“Maybe. You’re thinking this girl, this…”
“Emily. Or Esme. Emily Lindquist. Emily Lundgren.”
“You’re thinking that this girl just told him all this before the police got there and he heard it somehow and believed it. As much as he could understand.”
“Something like that.” Then I asked, “Are you going to arrest her?”
Pete Sunday blinked. “Arrest her? I don’t even know who she is yet.” If only I’d heard from her recently. I personally had called every one of those numbers and every one of them was disconnected. Could Pete find out who’d used them and how, in previous months? That depended, he said, on what kind of phones they were.
“This is important,” I insisted, just north of a whine.
“It is, but, Thea, it’s an old case, and yes, it’s a priority, but I have other cases. A guy who just robbed and beat up six women who’ll get away if I don’t find him. I don’t even work for that jurisdiction anymore, so I should just hand this box and your thoughts over to them. I just can’t bring myself to do that. So I’m going to have to ask my boss here if I can use my own time to chase this down.”
Frustrated, I asked him how long this would take. Conservatively, days if not weeks, he said.
The speech we were to give was in two days’ time. What if it wasn’t relevant at all anymore? Why should we do this?
Pete Sunday asked the substance of what we were to address and I told him that it was the challenges Stefan faced coming out of prison.
“Well, that’s still something you faced, right?” he said.
It was. With a promise to try to speed things up, Pete Sunday left, the box tucked under one arm.
It’s really almost over, I told myself. Almost really over for good.
* * *
We arrived at the hotel in Milwaukee early in the morning that weekend, although the speech was not scheduled to start until that night at six. I was practically teen-like in my relief when Jep was able to come with us. Curt Cowrie met us in the lobby of The Nines, the very kind of hotel I’d dreamed of last January when Stefan came out of prison, with a rooftop restaurant where we lunched on Thai barbecue until my stomach literally protruded. He said we were welcome to stay overnight in the suite booked for us, dine out, have brunch the next day, whatever we wanted, and we agreed to take him up on that. We went to the theater and did a sound check. How many seats there were, how long it took to walk from the back of the theater to the stage, these things literally nauseated me, or maybe it was all that barbecue. Forty minutes, an hour with questions, I told myself. It couldn’t last forever. Be brave and be seated.
After lunch, a stylist showed up to do hair and makeup. Stefan looked like old money in a slate-blue Marc Jacobs sport coat over a gray checked shirt with a dark green tie. He told me that he’d gone swimming in the indoor rooftop pool and then took a nap. At four, we showed up at the theater. We sat side by side on the stage in big wing-back chairs. The sound technicians inserted the mics, clipped them and turned them on. When it was time for each of us to speak, we would get up and stand in front of a slender podium on which we’d set our notes.
An hour until the curtains would open. A half hour. Five minutes.
As the lights went down, I looked out over the crowd, which was startlingly vast, and reminded myself not to think too much. I began, “Today, you’re going to feel the whole range of emotions, from outrage to pity. When you leave, I hope that you will also feel understanding and compassion, even if that surprises you. I can assure you that this whole range of emotions is something that everyone who knows me and who knows my son Stefan has felt…”