The man in the easy chair looked bored. His wife was still talking about the tough afternoon that she’d had at her club. The rough bricks had rubbed my fingers raw. I licked the blood off them, as I stood with my back to the wall wondering what to do, wondering what I could do. I could turn myself in. I wasn’t crazy. They couldn’t put me in an asylum. Almost any smart lawyer could make a monkey out of Gloria in court, prove that I hadn’t raped her. Even if I had, she wouldn’t have lost a thing she hadn’t lost a hundred times before. In time they would let me go. But by the time they did the little doll in the death house would be dead. “Just think of me once in awhile,” she’d told me. I was thinking of her. Besides, I’d promised Johnny. I knew now I was right. Emerson had been killed because he knew. But I had to have something for Corson, some tangible proof that would make him and Olson believe me. Olson would be a tough nut to crack. He had no doubt about Mona’s guilt.
