Hope to Die Read Free

all that detectives, private and public, deal in and count on facts, it is our capacity to reflect, to imagine, that points us to solutions. When two cops discuss a case they're working on, they talk less about what they know for a fact than what they imagine. They construct scenarios of what might have happened, and then look for facts that will support or knock down their constructions.
    And so I have imagined the final moments of Byrne and Susan Hollander. Of course I have gone much farther in my imagination than I have felt it necessary to recount here. The facts themselves go farther than I've gone here- the blood spatters, the semen traces, the physical evidence painstakingly gathered and recorded and assessed by the forensic technicians. Even so, there are questions the evidence doesn't answer unequivocally. For example, which of the Hollanders died first? I've suggested that they shot Byrne Hollander before they raped his wife, but it could have been the other way around; the physical evidence allows for either scenario. Perhaps he had to watch her violation and hear her screams until the first bullet mercifully blinded and deafened him. Perhaps she saw her husband killed before she was seized and stripped and taken. I can imagine it either way, and have in fact imagined it every possible way.
    Here is how I prefer to imagine it: Almost as soon as they are inside the house and the door is kicked shut, one of the men shoots Byrne Hollander three times, and he is dead before the third bullet enters his body, dead before he hits the floor. The shock alone is enough to induce an out-of-body experience in his wife, and Susan Hollander, disembodied, hovers somewhere near the ceiling and watches, emotionally and physically disconnected, while her body is abused on the floor below her. Then, when they cut her throat, that body dies, and the part of her that has been watching is drawn down that long tunnel that seems to be a part of all near-death experiences. There's a white light, and she's drawn into the light, and there she finds the people who loved her and are waiting for her. Her grandparents, of course, and her father, who died when she was a child. Her mother, who died just two years ago, and her son, of course, Sean. There's never been a day that she hasn't thought of Sean, and he's there now, waiting for her.
    And her husband's there, too. They were only apart for a few minutes, really, and now they'll be together forever.
    Well, that's how I prefer to imagine it. And it's my imagination. I guess I can do as I please with it.

TWO
    Their daughter Kristin found the bodies. She'd spent the evening with friends inChelsea and was going to stay over at a girlfriend's apartment in London Terrace, but that would have meant wearing the same clothes to work in the morning or else running home first to change. A man she'd just met offered her a ride home, and she took it. It was a few minutes after one when he pulled up and double-parked in front of the house on West Seventy-fourth.
    He was going to walk her to her door, but she stopped him. Still, he waited while she crossed the sidewalk and mounted the steps, waited while she used her key, waited until she was inside. Did he sense something? Probably not. I suspect it was habit, the way he was brought up: when you see a woman home, you wait until she's safely inside before you take your leave.
    So he was still there, just about to pull away, when she reappeared in the doorway, her face a mask of horror. He killed the ignition and got out to see what was the matter.
    The story broke much too late for the morning papers, but it was the lead item on the local news, so Elaine and I learned about it at breakfast. The gal on New York One reported that the victims had attended a concert atLincolnCenter that evening, so we knew we'd been there listening to the same music with them; what we didn't know then was that they'd been at the patrons' reception and dinner as well. It was