Land of the Blind Read Free

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 asmuch 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