studying my face, measuring my reaction. On record I have psychologists supporting my claim that I don’t remember what happened that night. For three days after Linda Sue’s death, I watched in disbelief as the murder of our neighbor got played out nightly on the local news. I responded as any neighbor would, making phone calls as the story spread like a virus around the state— Yes, that’s right, we had to tell people. That’s our town, our Juniper Lane. Our dead neighbor . I moved between the library and home in a frightened daze with a growing sense of unease I couldn’t place until the night I found my nightgown at the bottom of my laundry hamper, stained with a great Frisbee-sized circle of blood.
I washed it, assuming the blood was my own.
Only later did I see that the stain was on the front, spread across the chest, an unlikely placement for a menstrual stain. Realizing this, I moved as if following someone else’s orders. I folded my nightgown, the stain a faint pinkish brown, placed it in a bag, drove first to the library where I worked and then, a few hours after that, to the police station, where I told them I needed to talk to someone. Eight hours later, with a detailed description of my past parasomniac episodes—most, but not all, dating back to my childhood and college days—I signed a confession. While I had no memory of the night, I believed that in all likelihood I was responsible for the murder.
Jeremy has said the whole sleepwalking defense was a ridiculous gamble no right-minded lawyer should have taken. My defense should have pointed out the almost entirely circumstantial evidence against me. Yes, my fingerprints were in Linda Sue’s bedroom, but I had been in her house on the afternoon of her murder. She had given me a tour of the upstairs, taken me into her bedroom. Other than the bloody nightgown stain (untestable because I had washed it so quickly), no physical evidence except the fingerprints directly connected me to the crime.
The weapon had been washed (“with such care for a sleepwalker,” the prosecutor at my trial enjoyed pointing out). I’d also left no footprints anywhere in the blood, showing more foresight than O.J. had, they said. What clinched my innocence in Jeremy’s mind were the photographs of the nightgown and the solid, oval stain of blood. There were no spatter marks at all, which, given the manner of death (head bludgeoned three times), would have been impossible. “How do you bludgeon someone and get a stain like that? I don’t understand what they were thinking, frankly. There was spatter on the floor and on the walls and none on your nightgown? It’s ridiculous.”
Jeremy is a sweet man, not young enough to be my son, though now that seems to be the tenor of our relationship. In the three years since he began working on my behalf, he has gotten married and fathered a child. I’ve seen baby pictures, one including his wife, Laura, looking ashen and weary, propped up in bed, a blanketed baby at her side. Beyond that one picture (which, I have to admit, I have a hard time forgetting), I can’t imagine what his home life is like. I don’t know if he’s a hands-on father who changes diapers or a distracted one who eats quick dinners and returns to work. Judging by the amount of time he’s devoted to my case, I’d have to guess the latter.
In the beginning the careful attention Jeremy paid to the details of my trial embarrassed me enough to wish I’d been more present at it. If I’d paid better attention, would things have gone differently? Jeremy has called Franklin Mayhew, my first lawyer, an idiot and has cited incompetent representation as the basis for my habeas corpus appeal. I certainly see his point, but at the time, we honestly thought we had the best lawyer money could buy. My husband, Paul’s, boss had recommended him, saying he’d gotten his son off a third DUI arrest. “Miracle worker,” he said. We dialed the number because we needed