"We still wouldn't have laid a finger on Willard."
"I know, I know. I guess I'd better have a talk with him."
Willard was sitting alone in a cell that dwarfed him a little, despite its narrowness, because he was both a very small and a very frail-looking man. Fenton put his age at about forty-five, although he could have been four of five years older.
He didn't look very much like a writer, but Fenton knew that few writers conformed to the picture people had of them. In general, they looked remarkably like everybody else.
Willard was about five-feet-two in his socks, and he was in them now because both his belt and his shoes had been taken away from him. He had thoughtful gray eyes, and rather handsome features and there was nothing in the least aggressive-looking about him. He was hard to picture with a gun in his hand, taking deliberate aim and shooting a defenseless woman through the head. It was difficult even, to think of him as a man with a violent temper who could write threatening letters or resort to any kind of extreme physical violence, even under the goadings of rage.
He looked up quickly when Fenton and Gallison entered the cell and then got slowly to his feet.
Fenton frowned a little and gestured toward the cot upon which he had been sitting.
"Sit down, please," he said. "No sense in standing. We're just going to have a brief talk and then you can see your lawyer, if you wish. You don't have to say a word, if you prefer to wait until he gets here. It's my duty to tell you that, even though you've signed a confession. Anything you may decide to tell us can be used as evidence in court, in addition to the information in the statement you've just signed. Is that clear to you?"
Willard nodded and sat down again on the edge of the cot. "What does all that matter now?" he said. "I'm going to plead guilty anyway. I killed her because—well, you don't know what kind of woman she was, so you probably won't be able to understand how a man can be driven to desperation—"