In the trial, he actually said he had never considered killing anyone. He added that he didn’t care enough about any of them to kill them—meaning, he clarified, there was no passion there. He asked, Why would he sacrifice his life, not to mention brilliant career, in the kind of town that needs every ounce of brilliance and expertise it can get?

All she could think while taking notes was how humiliating it would be to have to go home and face the husband you cheated on, knowing that the asshole you cheated with didn’t even care enough to kill you! The argument in her mind made her want to laugh, and she realized she had missed a beat or two, a few words, because she was remembering a woman on the stand saying how he’d said terrible things about his wife. He’d talked as if his wife was abusive to him, this woman said. But that woman is not in the courtroom today; none of them are. Today’s show is just for the smart ones, the ones who did not go along with him, the ones who loved the young woman he killed, and the wife whose life he has temporarily ruined. And how sad for his children to have to always know their father was capable of something so horrible, that they share DNA with such a horror show. A person might spend the rest of his or her life waiting for it to spring out of them without warning, in the form of a knife or a gun or a push from a precarious high spot.