The alleged perpetrator, Stefan Paul Christiansen, age 17, of 11 Washtenaw Street, Portland, Wisconsin, is unable to stand, walk or answer questions. He explains his arms are on fire. He asks for his mother. He tells this interviewer, “It is all my fault.” (See video recorded statement.)

Then this:

REPORT OF THE IDENTIFICATION DIVISION

To: Detective Sergeant Peter B. Sunday, cc Detective Sergeant Dashelle Lamartine

Black Creek County Sheriff’s Police Department

55 College Avenue

Black Creek, Wisconsin 53575

Specimens delivered by Louis Torres

60 negatives

60 photographs of latent prints, including tips, sides and lower joint series of fingers, palm prints and footprints of Jillian Rae McCormack, Belinda Lowell McCormack, Stefan Paul Christiansen, unidentified fingerprints and palm prints.

Photographs of household surfaces include TV, nightstand, coffee table, lamps, presumed murder weapon golf club. Prints of all three individuals distributed throughout the living area of the apartment 216, Covered Bridge Townhomes, 100 Tamarack Road, Black Creek, Wisconsin. Prints on the shaft of the golf club include palm, tips, lower joint prints consistent on examination with those of Belinda Lowell McCormack, Jillian Rae McCormack, Stefan Christiansen and two unidentified others.

I was wondering now whether some of the unidentified prints might belong to the caller Esme. Maybe she had been there, as she claimed, and left before the EMT arrived? Why would she have touched the golf club? What possible reason?

“Wouldn’t an autopsy report have the contents of the victim’s stomach?” Julie asked.

“That’s what happens on TV.”

“It’s what happens in real life too. There’s nothing like that here. I don’t see a toxicology report of any kind for Belinda or Stefan.”

We wrote down two questions for me to ask Sunday when I called him:

Where were the toxicology reports done on Stefan and Belinda?

How many hours after the murder was Stefan’s first interview? Was he still under the influence? Did that happen at the hospital or the police station?

After all this distress, I still didn’t feel that I’d learned anything new. I’d just been forced to look at disturbing images. Forced? I wasn’t forced. No one forced me except my own demons, unleashed by me. Maybe now they would get back into the box.

“We need to get some sleep now,” Julie said. So I gathered up all the files and envelopes and carefully replaced them. Then Julie said, “I’m glad we are here together, in case you have nightmares.”

We lay back to back, as we had for thirty years. The melony smell of Julie’s hair was as familiar to me as my own palm, the slight lift in one of her shoulders from a broken clavicle sustained by falling off the handlebars of my bike as known to me as Stefan’s eyes.