Billy looked at him very seriously and said, “You’ve got to promise me one thing.”

“What’s that?”

“If he did it,” Billy said, “don’t defend him.”

Gary smiled. “Coming from you, Billy, that’s really something.”

When Gary left the Athens Mental Health Center, he had mixed feelings, knowing that Billy was in other hands now. It had been an incredible fourteen months, all-demanding, all-consuming.

It had contributed to breaking up his marriage with Jo Anne. The time the case had taken away from his family, and the notoriety it was still causing—the late-night phone calls from people who were blaming him for having successfully defended a rapist—had become an intolerable burden. One of his children had been jumped in school because his dad had defended Milligan.

All during the case he had wondered how many of his other clients were being cheated out of the time and effort that he and Judy couldn’t give them because Billy Milligan had been so complicated and had taken priority. As Judy had put it, “The fear that you might be slighting someone else makes you work ten times as hard so you won’t short-change the others. Our homes and families paid the price.”

Gary looked up at the huge, ugly Victorian building as he got into the car, and he nodded. Now Billy Milligan was someone else’s care and responsibility.

(5)

Billy awoke on December 23, nervous at the thought of talking to the writer. There was so little he could actually remember of his early years, just bits and pieces, the things he had picked up from others. How could he tell the writer the story of him.

After breakfast, he walked to the end of the lobby, filled a second cup of coffee from the urn and sat in an armchair to wait for him. Last week his new lawyer, Alan Goldsberry, represented him on the book, and they had signed contracts with the writer and the publisher. That had been hard enough. But now panic was setting in.

“Billy, you have a visitor.” Norma Dishong’s voice startled him, and he jumped up, splashing coffee on his jeans. He saw the writer coming through the door of the ward, down the steps into the corridor. God, what had he gotten himself into?

“Hi,” the writer said, smiling. “Ready to start?”

Billy led the way to his room, then watched as the slight, bearded writer unpacked his tape recorder, notebook, pencils, pipe and tobacco, and settled back in a chair. “Lets make it a practice to start each session with your name. For the record, who am I talking to?”

“Billy.”

“Okay. Now, when you first met me in Dr. Cauls office, he mentioned something about ‘the spot,’ and you said you didn’t know me well enough to tell me about it. How about now?” Billy looked down, embarrassed. “That wasn’t me you met that first day. I’d have been too shy to talk to you.”

“Oh? Who was it?”

“Allen.”

The writer frowned and puffed at his pipe thoughtfully. “Okay,” he said, making a note in his memo book. “Can you tell me about the spot?”