Through some trick of acoustics, I now hear Detective Price’s voice, although I can’t even see him in the crowded and noisy space of the police station. His words float to my ear, precise and clear. “No, that’s what I’m telling you. That’s why we’re going for it. The guy is not lawyered up – you believe that? Not yet, anyway.”

He sits across from me, straddling a chair, arms making a kind of platform upon which he rests his handsome head. “You must be sick of this,” he says, with a sad swivel of his head. “I can only imagine.”

Price is good, I have to acknowledge that. I was expecting – I don’t know – gamesmanship, I guess. Good cop, bad cop with Shoffler, I don’t know. Some kind of heavy manners.

It’s not like that. It’s just me and Detective Price in the room. Shoffler is nowhere in sight, although I don’t doubt he’s behind the long mirror against the opposite wall.

I give my permission for the use of a tape recorder.

We start by going through my account of Saturday one more time, in great detail.

Then we move on to my finances.

“It’s tough, isn’t it, running two separate households on more or less the same income?”

I admit that it’s a strain, financially, but tell Price that Liz and I are getting by.

“I understand you were late with your support payments on two occasions.”

I nod. “That’s true. But it wasn’t because of the money. I was abroad. On assignment. You can check with the station.”

“Abroad,” Price says. His face twitches when he repeats the word, as if he just got a whiff of something unpleasant. “Abroad,” he says again. “I see.”

He says nothing for a good long minute or two. I look at my feet and resist the urge to fill in the silence. Price rocks back on his chair, then tilts his head and looks at me. “The preliminary separation agreement takes a good chunk out of your salary, right?”

I nod.

“Your house – that’s a pricey neighborhood, isn’t it? If you don’t work things out with Liz, you’re going to have to sell, isn’t that right?”

I shrug. “That’s true.” And then, before I can stop myself: “I don’t care about that. It’s not important to me.”

I hesitate. I don’t like the way I’m trying to explain myself to this guy. I don’t like the way he refers to my wife by her first name. He’s never even met her.

“So will you lose the house?”

I suddenly get angry. “What are you saying? You think I killed my kids because I don’t want to move out of Cleveland Park? Is that what you think? Jesus.”

He makes a conciliatory gesture. “Okay, new subject. Did the boys have insurance? Some policy out there? Because if they did, it would be best if you told us now.”

“Insurance? You mean medical insurance?”

Price shakes his head. “I mean life insurance.”

“Life insurance? They’re six years old!”

Then I get it, and my voice, angry and too loud, shows it. “Now you’re suggesting I killed my kids for insurance!? What – and after a decent interval, I’m going to cash in and move to fucking Brazil! Are you out of your mind?”

“No,” Price says, his voice calm and reasonable. “No one’s suggesting anything of the sort. We’re just talking about the pressures you’re under, that’s all, we’re just exploring that area. Personally, I think it’s far more likely that someone like you – you simply lost your temper, the way you did just now, and it went a little further than you intended, you know…”

Of course, I go ballistic. “Look,” I say, my voice shaking. “I didn’t kill my children.”

“Mr. Callahan. Maybe we should take a break here. Maybe you should consult an attorney.”

“I don’t need a break and I don’t need a fucking attorney.”

“Did Detective Shoffler tell you that someone saw you in the parking lot, opening your car – and this was after you reported the boys missing.”

“I was checking to see if the boys went to the car when they couldn’t find me. The security guy – he suggested it.”

It goes on like this. One hour, two hours, three, four. We’re into hour five, when Price, after asking me if I need to use the facilities, excuses himself to do so. When he comes back, he brings me some water and suggests we go over the whole story again.

We do. “Remind me,” he starts, “whose idea was it to go to this festival? You come up with that?”

“No,” I tell him, “I’ve told you. It was their idea. It’s not my kind of thing.”

“What is your kind of thing?”

It goes on.

“You say you heard Kevin’s voice on your cell phone,” Price says when we reach that point. “He said one word: ‘Daddy.’ So what I want to know is – how you could tell it was Kevin? They’re identical twins, right?”

“They’re my kids. I could tell.”

“You could tell.” Price makes quotation marks in the air.

“That’s right.”

He looks as if he’s about to challenge this, but then he smiles. “I guess I can accept that.” He shakes his head. “Must have been rough, though,” he says with what seems to be genuine concern. “Tantalizing.” A regretful sigh. “Just that one word, and then he never called back.”

“No. That was it.”

“Boy,” Price says, then suddenly veers off in another direction. “Why don’t you tell me about the night before. Hmmmm?”

“I don’t see-”

“Do you not want to talk about that?” He frowns and then apologizes, as if he’s inadvertently hit a sore spot.

“No, I don’t mind talking about it. I just-”

Price shrugs. “Look, you never know when something’s gonna come up that will help.”

I nod.

“Okay, so the night before – Friday night – you said you had a lot of work to do. So, let’s talk about dinner, okay? You cook, or did you eat out?”

“We ate out. Pizza.”

“What pizza? Where?”

“The Two Amys – on Wisconsin.”

“Anyone see you?”

“Sure. The waiter, other customers.”

“You pay with a credit card or cash?”

“Probably a credit card.”

“You don’t remember.”

“I don’t remember.”

He waves the significance of this away, tosses me a smile. “I don’t always keep track of that kind of shit, either.”

Jason Price has a powerful charm and he uses it all to persuade me that he wants to be my friend, he really does. And the way to get in tight with my new friend is to tell him what he wants to hear. And what he wants to hear – not that he’d hold it against me, he’s had some bad moments with Derrick, he wouldn’t lie to me – is that I did it. I lost it, we all do, it’s the human condition. Nobody is under control 100 percent of the time. And so on.

I’m making it sound hokey and easy to dismiss, but it isn’t like that. It’s an almost religious yearning, the impulse to confess. If only I could confess, I’d be cleansed and reborn, I could start over.

As the hours slide by, I begin to slip into a dangerous apathy. I want to stop talking. I want to sleep.

I’ve read more than once about survivors pulled back from the brink. There’s a point where the will begins to fade. Just before freezing to death, the victim of hypothermia is said to get warm and sleepy; the drowning person, to find himself immersed in a burst of light. I take it from such accounts that oblivion can be enticing, a welcome respite from struggle and pain.

We’re going over the journey through the fairgrounds yet again when someone raps on the door. Detective Price frowns, says “excuse me one moment,” gets up, opens the door a crack, conducts a brief conversation with someone else. Although this discussion is conducted at the volume of a whisper, I can tell it’s an argument. Then, without a word, he leaves me alone.

I wait in a kind of dull reverie, checking my watch every few minutes. Ten minutes go by. Twenty. Half an hour.

When Price comes back, he launches into a whole new line of questioning, one that baffles me.