While They Slept: An Inquiry Into the Murder of a Family

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Authors: Kathryn Harrison
Tags: General, nonfiction, True Crime
evident. His gray hair is long enough to gather into a ponytail, but he leaves it loose, falling over his collar. His teeth are bad, crooked and stained as if by tobacco—although it’s been years since smoking was permitted in prison—and his expression is wary, nervous. Everything about him suggests a blue-collar job, the labor of his hands rather than his brain, everything except his hands, which are small for a man’s, and soft. When he offers one in greeting, an awkward formal gesture, I take note of how pink and smooth his skin is. His hand seems freshly scrubbed, not one I picture holding a wrench or a hammer, nor wrapped around the handle of a murder weapon.
    At home I’ve taken my fourteen-year-old son’s aluminum baseball bat and lifted it over my head to bring it down as hard as I could on the dirt under our maple tree, trying to imagine what it might be like to hit someone’s head with the intention of crushing it, hit it not once but several times and then move on to another victim. Apart from the emotional resistance I have to overcome to accomplish the imagined act, whacking the ground is not a very useful exercise. It produces a less-than-evocative thud and breaks a single ivy vine, but the jolt travels up the bat into my arm, underscoring the resolve necessary for so intimate a murder, much different from firing a gun from a distance. I remember only one line from
In the Belly of the Beast,
a collection of letters from prison, by Jack Henry Abbott. Abbott wrote about how it felt to stab someone to death, the ebbing of his victim’s life communicated to him through the blade of his knife. Taking Billy’s hand, I remember reading that book when I was eighteen or twenty and accepting Abbott’s description as true. It felt true.
    Beyond the security gauntlet, the visiting area presents the bland, institutional quality of a hospital or a school, almost disappointing in its lack of crime drama atmosphere. The windows aren’t barred; instead their panes are impregnated with wire grids. The pale light reflected by the fresh snow outside gives everything, even our faces, a clean, almost antiseptic look. Only the inmates’ blue denim shirts and jeans, stamped with bright orange prison seals, and the numerous guards, visibly enamored of their khaki uniforms, weapons, handcuffs, and other disciplinary accessories, distinguish the big square room as one within a correctional facility. Like highway patrolmen, most of the guards have full mustaches; a few even wear mirrored sunglasses indoors.
    My visit with Billy isn’t bisected by a pane of unbreakable glass, and we speak without telephone receivers, but we sit where we’re told, facing each other across a short round table that leaves our laps exposed, open to view. We may not move our chairs, set too far apart for us to reach forward and touch each other, and we are allowed no physical contact other than the formalities of greeting and leave-taking, which in Billy’s and my case is a solemn handshake that grows only a little less awkward as the days pass. I am not permitted to bring anything into the visiting area other than up to $10 in change, which I may not conceal in a purse or pocket. Among what distinguishes me from the usual crowd is the fact that I carry my vending machine quarters in a Ziploc bag. All the other women, most of whose tight pants and big hair make me look like a schoolmarm in my black skirt and cardigan, keep their change in zippered, clear vinyl cosmetic cases. I might not stick out so much if I were wearing jeans, as I would have if visitors were allowed to wear denim. But we can’t. If we did we’d blend in with the inmates’ prison blues. On my visitor’s application I stated “friend” as the relationship I bore to Billy, but the corrections officers regard me with frank curiosity. “You get what you were after?” one asks on the last day I came to the prison, the same one who noted my New York address on the forms.

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