The Red Parts Read Online Free PDF Page A

second-born daughter. He still looks amazed.
    At the end of this day my grandfather announces that he has a “gut feeling” about Leiterman. He announces this at dinner at the Olive Garden in the strip mall across the freeway from the motel where the state has put us all up for the night. He mentions this “gut feeling” several times, but never says exactly what it is.
    All I’m saying is that he looks like a tortured man , he says.
    I don’t expect you to have empathy for the guy , Schroeder had told me the day after Leiterman’s arrest. I mean, he’s a sorry sack of shit. But he’s in hideous health, and, in my opinion, his body is completely eaten up by the things he’s done.
    Sitting at the Olive Garden, I wonder, does looking like a tortured man or having an eaten-up body mean that you premeditated and carried out the brutal, sexualized murder of a complete stranger three decades ago? I am also now remembering that when I tentatively, covertly interviewed my grandfather for Jane a few years back, he said that he had a “gut feeling” about John Collins.
    Although in his nineties, my grandfather shows few to no signs of fatigue, either with daily life or with the nine decades of it prior. He drinks about three pots of coffee a day, and takes hot baths and does crossword puzzles throughout the night. The prosecution team calls him “Dr. Dan,” which suits him well; he was a practicing dentist for more than sixty years. He wants to be sharp as a tack and he is. And yet I know he gets tired, because in court he falls asleep a multitude of times, his head slumping onto the shoulder of whichever family member happens to be sitting beside him. Each time he wakes up he appears alarmed, and immediately reassures the dead courtroom air, I’m all right, I’m all right.
    In the months leading up to the July trial, he will become increasingly concerned that the police are going to suggest exhuming Jane’s body from her grave in search of more evidence. He starts calling my mother late at night to say he won’t allow it, he simply won’t allow it.
    My mother tells him not to be paranoid. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it , she says. So far we have not come to it.

A Live Stream
    O N THAT JANUARY day Hiller warned us that the medical examiner’s testimony was but a warm-up for the graphic nature of the trial to come. Before he began his opening arguments on July 12, 2005, he warned us again. He took the members of Jane’s family who were present that day—me, my mother, my grandfather, Jane’s younger brother and his wife—aside in the courtroom hallway to tell us that he would be projecting several photos from Jane’s autopsy for the jury, photos that we might not want to see.
    My uncle heeds the warning, says he can’t think of one good reason to have those images in his mind, and heads straight down to the courthouse coffee shop.
    My mother feels differently. We’re tough , she tells Hiller. We can take it. I’m not sure for whom she’s speaking.
    My grandfather seems distraught, stranded between the polar stances of his two surviving children. He turns to me and asks, What do you think I should do, kiddo?
    I think you should do exactly what you need to do , I say inanely, knowing full well that he has no idea what he needs to do, and that he’s not going to be able to figure it out in the two minutes he has to decide before the courtroom fills up.
    He shuffles in, and the slide show begins.
    Photo # 2:
    Jane, on a metal gurney. A profile shot, from the sternum upwards. She is naked, except for a baby-blue headband, which is thin, just a little more than a ribbon. Her hair is auburn and shiny with blood. And then, tied around her neck, almost like another fashion accessory, like some perverse ascot, is the stocking that was used to strangle her, its knot and two ends streaming toward the camera. The stocking looks reddish, probably from the age of the photo. As far as I know it was just a