him.
Someone had left a broken lawn chair near the roof’s parapet and I sat down. The only time I had ever seen stars over the city was after the lights went out during Hurricane Sandy. Tonight, most of the downtown office buildings were dark, but not the new World Trade Center. It was lit up, and a crescent moon—the symbol of Islam—was positioned such that it seemed to touch the tower.
I did it. I got through the first night. Sleep wasn’t a big part of it, but I got through it. The kitchen cabinet I opened to get a coffee filter also housed Bennett’s granola. I would get coffee on the way to class. I’d lost a size so I put on my thin jeans and a cotton turtleneck. My concession to makeup was a swipe of concealer under each eye.
Going on Lovefraud.com, after what I’d read the night before, spotlighted the eloquence of the Marquise versus the cheeseball American duped. In reply to the letter I had read days before, I wrote:
I read about your terrible experience with great empathy and an escalating sense of familiarity. I, too, was involved with a man who asked me those identical questions, who pretended to be an agent, who never invited me to his place but instead met up with me at B&Bs in Maine. Lastly, he gave me a key to his apartment and, as in your experience, there was no such address. You can see why it is urgent that I speak with you. You can contact me at [email protected].
This was the secure e-mail address I used for participants in my study.
• • •
Returning to class was not easy. I had planned to enter the lecture after the professor began and exit a few minutes early. One of my final courses after two years of graduate school was Psychology and the Law. It sounded like an entry-level course, but was, in fact, an overview of the latest intersections of mental-health and legal issues. I had already missed a quarter of the lectures. The last one I attended was the morning of the day I found Bennett dead. I dreaded the turning of my classmates’ heads, and the way I would be seen: a victimologist turned victim.
John Jay’s student body ranged from the beat cop getting extra credit that would speed a promotion, to a former prison guard whose goal was to become a warden, to a psychiatrist who wanted to perform psychological autopsies. The city campus was spread out over five square blocks in the West Fifties, near Roosevelt Hospital. The building always photographed, built in 1903 of marble and red brick, the one you might find on an Ivy League campus, housed the administration. All my classes were held in a generic modern annex. I slid my photo ID card through the electronic reader and headed up the stairwell to my class. The professor was consulting with one of the students about how to operate the PowerPoint system. The lights were still on, affording everyone a good look at me. I avoided eye contact as I shrugged off my backpack and took a blessedly empty seat next to my Dominican cop friend, Amabile, who was aptly named. When he and I were briefly dating, he said it meant “kindness.” He reached out and put his hand over my hand and held it there for a moment. I noticed he was wearing a GO BLOODHOUNDS T-shirt—supporting the John Jay basketball team. I must have been the topic of so much talk. It was not hard to imagine that a paper on my case would someday be included in the literature of criminology.
I went into this field of study to answer one question: not the one everyone asks—Why do certain people cross the line?—but why everyone doesn’t cross the line. I wanted to know what held me back and by how much. My interest was more than scholarly; it was personal.
Steven and I were Midwesterners with all the attendant stereotypes: our father was conservative, self-reliant, honest, and stubborn—that is, when he wasn’t cycling mania. Then he was charismatic, adventurous, and seductive. During one of those phases our mother had married him. She, on the other hand,
Someone had left a broken lawn chair near the roof’s parapet and I sat down. The only time I had ever seen stars over the city was after the lights went out during Hurricane Sandy. Tonight, most of the downtown office buildings were dark, but not the new World Trade Center. It was lit up, and a crescent moon—the symbol of Islam—was positioned such that it seemed to touch the tower.
I did it. I got through the first night. Sleep wasn’t a big part of it, but I got through it. The kitchen cabinet I opened to get a coffee filter also housed Bennett’s granola. I would get coffee on the way to class. I’d lost a size so I put on my thin jeans and a cotton turtleneck. My concession to makeup was a swipe of concealer under each eye.
Going on Lovefraud.com, after what I’d read the night before, spotlighted the eloquence of the Marquise versus the cheeseball American duped. In reply to the letter I had read days before, I wrote:
I read about your terrible experience with great empathy and an escalating sense of familiarity. I, too, was involved with a man who asked me those identical questions, who pretended to be an agent, who never invited me to his place but instead met up with me at B&Bs in Maine. Lastly, he gave me a key to his apartment and, as in your experience, there was no such address. You can see why it is urgent that I speak with you. You can contact me at [email protected].
This was the secure e-mail address I used for participants in my study.
• • •
Returning to class was not easy. I had planned to enter the lecture after the professor began and exit a few minutes early. One of my final courses after two years of graduate school was Psychology and the Law. It sounded like an entry-level course, but was, in fact, an overview of the latest intersections of mental-health and legal issues. I had already missed a quarter of the lectures. The last one I attended was the morning of the day I found Bennett dead. I dreaded the turning of my classmates’ heads, and the way I would be seen: a victimologist turned victim.
John Jay’s student body ranged from the beat cop getting extra credit that would speed a promotion, to a former prison guard whose goal was to become a warden, to a psychiatrist who wanted to perform psychological autopsies. The city campus was spread out over five square blocks in the West Fifties, near Roosevelt Hospital. The building always photographed, built in 1903 of marble and red brick, the one you might find on an Ivy League campus, housed the administration. All my classes were held in a generic modern annex. I slid my photo ID card through the electronic reader and headed up the stairwell to my class. The professor was consulting with one of the students about how to operate the PowerPoint system. The lights were still on, affording everyone a good look at me. I avoided eye contact as I shrugged off my backpack and took a blessedly empty seat next to my Dominican cop friend, Amabile, who was aptly named. When he and I were briefly dating, he said it meant “kindness.” He reached out and put his hand over my hand and held it there for a moment. I noticed he was wearing a GO BLOODHOUNDS T-shirt—supporting the John Jay basketball team. I must have been the topic of so much talk. It was not hard to imagine that a paper on my case would someday be included in the literature of criminology.
I went into this field of study to answer one question: not the one everyone asks—Why do certain people cross the line?—but why everyone doesn’t cross the line. I wanted to know what held me back and by how much. My interest was more than scholarly; it was personal.
Steven and I were Midwesterners with all the attendant stereotypes: our father was conservative, self-reliant, honest, and stubborn—that is, when he wasn’t cycling mania. Then he was charismatic, adventurous, and seductive. During one of those phases our mother had married him. She, on the other hand,
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