The lieutenant laughs. “You were thinking clearly all right. You were trying to protect yourself.”
“Well, I’m not about to say anything more. No matter what I say, you’ll find a way to use it against me.”
“If you don’t say anything, it will look bad for you.”
“Let it, then,” I say.
Lieutenant Hanson asks, “Mr. Erickson, did you kill Violet Alexander?”
“No. I told you, I never killed anybody.”
“Did you have s****l relations with Miss Alexander?”
“No.”
“Did you write a diary describing your relations with Violet Alexander?”
“No.”
“Would you be willing to take a lie detector test?”
“I’d rather not,” I say. “I’m so flustered, you wouldn’t get a correct result.”
The lieutenant says, “That doesn’t matter. There should still be a difference between true and false answers. And the test
