Date: Wed, 17 Jul 2002 11:16:55
Subject: Interrogation
From: susannenbreone@aol.com
To: skipvskip@hotmail.com

Skip,

I'm exhausted. I spent four hours last night in a small room with two detectives. I guess I'm a suspect in Regine's murder. I guess this is the cost of having loved too deeply. In my mind, you certainly hurt the ones you love but to killing them is more than a little bit extreme. I was crushed by the news and now the cloud of suspicion flattens me. I feel desperately lonely and though there is little I'd like more than to spend some time in your arms, I think that that would not be a good idea just now.

I arrived at our affair under pretenses that would have been false if I had not made them explicit. You know and I know that in many ways I came to you because I was running from my feelings from Regine. I thought of our first tryst as a kind of weapon, a metaphoric dagger I could twist in Regine's back, in hopes that she would turn back towards me. I don't know what I was hoping, and now she is gone, a victim of the brutality of now.

And I do have feelings for you Skip, it's just that right now I'm not sure I have the emotional energy for anyone. I did see you standing at my doorway last night, I did hear you knocking at the door, I did hear you ringing that bell, but I just couldn't open up the door and let you in, and I don't think I'll be able to for some time. I need to at least get through the funeral before I start to put the pieces back together.

Having said that, I need to tell you that some embarrassing things came up during the interrogation: some emails that I sent Regine that in retrospect might make me appear a teensy bit obsessive. Which is why the police have asked not to leave town, and I guess why the police felt they had a right to seek a warrant and to ransack my apartment, taking with them every bit of cutlery in my kitchen, my diary, all my dirty laundry.

One of those emails, I'm mortified to admit, was a description -- albeit one with certain extravagant flourishes and exaggerations -- of the first time that we had sex. I guess I'm an emotional five-year-old: I thought that by giving Regine a sense that what she had so casually cast aside was being appreciated, ravished even, in other quarters, might draw her back to me. It is impossible to describe the pain I felt as this private, and somewhat infantile, correspondence was laid out before me as evidence in a homicide.

Anyway, this is to say I'm sorry that I may have gotten you involved in this carnival of suspicion. I'm sure that the police will have questions for you, and that much of what they will say to you will be dreadfully embarrassing to both you and me. But I thought it would be better that you hear from me first.

Nothing between us is private. The police searched my computer and copied the contents of my hard drive. They will doubtless find your fluids on my sheets.

I'm innocent of any wrongdoing and I feel violated, and I dread that this violation may extend to others that I care about, particularly you.

Susanne