Noah’s conviction was front-page news. The gruesome and inexplicable nature of his crime had the TV pundits and columnists swarming like piranhas. Noah’s only public statement was that he had committed this heinous act because his victim was a “jerk.” He used the word “asshole,” but most of the media who gorged themselves on the bloodthirsty details of the “slaughter” were loath to use this obscenity. And this left the question wide open. Why had he done it? Why had he confessed when it looked like he might never be caught? How could someone from his background commit this act? The “experts” had the answers, each with his or her own narrative, while life’s ambiguities were left behind, the skeletal remains of the feeding frenzy.

Noah dressed for sentencing in his good suit, a kerchief in his breast pocket, school tie and Oxford-cloth white button-down shirt. When he stood to make his final statement in the stuffy courtroom, not a single drop of sweat dribbled down his side. “I doubt that you are able to understand my reasons for my actions since I do not fully understand them myself,” he said to the judge. “The victim is dead, and whatever those reasons may have been are now irrelevant. The only certainty I can see in this horrific act is that there is life and there is death and these are irreconcilable.” That was it. Noah was cuffed and taken away.