Need

I make every change I can think of: I apply to grad school, my partner and I finally break up, I address a number of health issues that have been hanging over me. I get into grad school and choose a small arts college outside Los Angeles. I fall in love with Josh, a funny, kind man who I meet in an improv group. I move to Southern California to spend two years reading and writing. Josh follows in a matter of months, and we move into a sweet one-bedroom apartment with our dog.

I read and reread any article I can find about Raymond’s trial. There aren’t many. I try to understand how Dale’s recanted testimony came to be, who the different witnesses were, what evidence was presented, how Sarah’s death was addressed.

I have Google alerts set for Dale Brady and Raymond Douglas. I search for Raymond Douglas in a Prison Inmate Finder until one day his name no longer appears. I call the number listed and find out that he has been released early, after serving only a couple years of his sentence.

I have trouble accessing rage. It is hard for me to feel anger. I can settle into bleakness or dark grief, but I see that Raymond Douglas is no longer in prison and feel nothing. Or rather, I feel a blankness where rage should be.

Over time, the blankness becomes a gnawing thought, a need to know more.

I email Detective Bud Hayes; I call the sheriff’s office; I order a copy of Sarah’s coroner’s report. I find out I can pay for a copy of the court transcripts from Raymond’s trial, and $1,300 later, seventeen hundred pages weighing over twenty pounds are delivered to my apartment, bound into six volumes. I start to read. I look for my rage.