M. Gessen

All of it, she believed, orchestrated by Alan.

Hiring a hitman, if that's what he did, was just the latest thing and the worst one.

The mind kept looking for a way to make what Alan did seem maybe a little less bad.

Family and friends, especially those who were talking to my Aunt Lena, Alan's mother, were convinced, or hoping to be convinced, that Alan had somehow been set up.

One of the men in my family told me that he'd heard that the undercover agent called Alan himself and said, "'I hear you have a problem.

Would you like us to take care of it for you?'

as though a murder for hire were a wallet found on the sidewalk.

If he didn't intend to steal it, maybe it wasn't a crime.

I knew what he was getting at.

He thought Alan had been entrapped.

But entrapment isn't much of a defense, morally speaking.

I mean, wouldn't most people have said no?

My father, he never voiced a theory of the case, but he kept texting me when I was in San Francisco.

Tell me what's happening, he brought it.

Don't make me wait for you right up.

I knew that this was his way of saying, please tell me something to help me believe that Alan is innocent, or at least not guilty as hell.

Even Priscilla, when I spoke to her on the eve of the trial, said that she felt sorry for Alan.

The prosecutors had brought her to San Francisco to testify.

And yet, I sensed, she still didn't quite believe that Alan was capable of this.

When I say that the mind kept looking for ways to absolve Alan, I do not mean my mind.