A/N – Sorry this is a little late. I can't imagine what could have delayed me this week? Hmmmm….

Thank you as always to the readers, Tiggrmommi, Pomme_de_terre, VJGM, Emibella, GinnyW, and anyone I am sure I have forgotten.

I do not own the characters, only the story.

Tuesday – San Quentin Prison

Even though I didn't want to admit it to myself I took extra care getting ready in the morning before I drove to the prison. I was no longer wearing long sleeves and a jacket but something lighter to accommodate for the heat inside the walls. I had spent the previous evening listening to my tape over and over again, lulled by his voice and trying to prepare for today. After calling his lawyer I was able to secure additional time for the next four days and wanted to use them as wisely as possible.

As I drove back through the gates I wondered what today would bring. I had prepared new questions that I wasn't sure that I would even use. My boss had pumped me for information as soon as I had gotten back to the office but I wasn't quite prepared to talk about it yet. I wanted to keep the information to myself and think it over before I discussed it with her.

When I got to the room he wasn't there yet so I went through the ritual of getting everything ready to try to calm my nerves. I didn't look up when the door was opened but I could hear the sound of his shoes scraping along the concrete floor, his chain being dragged along with them. The chair was moved back for him and he sat down without saying a word. I wasn't going to allow a moment of this time to be wasted so I started to talk immediately.

"Good afternoon Mr. Cullen." I started the recorder and took out my pen prepared to take notes.

"Please call me Edward."

"Thank you, good afternoon Edward." Under normal circumstances I would have extended the same courtesy but when interviewing a murderer the usual rules of etiquette went out the window.

"Good afternoon Bella." Apparently he felt the same way about things not being normal given the situation. My name sounded so different coming from him. I wanted to hear it again but I didn't want to encourage that kind of intimacy with him.

"When we left off yesterday we were talking about the first time not being a conscience decision. What pushed you in that direction?" He looked up at me, his eyes weary. There were dark circles under his eyes as if he hadn't slept in days.

"Can we please talk about something else? I didn't sleep very well last night and I'm not quite ready to talk in detail about what I have done. I promise you I will, perhaps even later on today but I'm just not up for it yet." He gave me a half hearted smile and I didn't have the heart to push him on it.

"What was it like growing up with your aunt and uncle after your parent's death?" There were plenty of other topics to discuss so I could only hope that he would be forthcoming.

"They are very special people. They refused to use any of my parent's money for anything other than me, even when they could have used it. Some of the best people I have ever had the honor of knowing." His smile had left his face while he discussed them.

"Do you miss them?" I was hoping to interview the Cullen family next week but had had no luck setting up any interviews at this point.

"Like I told you yesterday, they don't approve of what I have done. They are still here for me though. They don't have it in them to write me off completely regardless of what I have done. We talk once a month."

"Does anyone ever visit you?" I already knew the answer to this but I wanted to hear it from him.

"You are the first visitor I have had since I have been here. There have been plenty of offers but seeing as how I am not planning on being around for long I figured there was not much use." He traced a circle with his finger over and over again. I had noticed that he did this whenever I asked a question that he was uncomfortable with so I changed the subject.

"You've never married, never had children; never had a serious relationship to anyone's knowledge. Is there a reason why you have lived a solitary existence?" I watched the expressions go across his face and wasn't able to distinguish one from the next.

"I never wanted to let anyone get that close to me. If something happened to me I didn't want anyone to go through the pain I went through when I lost my parents." He sighed as he finished speaking. For someone who hadn't planned the course his life had taken he seemed to have taken many precautions.

"But you can't spend your whole life avoiding relationships so you don't hurt someone." It made no sense. He didn't want anyone to be hurt if something happened to him but he murdered people who had to have families that loved them. "How do you justify what you have done given what you just said?" I knew that perhaps I was being harsh but I had come here to ask the tough questions and I was willing to accept the consequences.

"I know it doesn't make sense, even as I am saying the words it sounds ridiculous to me. I couldn't handle losing anyone again. I couldn't let anyone mean that much to me. Maybe that is why all of this was so easy." He put his hand in the air and motioned to the room around him. "I was willing to make that sacrifice so that no one else had to wonder where their sister or brother was late at night."

He made it all sound so selfless as if he had volunteered to help them cross the street, not brutally murder nine men.

"So you made these sacrifices and you turned yourself in. Was your freedom not sacrificing enough? You begged for the death penalty, why?" When he turned himself in that was his only stipulation. He wanted the death penalty, no trial, he was guilty and he wanted to die.

"Despite whom those men were, what they had done, their families deserved to see justice served. Every day I stay alive is a reminder to them of what they have lost. I hope that when I am gone it will give them some peace. I hope that what I did gives their victim's families peace as well."

He made it all sound so simple. Man gets released from prison, man goes back to old ways, other man stops him and all is well in the world again. Life didn't work that way though. There were always consequences to any actions as extreme as the ones that he had taken. He was an intelligent man. He had to have thought this through.

"The first time it happened it wasn't planned." I wasn't buying it. You don't carry around a knife of that caliber without alternative motives.

"Then why the knife? Why were you following him down a dark deserted alley?" It didn't add up. He had turned himself in so there was no reason to lie to avoid the death penalty. He had asked for it, demanded it.

A small laugh escaped from him. If it I hadn't heard it myself I would have never believed the sound came from him.

"Yes, that is hard to explain isn't it?" He ran his fingers through his hair and I waited for him to expand on his answer but it soon became obvious that I wasn't going to get anything else from him.

I shuffled my pages trying to get some direction from the words that were written on them. I only had five days to get the answers I needed and the more questions he answered the more baffled I became. He was nothing like I had expected him to be. I had expected him to be harsh, unapproachable and unremorseful. He seemed to actual have compassion for the families that he caused pain to and I wasn't sure how to digest that.

"Bella?" I'm not sure how long I had been sitting there staring at the pages in front of me before he called my name. I wasn't ready for this. I hadn't been doing this long enough to properly conduct an interview of this magnitude. He was probably wondering why they had sent someone incompetent here to him. I wouldn't be surprised if I wasn't allowed back tomorrow.

"Bella?" He said my name again and there wasn't a note of annoyance to it. It seemed more confused than anything.

"Sorry, where were we." I was surprised at how modulated and calm my voice sounded.

"I wasn't answering your last question." Humor laced his voice and I couldn't help but smile when I looked up at him.

"What is life like here? You're alone for the majority of the time, is that hard?" A change of tactics was in order so that I could regain control.

"It wasn't hard at all. I lived a rather solitary existence before I came here. Granted I had the ability to come and go as I pleased then but when given no other option you have the ability to adjust to almost anything." He made it all sound so simple as if he had just had a delay on a flight and was not sitting in prison.

"So the fact that you preferred your own company when you were free prepared you for death row?"

"I wasn't naïve enough to believe that I was prepared for prison. Nothing could ever prepare you for life here." He raised his arms up, encompassing the room around him. "It isn't so bad though. It was the choice I made."

"If you had the chance to do it again, would you?"

"Without hesitation." His voice was low but there was no mistaking the strength and conviction behind it. "When I saw him taking her outside into the alley, when I saw his fingers wrapped around her throat there really wasn't a question of what the right thing to do was."

"Couldn't you have just subdued them, waited for the police to come?" There was that laugh again.

"How many chances does one person get Bella? How many people have to be hurt before you realize that not everyone is worth saving?" He waited until I looked up at him before he continued talking. "If that had been your sister, your mother in that alley would you still have so much compassion?" His eyes burned as the words were spat from his mouth. I couldn't look away as he spoke. "I did what everyone wanted, even though they would never admit it to themselves."

"You actually believe that people condone your murders?" Perhaps a psych evaluation should be administered to him.

"I can tell what you are thinking. Don't worry, I was properly evaluated when I was first brought here. I don't think that people celebrate what I have done but I do think that somewhere in the back of their minds most people have had the same thoughts when someone gets away with doing the same thing over and over again. Not everyone is capable of change. I read the newspapers before I turned myself in. Whenever someone was released the press waited with baited breath, almost hoping that something would happen."

It was true, the coverage had been intense. When someone continued to live after a few weeks there was an air of disappointment in the newsroom.

"So did you do this to try to please people in some sick way?" This was no longer an interview as much as a dialogue.

"No! Is it easier to believe that I did this to gain satisfaction from others as opposed to doing it to satisfy myself? This was all for me, every murder, every death was because it was what I wanted." He slammed his hand on the table and stood up, looming over me. The guard was inside in an instant, hand on his gun.

"Everthing okay here?" I was shaken by his outburst but I wasn't about to leave. Edward looked down at me debating his options before he sat down again.

"We are fine." I smoothed down my shirt and looked over to him. "Are you ready?"

"I think we are done for today." With that he stood up again walked over to the guard. "Please take me back to my cell." And then he was gone.

Thank you for reading, more coming soon. Probably around Tuesday due to the holiday weekend coming up. Let me know what you think.

Jaime