Fostering Death (19 page)

Why had I taken them? I might be a convicted murderer, but I wasn’t a thief. Just because I’d been angry that they planned to take my wallet. And I’d had some vague idea I could offer to return them if they’d keep their mouths shut. Did that amount to blackmail?

Probably.

But I couldn’t keep them here. Although no one had shown up to search my place so far, it could happen any time. No warrant needed.

Taking a roll of duct tape, I gathered them up into two bundles and taped them together securely. Wincing as I put weight on my ankle, I struggled upstairs and out to the alley beside the building. It was deserted. I knelt beside the dumpster and taped them on the bottom, behind the supporting framework. Once a week a refuse truck pulled into the alley, lifted the dumpster over its cab, and emptied it. That had been today. The bundles should be safe for a week. If no one found them.

Work was going to be a whole lot of fun with my ankle as sore as it was. At least John knew I’d been hurt the day before, so I could just pass this off as from the same incident.

I ripped up a T-shirt and wrapped the ankle tightly. Maybe the pain would work itself out some.

To my relief, the shift passed uneventfully.

The next morning I walked carefully the mile or so from work to the parole office. I wondered if Mr. Ramirez would show up this time, and if the detectives had convinced him I should be back on house arrest.

I breathed deeply, reminding myself how much better it was to breathe the cold, clear air than the stuffy, disinfectant scented air in an overcrowded prison. That could be pretty cold, too, but the damp smell of urine and unwashed bodies was always hovering under the disinfectant. I’d take house arrest, with all its limitations, over prison any day.

The waiting room was empty. I was early, but I signed in on the clipboard on the ledge and took a seat in the corner. Nothing to do but wait.

The window above the ledge opened and a pale hand with manicured fingernails reached out to snag the clipboard, drawing it inside. The window slammed shut again.

Ten a.m. came and went. No one else came in. Thursday mornings were not a busy time at the parole office, but I wasn’t usually the only one there. I shifted uneasily on the bench. Was there something going on I’d missed? Like that the entire building was in lockdown. Or the world was coming to an end.

The crooked clock with its cracked face said close to eleven a.m. before the door opened. A very large lady with a yellow sweater stretched tight against a bosom that would be right at home in a porn flick frowned down at the clipboard in her hand.

“Jesse Damon?” she said, looking around the room as if expecting a more suitable Jesse Damon to materialize before her eyes.

“Yes, ma’am,” I said, getting to my feet.

“Mr. Ramirez will see you now.”

I followed her through the door and down a hallway. The temperature had to be fifteen degrees cooler in here, and the air was drier. I suppose the union would get on the county’s case if they tried to make people work in conditions like the ones in the waiting room. The only people who had to stay in the waiting room, of course, were parolees like me.

Mr. Ramirez was leaning back in his battered desk chair with his eyes closed, his head almost touching the file cabinet behind him in the cramped office. When I knocked on the open door, he swiveled in the chair and brought his feet down on the floor with a thud.

“Made it, did you, Jesse?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.” I was tempted to say, “So did you, this time,” but that was a much too chummy thing to say to a man who could send me back to prison with a stroke of his pen.

His hands were clasped on top of all the papers on his desk, his fingers entwined. Little tufts of dark hair sprouted on his fingers above the knuckles. “Did you walk?”

“Yes, sir. It’s not far from work.”

He nodded. “Think we should give you a drug test?”

I blanched. Had Aaron been complaining that I had access to drugs but wouldn’t hook him up? If so, to whom? Why else would Mr. Ramirez want a test all of a sudden?

“Your call, sir.” No reason why I shouldn’t piss clean. I just hoped he wouldn’t make me pay for it. The tests were expensive.

His dark eyes studied my face. “Sit down,” he said, nodding toward a worn wooden chair in front of his desk.

I sat.

“You look like you been through a wind tunnel. Care to tell me why?”

Reaching up, I touched a swollen cheek. “I’d rather not, sir.”

“Recent, those bruises?”

“Yes, sir.” If Mr. Ramirez didn’t know about the fight with Aaron and his buddies, I wasn’t about to volunteer the information.

He leaned back in his chair again. “Anything to do with an encounter with a couple of detectives?”

Of course Belkins and Montgomery had told Mr. Ramirez that he wanted me back on home detention, but they wouldn’t have mentioned roughing me up.

“Maybe,” I agreed. I would be happy to let that assumption stand.

“I’ve been hearing interesting things about what you’ve been up to.”

I didn’t see what I could say that would help, so I didn’t say anything.

“Detective Montgomery was in. He said he’d seen you at a funeral.”

“At a viewing, sir. I didn’t go to the funeral.” I didn’t add that I wouldn’t have been welcome.

“While you were at the funeral home, did you talk to him?” Mr. Ramirez rubbed his pudgy hands together.

“Yes, sir. Him and Detective Belkins.” He’d find that out easily enough if he asked.

“And why were you at this—viewing?”

I stared at a spot on the floor between my boots. “It was for my foster mother, sir. I wanted to pay my respects.”

“Your foster mother, eh? How long did you live with her?”

“About five years, sir. She meant a lot to me.”

“But I suppose she wasn’t exactly thrilled with how you turned out.” Mr. Ramirez shifted his considerable bulk in his chair.

“No, sir. I guess I should have thought of that. Before I went.”

“Do you know how she died?” He leaned forward.

I could feel his gaze boring into me. “It was sudden, I think, sir.”

He lowered his voice. “Murdered?”

“I don’t know, sir.” I did, really, but I didn’t want to say so. “I suppose maybe.”

“And did you have anything to do with that?”

I tried to take a deep breath, but my lungs wouldn’t cooperate. “No, sir.”

“Had you been in touch with Mrs. Coleman since you were released?”

“No, sir.”

“If she meant so much to you, why not?”

“I didn’t think she’d welcome the contact, sir.”

“How about while you were in prison? Did she come to see you?” His chair squeaked in protest as he leaned forward.

“No, sir.”

“Yet she was on your visiting list.”

“Yes, sir. When I first got locked up, I hoped she’d come visit, so I put her on the list. But she never came.”

“But you left her on the list.”

I shrugged. “I just never bothered to take her name off the list. I didn’t have anybody else to put on it.”

“And she never came to visit you? I can check, you know.”

“Then you’ll find out I never had any visitors at all.” Did I sound like a smartass? I’d better get a grip on myself.

“I find that hard to believe.” Mr. Ramirez shuffled some of the papers on his desk. “Not in the whole twenty years?”

I didn’t find it hard to believe. Depressing, maybe, but not hard to believe. Who would visit me? I had no idea what the visiting room at the prison even looked like. “No, sir.”

“Did she write you?”

“No, sir. I wrote her once, but I got a letter back from Mr. Coleman saying she didn’t want to hear from me. And not to write again. So I didn’t.”

“And yet you went to her funeral.”

“Viewing, sir. It was stupid. I shouldn’t have gone.”

“And have you seen Mr. Coleman since?”

Belkins and Montgomery knew about the visit I’d made to the house, so there wasn’t much point in not ‘fessing up.

“Yes, sir. I went round the house to check up on him.”

“For any particular reason?”

“Not really, sir. I was just concerned about him.”

“You must realize I’m not happy you’re involved in a murder investigation.”

No surprise there. “Yes, sir.” I wasn’t too happy about it either.

The chair squeaked. “You must also have realized Mr. Coleman wouldn’t be pleased to see you at his wife’s funeral.”

He was going to keep calling it a funeral. I was not going to keep trying to correct him. I stared miserably at my hands. “I was hoping I could kind of sneak in and get out without him noticing me.”

“At a funeral home? During visitation for his recently murdered wife?” Mr. Ramirez sounded incredulous.

It did sound pretty stupid. “I never been to a funeral home before.”

Mr. Ramirez shook his head. “Nobody you knew ever died before?”

“I only been out on the street for a few months,” I reminded him. “And I was sixteen when I got locked up.”

“So it’d be fair to say that you’re not familiar with how a lot of things work?”

“I guess.”

He shuffled a few of the papers around on his desk. “Are you aware that Detective Belkins, who is assigned to this case, is of the opinion that it was a mistake to grant you parole? He thinks the only reason you haven’t killed anyone in the last twenty years is because you were locked up. And now, here we are, you’ve been recently released, and there’s another dead body with connections to you.”

I hadn’t actually ever killed anyone. But I’d been convicted of murder. What really happened back then didn’t matter much. Not to anyone but me anyhow.

I didn’t answer. Mr. Ramirez sat silently. I kept staring at the floor between my boots. Worn wood, probably pine. Needed a good refinishing.

“Why did you go to the viewing?” he finally asked.

“I don’t know. I shouldn’t have gone.”

“Sometimes murderers can’t stay away from the funerals of their victims. Kind of like a lot of arsonists are the first on the scene to help put out the fire. You know that?”

“Yes, sir. I didn’t know she’d been murdered.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

I winced. As parole officers go, Mr. Ramirez had been pretty supportive. If he thought I was lying to him, that would change.

“And then you went to Mr. Coleman’s house. Any good reason for that?”

“No, sir.”

He got to his feet and drew himself up to his full five foot two inches. His expansive gut hung over his belt.

I knew better than to stand up. At just about six foot, I would tower over him.

“Have you heard about the grant the county has gotten for law enforcement?” he asked.

“No, sir.” Why was he bringing this up? I’d seen something about it in the newspaper, and of course I was interested, but the article hadn’t gone into details.

“Money from seized assets from convicted drug dealers. The county law enforcement can use it any way they want, but they’ve mostly used it for electronic communication and surveillance equipment,” Mr. Ramirez said. He held up a black plastic box with a screen. “Hand-held computers for patrolling police. Pocket cops, they call them. Upgraded bugging devices. GPS monitors for parolees and people out on bail. You know what they are?”

“Yes, sir.” I wondered if one of the upgraded bugging devices had made its way to Aaron.

“High tech replacements for the ankle boxes we’ve been using, the ones that are read with a phone land line.”

I knew all about the ankle boxes. I’d worn one for three months. It had cost me forty dollars a week in monitoring fees. I’d had to have a phone installed in my apartment. A phone that was never used now that I wasn’t on the box. I’d decided to leave it until I was pretty sure I wouldn’t need it again. It had been expensive to get hooked up.

Mr. Ramirez reached over and removed some pamphlets from the top of his file cabinet. “Some of us have our doubts as to how effective the GPS systems will be here in the hills. Lots of places we can’t get cell phone signals. Still, the GPS uses satellite signals. You wear the box and carry a transmitter. Might work.”

I didn’t like where this was leading.

“We need a few people to run a trial.”

Definitely not heading in a good direction.

“I’d like to fit you with one,” Mr. Ramirez said, handing me a pamphlet. “We can’t use something experimental on anyone released on bail, since the court controls the terms of the monitoring. And we’re not going to replace the box on people presently on home detention. Are you willing to be part of the trial?”

“Do I have a choice?” I asked, trying to keep the agony out of my voice.

Mr. Ramirez chuckled. “I guess not really. Unless you’d rather go back on the old box.”

“How much will it cost?” I’d only recently gotten to the point where I had anything left over after I paid for essentials. I wanted to take Kelly and the kids out a few times. If she’d let me. And I wanted to save up to buy a pickup truck. Unlikely, maybe, but I could dream.