Fostering Death (6 page)

The first time I was arrested, I was sure things would work themselves out, and I wouldn’t be held for long. A day. A few months. A year at the most. It’d turned into twenty long years.

Here I was, shackled and detained again. This time, I had no illusions. If I was sent back to prison, I’d be there for years. Most likely for the rest of my life. Nothing for me to do but wait for someone else to decide what happened to me next. I could think of several possibilities, most of them not good.

A pair of boots stopped in front of me. I didn’t open my eyes.

“Damon. Stand up.”

I rose unsteadily to my feet.

“A couple of detectives want to talk to you.”

Had to be Belkins and Montgomery. At least it didn’t sound like Belkins would be there by himself.

The guard unlocked the waist chain and yanked it free of the eyebolt. He slapped it around my waist and snicked the lock down.

Grabbing my elbow, he escorted me up a steep staircase. I’ve never gotten used to climbing stairs in leg irons, and I almost fell. At the top of the stairs we went down a long dim hallway to an interrogation room with a battered table flanked by two worn but sturdy chairs and a harsh overhead light.

I knew the routine. Sit and wait. Possibly for hours. No doubt in my mind that the dark piece of glass in the wall was a one-way window. If I got out of the chair, someone would be in immediately, and I might end up shackled to the chair. I would have no way to tell how much time passed. An unsettling feeling. That was the whole point of the arrangement. I waited.

Yesterday I hadn’t gotten enough sleep. And I’d worked all night. I was pretty tired, and if I looked like I was falling asleep, they might hurry things up without making my situation any worse. I let my head drop and closed my eyes.

Sure enough, the door opened. I didn’t turn to look at who was coming in, but the sour scent of stale cigar and the odor of someone who was just slightly overdue for a shower and change of clothing suggested that Belkins had entered. Underneath that smell I could detect Montgomery’s fresh aftershave and his minty mouthwash.

Belkins stopped behind me. Montgomery came around, perching himself on the edge of the table, his legs crossed. His elegantly shod foot swung gently in a mesmerizing arc. The glare from the overhead light winked off a large green stone set in a ring on his right hand. Unblinking, he stared straight into my face. I kept my eyes downcast.

Neither one of them said anything. Good interrogators know that most people can’t stand a silence for long and will fill in the emptiness with talk. Often unwise talk.

Even though I was familiar with the technique, I sometimes found myself saying more than I should. I knew I had to answer questions if I didn’t want to be reported to Mr. Ramirez in the parole office as uncooperative. That didn’t mean I had to start the conversation.

The silence grew uncomfortably.

Belkins broke first. He slapped me on the back of the head. “Say something, damn it.”

Montgomery shifted his gaze to Belkins and frowned. “Watch it, Belkins. We’re recording this.”

“So erase the first bit.” Belkins jabbed my shoulder. Hard. “And why’re you letting him know we’re recording?”

“I imagine Jesse’s well aware that we’re recording.” Montgomery smiled. “Aren’t you, Jesse?”

A direct question. I had to answer. “Yes, sir.”

“So what do you think we want to talk to you about, Jesse?”

I shook my head. “I’m not really sure.”

“Guess.”

“Mrs. Coleman?”

“See. He’s no dummy. Are you, Jesse?”

I shrugged.

Montgomery leaned forward, bringing his face close to mine. The smell of his minty breath grew stronger as he asked, “So, Jesse, how do you think Mrs. Coleman died?”

I didn’t want to venture an answer, but I had to give the impression I was cooperating. Otherwise I’d spend the rest of the afternoon in this interrogation room, and probably most of the night in a holding cell. It wasn’t what they were looking for, but I said, “The obit just said she’d died suddenly, at home. She wasn’t young.” I glanced up at Montgomery’s chiseled dark features.

“True.” Montgomery’s bottomless brown eyes bored into mine. I shifted my gaze to avoid his. “But she was in pretty good health, especially for someone her age,” he said.

My stomach churned. “An accident?” After the brief session with the detectives outside the funeral home, I was pretty sure it wasn’t an accident.

“She fell. Down the basement stairs at her home. Broke her neck.” Montgomery leaned forward, his dark chiseled features immobile, inches away from me.

With limited success, I tried to keep my face equally expressionless. I thought of the steep, dark stairs that ended at the concrete floor of the basement. “How’d that happen?” I asked.

“How do you think?” Montgomery asked.

“Anybody can fall.” A sob caught at the back of my throat as I thought of Mrs. Coleman tumbling down the stairs. With an effort, I took a deep breath and choked it back.

Montgomery leaned back. “True. Do you think she just fell?”

I shrugged.

“Or do you think she was pushed, Jesse? Or thrown?”

My stomach knotted. “I hope not,” I said.

“What about if she was hit over the head?” Belkins chomped on his unlit cigar. “Before she went down the stairs.”

“Maybe she hit her head when she fell?” I said.

“That’s not what the coroner says,” Montgomery said. “He says she suffered the head injury first. Then she went down the stairs.”

Maybe at least she’d been unconscious and had been spared the fear and pain of falling down the stairs.

“And that if she hadn’t broken her neck in the fall, she’d of died from the blows to her head,” Belkins said.

“Somebody was stupid enough to hope the coroner would think all the injuries came from the fall,” Montgomery said. “I’d expect you to be smarter than that. If you had time to plan the whole thing out. So maybe you didn’t mean to kill her. It just happened. And you panicked.”

I swallowed hard. “I didn’t kill her. I haven’t been near the Colemans’ house since I was released.”

Montgomery leaned back and raised his eyebrows. “Really? So then who do you think would have hit Mrs. Coleman over the head, Jesse? And why?”

Whatever I told them, they’d twist around and use against me. But I had to say something. How much should I tell them? “She used to keep money in the house,” I blurted out. Didn’t take but a second for me to realize it was stupid for me to let them know I was aware of that. “Maybe she still did. Did anyone check?”

Montgomery looked down at his manicured fingernails. “Why would she keep money in the house?”

“She didn’t believe in credit cards. And she always said you never knew when you might need money. Especially with emergency foster kids arriving at all hours of the day and night.”

“How much would she have had?”

“A couple hundred dollars, at least,” I said.

“And where did she keep it?”

“Back when I lived there, she kept it in twenties and fifties stuffed into the thesaurus on the bookshelf. In the office.”

Montgomery brushed imaginary lint from the front of his blazer. “In the thesaurus?”

“Yeah. She said hardly anybody ever looks in a thesaurus. Not like a dictionary or something.”

“He knows about the money,” Belkins said.

My guts lurched. I’d been saying entirely too much.

Montgomery nodded. “The money’s gone.”

“I’m sure Damon could use a few hundred bucks,” Belkins said.

“Pretty much anybody could use a few hundred bucks.” Montgomery folded his arms over his chest.

“But most people would earn their money.” Belkins shifted behind me. I braced for another blow to the back of my head. It didn’t come.

Montgomery got up and paced a few steps. “Tough way to die. Hit over the head by somebody she probably knew. Somebody she must have let into the house.”

I stared at a dark stain on the surface of the battered table. Blood? “She didn’t deserve that,” I said.

“Nobody deserves that,” Belkins said. “But Mrs. Coleman died like that. A nice, defenseless old lady. Who took in kids who needed a home. And trusted the wrong person.”

No one I knew would ever have described Mrs. Coleman as “defenseless.” Obviously he had never met her when she was alive. But I kept my mouth shut.

“And somebody killed her,” Belkins continued.

“Somebody who thought killing an old lady was an okay thing to do. An old lady who spent her life taking in stray kids. Stray kids like you.” Montgomery said.

I didn’t trust myself to say anything. It might come out as a sob.

“Way we figure it,” Belkins said, “it
had
to be somebody who knew her. Somebody she let in.”

Montgomery sat down and leaned forward again. “Somebody who didn’t mind killing.”

I shivered and took a quick look up.

“You’ve killed before,” Belkins said.

As the prison saying goes, don’t deny, don’t defend. Just makes things harder.

“I’ve heard that the first kill is the hardest,” Montgomery said, his dark face thoughtful.

“All the combat veterans say that,” Belkins added.

Montgomery leaned forward again. “You agree with that, Jesse?”

It wouldn’t do any good to point out that I hadn’t actually killed anyone. My murder conviction said otherwise. I just shook my head.

We sat in silence for what seemed like forever, but was probably only a few minutes. Belkins put his hand on the back of the chair I was sitting in. “You were in foster care with the Colemans for a couple of years, weren’t you? And it’s pretty obvious from the funeral home that Mr. Coleman isn’t a fan of yours. You want to explain why?”

I shifted in my seat. “I guess Mrs. Coleman was pretty upset when I picked up that conviction. She felt like I let her down.”

“And was she right?”

“Yeah. She’d hoped I’d go on to college. Make something of myself.” Another sob rose from deep my chest, but I managed to turn it into a cough. Mrs. Coleman had believed in me. Nobody else ever had. Not even me.

Belkins snorted and turned away. “That certainly didn’t happen.”

Like I needed a reminder.

“What would you say if I told you someone saw you outside the Colemans’ house the afternoon she was killed?” Montgomery said.

They had to be making this up. “I’d say they were lying.”

“You think a neighbor’s going to lie about something like that?”

Not good to suggest a prosecution witness was lying. “Or made a mistake.”

“That jacket of yours is pretty distinctive,” Montgomery said.

I was uncomfortably aware of that. When I’d been released from prison, I’d bought the cheapest warm jacket I could find in the Goodwill shop. A black and red buffalo plaid hunter’s jacket with big patch pockets. It was old and very noticeable, but not all that unique.

Montgomery got up and paced across the floor. “Too bad for you that you work nights. We’ll be asking about you there, but they can’t provide an alibi, since Mrs. Coleman was killed during the day.”

I was sure they’d already been asking questions at work, but they were right about that not helping much.

“I say we ask his PO to lock him up,” Belkins said. “Hold him for a violation hearing.”

Montgomery stopped and stroked his chin. “What will that accomplish?”

“Get a killer off the street,” Belkins said. “No parole board would ever cut him loose again if he’s violated. Killers kill. We might save a few innocent lives.”

“We need to get a conviction in this case. Not just an arrest.” Montgomery wanted the kudos that went with solving a high profile case. It would help in his quest for promotion.

Belkins was burned out and didn’t care as long as he could make it to his retirement date. And he didn’t like murderers loose on the streets. Especially me. “As long as we know who did it and he’s locked up, who cares?”

“I say we cut him loose. We might find out more keeping an eye on him than he’s ever going to tell us.” Montgomery resumed his pacing.

They were seriously playing with me, I reminded myself. If someone could definitely place me near the Colemans’ house the afternoon she was killed, we wouldn’t be sitting here. I’d be in a cell right now, waiting for a parole revocation hearing. I tightened my jaw and willed myself not to let any expression show on my face.

If they had any idea how close I was to breaking down in tears, they’d up the ante for sure. Press on while they had the advantage.

“How about we ask the PO to put him back on the ankle monitor?” Belkins suggested. “If he’s on home detention, he won’t have nearly so much chance of getting involved in things he shouldn’t.”

Montgomery nodded approvingly. “That way he still works and doesn’t cost the taxpayers as much, he’s limited in how much time he has to get into nefarious activities, and we can keep an eye on him better. I’ll call his PO.”