Last Call (21 page)

She verifies that the tape is picking them up clearly while Bailey says, “Damn right you better read me my rights. I know I got ‘em, too.”

“Yes, you most certainly do. Just so you know, you have the right to remain silent. You don’t have to talk to me if you don’t want to. Do you understand that?”

“Yeah, I understand.”

“Okay,” Frank continues. “So what we say here can be used in a court of law, and you can also have a lawyer here, if you want one. If you can’t afford one, I’m not saying you can’t, we can appoint one for you. You can talk to me if you want, but you don’t have to,” Frank reiterates in a rush. “Do you understand all this? I know we woke you up kinda early this morning and I don’t always understand too much without my first cup of coffee. So I just want you to be clear that we can hang out here and wait for a lawyer if that’s what you want.”

On tape it will sound as if Frank’s going out of her way to help Bailey, when in reality she’s distracting him from the implications of being Mirandized.

“Shit, I don’t want no lawyer, I just wanna get outta here.”

“Me too,” Frank sympathizes. Bailey’s sister had mentioned that he hates Bakersfield, so she adds, “I don’t know about you, but I’d like to get out of here and outta this town. Too much fuckin’ dust and too many shitkickers.”

The cop who’s followed Frank in as a witness glares but remains mute. Frank grins at Bailey, broaching a rapport with him.

“Sorry about waking you up so early, but like I said, I just want to get this over with. So do you want to work this out? Just you and me? Do you want to give up the right to remain silent and talk this out without an attorney? Just you and me, one on one?”

Being a white cop, Frank is usually at a disadvantage when trying to gain a minority suspect’s trust, but being a woman, plus a blonde, gives her a subliminal edge. Most men have enough pride to think they can con some dumb bitch, especially a blonde one. Bailey is no exception.

He nods.

“Is that a yes? You want to talk to me?”

“Yeah, I’ll talk,” he grumbles. “I got things to do.”

As she slides him the waiver and a pen, she distracts him by asking, “Do you want to know what I was looking for in your camper?”

“I ain’t took nothin’ so how would I know?”

“I admire your confidence.” Frank smiles. She opens a folder and leafs through it, waiting Bailey out.

“What you think I took?”

“Hmm?” She glances at Bailey.

“What’d you think I took? What was you lookin’ for?”

“Pair of panties, Mr. Bailey.”

“Panties?”

“Yeah. From a little girl.”

Bailey laughs. “You think I stole a little girl’s panties?”

“Stranger things have happened.”

Bailey laughs again and wiggles in his chair, like a dog shaking water. Frank smiles. She asks simple questions. Where was he last night? Where’d he been before that? Can he produce witnesses to verify this? She lets him tell the truth. Lets him get comfortable.

Then she pushes a picture of a young girl across the table. The girl is naked on her back. She’s slit all over, like a leg of lamb ready to be studded with garlic cloves.

Bailey winces and pushes his chair back.

“Found her a while back,” Frank tells him. “Her clothes were folded right next to her. Real tidy. Everything was there except her panties. We know she was wearing them because she’d complained to her mother they were her last clean pair.”

When Frank pauses, Bailey asks, “Why you showin’ me this?”

“Why do you think?”

“You think I got somethin’ to do with this?”

“Do you?”

“Hell,
no!”

Frank knows he doesn’t, but she wants him thinking she does. One of the last gifts a cop has is legal wherewithal to lie to a suspect. They can’t physically coerce a perp into a confession but they can still mentally fuck them silly. Her plan is to get Bailey thinking he’s wanted for various murders. If she can get him sweating about that, it might make him willing to cooperate, to admit to a lesser crime like rape.

She hands him a similar picture. Another dead girl, her intestines popped out of the gash in her belly. “Recognize her?”

“I ain’t never seen her before.”

“Really?”

“Yeah,
really.
Girl, why you wasting my time with this shit?”

Sliding a picture of Ladeenia Pryce toward him, Frank asks, “How about this one, Antoine? We never found her panties, either.”

Bailey stares hard, for just a second, then says, “I ain’t never seen her neither.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

Frank nods. She hands him a picture of the Pryce site. “Ever seen this place before?”

Bailey barely glances at the picture before answering, “No.”

Frank makes a loud buzzing noise and slaps the table. “Antoine, you done set my bullshit meter off! Come on, man. You gotta level with me here. Don’t,” she stresses slowly, “fuck with me. Or I’ll fuck you back. Is that what you want?”

Antoine turns his head away.

Frank repeats, “Is that what you want?”

“No,” he mumbles.

Sliding the scene photo under his face again, she tells him, “All right. Then I’ma get straight with you too.” Frank taps the picture. “I got witnesses telling me you were here when they found these kids. I got your sister Sharon on tape, saying you and her stopped by here to see what was going on. I
know
you were there, Antoine. So let’s start over. I’ma reset my bullshit meter, and you’re gonna tell me the truth this time. Have you ever seen this place?”

Bailey checks out the photo. “I guess. Maybe. But it was a long time ago. I didn’t recognize it, s’all.”

“So were you there the day these kids were found?” Frank deals another photo from the deck. Trevor and Ladeenia smiling together, hugging a teddy bear.

“I guess.” Antoine pouts.

“Good. What were you doing in the area?”

“I was at my sister’s. Collecting my check like I do every month.”

“Okay.”

Frank leads him through the day and the day prior. Bailey stays close to the alibi he and Ferris built for Noah. He trips on a couple key details but doesn’t notice. Frank leads him on, building his confidence, letting him reinforce his errors.

Suddenly she turns in her chair and faces him head on. “What if I told you this is all a pack of lies, Antoine? Everything you been telling me so far, it’s all lies. You dumped so much shit on my bullshit meter you broke it.”

“Nah, it’s all true. Ask Sharon. She’ll tell you.”

“I did ask Sharon.” Frank pulls Ferris’s statement. She lays it on the table where Antoine can read it. “She told me a different story, Antoine. Said you and she had a big fight that day.”

“No, that ain’t true. We ain’t never fought.”

“Never?”

“Nah, never.”

“How about when Kevin kicked you outta the house back in ‘ninety-two? Or that time a couple years ago when you borrowed his car without asking? How about the night before these kids were found, when your sister asked you to leave?”

“She didn’t ask me to leave. It was Kevin askin’ me. He always the one. He jealous is all. My sister loves me. She ain’t never said nothin’ bad about me.”

“She’s tired of covering for you, Antoine.” Frank pats the statement. “It’s all here. The fight. How you stayed in your truck all day. How you left the next morning. All here. She ain’t backing you this time. She’s tired, Antoine. Tired a watching after her baby brother.”

“That ain’t true.”

“Yeah, it is. You know it is. Go easy on yourself. Tell me what
really
happened that day. Sharon already has, so you got nothing to lose. If you come clean now, this won’t come down on you so hard.”

“What won’t come down on me?”

“Antoine,” Frank croons. “We
know
those kids were in your camper with you. We know how you took ‘em, front and back, doggy style.” Still seductive, she alludes to evidence they don’t have. “Got sperm all over ‘em, man. You know about DNA.”

“Not the boy,” Bailey blurts out. “I ain’t no faggot! I ain’t touched no boy.”

Bingo! Cool as summer rain, Frank shrugs. “Just the girl then. Tell me how she went down.”

But Bailey suddenly balks. “I want my lawyer. I got a right to a lawyer and I want him now.”

Frank’s exhilaration pops like a cheap condom. “You sure that’s what you want, Antoine? We can clear this up right now. Just you and me. Let’s do it.”

“Nuh-uh.” He shakes his head hard. “I know my rights. I want a lawyer.”

“All right.” Frank sighs. “I’ll get you one.”

Bailey is silent during the drive to L.A. Frank tries to get him talking but he maintains, “I ain’t saying nothin’ else until I get a lawyer.”

She drives slowly, finding the most congested routes. She stops at a Del Taco for lunch. By dragging her heels, they get Bailey processed into County during a shift change. His paperwork gets lost. When they find it, he gets transferred to Pitchess. Then back to County.

While Bailey rides the legal merry-go-round, Frank has his camper towed to the LAPD garage. Because the case is such a low priority, it will be weeks before the vehicle is processed. Frank searches it carefully. There’s no sign of the panties. Nothing that can be considered a souvenir. Frank needs more for McQueen. After his arraignment she visits Bailey in lockup.

“How they treatin’ you?”

“Shit,” he complains.

“How’d it go with your attorney? They spend a couple hours with you?”

“Hours?” Bailey’s incredulous. “She wasn’t here but ten minutes.”

“That happens.” Frank shrugs. “They got a lotta cases—I’m not being cold, it’s just a fact—that are probably a lot more important than you. Anyway”—Frank slaps a stack of printouts—“we got your blood work back. Doesn’t look good, Twan. You better give her a call. Let her know.”

Bailey’s eyes are all over Frank. She can almost smell him thinking. He doesn’t know that any possible physical evidence was lost years ago and she lies to him with a confidence born of knowing how public defenders prioritize their schedules. There’s no way a PD will get back to him this far from the pretrial.

“Anything you need in here?”

“Shit. What I need’d fill a phone book.”

“A’ight. I’m outta here.”

As she’s leaving, Bailey calls out, “Toothpaste.”

“Any particular flavor?” she answers without looking back.

“Crest. Regular.”

“You got it.”

Frank gives Bailey two days, letting the scum build up on his teeth. He’s not overjoyed to see her, but he’s not disappointed either.

“What’d your lawyer say about the DNA?”

“I ain’t talked to her yet. She ain’t returning my calls.”

Frank pitches her ball. “You never been in here before, have you?”

“Nah.”

“Antoine.” Frank wriggles close to him. “You’re lucky if your lawyer reviews your case five minutes before it goes to court. Look around you, man. How many people you see in here? You think each one of these bastards got Johnnie Cochran reppin’ ‘em? Hell, no. They all got PDs just like you. There are about six hundred public defenders in the system. Only half of ‘em do felonies. On any given day there are about twenty thousand people in and outta these jails. Not counting Juvenile Hall and CYA. You do the math. Soon as a PD gets one case cleared she gets slammed with three more. She ain’t calling you back till you’re dressed for court, man.”

Frank shakes her head in disbelief.

“You’re staring down two murder counts, Twan. You gonna put your faith in a stressed-out, overworked, underpaid, court-appointed PD? Man, if you just poked the Pryce girl admit it now and move on. Look at this place. It’s packed so fuckin’ tight the judge’ll probably kick you in the ass, tell you not to do it again and make you serve six months. But you’re gonna take a chance on a murder one rap over a little piece a poonannie? You’re crazy, Twan. Rape’s a longways from murder.”

Bailey considers this, eyeing Frank like a granny he’s fixing to jack.

“Well, the good news,” Frank says with a grin, “is you ain’t young and pretty like that boy over there.” Frank gives the nod to a delicately featured man-child, sobbing to his mama. “At least you got that going. Most you’ll likely have to do is clean the shit stains outta your cellie’s drawers. Could be worse.”

“Just ‘cause you slept with someone, don’t mean you killed her,” he says slowly.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. And that’s exactly what your lawyer’s gonna say. Admitting to boning the girl can’t hurt you in the long run, ‘cause it makes you look honest. And like you said, screwing someone’s a long way from killing them.”

“Yeah.”

Frank makes a show of rummaging through her briefcase. “I think I got a statement in here if you wanna fill one out. That’d speed things up when you talk to your PD.”

“What would I say?”

“Depends on what you did, man. Did you poke her or not? Lotta guys mean to but they get nervous and can’t get it up. Happens all the time. Don’t mean nothing.”

“Nah, that don’t happen to me.”

“So write that down, how you did her.”

Antoine’s still reluctant, but Frank wags her head at him. She chuckles. “You’re
bad,
Antoine. Why you bonin’ little girls? You ain’t half bad-lookin’. I bet you could have most any woman you wanted.”

“You got that right.”

“So why some girl?”

Antoine shrugged. “Why not?”

Frank agrees, “Yeah, whatever. Parts is parts. Why don’t you fill that out?” She tips her head to the statement. “Get you outta here so someone else can have your bunk.”

“Yeah, I heard that.”

Handing him a pen, she mentions, “Yeah, just explain real simple what happened. How it went down.”

“Yeah, all right. You know, I just had a little sex with her. Nothin’ else, you understand.”

“Yeah, sure,” she encourages. “It’s not like you were out looking for her. She came to you, right?”

“Yeah, that’s what happened.” Bailey relaxes, crossing his legs at a cocky angle. “She come by my camper. It was raining a little out. I axed her in, thought she might want to get dry, you know. Wait out the rain. She come in. Sat on my bed, looked around. One thing went to another. She a pretty little girl. Next thing you know, I’d done it to her. She didn’t seem to mind too much. Didn’t say nothin’ ‘bout it.”