Criminal (30 page)

Amanda closed her eyes. This would be so much easier with Pete. “I had a question about the piece of skin found under the victim’s fingernail.” Amanda looked down at the scratch on her palm. “I was wondering—” She couldn’t do this. Maybe she would wait for Pete. He would probably be back in the office tomorrow. Jane Delray wouldn’t be any more dead by then.

Deena said, “Come on, girl. Don’t waste my time. Spit it out.”

“Pete found something under the girl’s fingernail on Saturday.”

“Right. Skin tissue. She must’ve scratched her assailant.”

“Did you analyze it yet?”

“Not yet. Why?”

Amanda shook her head, wishing she could just melt into the chair. It was probably best to just blurt it out. “If the attacker was Negro, wouldn’t the skin under the girl’s fingernail be black?”

“Hm.” Deena was quiet for a few seconds. “Well, you know, Pete’s got this special light. You shine it on the skin sample and it glows this kind of orange if it’s from a Negro.”

“Really?” Amanda had never heard of such a thing. “Did he test the skin yet? Because I think—”

At first, she thought Deena was crying. Then Amanda realized the woman was laughing so hard that she had started gulping for air.

“Oh, very funny,” Amanda said. “I’m hanging up now.”

“No, wait—” Deena was still laughing, though she was obviously trying to get it under control. “Wait. Don’t hang up.” She kept laughing. Amanda looked down at Keller’s desk. Cigarette butts spilled out of the ashtray. His coffee cup was rimmed in an orange nicotine stain. “Okay,” Deena said. “All right.” And then she started laughing again.

“I’m really hanging up now.”

“No, wait.” She coughed a few times. “I’m good now. I’m good.”

“I was asking a sincere question.”

“I know you were, honey. I know.” She coughed again. “Listen, you know that Pure and Simple lotion ad, shows the different layers of skin?”

Amanda couldn’t tell whether or not she was setting up another joke.

“I’m serious, girl. Listen to me.”

“Okay, I know the ad.”

“The skin basically has three layers. All right?”

“All right.”

“Usually, when you scratch someone, you get the upper dermis, which is white no matter who you are. In order to get the pigmented layer of skin, the black part, you’d have to scratch to the subcutis, which means the fingernail would have to go deep enough to cause some serious bleeding. And it wouldn’t be a sliver of skin you’d have to scrape out from under the fingernail. It’d be a chunk.”

Amanda detected Pete’s patient teaching tone in the woman’s words. “So, there’s no way to tell if the girl from Friday scratched a black assailant or a white one?”

Deena was quiet again, though this time, she wasn’t laughing. “You’re talking about that pimp they arrested for killing that white girl, aren’t you?”

Amanda saw a guard standing by Holly’s desk. He was gangly, with an untrimmed mustache and dark hair. Holly waved Amanda over. Juice was ready.

“Amanda?” Deena asked. “I’m not playing now. You best think about what you’re doing.”

“I assumed you’d be eager to help one of your own kind.”

“That murdering bastard ain’t got nothing to do with me.” She lowered her voice. “I’m eager to keep my head attached to my shoulders, is what I am.”

“Well, thank you for answering my question.”

“Wait.”

Holly’s waving took on an urgency. She was probably afraid Keller would return. Amanda held up her finger, indicating she needed a minute. “What is it?”

“Be careful. The same people protecting you right now are gonna be the same ones coming after you when they find out what you’re doing.”

There was a long silence after that. Both of them reflected on the words.

“Thank you.” Amanda tried not to read anything into Deena’s gruff goodbye. She hung up the phone. Her heart was thumping in her chest. The woman was right. Duke would be furious if he knew what Amanda was doing. So would Keller. So would Butch and Landry and possibly Hodge. Add the whole department to that if they found out she was trying to help a black man get out of jail. A black man who’d already confessed to murder.

Holly came to the doorway. “Hurry up, Mandy. Phillip’s going to take you down and stay with you.” She lowered her voice. “He’s not so bad.”

Amanda felt the urge to flee. Her bravado was going up and down like a piston engine. “I’m ready.”

She stood from the desk. She forced a smile onto her face as Phillip came into the office. He was wearing the dark blue uniform of the prison guards, a set of keys hanging from one side of his belt and a nightstick dangling from the other.

He was younger than Amanda, but he talked to her as if she was a child. “You sure you wanna be doing this, gal?”

Amanda swallowed past the lump in her throat. She wished that Evelyn were there to give her strength. Then she felt guilty, because Evelyn had been taking the brunt of the anger lately—not just from Rick Landry, but from Butch and whoever had transferred her into Model City.

Maybe Evelyn was right. Maybe people were careful with Amanda because they were afraid of Duke. Instead of being afraid of him herself, Amanda should be taking advantage of it. At least for as long as she could.

“I’m not sure we’ve met.” Amanda walked toward the man, hand extended. “I’m Amanda Wagner. Duke’s daughter.”

His eyes shifted to Holly, then to Amanda as he shook her hand. “Yeah, I know Duke.”

“He’s friends with Bubba.” Amanda never called Keller by his first name, but the guard needn’t know that. She took her purse out of the chair and dug around for the new pen and spiral-bound notebook she’d brought from home. She handed her bag to Holly. “Mind holding on to this for me?”

Holly stared wide-eyed as Amanda walked out of the office. She forced herself to keep a steady pace as she passed through the typing pool. The constant spinning and pecking of the Selectric balls seemed to match the erratic beats of her heart, but Amanda forced herself to keep walking. Going into the men’s jail was likely the same as going into a swimming pool. You either jumped in and experienced that quick shock of cold or you dragged it out, walking in slowly, your skin prickling with goose bumps, your teeth chattering.

Amanda jumped right in.

She held on to the railing as she walked down the stairs. She didn’t wait for Phillip to open the door. She pushed it with the palm of her hand. The cells. Holly was right. The men’s side was far worse than the women’s. Large cracks split the walls. Pigeons cooed from the rafters; their droppings littered the concrete floor. She stepped over a passed-out wino leaning against the wall. She ignored the catcalls and the stares. She kept her posture straight, her eyes ahead, until Phillip spoke.

“It’s on the left.”

Amanda stopped in front of a door. Someone had used a knife to carve
INTERRORGATION
into the thick lead paint. There was a square window at eye level, though the glass was nearly opaque with grime.

Phillip took out a set of keys and searched for the right one. He swayed slightly, obviously from drink. Finally, he found the correct key. He slid it into the lock and pushed open the door. Amanda turned around, preventing him from going in.

She said, “I’ve got it from here.”

He laughed, then saw she was serious. “Are you nuts?”

“I’ll call you if I need you.”

“That ain’t gonna be enough time.” He indicated the door. “This thing locks when you close it. I can leave it cracked so—”

“Thank you.” She pulled one of Rick Landry’s moves, closing the space between them, forcing him back without having to touch him. The last thing she saw of Phillip was the shocked expression on his face when she closed the door.

The clicking of the latch echoed in the room. She caught a glimpse of the guard’s blue hat, just the rim, in the window, but nothing else.

And then she turned around.

Dwayne Mathison was sitting at the table. A bloody white bandage was wrapped around his head. One of his eyes was swollen shut. His nose was broken. He had pulled back his chair several feet, so it was almost touching the wall. Amanda recognized his clothes as the same he’d had on last week, though they were stained with blood and dirt now. His legs were wide apart. His arm hung over the back of the chair, fingers nearly touching the floor. She could see the Jesus tattoo on his chest. The mole on his cheek. The hate in his eyes.

“Whatchu doin’ here, bitch?”

It was a good question. Amanda had never before interviewed a suspect in a proper interrogation room. She was usually in the suspect’s home. His parents were in the room, sometimes a lawyer. The boys were always contrite, terrified to be talking to a police officer, though relieved it was just a woman. Their fathers assured Amanda that it would never happen again. Their mothers revealed salacious details about the girl who’d made the allegations. Generally, it was over in less than an hour and the boy was left to get on with his life.

So what was she doing here?

Amanda hugged her notebook to her chest, then regretted the move. Juice would think she was covering her breasts. He would think she was scared. Both of which were true, but she couldn’t let him know that. She dropped her arms as she walked to the table. The room was small. It was just a few steps. She dragged back the empty chair and sat down. Juice was watching her the way an animal studies prey. Amanda pulled the chair closer to the table, though every muscle in her body was tingling with the desire to flee.

In seconds, he could lurch across the table and snap her neck. He could punch her. Beat her. Try to rape her again. Amanda had always worried that if something bad happened—a man broke into her apartment in the middle of the night, an attacker cornered her in an alley—she would not be able to scream. She hadn’t screamed before when Juice had threatened her. Could she scream now if he lunged for her? Would Phillip even hear her? If he did, would he be able to find his keys in time to stop the worst of it?

Amanda couldn’t generate enough saliva in her mouth to swallow. She opened her notebook. “Mr. Mathison, I understand that you’ve confessed to the murder of Lucy Bennett?”

He didn’t answer.

Water dripped from a hole in the ceiling. The drops had puddled on the floor. There was a dead rat in the corner, its neck broken by a trap. Cobwebs filled the corners. The air stank of sweat mixed with the distinctive ammonia smell of dried urine.

She said, “Mr. Math—”

“Mm-mm.” Juice slowly licked his tongue along his top lip. “You still a fine-lookin’ woman.” He made a tsking noise. “Shoulda took you when I had the chance.”

Incongruously, Amanda felt a smile wanting to come to her lips. She could hear Evelyn’s voice, the way she’d mimicked Juice when they were at the Varsity.

Her tone was surprisingly strong when she said, “Well, you lost your chance.” Amanda clicked her pen so she could take notes. “What happened to Jane Delray?”

He made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a groan. “Why you askin’ after that bitch?”

“I want to know where she is.”

He held his hand up above his head and whistled like a dive-bombing airplane as he dropped it to the table.

Amanda looked at his hand. Two of his fingers were taped together with surgical tape. There were no scratches on his hands, his bare arms. “You confessed to killing Lucy Bennett.”

“I confessed to keepin’ my black ass outta the ’lectric chair.”

“The death penalty is no longer legal.”

“They say they gone bring it back for me.”

Given the circumstances, Amanda didn’t doubt that the state would try. Everyone knew it was only a matter of time before Old Sparky was powered back up again.

She said, “We both know you didn’t kill that woman.”

“Wished I woulda.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Why you here, bitch? Why you care what happen to a nigger?”

“I don’t, actually.” Amanda was startled by the truth of her own words. “I care about the girls.”

“ ’Cause they white.”

“No.” Again, she told him the truth. “Because they’re girls. Because no one else cares about them.”

He looked at her. Amanda hadn’t realized until that moment that Juice had been avoiding her eyes. She stared back at him, wondering if she was the first woman who’d had the courage to do so. He must have a mother somewhere. A sister. He couldn’t rape and whore out every woman he met.

Juice tapped his hand on the table. Amanda didn’t look away, but Juice did. “You’re like her.”

“Like who?”

“Lucy.” He kept tapping his fingers on the tabletop. “She strong. Too strong. I break her down. But she always get back up.”

“Was Kitty like that, too?”

“Kitty.” He snorted. “That bitch near about broke
me
, you hear what I’m sayin’? Had to beat her down and keep her down.” He pointed at Amanda. “You run them gals long enough, you see the strongest one’s the one what’s gonna be most loyal. All’s you gotta do is find you way in.”

“I’ll keep that in mind if I ever decide to trick out women.”

He put his palms flat on the table and leaned toward her. “I trick you out, bitch. Gimme five minutes with that fine white ass.” He started thrusting his hips, banging against the table. “Dig my hands in that juicy white meat. Stick it in ya till ya cryin’.” He banged harder against the table, punctuating each thrust with a deep moan. It was a guttural sound that made her note the dark bruises on his throat.

She asked, “Would you choke me?”

“I choke you, bitch.” He pushed one last time against the table. “I choke you till you come so hard you pass out.”

“Do you like being choked?”

“Shit.” He crossed his arms over his chest. His biceps were huge. “Ain’t nobody chokin’ this brother.”

Amanda remembered something Pete had said in the morgue. “Did you urinate on yourself?”

“I ain’t piss myself.” He tilted up his chin defensively. “Who told you that?”

Amanda felt a smug smile on her lips. “You just did.”

He stared at the wall.

“The apartment at Techwood. That’s Kitty’s, isn’t it?”

He didn’t answer.

“I can stay here all day,” she told him, and in that moment, Amanda could see herself doing just that. Bubba Keller would have to drag her from this room. She would sit here staring down this disgusting pimp for as long as it took. “The apartment at Techwood belonged to Kitty, did it not?”