Steeled for Murder (8 page)

Belkins stepped nearer to the raised wooden platform on which we plater operators stood.

The other men stood back with Hank, who had his clipboard clutched in his hand again. He didn’t look any happier.

Belkins tried to squeeze his bulk between the pallet of unfinished cabinets and the pallet of completed ones. He couldn’t fit and had to go back around the end of the pallets past plater one. He stepped up on the platform and came toward me.

“If you’re gonna go up by where there’s machinery operating overhead, at least get a hard hat,” Hank yelled to him.

“Don’t need one,” Belkins shouted back, taking another step toward me.

“Then I’m gonna have to shut the platers down,” Hank shouted. “Safety issue. OSHA regulations.”

As Belkins stepped around the plater one operator, that worker reached over and punched the big emergency stop button on his control panel.

“Don’t stop production,” Mr. Radman hollered. “We’re already backlogged.”

“Union regs,” the plater operator shouted back. “Unsafe working conditions. If you want the platers running, get this guy off of here or go get the steward.”

The operators of platers three and four reached for their emergency stop buttons.

I didn’t have union protection. If I stopped the plater without permission, no one would step in to save me from being fired. I glanced over to where Hank stood. He shook his head slightly.

I stowed the next cabinet on the pallet and reached for another one.

Montgomery slipped between the pallets and stepped up on the platform. He had no trouble fitting. “Belkins. Get down from there.”

Belkins stopped a few feet away from me. Mine was the only plater still running.

“Get the union steward,” plater three’s operator said. He stripped off his gloves and rocked back on his boot heels. “Somebody’s gonna stand bareheaded near my plater, I ain’t running it. Somebody’s gonna get hurt. They ain’t gonna say I wasn’t following safety procedures and blame me. I’ll file a grievance if I have to.”

Montgomery reached over and grabbed Belkins by the arm, dragging him off the platform. “Get down here. You can talk to him after the shift ends. It’s only ten minutes.”

The other operators started their platers again.

Mechanically, I continued working. When I glanced over, the little knot of men still stood there. Belkins stared at me, an unlit cigar clenched in his mouth.

Day shift workers came in, pulling on gloves and straightening hard hats. They all looked curiously at the visitors. My replacement stared at them and then at me.

The whistle blew for shift change. The day shift workers stepped up and took over.

Were they going to cuff me again and march me out of there? In front of another shift? Not a damn thing I could do about it.

I stepped off the platform and peeled off my gloves.

Maybe not. If they had planned to do that, they’d have brought uniformed backup.

Hank came up to me. “Punch out and report to Radman’s office. You know where it is?”

“Yeah.” I tucked the gloves in my pocket. “And Hank…”

“Yeah?” he asked, his black eyes small in his beefy face.

“Just wanted you to know I appreciate what you’re doing for me,” I said.

“And what’s that?” His eyebrows rose above his crooked nose.

“You know.” I shrugged. “Giving me a chance here. Telling the cops that I was on the plater all night. Especially when Mitch was killed.”

He looked at me. “Ain’t nothing special. You work hard. We need good workers. And I ain’t gonna tell no lies for nobody. I keep records on breaks.” He tapped his clipboard. “I know where my operators are and when they’re there. Includes you that night.”

“Well, thanks anyhow,” I said awkwardly.

I went to the time clock and waited my turn to punch out.

For a brief minute, I thought about leaving with everyone else. I could say I’d misunderstood what Hank had told me.

But that would gain me nothing except a little time and might lose me my job—or my parole. If Belkins was determined to talk to me again, sooner or later, he would make sure he did it. I fingered my still-bruised face. Better here at the plant than at the police station. And better with Montgomery around than Belkins by himself.

I climbed the stairs to the offices, walking along the hallway until I came to Radman’s door. My stomach churned. Maybe I should have gone to the men’s room first and seen if I could throw up.

The office door was open. Radman sat at his desk. Montgomery was in the visitor’s chair, leaning back and relaxed, his charcoal-gray suit looking like it had just come back from the cleaners.

Belkins paced restlessly, his stained suit wrinkled at the knees and elbows. His shirt collar was open. He wasn’t wearing a tie.

I wondered what it would be like to have a daughter. I liked kids. Had ever since I helped take care of younger ones in foster homes. Maybe I would have some one day. Unlikely, but I could hope. But to know that a daughter had been killed and before that, tortured—on purpose—by someone who had done it before…It’d have to unhinge the mind.

I stood just outside the door. They’d tell me what they wanted me to do.

“Maybe it was a mistake, putting him back to work,” Mr. Radman was saying, glancing nervously at his blunt fingernails. “But we’re shut all next week, and I’m short operators. No one has any solid evidence, but opinions are mixed. I’ve been asking around.”

“We’d rather you didn’t ask around,” Montgomery said smoothly, turning to look toward me in the hall. “That’s our job.”

Belkins stopped his pacing. His gaze followed Montgomery’s. “Get in here, Damon,” he said.

Montgomery got to his feet. “Sit down here, Damon,” he said, gesturing toward the chair.

I would rather have stayed standing. When I sat down, they would be looking down on me and I would have to look up to make eye contact. Psychological disadvantage. Not to mention making me more vulnerable physically. Part of their method, I knew. Nothing I could do about it.

I sat.

“Mr. Radman,” Montgomery said with a tight grin, “I wonder if Detective Belkins and I can have this office for a little while?”

“Well…” Radman clearly didn’t want to leave. I really didn’t want him to leave, either. The more witnesses, the better.

“We won’t be long,” Montgomery assured him.

“All right.” Radman straightened the pens in the holder on his desk and got to his feet. “I’ll be down in the executive suite, if you should need me.”

“Thank you, and shut the door on your way out.” Montgomery perched himself on the edge of the desk, facing me. “Why don’t you have a seat, Detective Belkins?” he said, indicating the chair behind the desk.

Sounded like a good idea to me. He would be too far away to reach over and grab me.

Belkins moved his ponderous bulk behind the desk, but he didn’t sit down.

“I hope you had no unfortunate aftereffects from our encounter yesterday.” Montgomery’s eyes bored into my face.

“No, sir.” I realized I was rubbing my swollen eye. I dropped my hand into my lap and looked at the floor.

“That’s good.” Montgomery rested his slim dark hand on the polished surface of Radman’s desk. He wore two rings, both gold with some kind of green gemstone. They’d really tear up my face if he hit me with them. “I would hate to have to change my report to your parole officer. I told him you were cooperating fully.”

I nodded.

“Now,” he said. “I don’t think we had an opportunity to go over your whereabouts last night as completely as we would have liked. Can we start with what time you arrived at work?”

I stared at my hands in my lap. If I could give them the information they needed, maybe Belkins wouldn’t be hauling me in again. I much preferred Montgomery’s methods of questioning.

But I could practically guarantee they’d distort whatever I said. Not answering questions, though, was being uncooperative.

“About eleven fifty, give or take,” I said. “Shift starts at midnight.”

“And what time did you leave your apartment?”

Belkins scoffed. “Call that rathole an apartment?” he muttered.

Montgomery turned and glared at him. Belkins shifted on his feet and was quiet.

“What time did you leave?” Montgomery repeated.

“Eleven thirty,” I said. “I’m allowed a half hour to get to work.”

“And if I check the monitoring records…”

“Eleven thirty almost exactly,” I said.

“You’re pretty good about sticking to the schedule your parole officer set?”

“Yes, sir. Except for yesterday.”

“What happened yesterday?” Montgomery asked.

“You guys pulled me in. I couldn’t go home,” I said. “I was pretty late checking in.”

Two hours later, Montgomery was still asking the same few questions in different ways. Belkins had hardly participated. But he finally sat down. I was still answering the questions the same way. If I’d been trying to hide something, I couldn’t have kept the answers straight. Montgomery would have figured out I was lying in no time.

Montgomery finally got to his feet. Belkins stretched, yawned, and stood. I remained seated, waiting to be told what to do next.

“I think you can go,” Montgomery said. “I’ll call your PO—Mr. Ramirez, is it?—and tell him if you’re checking in late that you were with us.”

“Thank you, sir,” I said.

My shoulders ached. Despite that and the storm raging in my head and gut, I was exhausted, and my eyes kept wanting to close. And I was hungry.

“I think we should take him downtown and grill him some more,” Belkins said, looking at his watch. “We got time.”

“We want to talk to a few more people here.” Montgomery shot up the cuff of his starched shirt and consulted his watch. “I think we’ve gotten everything Damon has to tell us.”

“You mean everything Damon’s
going
to tell us,” Belkins said, coming around the side of the desk and looming over me menacingly. “I think if we got him into the right situation downtown, he might have a lot more to tell us.”

Montgomery smoothed the front of his jacket. The green gemstones in his rings glistened in the overhead light. “You might be able to coerce a confession from him. Although I doubt it.” He gave me a calculated look. I kept my eyes focused straight ahead. “But then what would you have? A coerced confession. Probably be thrown out of court. No point undermining our credibility.”

“A confession is a confession,” Belkins said, leaning down so his face was close to mine. I could smell alcohol and stale cigar mingled with his aftershave. “And scum is scum. He ought to be locked up.”

Montgomery moved over to the door and opened it. “We know where he works. We know where he lives. We can always pick him up again, anytime. Isn’t that right, Damon?”

I moved my gaze to the floorboards just beyond the tips of my boots, avoiding eye contact with either one of them. “Yes, sir,” I said.

“You can go now.” Montgomery gestured toward the open door.

“Thank you, sir.” I stood up.

Belkins coughed. “And stay away from women and children, you hear?” he said, “or I’ll see you spend the rest of your life locked up.”

I wasted no time scrambling down the hallway and the stairs. I grabbed my lunchbox from the plating room office and my jacket from its hook by the time clock. I struggled into the jacket as I pushed through the doorway to the street. Flipping up the hood and hunching my shoulders into the weather, I headed back to my tiny apartment.

Exhausted, I took a quick shower and fell into bed.

When I got to work that night, John put me back on the plater. The heavy steel cabinets were done; my plater was running some long wire shelving. After the cabinets, they seemed weightless and easy to handle.

Hank nodded as I quickly swung into the plater’s rhythm. He leaned in close and shouted, “Figured you’d make a plater operator. You may not be all that big, but you’re quick and wiry.”

I nodded my thanks.

As lunch approached, I was surprised to feel a cramp in my gut. But not the same kind of cramp as when I heard a cell door slam behind me. Strange, yet not an entirely unpleasant sensation.