“The story’s even gone national!” Gaines declared.
“AP’s picked it up. Your phone’s going to be off the hook.” He added quietly, “But don’t talk to anybody but me.”
“Um, chief,” Detective Leland said, laying the paper down beside her bouquet, “could we have a word in your office?”
He nodded, blushing a little, and then said to the ardent crowd, “Give us a second, would you? I have to confer with the hero.” Setting his hand on her shoulder, he guided her toward his office. Once within, he closed the door, asked her to take a seat, and circled around his paper-strewn desk. “So, what’s up?”
Leland almost laughed, but then she shook her head.
“Listen, I need some time off.”
“Sure! You’ve been working hard, I know that. Take a week – on the house.”
“No, I mean, more than that.”
“Well, I don’t know… You’re kinda central to this whole case.”
“That’s just the point. I-”
“We need you for the conviction,” he interrupted.
“You’re the one who tracked him down. You’ve got all the evidence the DA’s gonna need. You’ve been following him since Bohner’s Lake.” His bloodshot eyes glowered beneath aggressive black brows. Leland sighed. “I’ll get the evidence all in order in the next few days, get my paperwork done, instruct a replacement in all aspects of the case, but then I want off.”
“In God’s name, why?”
“I’m in love with the killer.”
There are some statements that can end an argument.
“You’re what?”
“I’m asking for administrative leave.”
Biggs chewed on the request, and his lip, for a while before responding. “All right. Of course. Administrative leave. However long you need. You just get all the evidence pulled together and give it to me and…”
A sudden smile came to his face, and he blushed again. “I guess, all of a sudden, I’m the lead.”
E L E V E N
The counsel cell was cinder block and steel, glass fused with metal mesh. Once built, the room had been fastened into an eternal solidity with round-topped bolts as thick as a man’s middle finger. The speckled paint was rosy colored, something like a mixture of blood and milk, left from a time when pink was thought to pacify inmates. To John Doe, it seemed the room had experienced a swift volcanism that had melted every surface and galvanized all into a seamless whole. The rest of the Racine County Jail was the same – homogenized and impersonally antagonistic. Even the guards were fundamentally interchangeable, their eyes neutral and steely. They walked the catwalks and manned their stations with the silent menace of sharks. This was the joyless Sheol in which the Jews had once believed. Yellowish light. Milk-blood walls. Metal bunks. A steel table with a checkerboard scratched into its paint and scraps of paper as playing pieces. The everpresent reek of cigarettes. For a week now, this realm of the dead had been his home.
But into that homogeneous room of steel and cinder block came something unique: a black woman. Her hair had been straightened and then curled again into a feathery mound on her head. Her face was ageless, as are those of black women, though the mixture of caution, wisdom, and compassion in her eyes said that she had seen much. She wore a kente cloth vest over a shirt of shiny black fabric. A long black skirt finished the ensemble.
“Hello, Mr Doe, my name is Lynda. Lynda Barnett. I’m your state-appointed defender.”
John Doe nodded. His features were handsome despite the rings beneath his eyes and the slack hang of his cheeks. “I would rise, but they have attached me to the table.” He rattled his shackles.
Counselor Barnett nodded noncommittally to that, swung a leather attache to rest on her end of the table, pulled out a number of loose sheets and manila folders, and settled down on the chair.
“Now, I find it much easier to defend a man whose name I know. I’ve told you mine; how about if you tell me yours?”
“I have told the police and will tell you. The closest thing I have to a human name is Azrael Michaels,” the man said quietly.
“There is no Sergeant Michaels of the Griffith, Indiana, Police Department. The Social Security administration lists only five Azrael Michaelses who would be about your age. Two are dead already, and though the three others are alive and well – they aren’t you.” Her eyes flared. “No birth certificate. No green card. Who are you?”
“My true name is unpronounceable and unspellable.”
Counselor Barnett blinked once slowly. She tipped her head toward the documents she had brought. “That’s what this report says.” She looked up from the papers. “Already, the press is calling you the Son of Samael. Is that what you want them to call you?”
“Why not? Samael is the name the Jews give to the Archangel of Death.”
“Yes,” Counselor Barnett responded. “Muslims call him Azrael, and Christians call him Michael, which is why you call yourself Azrael Michaels – but the papers are calling you Samaele-”
“I’m not really the Archangel of Death.”
“No?” she asked sarcastically.
“I’m just an angel. One of his deputies.”
Counselor Barnett stopped and took a deep breath, looking infinitely weary. “Look, Mr Doe, just because I am an overworked public defender handling the cases of people who are broke and desperate doesn’t mean I ignore my research or do a slapdash job. I’m a damned good attorney, but you’re going to have to meet me halfway on this. Drop the insanity act just long enough to give me your name, Social Security number, birth date – that stuff.”
“This isn’t insanity,” John Doe replied calmly. “Nor is it an act. I truly am – truly was the angel of death for this area.”
The lawyer sighed wearily. “What area?”
“The Chicago-Milwaukee metropolitan area, stretching from Lake County, Indiana, up to the northernmost suburbs of Milwaukee.”
She wrote. “And how long have you been assigned this area?”
“For almost fifteen years.”
That, too, was noted. “And how many people did you kill in that time?”
“That is a difficult question. Do you mean how many deaths did I approve, or how many did I arrange?”
“How many did you arrange?”
“About four hundred thirty per month.”
She stopped writing. “The cops have been through this before with other drifters of your stripe. If you’re planning to delay your trial while police haul you from state to state for questioning about various unsolved murders, you’re sadly mistaken-”
“Murders? Ah, well, many of the ones I arranged were accidents, not murders. If you are asking how many murders I arranged, that’s more like about ninety-five per month.”
Ms. Barnett looked stunned. “You want me to believe you killed, what…? Three people a day for the last fifteen years? That’s, what, a thousand per year… about fifteen thousand murders before getting caught?”
“First of all,” John Doe returned quietly, “I did not kill them. I arranged their murders. Others did the actual killing. Secondly, you are right: A mortal could not have slain so many without being caught.”
She nodded. “If you are an angel, why don’t you just blink out of here?”
“I’m no longer an angel,” the man said. “I’ve fallen.”
“What sin made you fall?”
“Love.”
With that, she slid the papers back into her leather satchel and stood. “Mr Doe, regardless of what you were, we both agree that you are human now, and that you are on trial for multiple murders in a human criminal justice system. Either you come clean with me so I can provide you the best possible defense, or you get multiple life sentences without the possibility of parole
– and get stabbed to death by an inmate with a broomstick. Who says Wisconsin has no death penalty?”
She turned and walked from the room.
Counselor Barnett arranged a competency hearing. She wanted to take away my right to determine my own defense, but I didn’t cooperate.