He stared at his shoes, shaking his head in voiceless anger.
“C’mon, man. You pleaded guilty to the woman’s murder back in ’45 when you were arrested,” I said. “Show some remorse, for chrissakes.”
“That’d be hard to do,” he whispered.
“What?”
“I said I can’t do that.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I didn’t kill her.”
“For chrissake, Roberts. It’s all here in black and white.” I thumbed the report, quickly reviewing a few details. Roberts’s first victim, the guy who gave him a lift, was named Charles Haskell, Jr. The woman Roberts had picked up on the road after killing Haskell and stealing his car had not been identified by the authorities. No one came forward to claim her body and after the time prescribed by law she had been buried at the expense of the City. I slammed the report on the table. “Says here you killed them both. You’re lying to me, Roberts.”
“No!”
“Then why did you say you murdered the woman in the first place?” I paused and he remained silent. We both knew the answer: the plea bargain. “It’s not smart to lie to your lawyer, Roberts. Are you that goddamn stupid?”
His face turned red, his breathing irregular, beads of sweat dotted his forehead. I felt at any moment he’d bust loose. Then after he got the anger out of his system, I’d do what I came here to do: show Roberts how he’d have to present himself at tomorrow’s hearing. The board wouldn’t tolerate his claims of innocence. That would blow the whole thing right out of the gate. He’d have to admit his guilt and he’d have to appear to be a man of humility with sorrow and remorse in his soul for what he had done all those years ago. He’d have to show them how, after twenty-nine years languishing in this “correctional” facility, he’d changed and had achieved a state bordering on veneration.
I pounded the table with my fist. “Why’d you confess if you’re so goddamn innocent?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “I’ll tell you why. You took the easy way out, Roberts. Couldn’t take the pressure. You copped a plea to the woman’s murder. They didn’t charge you with Haskell’s death, no sir. But they used his murder as a wedge, pressuring you to admit that you strangled the blonde.” I got up and paced the room. “Isn’t that right, Roberts?”
He kept quiet, but the veins on his neck pulsed and his jaw muscles tensed. His insides had to be burning as he continued to struggle to maintain control. Damn, I said to myself, let loose, Al. C’mon, man, let it out. Show some emotion.
I turned back to him. “The prosecutor played the old shell game, didn’t he, Roberts? ‘Take your pick. The little pea under the walnut hull is a six by eight cell in San Quentin. Or, hey, maybe it’s a trip to Yuma. They have a nice little room down there filled with cyanide perfume just waiting for you.’ Is that what he said?”
He slowly shook his head.
I walked around behind him. “And you fell for it,” I said to his back. “You were a fool.”
He still didn’t respond, but I saw his fists tighten, the knuckles turning white. I was getting close. Any moment, he’d blow. And in anger, he’d admit to what he had done.
I darted to the table, leaned forward, and stabbed the report repeatedly with my finger. “It says here you strangled the girl with a telephone cord until she couldn’t breathe. Then you snapped her neck with your bare hands.”
“I wasn’t even there when she was killed,” he muttered.
“What about the guy, Haskell, you killed a couple days earlier?”
“I didn’t kill him either, understand?”
“Okay, you didn’t go to trial on that one. We’ll forget about it for a while. But tell me more about the dead girl. The girl you didn’t kill. The one you had sex with. The one who grated on your nerves, the girl you were cooped up with all alone at that motel.”
“It wasn’t like that. Somewhere in the middle of the goddamn desert, Haskell gave me a lift. After a while, he got tired and I drove. Then he died. He fell out of the passenger seat, hit his head on a rock. But I had to get to L.A. So, naturally, I took the car. I-”
“Then you, naturally, stole his clothes and money. Then you, naturally, picked up the girl on the road while driving the dead guy’s car the rest of the way to Los Angeles. Then you, naturally, killed her too.”
“No, goddamn it-I mean, yes, I picked her up, but… She wanted money. I gave her everything, all the money I took from Haskell’s body, but she wanted more.”
“Strong motive.”
“After we had been in L.A. a few days, I left the motel room, went to sell Haskell’s car, but without papers nobody would touch it. I went back, was gonna tell her. When I got there, she was dead. But I couldn’t prove that I didn’t do it. My prints were all over the place. I’d been there with her for three days.”
“I’m not buying it, Roberts. You confessed? I’ll say it again. You’re a goddamn liar.”
He turned his head slowly. The look in his eyes told me I’d be a dead man if he wasn’t cuffed and Marsh wasn’t in the room.
“Don’t call me a liar! I’m not a goddamn liar.” He paused for a beat. “You hear me?” His words bounced off the walls, echoing in the small room.
Marsh walked over to him. “Keep your voice under control or this meeting is over,” he told Roberts, jabbing a finger in the prisoner’s chest. “Do you understand me?”
Roberts stared at Marsh, wide-eyed. Then he looked at me again, despair on his face. I felt some sorrow, surely not for him. After all, he did kill two people. Still, nobody was on his side, then or now. I’d worked him over as hard as I could and he didn’t crack. Could there be a possibility that he’s telling the truth? No, and that issue had been decided long ago.
But the State said he had a right to parole. After all this time maybe he changed, became a different person. Maybe he wasn’t the same monster who’d walked in through those barbwire prison gates back in ’45.
“Why, Al? How’d you get in this mess if you’re innocent?”
“They were gonna kill me,” he said softly.
I pulled out a chair and sat next to him. “You wanna tell me about it?”
“The DA gave me a chance to stay alive and I took their deal. Nothing I could do.”
“Your lawyer went along with it? Advised you to take the deal, is that it?” I asked.
“A trial costs big dough.”
“And of course, you had no money.”
“After I was arrested, my lawyer sold my story to some guy, got five hundred bucks. They made a movie, wasn’t much, and they mostly got it wrong. But anyway, once the five hundred was used up, my lawyer wanted to cut and run.”
“What was the name of the movie?”
“Detour.”
“Never heard of it,” I said. “Who’s in it?”
“Nobody.”
I got up and walked around the room again.
“Do you want out of here, or not?” I asked, staring at the back of Roberts’s lowered head.
“It’s not fair.”
“You know how it is with the law, Roberts. What do you expect, put a quarter in the slot and out pops justice?”
“The parole board’s gonna give me a down letter. Hell, even if they gave me parole, they’d send me to Arizona. I’m in for the long ride. You’re wasting your time.”
“Forget about Arizona,” I said. “You’re here because you murdered the woman. This isn’t about the dead guy on the road. Now tell me the truth. Why did you kill her? You must’ve had a reason.”
“I already told you I didn’t kill either one of them, Haskell or Vera in the motel. That was her name, you know, Vera. Didn’t catch her last name.”
“Smith, Jones, MacGillicuddy, take your pick. The police never got a positive I.D. All they knew was that she had track marks on her arm. If it’s true what you said when you were arrested, she came from somewhere in the South.”
“She had an accent.”
“That’s not all she had. She had narcotics, barbiturates in her purse.”
“Yeah, I know…” His voice trailed off.
We didn’t say anything for a couple of moments. Roberts remained slumped in his chair while I gazed at the ceiling. I could smell the anguish permeating the walls of this warehouse of human atrophy. “Look, Roberts, we have a few minutes left. Why don’t you tell me your side?”