“I’d like to talk to Michael,” I said. “Alone, Jamie.”
“That’s usually best,” Ehrenberg said, and nodded reassuringly. I did not for a moment doubt that the arrest of twenty-year-old Michael Purchase had upset him. He seemed to be a man who could not easily hide his feelings or pretend to feelings that weren’t genuine. He was disturbed by the turn of the events, and it showed on his face and in the slump of his shoulders. His hands were in his pockets. He seemed almost ashamed of the fact that we were here on a bright sunny afternoon to examine the bloody deeds of a midnight just passed.
“All right,” Jamie said, “but, please, I want to see him before—”
“You can talk to him before we question him,” Ehrenberg said. “But then it’ll have to be just his attorney present, if he wants one.”
“I may have to call in a criminal lawyer,” I said.
“If that’s what the boy wants, fine.”
“Have you talked to him yet?”
“Why, no, sir,” Ehrenberg said. He looked suddenly injured.
“You said he’d confessed to the murders...”
“Yes, but that was to the arresting officer. That was still a field investigation, the officer wasn’t required to read him Miranda-Escobedo. We advised him of his rights the minute he was in custody here at this facility. He said he wanted us to call his father, and we finally reached Dr. Purchase at your office.”
“All right,” I said, “let me talk to him, please.”
He had walked us into a large reception area dominated by an orange letter-elevator that rose like an oversize periscope from the floor diagonally opposite the entrance doors. There was a desk against the paneled wall facing us, and a girl sat behind it, typing furiously. The clock on the wall above her head read twelve-fifteen.
“He’s in the captain’s office,” Ehrenberg said. “If you’ll have a seat on the bench here, Dr. Purchase, I’ll find somebody to bring you a cup of coffee.” He indicated the bench, and then led me past an American flag in a floor stand, to where another pair of doors stood at right angles to each other in a small alcove. He opened the door on our left, and I went into the room. The door clicked shut behind me.
At first I thought the office was empty. There was a desk on the wall opposite, a green leatherette swivel chair behind it. On the paneled wall above the desk, several framed diplomas. Bookshelves behind the desk, a hookah pipe on the top shelf. Framed photos of women I guessed were the captain’s wife and daughters. From the corner of my eye, I saw Michael Purchase sitting in a chair to the right of the door, and walked to him at once.
His elbows were resting on his thighs, his hands were clenched forward of his knees, his head was bent, almost level with the polished top of the captain’s desk. He did not look up as I approached. His eyes remained focused instead on the desk top, where half a dozen Polaroid pictures of a black girl were spread in a row that resembled a lineup of sextuplets. Michael was wearing blood-stained blue jeans and a blood-stained white T-shirt. His sandals were caked with what seemed to be a mixture of dried blood and sand. There was sand in his matted black hair, blood on his cheek, blood caked in the curve of his ear.
“Michael,” I said.
He looked up at me, brown eyes wide in his narrow face, and nodded bleakly, and then went back to studying the pictures of the black girl. I could not believe he was really seeing them. I felt only that he chose not to meet my eyes.
“I have some questions for you, Michael.”
He nodded again.
“Did you kill Maureen and your sisters?”
He nodded.
“Michael, I want you to speak, please. I want you to answer yes or no. Did you kill Maureen?”
“Yes,” he said. His voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat “Yes,” he said again.
“And the girls?”
“Yes.”
“Who’d you tell this to?”
“The cop.”
“Which cop?”
“The one who arrested me.”
“Where was this?”
“Sabal Beach.”
“What time?”
“About ten? I’m not sure. I haven’t got a watch.”
“Is he the only one you told it to?”
“Yes.”
“Michael,” I said, “I want to get a criminal lawyer for you. I’m not equipped to handle something like this myself, I want to call in someone who is. The best criminal lawyer in town is probably Benny Freid, I want to call him, I want to get him in here immediately.”
“No,” Michael said, and shook his head.
“I’m advising you as your attorney—”
“You’re not my attorney, nobody asked for you. I don’t need you, and I don’t need a criminal lawyer, either. I killed them.”
“In this state, the penalty for first-degree murder is—”
“Fine, let them—”
“The electric chair.”
“Fine.”
“Michael, they’re going to start questioning you in just a little while. I want to call Benny before then. He’s a friend of mine, I feel reasonably sure he’ll—”
“I don’t want him. Don’t call him because I don’t want him.”
“What exactly did you say to the patrolman who arrested you?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Did you say you’d killed somebody?”
“Yes.”
“Did you say who you’d killed? Did you say you’d killed Maureen Purchase and Emily Purchase and Eve Purchase?”
“No, I didn’t say that.”
“What did you say exactly, can you remember?”
“I said I did it.”
“Did what?”
“Killed them.”
“Were those your exact words? Did you say ‘I did it, I killed them’?”
“What difference does it make?” he shouted, and rose suddenly. “I did it, I did it, what more do you want?”
“I want to know what you told that patrolman.”
“He came on me in the woods, okay? I was sleeping in the woods.”
“What woods?”
“Off Sabal Shores. The pine forest going down to the beach. North Sabal.”
“Near your father’s house?”
“Yes. You walk to the end of Jacaranda, and then you climb over the chain across the driveway on West Lane, and you’re in the pine forest. I was sleeping there when he found me.”
“He woke you up?”
“Yes.”
“And you say this was about ten o’clock?”
“I told you I don’t have a watch, I don’t know what time it was.”
“All right, he woke you up. What’d he say?”
“He wanted to know what I was doing there. I told him I was sleeping.”
“Then what?”
“He asked me did I have any identification. I showed him my driver’s license, and he looked at the picture on it — I had a beard when I took the picture, he made some comment about it, I forget what he said... look, what’s the sense of this, would you please tell me? Let’s get it over with, for Christ’s sake!”
“Over with? Michael, they’re going to charge you with murder!”
“I know what they’re going to charge me with, what do you think they’re going to charge me with?”
“Tell me what happened with the patrolman.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to know what you said to him. I want to know what gave him the idea you’d killed Maureen and—”