I rested my elbows on my knees and brought my hands up to my face. I buried my face against my palms, which were sweaty and warm. I closed my eyes and tried to absorb it all.
Why?
I don’t know how long I sat that way. It felt like hours, but it must have been only a few minutes. I looked up when I heard the door open. Detective Richland came into the room, still holding his phone and nothing else. He didn’t make eye contact with me or offer a greeting. He took the seat across from mine, folding his extended frame into the compact chair. He didn’t pull out his little notebook or anything. I wasn’t sure why he was there.
“Are you doing okay, Ms. Hampton?” he asked. He met my eye this time. He seemed to be trying.
“No.”
“Do you need some water?” he asked.
“Why do you cops always offer me water?” I asked. “Do you think that’s going to make anything better?”
“No,” he said. “But I’m trying to be nice.” His hands fluttered a little, then quickly stopped.
“Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?” I said. “My uncle called me this morning and said Ronnie confessed to killing my mother. That has to be a mistake.”
“Just to be clear,” Richland said, “we tried to call you first. You’re the next of kin, of both the victim and the perpetrator. We did call you, and you didn’t answer. That’s when we called your uncle.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“I’ll tell you what I can right now,” he said. “We’re still putting things together and tying up some loose ends. But this morning I came by here to consult with Dr. Heil about your brother’s situation. I had some follow-up questions about the report Dr. Heil had submitted after he examined Ronnie. And let me just state this up front—Dr. Heil’s report assured me that Ronnie is capable of understanding the difference between right and wrong and understanding the consequences of his actions. The report spoke very highly of his intellectual capabilities.”
“I could have told you that,” I said.
“You understand we need to hear it from a professional.”
“How did all of this lead to a confession?” I asked.
“When I arrived here at the hospital, Ronnie told the nurse on duty that he wanted to speak to me. I went in, and he told me that he had killed your mother.”
“He just told you that.”
“He did.” Richland raised his right index finger as though to emphasize a point. “Dr. Heil was present when I spoke to your brother, and after he made that declaration—what we call a spontaneous declaration—I informed him of his Miranda rights. In fact, I went over them three times with him. He understood them. Dr. Heil felt Ronnie understood them and understood what he was telling me.”
“And he just said it to you, just like that.”
“He said, ‘I killed my mom.’ Clear as day he said it. And he repeated it when I followed up.”
I closed my eyes. I tried to lose myself in the darkness behind my lids, to drift away and out of that room and that space. But I couldn’t. I could still hear the soft hum of the hospital’s heating and cooling system, could still hear the occasional footsteps in the hallway, the voices over the loudspeaker paging nurses and doctors to more trouble. I couldn’t escape it.
“Why?” I asked, opening my eyes.
“What’s that?”
“Why did he do it?” I asked. “What did he say caused… this to happen?”
Richland paused. “At this point, I don’t want to get into any of these details. Like I said, we’re working some things out.”
“So you won’t tell me anything except that my brother confessed to killing my mother?”
“You know what the issues were we already had,” he said. “We haven’t been able to account for your brother’s whereabouts on the night your mother died. We have a history of violent behavior. And now…”
He didn’t say it, but I knew what he meant. Now, a confession. And I couldn’t help but think back to the night before, when I had spoken to Ronnie in the hospital. I had asked Ronnie directly if he’d hurt Mom—and he didn’t answer me. He didn’t confess, but he didn’t deny it either. And I wondered, sitting there with Detective Richland, if my question from the night before had set Ronnie on the path to confessing to the crime. Had he wanted to do it for a while, but couldn’t bring himself to say it to me?
“What happens now?” I asked.
“I’ll hand everything over to the county attorney’s office. It will be in their hands from here on out. They’ll decide the best facility to hold your brother in short term and then long term.”
Long term?
“How long?” I asked.
“I can’t say. That’s out of my hands.”
“Are we talking about life in prison?” I asked.
Richland raised his hands as though to say, I don’t know. And please don’t ask.
“Can I go see him?” I asked.
Richland shook his head. “Not now. No one can see him now. Everything is at a crucial point. We can’t risk having someone else in the mix.”
“Do you understand that disabled people have a strong desire to give in to and please authority?” I asked.
“I told you he was informed of his Miranda rights—”
“He might have confessed just to do that,” I said.
“To do what?”
“To please you because you’re in a position of authority over him.”
“What about your mother?” he asked. “Isn’t—or should I say wasn’t she in a position of authority over him? She was his mother, right?”
He looked at me, waiting for an answer. I didn’t give him one.
“He didn’t respect her authority that night he went after her and she had to call the police, did he? And he didn’t respect her authority when he killed her.” He waited another moment. “Did he?”
I didn’t answer. I didn’t have anything to use against him. He had completely deflated my argument. He unfolded himself from the chair and left me alone in the room. Alone with the knowledge that my family was disappearing—and one of them had very likely killed the other.
Chapter Thirty
I waited in that little room for a long time. It felt as if that little room existed on its own plane of the universe, cut off and separated from everything else happening in the world. It was hard for me to imagine that Ronnie lay in a hospital bed less than a hundred feet from where I sat. He might as well have been on the moon. If I opened the door, it wouldn’t have surprised me to see not a hallway but a steep cliff, something that separated me from everything else in the world.
I had thought Mom’s death was bad enough. But I was suddenly living through something even worse.
I had to do something. Something for Ronnie. It did none of us any good for me to sit and stew.
I pulled out my phone and dialed a number. Frank Allison wasn’t in on Saturday, so I told his answering service what I wanted. I didn’t spare the melodrama.
“He needs to call me back right away,” I said.
“I’ll pass it along, dear,” the efficient voice said.
I stood up and paced. It didn’t take long. About two minutes later the phone rang in my hand. It was Frank Allison, and I gave him the rundown on Ronnie’s situation.
“He confessed, huh?” he said, his voice low and distracted.
“I don’t know where that came from,” I said. “It’s crazy talk.”
“Sure, sure,” he said. “And you say you’re at the hospital? Is it Dover Community? And he’s still there as well?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll get there as soon as I can,” he said. “And, Elizabeth? Don’t let him say anything else if you can help it.”