“You can’t prove I did anything.”
“I can prove you’ve committed fraud,” Marino says. “You want to talk about all those letters of reference you faked so the Doc would hire you as a fellow?”
For an instant, he’s speechless. Then he begins to regain his composure. He gets that smart-ass look on his face again.
“Prove it,” he says.
“Every one of those letters is on the same watermarked paper.”
“Doesn’t prove a thing.”
Joe gets to his feet and rubs his lower back.
“I’m going to sue you,” he says.
“Good. Then I may as well hurt you worse,” Marino replies, rubbing his fist. “Maybe I’ll break your neck. You haven’t seen me touch him, have you, Detective Wagner.”
“Absolutely not,” she says. Then, “If you didn’t take the shotgun, who did? Was anybody else with you in the firearms lab that afternoon?”
He thinks for a minute and something shows in his eyes.
“No,” he says.
61
Twenty-four hours a day, guards inside the control room monitor inmates who are considered suicide risks.
They watch Basil Jenrette. They watch him sleep, shower, eat. They watch him use the steel toilet. They watch him turn his back to the closed-circuit camera and relieve his sexual tension beneath the sheets of his narrow steel bed.
He imagines them laughing at him. He imagines what they say inside the control room as they watch him on the monitors. They make fun of him to the other guards. He can tell by the smirks on their faces when they bring him his meals or let him out so he can exercise or make a phone call. Sometimes they make comments. Sometimes they show up outside his cell just as he is relieving his sexual tension, and they imitate the noise and laugh and bang on the door.
Basil sits on his bed, looking up at the camera mounted high on the opposite wall. He flips through this month’s copy of Field amp; Stream as he thinks back to the first time he met with Benton Wesley and made the mistake of answering one of his questions honestly.
Do you ever think about hurting yourself or others?
I’ve already hurt others so I guess that means I think about it, Basil said.
What thoughts do you have, Basil? Can you describe what you envision when you think about hurting other people and yourself?
I think of doing what I used to. Seeing a woman and getting the urge. Getting her into my police car and pulling out my gun and maybe my badge and telling her I’m arresting her, and if she resists arrest, so much as touches the door, I’ll have no choice but to shoot her. They all cooperated.
None of them resisted you.
Just the last two. Because of car trouble. It’s so stupid.
The others, before the last two, did they believe you were the police and you were arresting them?
They believed I was a cop. But they knew what was happening. I wanted them to know. I’d get hard. I’d show them I was hard, make them put their hand on it. They were going to die. It’s so stupid.
What’s stupid, Basil?
So stupid. I’ve said it a thousand times. You’ve heard me say it, right? Wouldn’t you rather I shoot you right then in my car or get you off somewhere so I can take my time with you? Why would you let me get you to some secret place and tie you up?
Tell me how you would tie them up, Basil. Always the same way?
Yeah. I have a really cool method. It’s absolutely unique. I invented it when I started making my arrests.
By arrests you mean abducting and assaulting women.
When I first started, yeah.
Basil smiles as he sits on his bed, remembering the thrill of twisting wire coat hangers around their ankles and wrists and threading rope through them so he could string them up.
They were my puppets, he explained to Dr. Wesley during that first interview, wondering what it would take to get a reaction out of him.
No matter what Basil said, Dr. Wesley kept his steady gaze, listening, not letting anything he felt register on his face. Maybe he didn’t feel anything. Maybe he’s like Basil.
See, in this place I had, there were exposed rafters where the ceiling had come down, especially in this one room in the back. I would throw the ropes over the rafters, and I could tighten or loosen them however I wanted, give them a long leash or a short one.
And they never resisted, even when they realized what was in store for them when you got them into this building? What was it? A house?
I don’t remember.
Did they resist, Basil? Seems as if it might have been difficult to restrain them in such an elaborate fashion while you’re still holding them at gunpoint.
I’ve always had this fantasy of having someone watch. Basil didn’t answer the question. Then having sex after it was over. Having sex for hours with the body right there on the same mattress.
Sex with the dead body or sex with another person?
I was never into that. That’s not for me. I like to hear them. I mean, it had to hurt like hell. Sometimes their shoulders got dislocated. Then I’d give them enough slack to use the bathroom. That was the part I didn’t like. Emptying the bucket.
What about their eyes, Basil?
Well, let’s see. No pun intended.
Dr. Wesley didn’t laugh, and that annoyed Basil a little.
I’d let them dance around at the end of their rope, no pun intended. Don’t you ever smile? I mean, come on, some of this is funny.
I’m listening to you, Basil. I’m listening to every word you say.
That was good, at least. And he was. Dr. Wesley was listening and thought every word was important and fascinating, thought Basil was the most interesting, original person he had ever interviewed.
As soon as I was going to have sex with them, he continued, that’s when I’d do their eyes. You know, if I’d been born with a decent-sized dick, none of this would have been necessary.
They were conscious when you blinded them.
If I could have given them some gas and knocked them out while I was performing the surgery, I would have. I didn’t particularly like them screaming and jerking all over the place. But I couldn’t have sex with them until they were blind. I explained it to them. I’d say, I’m really sorry I got to do this to you, okay? I’ll be as quick as I can. It’s going to hurt a little.
Isn’t that funny? It’s going to hurt a little. Every time somebody says that to me, I know it’s going to hurt like a bitch. Then I’d tell them I was going to untie them so we could have sex. I said if they tried to get away or do anything stupid, I was going to do even worse things to them than I already did. That’s it. We had sex.
How long would this go on?
You mean the sex?
How long did you keep them alive and have sex with them?
Depended. If I liked having sex with them, sometimes I’d keep them around for days. I think the longest time was ten days. But that didn’t turn out to be a good thing because she got infected real bad and it was disgusting.
Did you do anything else to them? Anything besides blinding them and having sex?
I experimented. Some.
Did you ever engage in torture?
I’d say stabbing somebody’s eyes out… well, Basil replied, and now he wishes he hadn’t said it.
It opened a whole new line of questioning. Dr. Wesley started in on knowing right from wrong and comprehending the suffering Basil was causing another human being, that if he knew something was torture, then he was cognizant of what he was doing at the time he was doing it and also upon reflection. That’s not exactly the way he said it, but that’s what he was getting at. Just the same old song and dance he heard inGainesvillewhen the shrinks were trying to figure out if he was competent to stand trial. He never should have let them know he was. That was stupid, too. A forensic psychiatric hospital is a five-star hotel compared to prison, especially if you’re on death row, sitting around in your tiny, claustrophobic cell feeling like Bozo the clown in your blue-and-white-striped pants and orange T-shirt.