“Most likely was,” Jennings said.
“Really? He would have been just twelve years old.”
“He was only thirteen when Becky Medeiros was butchered, and we know for sure he did that.”
“Why didn’t I hear anything about this back then?” Mulligan asked.
“Chief’s orders. Folks were in a panic over the Medeiros and Stuart murders. He didn’t see any point in making things worse.”
“Was there any evidence tying Diggs to Ashcroft?”
“Nothing hard. Just circumstantial.”
“No prints?”
“A couple of bloody palm prints in the bedroom, but they were smeared. Not good enough to make a comparison.”
“No DNA?”
“Not enough of anything you could test. At least not back then. Folks who believe what they see on them CSI shows think there’s always hair, saliva, skin cells, or some other damned thing the lab rats can use to finger the perp. Most times it ain’t that easy.”
“What about the circumstantial evidence?”
Jennings raised his right hand and ticked it off one finger at a time: “Ashcroft was young and blond, just like Diggs’s other victims. In all three attacks, the perp pried the screen off an unlocked rear window and climbed inside. All three times, he didn’t bring a weapon with him. Just grabbed what he could find in the victims’ kitchens. All three times, the victims had multiple stab wounds.”
“Nowhere near the same amount of rage, though,” Mulligan said. “Sue Ashcroft was stabbed only five times.”
“We figured he was escalating.”
“You took Diggs’s confession, right?”
“Yeah. Me and Mello.”
“He confessed to the Medeiros and Stuart murders, but not the attack on Ashcroft?”
“That’s right.”
“Why?”
“We got the feeling he was embarrassed about that one because he didn’t finish her off.”
“No shit?”
“That’s how it seemed, yeah.”
“Tell me about the confession.”
“What do you want to know?”
“What was his demeanor?”
“Boastful.”
“Run it down for me.”
“We put him in an interrogation room, chained him to a table, and asked him again if he wanted a lawyer. He said he didn’t.”
“A teenager can make that decision for himself?”
“Long as he understands his rights when they’re explained to him, yeah.”
“Then what?”
“We asked if he wanted his parents present. He said no way. He actually begged us not to call his mother. We did anyway, of course. Got to notify the parents when you arrest a juvenile. But between you and me, we took our sweet time about it.”
“You interrogated him before they got there?”
“We don’t like to question a teenager with the parents in the room if we can avoid it. The kid usually clams up in front of Mom and Dad. And a lot of times, when we ask the kid a question, the parents answer it. So, yeah, we did.”
“You can do that?”
“Back then, yeah. There’s still no law against it, but now it would be a violation of the state’s judicial guidelines unless the parents agree to it. That’s how it is in most states now.”
“So what happened?”
“I told Diggs we had him dead to rights. Fingerprints at the two murder scenes. Trophies from the victims in his garden shed. No way he was gonna talk his way out of it. Mello told him that if he came clean about what he’d done, the judge might go easier on him at sentencing.”
“Which was a lie?”
“Oh, hell yeah… Diggs stared at us for a minute, thinking it over. Then he nodded and started talking. He told us how he stalked his victims. How he broke into their houses. Where he found the knives in their kitchens. How he broke knife blades off inside of Becky Medeiros and one of the Stuart kids. And Mulligan?”
“Yeah?”
“The fucker was smiling the whole time, like he enjoyed reliving it. Couple of times he even laughed. Spilled details for nearly two hours before his parents showed up.”
“They bring a lawyer?”
“Not then, no.”
“Did he say why he killed those people?”
“We were about to get into that when his mother and father stormed in.”
“So then what happened?”
“Soon as they barreled through the door, he started bawlin’. Told them he’d never hurt anyone. I got the feeling he was more afraid of his mother than he was of us. He claimed the only reason we’d arrested him was that he was black. Accused us of calling him nigger and beating him with a phone book to make him confess.”
“Did you?”
“Call him nigger? Of course not. Beat him? We wanted to, believe you me. Would have loved to kick the smile off that murdering sonovabitch’s face. But we didn’t. We were completely professional. No way we were gonna risk screwing up this interrogation.”
“But you did,” Mulligan said. The trial judge had thrown out the confession on a technicality the reporter had never fully understood.
“Not really,” Jennings said. “The judge knew the confession was good, but he concocted a bullshit reason to toss it.”
“Why would he do that?”
“The physical evidence was more than we needed to convict, so he didn’t want to risk having some bleeding-heart liberal appeals court overturn the verdict by ruling that the kid hadn’t understood his rights or some such bullshit.”
“Where’d you hear that?” Mulligan asked.
“From the prosecutor.”
“Roberts?”
“Yeah. He said the judge explained it to him in confidence, so you can’t put that part in the paper.”
So no one but the judge, the police, the prosecutor, and Diggs’s trial lawyer, Mulligan realized, had ever heard Diggs’s confession.
“The interrogation was videotaped?”
“It was.”
“Any way I can get a look at it?”
“I’ll have to think about that.”
“You have a copy?”
“I do. Made copies of the murder books too. Took it all with me when I left the force.”
“Anything in them that didn’t come out at the trials?”
“Oh, yeah. Lots of ugly, perverted stuff. Since the fingerprints and the trophies he kept from his victims were all we needed for a conviction, the prosecutor left out some of the sordid details to spare the victims’ families. I had it in the back of my mind that I might write a book about the case someday, but I’m thinking now that’s never gonna happen.”
“Why not?”
“Mary doesn’t want me reliving it all over again. I gotta admit she has a point.”
“May as well give everything to me, then.”
“You’d have to give me a real good reason.”
Mulligan sipped his beer and thought about how he should put this.
“I’m worried,” he said, “that Diggs is going to get out.”
“You’ve gotta be shittin’ me.”
“Wish I were.”
“What the fuck’s going on, Mulligan?”
“You’ve heard the rumors about the state faking charges to keep Diggs inside?”
“Yeah. Of course I have.”
“It’s probably true. And now somebody’s looking into it.”
“What? Who?”
“I’m not prepared to say.”
“It’s the goddamned ACLU, isn’t it?”
“Sorry, but I can’t get into that.”
“Those sons of bitches.”
Mulligan didn’t say anything. He figured it was best not to straighten Jennings out.
“So you’re looking for a legal way to keep Diggs locked up?”
“I am.”
“Well, okay, then. I doubt I have anything that will help, but if you come over to the house for lunch Saturday, I’ll walk you through what I’ve got.”
“Not till Saturday?”
“Mary’s leaving town Friday night,” Jennings said. “Gonna spend the weekend with her brother in Nashua. I don’t want her listening in on our conversation.”