“Attorney General Malcolm Roberts for the People, Your Honor.”
“Austin Donahue representing Eric Kessler, Your Honor.”
“Very well. Mr. Roberts, you may proceed.”
The attorney general rose to address the court: “Your Honor, the State of Rhode Island hereby withdraws its petition that the court order Eric Kessler to be examined by a psychiatrist.”
Donahue spun, cocked an eyebrow, and stared at Roberts. Spectators gasped and grumbled. Then several of them began to shout.
“No!”
“What the hell are you doing?”
Then three men in the back row picked up the familiar chant: “Impeach Roberts! Impeach Roberts!”
“Order!” the judge bellowed, slamming his gavel on the bench. “Bailiff, please escort those gentlemen in the back row from my courtroom.”
It took ten minutes before decorum was restored.
“Mr. Roberts, please continue.”
“Your Honor, Eric Kessler has been suffering from a heart condition for several years. Late last night, he suffered a severe cardiac episode and was transported to the intensive care unit of Rhode Island Hospital. According to the chief cardiologist, his condition is grave.”
“I see,” the judge said. “What is his prognosis?”
“I am told that he could linger for six months or so, but he is not expected to recover. Therefore, the State has decided that justice would be served if Mr. Kessler were to be released from custody as scheduled on Friday. He will remain at Rhode Island Hospital until his condition stabilizes and then be transferred to a skilled nursing facility.”
“Very well. Mr. Donohue, do you have anything to add?”
“No, Your Honor.”
“Case dismissed.”
May 2012
The man sprawls on his back in his prison bunk and curses to himself. The old fantasies aren’t working.
For eighteen years, all he had to do to get a raging hard-on was close his eyes and pretend he was climbing through a bathroom window. Imagine a knife in his hand and he could come without touching himself.
Some nights, he’d relive one of his murders. Other times, he’d pretend he was Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees. Tonight he tries it all, but his cock remains flaccid. Perhaps it’s because his release from prison seems close now. He hungers for a new victim.
He thinks about the blondes he has known: Jenny, the skinny bitch who thought she could play football with the boys. Mrs. Montgomery, the eighth-grade math teacher who taunted him with her short skirts. Connie Stuart’s twin sister, Mary, who glared at him through wet eyes at his trial. Susan Ashcroft, the one that got away. Maybe, if he gets out, he could track her down and finish her off.
He pictures them naked one at a time, then in a group, cowering before his godlike power. The sheet rises, his penis a tent pole.
33
June 2012
Mulligan parked Secretariat at the curb in front of Jennings’s barn-red ranch-style house in Warwick and watched the ex-cop trot down the sidewalk with his two Irish wolfhound-size mutts, Smith and Wesson.
“Just got back from our daily constitutional,” Jennings said as the dogs sat on their haunches so Mulligan could pet them. “Hope you weren’t waiting long.”
“No problem,” Mulligan said. “I just got here.”
The four of them went through the gate to the small, sun-drenched backyard, where Jennings had a charcoal grill and a well-stocked cooler on the flagstone patio. Jennings tied on a “Taste My Meat” barbecue apron and got the charcoal going while Mulligan played fetch with Smith and Wesson. Man, he wished he could get a dog of his own. Larry Bird didn’t fetch anything but trouble.
When the cheeseburgers and foot-longs were ready, the two men settled into red vinyl lawn chairs with heaping paper plates in their laps and bottles of Narragansett in their fists. The dogs sat at their feet and gazed wistfully at the meat.
“Don’t give ’em nothin’,” Jennings said. “I fed ’em before their walk. I never give ’em scraps when I eat. It would just teach ’em to beg.”
After the meal, the men dropped their grease-soaked plates into a trash can, lingered over their second beers, and talked about the sorry state of the Red Sox. Later, Mulligan roughhoused with the dogs while Jennings scrubbed the grill clean and bragged about how his son from his first marriage was doing.
“Jerry’s an expert on the locomotion of early hominids,” Jennings was saying. “Spent the last five years studying anklebones. Can you imagine that? I don’t understand much of it, but it’s paying off for him big-time.”
“How so?” Mulligan asked.
“He’s one of the scientists studying a couple of two-million-year-old skeletons some kid stumbled over in a cave in South Africa. The way he tells it, the discovery is going to rewrite the story of human evolution.”
“No kidding?”
“Yeah. The kid just got tenured at Boston University. He’s making quite a name for himself.”
“Good for him,” Mulligan said.
Jennings finished with the grill, rinsed his hands with the garden hose, wiped them on the apron, and took it off. Then he handed Mulligan another beer and led him through a sliding glass door to the family room. There he plucked a videotape from a bookshelf, slid it into the DVD/VCR combo, and pressed play.
“If you don’t mind, I’m gonna go back outside with the dogs while you look at this,” Jennings said. “I don’t need to see it again.”
Mulligan stretched out in a leather recliner that Smith and Wesson had gnawed through to the stuffing in several places, nursed the beer, and watched for nearly two hours without taking notes. Over the years, he’d seen video of other killers confessing their crimes-three times at murder trials and once in the media room at state police headquarters. Two of the killers had wept. Two had showed no emotion. But never before had he seen a killer’s eyes light up like this. Never before had he heard one giggle.
The confession was just as Jennings had described it, so Mulligan should have been prepared. Still, it shocked him. What disturbed him most was what happened just before Diggs’s parents entered the room.
Jennings, momentarily losing his composure, called Diggs a sonovabitch and told him he’d be spending the rest of his life in prison.
“Wrong, asshole,” Diggs said. “I’m a kid. They’ll have to let me out on my twenty-first birthday. The most I’m gonna do is six years in juvie.”
“Bullshit,” Jennings said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
The kid must have researched the state’s antiquated juvenile justice statutes before he committed his crimes. He knew the law better than the detective did.
Mulligan turned off the VCR, walked to the door, and watched Jennings work with Smith and Wesson. The ex-cop was teaching them to play dead.
34
“When we left off last time,” Mason said, “you were telling me about getting beaten up by white kids in the neighborhood.”
“I remember,” Diggs said.
“And then you got bigger, you said.”
“Uh-huh. Shot up crazy when I turned twelve. Grew four inches over the summer.”
“They didn’t pick on you after that?”
“They didn’t dare.”
“Did you do something to get even?”
“Damn straight.”
“Tell me about that.”
Diggs cracked a grin. “Jimmy O’Keefe. He was the main one. Pig-eyed white boy who liked to act tough. After I got bigger, he was still near as tall as me. But he was a coward, cuz. Even when I was little he never tried nothin’ ’less his peeps was around. First day of school, eighth grade, I caught him alone on the playground and beat the shit out of him. Smashed his nose. Blacked both his eyes. Whacked his arm against the pole that held up the basketball hoop. Heard his fuckin’ wrist snap, cuz. It was beautiful.”