“I am.”
“He also told me he asked you not to.”
“That’s true.”
“Would you mind telling me why you made the decision to proceed?”
Mason took several minutes to explain his reasoning and to run through what he’d learned so far.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this before?” his father asked.
“I was afraid you might tell me to stop.”
“I probably would have. This is causing us a good deal of trouble, son. Since Iggy Rock broke the news, more than three thousand readers have canceled their subscriptions. That’s nearly four percent of our circulation.”
“I know.”
“Did you also know that because of this, Media General and Belo have withdrawn their inquiries about acquiring the Dispatch?”
“Sorry, Dad.”
“Frankly, I’m not sure how serious their interest was in the first place, but now they’re saying they feel compelled to wait until they know how much permanent damage has been done.”
“I see.”
“I’m also receiving concerned inquiries from the board of directors.”
“What are you going to tell them?”
“I haven’t decided.”
“If I get the story, are we going to publish it?”
“I can’t say just yet. Let’s see what you come up with first.”
Mason was awash with conflicting emotions. Regret at the damage he’d done to the newspaper. Pride that his father understood what he was doing-and maybe even approved of it, if only a little.
After breakfast, he brooded over one last cup of coffee. Then he wandered into the music room and sat at the piano. He plunked out the tune to “Providence Rag,” his work in progress, jotted two lines of lyrics on a page of sheet music, studied what he’d written, and crossed it out. He had too much on his mind to concentrate.
He sat quietly and let his mind drift to Felicia. Dropping his hands to the keys, he began to play Debussy’s “Clair de Lune,” the most romantic piece of classical music he knew by heart.
He wondered. When they were finally done with Kwame, would she let him take her to Paris? But he was getting ahead of himself. Probably he ought to kiss her first. They’d both been so ambitious, spending their lives working toward something they couldn’t touch-and that couldn’t touch them back. It scared and thrilled him now, the way he wanted to fill those hollow spaces with Felicia. The way he wanted time to fly.
46
“So what’s the topic for today, cuz?”
“Susan Ashcroft.”
“Who the hell is that?” Kwame asked.
“You don’t remember her?”
“No.”
“A year before Becky Medeiros was murdered, someone broke into her house in Warwick, bashed her in the head with a clock radio, and stabbed her five times.”
“That sucks, E, but why tell me?”
“Aren’t you the one who did it?”
“Fuck, no. I already told you. I ain’t never stabbed nobody.”
“Do you know anything about what happened to her?”
“This is the first I ever heard about it.”
Mason peered at Kwame through the smeared Plexiglas and spoke again into the crackling visitors’ room telephone.
“Okay, then, Kwame. Let’s talk some more about your childhood.”
And so they did. A half hour later, Mason had all he needed to write his profile.
“So does that mean you’re not coming back?” Kwame asked.
“I’m still looking into the assault charges,” Mason said. “I’ll be back to talk to you again soon.”
“I’m keeping the faith, cuz. Malcolm X said, ‘Truth is on the side of the oppressed.’” And then he cracked a smile. “So tell me. You pumpin’ my fine-ass lawyer yet?”
“That’s really none of your business, Kwame.”
“Come on, cuz. Does she get all wet and shit when you play with her titties?”
Before he could stop himself, Mason flashed on a vision of Felicia nude from the waist up. Diggs sniggered. Mason squashed a sudden urge to punch the glass as hard as he could, to shatter it and wipe that smirk off the killer’s face.
Ten minutes later, heading for his car in the prison visitors’ lot, Mason was still feeling unnerved. He realized that whenever he thought of Kwame’s victims, they were just that-victims. He felt sorry for them, but he had to strain to remember all of their names. He wished Kwame had never met Felicia. He didn’t want him to look at her face. He didn’t want him to ever speak her name.
He stepped around a rusted Dodge van, spotted his car, and saw that someone had smashed the headlights and taillights.
47
Two cardboard boxes, each the size of a mini fridge, had been placed on a long metal worktable in the basement of the Warwick police station. Judging by the scrawls on the orange evidence seals, they hadn’t been opened since 1996.
“Is this everything?” Mulligan asked.
“No,” said Sergeant Mario DeMaso, the department evidence clerk. “According to the logs, there should have been three boxes. There’s no record of anyone checking one out, but I’ve looked everywhere. The damn thing’s just gone.”
“How can that be?” Mulligan asked.
Jennings, standing beside him, shrugged.
“Mulligan,” he said, “this happens more often than you’d like to think.”
DeMaso broke the seals with a fingernail and removed the lids. Mulligan and Jennings crowded around, bending to the boxes. Inside were evidence bags, some made of clear plastic and others of brown paper. Each had a label listing its contents, where and when it was collected, and the name of the officer who had bagged it. Each also included a chain of custody record that documented every instance in which the evidence had been removed for examination.
DeMaso carefully emptied the boxes, placing the evidence bags on the table. The men didn’t open them. They just read the labels. The largest bags held Susan Ashcroft’s pillowcase, her sheets, her blanket, and a stuffed bear. Smaller ones held a water glass and a blood-splattered paperback book collected from her nightstand. A dozen envelopes contained hairs, fibers, and other small bits of dubious value that had been plucked from the bedding and from the bedroom carpet.
“Where’s the clock radio the vic was struck with?” Jennings asked.
“Must have been in the missing box,” DeMaso said. “The kitchen knife she was stabbed with doesn’t seem to be here, either.”
“So what do you think?” Mulligan asked.
“I’d say your best bet for DNA is the bedsheet and the hairs,” DeMaso said. “But I’d also have the pillowcase and blanket examined again to see if the fucker shed anything on them.”
“Sounds right,” Jennings said.
“Okay,” DeMaso said. “I’ll drive it over to the crime lab this afternoon.”
48
“Today, I want to ask you about your confession,” Mason said.
“I already told you it was coerced,” Diggs said. “The fuckers beat me and then told me what to say.”
“I’m not talking about that confession. I’m talking about the one you made to me.”
“What the fuck you talkin’ about?”
“When we were discussing how you used to get angry, you told me this.” Mason flipped open his notebook and read from a page: “‘I understand now that there are better ways than killing to get even with racists.’”
Diggs didn’t say anything. Mason sat silently and stared at him through the Plexiglas.
“Shit,” Diggs finally said. “You took that out of… what the fuck’s the word?”
“Context?”
“Yeah. Out of context.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I thought you was on my side,” Diggs said.
“I’m on the side of the truth,” Mason said.
They stared at each other some more. After thirty seconds, Diggs averted his eyes.