Vic was sitting outside of the interview room, staring at one of the desks. He did not look up as Frank said, “Listen, are we going to do this or not?”
“Go to hell.”
“Okay,” Frank said. He sat down on the desk and folded his arms. “So let’s say we just put him in a cell and wait for him to see the judge. Is that what you want? Beth will have to testify and get torn apart by a defense attorney.”
Vic did not budge.
“Or, we put our personal feelings aside and go get a confession from this bastard. With that and the wire, there is no way he’ll try to fight it. Otherwise, you’re forcing that little girl into a trial.” Frank shrugged and said, “I’m sure her dad won’t do anything to screw that up, right?”
Vic smirked and said, “I manipulate people. I don’t get manipulated. Nice try, though. Somebody’s been teaching you well, rookie.”
They let Pete Lamia sit in the interview room while they watched him through the one-way mirror. “Some schools of thought say you can tell a suspect’s guilt by how they act when they’re sitting in the interview room. If they are alert and anxious, it means they’re innocent. If they get sleepy and relax, they say it is an indication of guilt.”
Pete was sitting motionless, sunk down in his chair. Frank frowned and said, “I can’t tell if he’s awake, asleep, or just old.”
They walked into the interview room and Pete said, “When do I get my phone call?”
“When you get to jail,” Vic said. “Do you understand that you’re under arrest?”
Pete shook his head and said, “No.”
Vic looked confused and said, “Well, the handcuffs on your wrist mean that is what you are.”
“I mean that I don’t understand what I’m under arrest for.”
“We’ll get to that,” Vic said. “In fact, there are several very important things I want to tell you that I think you need to know, but first, I have to read you your rights.”
“I already know them,” Pete said. “I watch those cop shows, about the crime scene people.”
“Is that right?” Vic slid a form stating the Miranda Warnings across the table and said, “Read this. If you agree to hear what I have to say, sign the bottom. If you just want to go see the judge, that’s fine too.”
“I don’t have anything to hide,” Pete said. He picked up a pen and scribbled his name on the bottom of the form. “This is all a huge misunderstanding.”
Vic took the form back and hid it under the table. “So explain it to me.”
“Beth is like my granddaughter. I raised her dad and his brother after their father, my brother, died. God rest his soul. We don’t have any children, so they’re all we’ve got. Everybody that knows me knows what kind of person I am. I spent twenty years on the school board. I wouldn’t do these kinds of things you are accusing me of.”
“I’m not accusing you of anything. Beth is.”
Pete nodded and waved his hands, “She’s a little bit of a drama queen. Did they tell you that? She’s the kind of girl that does things for attention.”
Vic shifted in his seat and folded his hands on the table. “She’s needy.”
“Exactly. She wants me to come in and read to her every night. Give me a kiss, Uncle Petey. Rub my back. That sort of thing.”
“So do you?”
“Sometimes,” he shrugged. “She takes things a little too far sometimes and I have to tell her it isn’t appropriate.”
Frank opened his mouth to say, “Get the f—” but stopped talking when Vic held up his hand.
“It happens,” Vic said. “Little girls want to explore. They have questions, right?”
“They do!” Pete said. “These kids today, they listen to the rap music and see the TV with everybody naked and they act older than they are. I tell her all the time to slow down and be a kid, but she’s always insisting.”
“I’ll be perfectly honest with you, Mr. Lamia. I think she brought a lot of this on herself. What happened was, her mom got hysterical about things and forced the kid to come in. She didn’t want to say anything.”
“Some mother,” Pete muttered. “Always harping on poor Paul about this and that.”
“Listen, I’m going to be perfectly honest with you, Mr. Lamia,” Vic said. He stood up and took several steps away from them before he turned, cupping his chin like he was an academic professor. “We know something happened between the two of you. We have evidence of that. What I need to determine, what the court will need to know, is did it happen by force or was it something else?” Vic stopped walking and clapped his hands together loud enough to make both men jump in their seats, then he spread them wide and wiggled his fingers like a circus showman, “Something harder to fathom. Something… special.” Vic’s eyes lit up, “A moment, Mr. Lamia. A moment of love.”
“Of course it was love. I love her.”
“Did she get wet when you touched her?”
“What?”
“Did she get wet when you touched her down there? Did her body respond to you?”
“I don’t…”
“I bet it did. I could see it in her eyes when she spoke about you. I know she loved it.”
Pete Lamia smiled and said, “She did. She really, really did.”
They watched the old man writing on a yellow legal pad through the one-way mirror. “What’s he writing?” Frank said.
“A letter to Beth,” Vic said.
“And how does that help us?”
“It’s as good as a confession.”
Frank put his face against the cool glass window, “That really disturbed me in there. Watching you give him permission to be what he is. I understand what you were doing, but in a lot of ways, I couldn’t believe the things that came out of your mouth.”
Vic nodded. “With my first couple of cases, I tried yelling at them until they gave it up. It didn’t work. Pedophiles don’t feel remorse.”
“So you make them feel good about raping young girls?”
“You think I enjoy it? Do you know how many dreams I’ve had where I’m reliving what these sick fucks tell me? Do you have any idea what it does to me every time I let one of those fuckers into my head? I feel like I want to rub a cheese grater up and down my insides.”
“You’re not supposed to let them into your head. You’re supposed to get into theirs, and that’s it. It isn’t worth it, your way,” Frank said.
“It is if they confess. As long as the kids don’t have to testify, who cares what I feel?”
Pete finished writing and they walked back into the room. Vic picked up the letter and read it, nodding, “This is good. Real good. You forgot to sign it.”
“How should I sign it?” Pete said.
“It’s to her, right? What does she call you?”
“Uncle Petey.”
Vic handed him the letter and said, “That sounds good.”
Pete signed the letter and slid it back across the table to Vic. “What happens now?”
Vic nodded to Frank, who uncuffed the handcuff from the metal bar and put it around the prisoner’s other wrist. “Now you go see the judge, Pete. How old are you?”
“Seventy-five. Listen, my wife is sick and needs me to take her to the hospital tomorrow morning. She can’t drive. For the love of God, the judge has to let me go home to help her. If she doesn’t get her medicine, she could have a stroke.”