Chet shuffled into the frame and sat down.
He looked like a murderer.
If Chet had been cast in a movie, the audience would know he was the killer the moment he appeared on-screen.
He was big, intimidatingly big, with hands that appeared to be twice the size of Zander’s. The shaved head and neatly trimmed goatee enhanced the stereotype.
Chet studied Zander on his screen as a guard chained his hands to the bar in the table. His weight was on his forearms as he leaned on the table, curiosity on his face.
According to Zander’s research, Chet Carlson had lived at a dozen addresses before he was arrested in Astoria for Lincoln Mills’s murder. He was a wanderer, never in one place for very long, with a lengthy record of arrests for vagrancy, theft, and DUI. He’d been using a suspended driver’s license when he was arrested.
Zander introduced himself. “I have some questions about Lincoln Mills.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“It was.”
“What is the point of revisiting it now?” Chet spread his hands as far as the chains would let him, the restraints clinking. “I’m here. Lincoln’s dead. End of story.”
Zander had expected a low, rough voice to emerge from the large man, but instead Chet spoke in mellow tones. Not feminine, but serene and calming, as if he were settling a wild animal. Or an overstimulated toddler.
“Everything I read says you claim you didn’t kill him.”
“That is correct.”
“But you pled guilty to murder.”
“Also correct.” Indifference came through Zander’s monitor.
Zander considered the man. “Explain.”
Chet shrugged and averted his gaze.
“Did you kill Lincoln Mills?”
Chet picked at a notch in the tabletop. “It doesn’t matter now.”
“Why not?”
“I don’t have proof I didn’t do it.”
“Lincoln’s bloody jacket was found in your motel room.”
Chet said nothing.
“You’d lived in a dozen different cities in five states over four years before landing in Astoria. Why were you in Astoria?”
“Why are you asking questions that you already know the answer to?”
“I want to hear you say it, so I can judge for myself.”
“A real judge already took care of that. Who are you to pass judgment on me again?”
“Touché,” said Zander. “Humor me. Do you have somewhere else you need to be? My contact told me you rarely get visitors.”
Chet’s chin lifted, his eyes flat. “I got nothin’ going on right now.”
“So . . . why Astoria?”
He tipped his head and worked his lips, appearing to weigh a decision. “The ocean.”
“What about the ocean?”
“I wanted to work on a fishing boat. I like the ocean. I’d already tried in a few towns south of there with no luck.” He attempted to cross his arms, his biceps flexing. The chain stopped him.
Zander could easily imagine him pulling ropes and throwing lines or doing whatever physical work was needed on a commercial fishing boat.
“It smells good.” The prisoner’s nostrils flared slightly.
“Fish don’t smell good.”
“No. But the ocean does. And I like being outdoors.”
Prison is not the place for an outdoor lover.
“I don’t understand why you confessed to a murder that you now say you didn’t do.”
“I’m pretty sure I didn’t do it,” Chet clarified.
That makes no sense. “Then why did you plead guilty?”
His mouth twitched, and he went back to picking at the notch. “When they brought me in, the officers told me I had done it.”
Zander frowned.
“I believed, because of my drinking, that it was impossible for me to remember.”
“You were an alcoholic.” Zander had wondered if that was the case because of all the alcohol-related arrests in Chet’s record.
“Still am. But back then I would drink until I was fall-down, blackout drunk. Don’t get to do much of that anymore,” he joked.
“You were too drunk to remember hanging someone from a tree.” Zander struggled to believe it.
“Yep. But in my sleep, I could see myself do it. I figured I had some weird subconscious block about the hanging and that what the police told me was truth.”
“You confessed because you assumed you killed him?”
“Something like that. Did you see I took a polygraph? I knew it couldn’t be legally used, but I took it because I hoped the test would tell me if I did it.”
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“The results of the polygraph said there was something going on in my head at the subconscious level, so I figured what the cops had told me was true. I’d had a lot of drunk blackouts before that—and people had always told me about shit I’d done that I had no memory of doing. This didn’t seem very far-fetched.”
Zander was incredulous. “But you had never killed anyone while you were drunk before.”
“No, but I got in plenty of fights and banged up a lot of people that I don’t remember.”
“What made you change your mind and start saying you were innocent?”
Chet wrapped his fingers around the table’s metal attached to his chain. Even via the video, Zander could see his knuckles were huge and dark hair sprouted from the backs of his hands. “I decided I didn’t do it.”
“A complete reversal.”
“I didn’t wake up one day and decide I was innocent. It took time. I got in a couple of brawls here—even when I thought I was going to die in one, I never had the instinct or desire to kill the person who was fighting with me. Never. I just wanted to live.”
Zander listened, and a slow chill started at the base of his spine.
“Lincoln and I got in a bar fight that evening. That’s the first time I’d met the guy. I remember bloodying his nose—which is another reason I thought I mighta killed him—but nothing happened beyond me ripping off his jacket. That’s why they found his jacket in my hotel room.”
Chet’s gaze was steady. He wasn’t trying to sell Zander on his innocence. He was simply telling his side.
Dammit, I believe him.
“Does the name Cynthia Green mean anything to you?”
Chet thought. “No. Should it?”
“She disappeared two weeks before Lincoln Mills was hanged. We recently found her remains near Bartonville.”
Annoyance wrinkled his features. “Do you know how many times cops have been in here to ask if I committed another crime simply because of the Lincoln Mills case?”
“A lot?”
“Yeah. It’s ridiculous. They come from all over the US. Talk about desperate.”
“She was a teenage African American girl who disappeared from a beach near Gearhart.”
“Telling me what she looks like doesn’t prod my memory because I’ve never done shit like that.”
He seemed insulted.
“Did you know there was another hanging in Bartonville a few days ago?”
The surprise on Chet’s face seemed genuine and then faded into contempt. “Hadn’t heard. At least they can’t convict me for that one.” He scowled. “Who’d they hang?”
“A young man in town. Schoolteacher.”
“That sucks.”
“You don’t know anything about it?”
His brows shot up. “Seriously? Didn’t we just cover this? Fuck off.” He snorted, derision in his eyes.