Doing the Devil's Work

by Bill Loehfelm

  Sansone called Atkinson’s name from the bedroom. Maureen followed her through the house. They found Sansone and Terranova standing by the closet, a large seaman’s trunk between them, the lid thrown open. Where would a guy like Scales, Maureen wondered, get something like that?

  “Found this in the closet,” Terranova said. “Come have a look.”

  Maureen and Atkinson peered into the trunk. Semiautomatic rifles, AR-15s it looked like, had to be twenty of them. Silver and black handguns, both full and semiauto, were tossed in with the larger guns, as if they were merely packing material. High-capacity clips and drums, boxes of armor-piercing and hollow-point bullets. Everything in the trunk looked new, unused. The guns smooth and shining, the boxes of ammo sealed. This was not a collection for personal protection, Maureen thought. And no matter how great Scales’s personal criminal ambitions, she thought, these weapons weren’t for him. This wasn’t merchandise for illegal retail on the street, either. Not this many rifles, anyway. These were different weapons than what they saw on the street.

  “What the fuck was this guy planning?” Sansone asked, incredulous laughter in his voice. “A fucking revolution?”

  “Not this mope,” Atkinson said. “He’s holding for someone else.”

  The bedroom was silent. This is an arsenal for a terrorist cell, Maureen thought. This is a trunk the Taliban would pay good money for. And this might not be all the weaponry in the house. It was only what they’d found so far. She agreed with Sansone’s question. The AR-15 was the civilian version of the military’s standard-issue M16. Every gangsta wants to be strapped, Maureen thought, but what in the world was Scales doing with this kind of firepower? And expensive firepower at that. Where had it come from? Where had he gotten it?

  “You wanted leverage on Scales,” Maureen said. “I think you found it.”

  “I’m calling for more help,” Atkinson said. She looked over at the other officers. “We’re gonna tear this place to fucking pieces.”

  23

  “I want a lawyer,” Scales said. “I ain’t done no murders.”

  “We heard you the first three times,” Atkinson said, seated across the table from him, her sleeves rolled up, her folded arms draped over the back of a turned-around chair. “We’re working on it. We’ve got calls in to the courthouse. Budget cuts have everyone short staffed. It’s tough. They might even be off today. What’s the word? Furloughed? Who knows anymore? We might not hear back until tomorrow. It’s not our fault you don’t have a pay lawyer.” She shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine when the city gets back to us. As for the murders you ain’t done, we’ll see about that.”

  Maureen observed their interaction from the far corner of the interview room, where she leaned on the wall with her arms crossed over her chest. She’d shed her bulletproof vest, her cap, and her sweat-soaked T-shirt; Atkinson had rummaged up a clean department polo shirt. She looked almost like plainclothes, and could pass for a detective if you didn’t notice her shield wasn’t gold. She wasn’t out to fool anyone, but didn’t mind looking the part. She was thrilled to be in the room with Atkinson and Scales. She’d been sure as Scales was brought in, fixed with leg irons, and cuffed to the table that Atkinson would make her watch the interview from the other side of the two-way mirror. That was if she let Maureen participate at all.

  “I want you in there,” Atkinson had told her instead of sending her home. “I want him to see you. I want you standing in front of him repping Mike-Mike and Marques and his grandmother. I want you to bring them into the room with you.”

  “I’m not sure he remembers me,” Maureen said. “Nothing registered when I put him in the car.”

  “We’ll make sure he remembers,” Atkinson said.

  Back in the interview room, Atkinson pulled an unopened pack of Newports from her pocket, tossed them on the table for Scales. Scales scoffed at the offer. “Bitch, please. You think you gonna buy me with that?”

  “I’m trying to show some courtesy,” Atkinson said. She retrieved the cigarettes, put them back in her pocket. Scales looked surprised at the move.

  “Courtesy? Nigga, please. Like y’all showed me at the house?”

  “You need to learn to listen.”

  “I don’t have to listen to y’all about nothing. And I damn sure don’t have to talk to you. I know more than you think about how this here works.”

  “You’ve made your feelings clear,” Atkinson said. “But this is one of those rare days where I don’t need you to talk to me much. You’re going to want to talk, but I don’t need you to. What you want to do right now is listen to what I say—very fucking carefully. We’re not sitting here for my benefit, Mr. Scales, we’re sitting here for yours.”

  “’Cause you’re cool like that,” Scales said, pouting, looking away from her. “That’s why my mouth is bleeding on the inside.”

  “Maybe I am cool like that,” Atkinson said. “Maybe I’m the reason your liver isn’t bleeding on the inside. Maybe this is your lucky day. Congratulations. You got busted by the last cool cop in the department. Make sure you get yourself a Powerball ticket on the way home.”

  “So I will be getting out of here.” Scales smiled. Maureen saw that his teeth remained bloody. At some point, he’d need stitches inside his mouth. “See, y’all done fucked up already, letting me know that.”

  Atkinson laughed. “What? Oh, no. You’re not going anywhere. Not at all. I was making a point.” She moved her seat closer to the table, the chair legs scraping on the floor. “You know who’s on the other side of that mirror.”

  “More fucking po-lice, I figure.”

  “But do you know what kind of police?”

  “Secret police?” Scales said.

  Maureen could see the mud-stuck wheels straining to turn in his head. He looked exhausted, and was probably hungover. She knew that Scales was also not as savvy as he thought he was, which made not being able to nab him sooner so frustrating. His misplaced confidence worked against him at every turn, yet they’d needed a vengeful girlfriend to find him.

  “If I told you about them,” Atkinson said, “they wouldn’t be secret, would they? Sex crimes, that’s who’s behind the glass. Why, you might ask, if I’m Homicide, would I have sex crimes watching my interview with you?”

  She gave Scales a moment to reply, or to let his thoughts catch up to her. To Maureen, there seemed to be minimal activity behind his eyes. He was trying hard to stay shut down, to freeze them out, as if he were trying to ignore a stubborn pain. He said nothing.

  “So, here’s the million-dollar question for you, Bobby,” Atkinson said. “Why today? How is it that we finally found your sad and dirty hideout?”

  Scales shrugged. “The fuck should I know?”

  He fidgeted in his seat, rubbing his hands up and down the backs of his arms, as much as the wrist chains would let him, looking away from them now. He tried hiding his fear, but it seemed to Maureen that the mention of the sex crimes unit unnerved him, undermining his bravado. It added an unknown element to the proceedings. A murder beef he knew how to handle. The police accuse, he denies, and around it goes. Being a murderer, he’d somewhat anticipated ending up where he was. Adding the sex crimes unit was something else, though. What that something was he hadn’t figured out yet. He wouldn’t figure it out, Maureen knew, without more help. He certainly didn’t feel guilty of anything.

  “You ain’t got nothing on me,” Scales insisted. “Some snitch a’yours tryin’ to get over on you. This is some kind of setup.”

  “You could put it that way,” Atkinson said. “But it’s not us that set you up. Wasn’t even one of our snitches. That’s the beautiful part. This one is all you, asshole.” She held up a plastic evidence bag containing a cell phone. Maureen thought of Drayton and his sad attempt to intimidate her in the Sixth District break room. She had a feeling that Atkinson would have better luck getting what she wanted.

  “Recognize this?” Atkinson asked Scales.

  “It’s
a phone.”

  “Is it your phone?”

  “You gonna say it is if you want it to be.”

  “I hope it’s your phone,” Atkinson said, “because we took it from your nightstand, and because there are twenty pictures of you having sex with two different women on this phone.”

  She got up from her chair, walking around the table, getting close to Scales, who shrank from her. “Those two women, they know about each other. They do. And that’s not the best part. You wanna guess what the best part is?” She actually gave him a moment to guess. He didn’t.

  “I see how this is,” Scales said. “Bitches stick together and shit.”

  “The best part is,” Atkinson said, “you know what those girls have in common, other than you? They’re both fifteen years old. Well under the age of consent. You know what that makes you, other than a two-timing asshole and a poor judge of romantic companions? It makes you a felon. A child rapist, twenty times over. A sex offender. Against juveniles.”

  Scales shook his head, squirming against his chains, the ropy muscles of his arms flexing, terrified by Atkinson’s accusations. “No, no, no. Those girls was about it. Steppin’ out on them ain’t against the law. Whatever they saying I did, they just mad because of the other girl. See? That’s all this is. They just mad. They playin’ you and me both. Man, I can’t believe you fell for that.”

  “Oh, they’re mad, all right,” Atkinson said. “Mad enough to hand you right over to us. I don’t see anyone taking a fall here but you.”

  Atkinson squatted on her haunches. She was so tall, and Scales so slumped in his seat with defeat, that they were nearly eye-to-eye. “So don’t cop to murdering Mike-Mike. Please don’t. That’s fine. I’ll hand you over to sex crimes. All I got is a witness who says you gave him the keys to a car with a body in the trunk, with orders to burn that car, a car you told the whole neighborhood was yours. Who knows if I can even get that witness to testify? You know this city, it’s tough getting anyone to give the police the time of day, never mind testify in court. Except, except for these girls. Photos, signed statements, DNA. They are hot. They are pissed. It is personal with them. They’re looking to put your dick in the meat grinder. I wonder if one or both of them ain’t pregnant.”

  “Bullshit, I use rubbers every time with those bitches. See how they lie?”

  Maureen blinked. Hardly even trying, Atkinson had gotten Scales to confess to multiple counts of statutory rape, and he didn’t even know he’d done it. It had happened so fast, so effortlessly, Maureen was half surprised she hadn’t missed it. She knew Atkinson hadn’t.

  Atkinson stood, leaning over Scales to deliver the hammer blow. “You see now why I got sex crimes people in the next room? I hand you to them, they charge you, they book you and jail you as a sex offender, son. As a child molester. How you think that’s gonna go for you? You just confessed.”

  Scales’s head whipped around, his mouth hanging open in disbelief. His brain finally caught up to what he’d said about using rubbers. It was almost unfair, Maureen thought, watching Atkinson work him over. Almost. She thought of how Scales had pressed his own advantages over boys smaller and younger than him, his size, his menace, his physical power. He’d pressed one into hiding, one out of town, and one into the grave. Now Atkinson was showing Scales what real power looked like. Every day of the rest of his life was in her hands. Where he would spend them, and what would happen to him while he was there. No, it wasn’t unfair what Atkinson was doing to him, Maureen thought, or even unethical. It was justice. The sight of it thrilled her.

  Atkinson turned away from Scales, shaking her head at the pity of the whole unfortunate situation. “And now we’re stuck using these temp jails while the new one gets built. Security is a mess.” She spoke now to Maureen, leaving Scales foundering. “Seems like once a month somebody’s dying up in there. Nobody even knows why, half the time. Some prisoners we have to send halfway across the state, out to the rural parishes. Anybody told you about that? It’s a tough gig, New Orleans baby gangstas jailing with trailer-park, swamp-living, meth-cooking Nazi white boys. There have been reports of conflicts. Of violent incidents. Some of our prisoners are coming back to the city in pretty rough shape. Casts. Wheelchairs. A couple haven’t made it back at all. And I don’t think we’ve sent them a black child molester yet. Maybe they’ll send us a prize.” She turned to Scales, looked him up and down. “Wanna guess what that prize might be?”

  Scales sat up straight. Maureen could see the lightbulb finally starting to glow for him.

  “I ain’t no rapist. I ain’t no child molester. Y’all can’t make me one.”

  “It ain’t us doing it to you,” Atkinson said. “It’s the law.”

  “You seen them photos,” Scales said. “It’s normal old sex. Those girls don’t look fifteen. You can see that. If they been in your office, you seen ’em in person. I’m supposed to check IDs?”

  “What I see,” Atkinson said, “is fifteen getting you twenty, over and over again. I think every time you messed with them is another rape count. We’re not even going to talk about what you’ll be getting while you’re doing those multiple twenties.”

  Maureen stepped out of the corner, nervous about what she had to say. “Detective.”

  Atkinson raised her eyebrows, as if surprised to learn Maureen had a voice. “Not now, Officer.”

  “I’m sorry,” Maureen said. “I know I’m only supposed to observe, but the way things are going, it makes me nervous. Bad nervous.” She glanced at Scales, who focused on her with startling intensity, pleading with his eyes for the lifeline he hoped was coming. “I have to say something.”

  She gave Atkinson a beat to answer.

  “Your concerns, then?” Atkinson asked, sounding impatient.

  “It’s already rumored, and pretty much believed around the city, that Mr. Scales here killed at least one of his teenage soldiers while trying to revive a drug ring over the summer. It’s rumored he tried to kill another boy, and that boy’s grandmother, and a couple of cops. There are rumors that maybe he’d flipped, that he’d been seen doing business with a cop, and that was why we couldn’t nail him. Those rumors were the main reason he’s so toxic even to the local criminal community that he was squatting in a dirty hole when we found him.”

  “Your point, Officer? You’re very eloquent, but we have shit to do here.”

  “Everyone we’ve talked to,” Maureen said, choosing her words with care, “thinks he’s a rat, and a child killer. I’m concerned that if we lock him up as a sex offender, what happens if those accusations get mixed up with the new charges? What if it gets through the system that he was raping these underaged boys before he killed them? And that’s why he killed them. No jail in the state could guarantee his safety. You said yourself it’s a mess throughout Louisiana. He wouldn’t make his arraignment, never mind live to see trial.”

  “So you’re interrupting my interrogation,” Atkinson said, “to express your concerns for the safety of the prisoner?”

  “I’m not real worried about him,” Maureen said, looking at Scales, who was so panicked now she feared he’d hyperventilate, “but a lot of good police work, and a lot of potential information, which could lead to more good police work, goes up in smoke if he gets shivved in the lunch line and bleeds out screaming for his mommy on the tile.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” Scales hollered. He squirmed in his seat, rattling his chains. “You can’t do that. You can’t be telling people inside that I been raping and killing little boys. While I been snitching at the same time? What the fuck is wrong with you? Why you doin’ me like this? You the police. You’re supposed to protect people.”

  “I wouldn’t do you like that,” Atkinson said, “but the officer here has a point. Jail is worse than high school for rumors, worse than the neighborhood, worse than the police department or the courthouse, even.” She paused, tapping her fingertip to her chin. “I just thought of something. You’ve never jailed bef
ore, have you, Bobby? Some juvie shit, but never with men.”

  Scales shook his head.

  “My, oh my,” Atkinson said. “Wow.” She paused. “I almost feel sorry for you.”

  Maureen backed into her corner.

  Atkinson returned to the seat, and the position, where she had started the interview, arms folded over the back of the chair. “You know how much we have on you. About the murder. About the girls. And now there’s those guns, and how you got them, and your plans for them, which can change things for you. That looks to me like a federal beef. Now, taking a federal charge is no picnic, it doesn’t bode well for your long-term future, I’m not gonna sugarcoat that. However, as we all know, your short-term future is looking mightily, brutally fucking grim right now. The feds do have more resources for prisoner protection than we do at OPP.” She inched her chair a few inches closer to Scales. “Gimme a reason, Bobby. Gimme a good reason not to jail you as a fucking rapist child-murdering molester. A really good fucking reason. Because you know that’s what I want to do. Talk me out of it.”

  Scales slumped in his seat again, a puppy cowering from the snapping jaws of a larger dog, hoping for mercy through submission. Maureen waited for Atkinson to tear open his soft belly. She watched and waited, chewing the inside of her cheek as Scales’s brain worked harder than it ever had in his brutish and short life. “I—I could tell you about those guns. I do know some shit.”

  “Give it up.”

  “You gotta promise me. No rape charges. None of that child-molester shit.”

  Atkinson barked out a laugh. Maureen nearly jumped out of her skin. She wasn’t sure when it had happened, but she was, at the moment, deathly afraid of Christine Atkinson. “Promise you?” Atkinson said. “I don’t have to promise you shit. I have all the cards, remember?” She pointed her finger at her face. “Look at me. I own you. This is me promising you nothing. You go in the Orleans Parish system, and you go in on child rape and murder, in which case you leave on a stretcher or in a pine box, or you go in federal on guns, and leave walking upright with your blood on the inside—that’s your choice here.”