Presumed Guilty: (A Jefferson Winter novella)

by James Carol

  They’d given him five minutes to get inside and get settled, and then they’d made their move. Charlie Dumas was leading the charge since this was his investigation. Yoko was right behind him because, technically, this was her arrest, and she didn’t want anyone to forget it.

  Winter’s room was on the second floor. It was mid-morning, quiet since most of the students were in class. The few they did see were ordered back to their rooms and told to stay there until the all-clear was given. Nobody had argued, or even asked why. When a gun-toting cop dressed in full body armour tells you to do something, you do it.

  The door was cheap and thin, a typical dorm door, and the lock had splintered away on the first attempt with the battering ram.

  They’d found Winter on his bed reading a book, seemingly oblivious to the fact that his door had been smashed open. Classical music played softly in the background, something doom-laden and depressing, and appropriate for the occasion.

  Casually, as though he had all the time in the world, he picked up a bookmark, placed it between the pages, and shut the book. There was a lot of yelling going on, a confusion of voices. Everyone was shouting for Winter to step away from the bed and get down on the floor.

  Dumas had talked strategy beforehand and decided the best way to take the kid down was to overwhelm him. From where Yoko was standing, Winter looked seriously underwhelmed. He was acting like this was an everyday occurrence.

  It was almost as if he’d expected this to happen, which made her even more convinced that they had their guy. She’d seen this reaction before. Some bad guys came in noisily, and some came without a fuss. Winter was obviously one of the quiet ones.

  The kid stood up in his own sweet time and knelt on the floor. The nearest cop rushed over, pushed him face down into the carpet, pulled his arms behind his back, cuffed him, then hauled him to his feet. Dumas walked over and looked him up and down, studying him. He allowed himself a small smile, then nodded his approval.

  The CD player was switched off and a strained hush descended on the room. Dumas took a card from his pocket, cleared his throat, then read what was written on it.

  ‘Jefferson Winter you are being arrested on suspicion of murder. You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be appointed for you. Do you understand these rights as I have read them to you?’

  The prompt card was unnecessary. It was something you gave to rookies to prevent screw-ups. Dumas would have Mirandized thousands of criminals. He would have been able to recite the warning from heart.

  Yoko understood where he was coming from, though. This was the highest-profile case he’d ever worked, the one he’d be remembered for, and everything was being done by the book. There was no way he was going to screw up. Not going to happen. Not on his watch.

  Winter’s reaction surprised Yoko. There was no emotion. Head cocked a little to the right, he stared blank-faced at Dumas and kept staring until the detective looked away first.

  Most nineteen-year-olds in this situation would be terrified, and rightly so. An army of gun-toting cops in full battle gear bursting into your life was meant to be intimidating. That was the play Dumas had been going for, and he’d missed by a mile.

  The kid waited until Dumas met his eye again, then he grinned at him. There was no real emotion behind the grin. It was a blatant attempt to piss the detective off, and it almost worked.

  Yoko saw the colour rise in Dumas’s cheeks. She noticed the way his fists clenched. She could sense his frustration and anger, and realised it would take just the tiniest of nudges to push him over the edge.

  She also knew that if he lost it now, it would damage the case more than any Miranda violation.

  She’d reached out and gently touched his arm. The way Dumas swung around, she was convinced he was going to hit her. Then, like a sleepwalker coming out of a trance, he’d blinked and his fists slowly relaxed. He stared at her for a second, as though he couldn’t work out who she was or what the hell she was doing there.

  The moment passed, and the kid was taken away.

  Chapter 12

  ‘It’s just the two of us now, Jefferson, so how about you tell me what really went on in the bedroom?’ Yoko’s tone was casual and conversational, and completely at odds with the way she felt.

  ‘Just the two of us and the camera.’

  Winter nodded towards the corner of the room, and she thought, This is it, this is the point when suspicion becomes certainty. These were the moments she lived for. The endgame. You’d moved the pieces around the board and set your trap, now you waited for your opponent to walk into it.

  There was always that heart-stopping moment when you were convinced that you’d missed something obvious, that your opponent was about to spring a surprise.

  Then they made the move you thought they’d make, and they made it because it was the only move they could make, and the reason for that was because you owned the board. They’d be sitting there wearing the face of a checkmate loser, and it was one of the sweetest sights in the whole world.

  Yoko glanced over her shoulder to double-check the camera was running, and saw the reassuring blink of the red light. She hoped the technology wouldn’t let them down. It was unlikely, but it could happen. When the future was balanced on a knife-edge anything could happen.

  Winter followed Yoko’s gaze to the camera, then looked her straight in the eye and started talking. His voice was different from earlier. It was alive and vibrant. The sparkle Yoko associated with guilt was there. He sounded proud of what he’d done, and that pushed any doubts away.

  For the next few minutes he described everything he’d done to Alice Harrigan. In detail. At times Yoko had the distinct impression that he was back in the bedroom, reliving the memories. He’d shut his eyes as he talked. It was almost as if he was giving a running commentary on the pictures flashing through his head.

  The more he talked, the more Yoko’s dislike grew. Somewhere along the line dislike turned to hatred. Later, she was able to pinpoint the exact moment that happened.

  It was when he’d looked straight at her and described how he’d ‘made love’ to Alice. There was no way that what he’d done could ever be described as ‘making love’. What he’d done was a complete bastardisation of the act. It was a complete perversion of all that was good.

  She was supposed to be objective, and usually she was. The ability to stay detached no matter what she was faced with was one of her greatest strengths. At that moment, though, she could relate to how Dumas had reacted earlier. She wanted to hurt Winter for what he’d done to those girls. Hurt him bad.

  Instead, she smiled and let him talk and did her best not to give any indication of how she really felt.

  Yoko couldn’t understand how he’d managed to get under her skin. It was so unlike her. A large part of it was his age. He was so damn young, and so bright. Beyond bright. This kid would make your average Mensa member look like an idiot.

  He should have a stunning future ahead of him. Instead, he was going to spend the next ten to twenty years on death row, and then the State of Maryland would execute him.

  Perhaps that’s what made her so angry, the loss of all that potential. It was such a waste. Here was someone who could have done anything with his life, and yet he’d chosen to be a murderer.

  The only reason he’d been caught was because he was so young. If he’d been older and less impulsive they’d have another Ted Bundy on their hands. No doubt about it. Returning to the crime scenes was a dumb thing to do. Ultimately, that was what had led to him being caught. As much as she liked to believe otherwise, his arrest had little to do with brilliant, painstaking detective work on their part and everything to do with poor impulse control on his.

  If Winter had been older, maybe even just a year or two, he would never have made that mistake. They’d caught a lucky break there. Yoko didn’t frighten ea
sily, but she’d be the first to admit that the idea of an older, more cunning version of this kid out there having his fun scared the crap out of her.

  Winter stopped talking as suddenly as he had started. It was like a tape recorder had been switched off. Even though Yoko knew he’d finished, she gave it a couple of seconds in case he had anything else to add.

  Nothing.

  He reached for his Coke can and drained it. The small hollow thump when he placed the empty can back on the table sounded much louder than it should have. There was something final about that sound, like a full stop. It was a sound that said we’re done here.

  ‘Maybe you’d like to call that lawyer now,’ she said.

  ‘No, I’m fine. Another Coke would be good, though. If it’s not too much trouble.’

  Yoko gave it another second in case he changed his mind, then got up and headed for the door. She felt uneasy. They had a full confession, and he’d spent the last few minutes telling her things only the killer could know, so why had she got misgivings?

  Then there was the way his voice had brightened, the way he’d become animated when he’d started talking. She’d seen plenty of guilty people, and Winter was obviously guilty. She’d met plenty of psychopaths, too, and this kid was a textbook psychopath. Look up psychopath in an encyclopedia and you’d see a picture of Jefferson Winter staring back at you.

  So, despite the overwhelming evidence condemning him, why was she having doubts? And why did she feel like she was about to step into a trap? More worryingly, why wasn’t Winter wearing the face of a checkmate loser?

  Yoko got up to leave, then turned back like there was something she’d just remembered. ‘I keep meaning to ask. What did you do with their hearts?’

  Winter smiled a smile that kept growing until it turned into a grin.

  ‘What do you think I did with them, Agent Tanaka? I ate them. Those girls are a part of me. For now and for ever more.’

  Yoko thought she was done with hating him. She thought that now they had enough evidence to nail him she could finally let go and get her objectivity back.

  She was wrong.

  Chapter 13

  Yoko had stayed behind in Winter’s dorm room after the arrest. It was just her and the cop who’d been left guarding the door until the crime-scene investigators showed up. Everybody else had been anxious to get back to Upper Marlboro. The kid was where the real action was, so everyone was sticking as close to him as possible.

  She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and little puffs of powder exploded from them. Then she picked up the book he had been reading. It had the uninspiring cover of an academic textbook, and a title that was as impenetrable as it was bland. Yoko had heard of string theory, but didn’t have a clue what it was. She opened the book at the page he had marked. It might as well have been written in Korean for all the sense it made.

  Next, she went over to the CD player and picked up the empty case lying on top. Mozart’s Requiem. Yoko turned the music back on. She’d always hated classical music, and this piece did nothing to change her opinion. Over-the-top strings, and a choir that sounded like every member had a pole jammed up their ass.

  It was over complicated for the sake of being over complicated, and much too pretentious for her taste. She preferred something with a decent backbeat and loud guitars.

  Not that she’d ever admit that around Quantico. She was aware of the names whispered behind her back, and was happy to play along. The pigeonhole she’d been slotted into did not include an obsessional love of late-sixties and early-seventies rock.

  She turned off the music and glanced around the room. If she could make sense of this space, then maybe she could start to unravel the puzzle that was Jefferson Winter. Because one thing was for sure: this kid was a puzzle.

  For starters, what sort of nineteen-year-old student did two masters degrees, read advanced physics books for fun, and listened to composers who’d been dead for centuries?

  At first glance, the room was a typical first-year dorm room. Tiny, with a small window that was covered by drapes so thin you might as well not bother. There was space for the bed, a desk, a wardrobe, and a small bookcase, and that was about it.

  That’s where the similarities ended. The room was spotless, no clutter anywhere. Even the desk was scrupulously tidy, and the air freshener on the bookcase was still new enough to fill the room with the soft smell of flowers and fruit.

  Where was the stale smell you usually associated with teenage boys? The one that came from leaving plates of food and dirty laundry lying around for an indeterminate amount of time? And what sort of teenage boy actually made his bed?

  Music posters covered the walls. Bands and musicians Yoko could relate to. Hendrix dressed like a cosmic warrior, wielding his Fender Strat as though the future of mankind depended on it. Keith Richards flying high, the very definition of elegantly wasted. Lennon expounding peace and love during his New York years. The Doors got a nod in this hall of fame, as did Nirvana and The Police.

  There were two racks filled with CDs, one classical, the other rock, pop and blues. The spines were the right way up, and all the discs were strictly alphabetised. The bookshelf was alphabetised, too, the split between fiction and non-fiction roughly fifty-fifty.

  Most of the non-fiction books looked as impenetrable as the string-theory book, although there was a whole section of criminal-psychology and true-crime books with titles and authors that Yoko recognised. His taste in fiction was surprisingly mainstream. Stephen King, John Grisham, Jeffery Deaver, Thomas Harris.

  The odd-book-out was an old, worn collection of L. Frank Baum’s Oz books. The cover was scuffed and battered with a faded picture, and the yellowed pages were well thumbed. Yoko opened the book carefully and read what had been written on the title page.

  To Jefferson

  Lots of love Mommy

  xxx

  (Christmas 1983)

  Yoko did the math. Winter would have been two and a half when he received this gift. She could imagine him as a child, tucked up in bed, his mother reading him the adventures of Dorothy and the Scarecrow and Jack Pumpkinhead.

  Then again, there was every likelihood that he’d read it to himself. Judging by the textbooks, he’d probably been one of those precocious two-and-a-half-year-old child prodigies, the sort of kid who was reading at two and building cold-fusion reactors by the age of five. The sort of freakish kid that film-makers loved doing documentaries on.

  There was a music keyboard on the stand below the window. Black and high-tech and furnished with enough buttons to make Yoko think it should be on the bridge of an intergalactic spaceship.

  She switched it on, hit a couple of keys at random. The sound that came out was a piano. She was no expert, but it sounded good quality. Yoko turned off the keyboard and opened the wardrobe.

  There had to be two dozen T-shirts, all neatly arranged on hangars. Three identical hooded tops and three identical pairs of Levis. There was a sheepskin-lined suede jacket for the winter, and a leather jacket for the milder weather. A spare pair of Converse sneakers sat on the shelf.

  More pieces to add to the puzzle. Who the hell hung T-shirts in a wardrobe? More to the point, what sort of nineteen-year-old did something like that?

  Yoko ran a hand over the T-shirts, the pictures on the fronts flashing like playing cards. More dead rock stars and bands. All the bands and singers from the posters on the walls were represented, and a few more besides. She took a closer look at the way the T-shirts were arranged and shook her head in disbelief. Jesus, even the T-shirts were alphabetised.

  There were a couple of drawers beneath the wardrobe. The top one contained underwear. Six identical pairs of black boxer shorts, all neatly folded. Six pairs of identical black socks, all neatly balled. Understandable for a middle-aged anal-retentive accountant, weird for a college kid. But nowhere near as weird as those damn T-shirts.

  The one thing she hadn’t seen was any sign of was the victims’ hearts. The crime-sc
ene investigators might have better luck, but she wasn’t holding her breath. She was sticking to the theory that Winter had a secret place somewhere.

  She stopped at the door on her way out and looked back one last time. She’d found out a lot about the kid, but rather than answers she just had more questions.

  ‘Who the hell are you, Mr Winter?’ she whispered to herself.

  As she walked away, the question in her head morphed subtly.

  What the hell are you?

  Chapter 14

  What the hell are you?

  Almost six and a half hours had passed since the arrest, and Yoko was no closer to answering that question. He was a psychopath. And he was a murderer. And he was one very screwed-up individual.

  And he was a nineteen-year-old kid.

  On their own, the labels were inadequate. Put them all together and the picture they made was still inadequate. Winter defied description. He was a whole new type of monster. Yoko watched him through the glass, desperate to unravel the puzzle. Desperate to know what made him tick.

  With any luck, she’d get the opportunity to interview him once he’d been sentenced. There was plenty to be learned from the kid. Over the years, the Behavioral Analysis Unit had interviewed hundreds of serial criminals. By understanding these monsters, they hoped to stop, or at least seriously curtail, the activities of the monsters of the future. Jefferson Winter would be a valuable addition to this hall of infamy.

  ‘So, that’s it, then,’ said Dumas.

  ‘That’s it. You’ve got your confession. You’ve got confirmation this is your guy. All you’ve got to do now is keep gathering the evidence. Keep building the case.’

  ‘At least we know what he did with the hearts.’

  ‘I guess so.’

  ‘What?’