Having lost his glasses when he fell, he could only squint at the large mirror set against one of the walls. He’d watched enough television cop shows to know that it was probably oneway glass and that he was being watched by police detectives on the other side.
Felix had already been at the precinct house for two hours. They’d taken photographs of his face, and his fingerprints. But mostly he’d been left to sit in the room. He wished they’d just tell him what they wanted him to say so that he could say it and leave.
The door clicked and then opened. A large man walked in and stood for a moment studying him. He walked over and sat in the chair across from Felix, who could then see well enough to note that he was an older man with a big, wrinkled face and icy blue eyes.
“I’m Detective Brock,” the man said. “I understand that you’ve waived your right to have an attorney present?”
Felix hesitated for a moment. The police officer who arrested him had also asked him if he wanted an attorney. He remembered that the police on the television shows asked that a lot, too, so he figured it must be important. But he didn’t know why. He did know, however, that attorneys cost money, and if his dad found out he was spending money on one, he’d get hit. He shook his head. “I don’t want an attorney.”
“And you’re willing to talk to me?” Brock asked. “No one is forcing you to answer my questions.”
Felix’s natural inclination to please kicked in. “Sure. I’ll answer your questions.”
“Good. Thank you, that helps,” the detective said. “Felix, can you tell me where you were earlier this morning, before the police officers arrested you?”
“Yes,” Felix answered, glad to start with an easy one, “I was home.”
“Was anybody else there?”
Felix cringed slightly at the memory of his father asleep on the couch. He didn’t want the police to bother Eduardo. “No.”
“What were you doing out so early on a Sunday morning?”
“I was going to Mullayly Park.”
“Why?”
“To meet my friends.”
“Felix, what would you say if I told you that you look like a man who attacked a young woman this morning near Mullayly Park?”
Felix furrowed his brow. “I didn’t do it,” he answered.
“Then why did you try to run away when the police officer stopped you?”
“I was afraid.”
“Afraid of what? That you’d be arrested for attacking that young woman?”
“No,” Felix answered.
“Then what were you afraid of, Felix?”
Felix thought back to the moment he decided to run and pictured his angry father coming at him with a raised fist. “That the policeman would find the stolen ring and tell my dad.”
“The stolen ring,” Brock replied, “the ring we found in your wallet? The ring you told Officer Givens was in your wallet?”
“Yes.” Felix nodded eagerly.
“Where’d you get the ring? Did you steal it?”
Felix shook his head. “No. I bought it from Al at the park.”
“You bought it from Al at the park,” Brock repeated.
“Yes, from Al. He gave me a good price because we’re friends.”
“Then how do you know it was stolen?” the detective asked.
“My friend Alejandro told me it was.”
“Alejandro told you the ring you bought from Al at the park was stolen?”
“Yes.”
“I see, and that’s why you ran from the police officer?”
“Yes.”
Brock quickly changed the subject. “Where’d you get that shiner?”
“Shiner?”
“The black eye,” Brock said, pointing to Felix’s face. “Looks like someone belted you pretty good. Did the young woman this morning hit you with her elbow?”
Felix didn’t know what to say. If he told the detective that his dad hit him and it got Eduardo in trouble, there’d be a beating later. “I ran into a door,” he said.
“A door?” the detective scoffed. He stared at Felix until the young man began to squirm in his seat. “You know what? I think someone hit you. I think maybe it was that young woman. In fact, maybe that’s what made you mad. Maybe that’s why you tried to pull her into the park. Maybe you were going to cut her with your knife. Is that it, Felix, she pissed you off so you were going to rape her and cut her with a knife?”
Felix started to panic. Brock’s tone had changed. Now the detective was saying that he had tried to cut a woman and rape her. But the detective was asking so many questions along with the accusations; Felix thought he better answer the questions that seemed the most important. “No. The young woman didn’t hit me. I wasn’t mad at her.”
“She didn’t hit you, so you weren’t mad at her,” Brock said. “Maybe you just wanted to rob her?”
This wasn’t going well. The detective couldn’t seem to understand him. “I didn’t want to rob her.”
“Rape her then? Did you want to rape her?”
“No, I didn’t want to rape her.”
“Then who hit you, Felix? That doesn’t look like you ran into a door.”
Felix’s shoulders sagged. “My dad.”
“Your dad hit you in the face?”
Felix nodded. “Yes. He thought I drank his beer.”
“I see,” the detective said in such a way that Felix knew he didn’t believe him.
Brock appeared to be getting ready to ask him another question when there was a knock at the door. The detective walked over to the door, which opened to reveal a uniformed police officer. The two had a quick conversation and then the detective turned back to Felix.
“I’m going to ask you to go with Officer Krysnowski here,” he said.
“Where am I going?” Felix replied, frightened. He’d hoped that the interruption meant he could now go home, but apparently they weren’t through with him.
“We’re just taking you to another room where there’ll be some other men,” Brock said. “You’re going to stand in line and then do what Officer Krysnowski asks you to do. It’s really very easy. You okay with that?”
Felix didn’t think that sounded too bad, especially if it got him away from Brock. “Sure, okay,” he said, standing. “Can I go home after that?”
The detective exchanged glances with the officer. “We’ll see. I may have some more questions.”
Felix sighed. “Okay, but if I don’t get home soon, I’m going to be in trouble.”
Officer Krysnowski led Felix from the room and put him in a line with four other men. They were then led into another room by the officer and told to stand along a wall and face another large mirror.
On the other side of the one-way glass, Marianne Tate stood with Detective Brock, as well as another detective, Scott McCullough, and Jon Marks, the sergeant of the detective squad.
“Do you recognize any of these men as the one who attacked you this morning?” Brock asked.
Tate studied the men one by one. “I didn’t get a real good look,” she said. “He was across the street when I first saw him and after that it was mostly out of the corner of my eye.”
“So none of these men look like your guy?” the sergeant asked.
Catching an irritated tone, Tate looked again. “Well, the guy on the end, number five, and number three look kind of like I remember. But I’m just not sure. Could you ask them to speak?”
The detective nodded. “Sure. Anything in particular?”
Tate’s eyes grew angry. “Yes. I want them to say, ‘Don’t scream, sooka, or I’ll cut your fucking head off.’ And then, ‘Now you and I are going to get busy.’”
Brock pushed the intercom button again. “Number five, I’d like you to repeat after me. ‘Don’t scream, sooka, or I’ll cut your fucking head off. Now you and I are going to get busy.’”
Number five, another detective in the Four-Eight detective squad who was working undercover, said, “Don’t scream or I’m g
oing to cut your fucking head off… Uh, now let’s get busy.”
“That wasn’t quite right,” Tate said.
“You want him to repeat it again?” Brock asked.
Tate bit her lip and shook her head. “Ask the other guy first.”
The detective pressed the button. “Number three, repeat after me, ‘Don’t scream, sooka, or I’ll cut your fucking head off. Now you and I are going to get busy.’”
“Don’t scream, sooka, or I’ll cut your fucking head off,” Felix said awkwardly, “now you and I are going to get busy.”
“That’s him,” Tate declared. “He said it perfectly. And now that I’ve seen him a little longer, I think he looks more like the guy.”
“You’re sure?” Brock asked.
Tate nodded. “Yes, I’m sure.”
“Thank you, Ms. Tate,” Marks said. “You’ve really done well. Can I ask you to step outside for a moment while I talk to my detectives?”
Tate glanced one last time at the lineup. A look of concern passed over her face, but she answered, “Of course,” and left the room.
“What do you think?” Brock asked.
The sergeant pursed his lips and then shook his head. “I think it’s pretty good,” he said. “It’s a positive ID, but a defense attorney is going to make hay with her hesitation. I sure would like a confession just to nail it down. And if he’s good for the Atkins murder, we’re going to need him to talk.”
Brock looked back at the lineup. The men were being led out of the room; Felix was filing out with a smile on his face. “I don’t know if he’s good for Atkins,” he said.
“Why not?” Marks said with a shrug. “This assault on Tate would match up pretty well-sudden blitz attack on a young woman, using a knife, during daylight hours.”
“You’re right there, Jon,” Brock agreed. “But the guy who did Atkins… he was a pretty smooth operator. He gets into the apartment with no sign of a break-in, murders Atkins, cleans himself up, and then leaves-all without anybody noticing him or hearing anything. But our boy Felix here, he’s sort of bumbling and not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed. Hell, he’s half-blind.”
“Maybe he was wearing glasses,” the sergeant replied. “And despite what they try to portray on TV and movies, not all killers are masterminds. Sometimes they’re just fucking animals; clever animals, maybe, and they only get away with it for so long before they mess up. Like your boy Felix did this morning. I’m not saying he’s good for the Atkins murder, but let’s not assume he isn’t. I tell you right now, I’d love to get the captain off my back on this one. Anyway, let’s get a confession out of him for Tate and use that for leverage; maybe it will get him to spill his guts.”
Felix was escorted back to the interview room and told to sit down. As he waited, he fidgeted and tried not to look at the mirror. He could feel eyes on him, like he was being watched from the bushes by some unseen predator.
When the door suddenly clicked and Detective Brock walked back in with another man, Felix about jumped out of his seat. He looked nervously at Brock and then at the other detective, who appeared to be younger, though he couldn’t make out his features very well due to his poor eyesight. The second detective introduced himself as Scott McCullough, but he moved around to stand behind Felix, who couldn’t see him without turning.
“Felix, we know that you attacked that young woman this morning,” Brock said matter-of-factly.
“No! That’s not true,” Felix whimpered. Frightened, he started to stand up. “I want to go home now.”
“Sit down!” the detective behind him, McCullough, thundered. “You were just positively identified as the attacker. She even says you sound like him.”
“She’s wrong,” Felix said, trying to turn to where he could see the detective, who kept moving to stay just out of his sight. “I was just walking to the park to tell my friends about my new girlfriend.”
Brock slammed his fist on the table, making Felix jump and spin back around to face him. “Goddamn it, Felix, quit fucking lying to me. You’re just going to make it harder on yourself.”
“If I tell you I did it, will you let me go home?” Felix cried.
“Just tell us the goddamn truth!” McCullough barked.
“You’ll feel better for it, Felix,” Brock told him.
Breathing hard, his eyes bugging, Felix thought about what Brock said. He hated it when people were mad at him. He would feel better when these detectives stopped yelling at him. “Okay, I did it,” he cried out. “I attacked her. Now can I go?”
Brock looked over Felix’s shoulder at McCullough. He then looked back at Felix and smiled. “You did a good thing, Felix, to get that off your chest, but I have a few more questions I need you to answer. To start, I need you to tell me how you attacked her.”
Felix thought hard about what he’d been told. Someone had said something about a knife. “With a knife?”
“You tell me, was it with a knife?” Brock asked.
Felix read the intonation of the detective’s voice and nodded. “Yes, it was with a knife.”
“How did you get that bruise on your face?”
Again Felix recalled Brock asking him if the woman had struck him with her elbow. “She hit me with her elbow.”
Brock stood up. “When she hit you, was she standing in front of you facing you like this?” he asked, pantomiming the action. “Or were you standing behind her, with her back to you, and she hit you like this?” He then simulated her striking him with an elbow.
Felix couldn’t remember anybody saying anything about this. “She was in front,” he guessed.
Brock scowled. “Really? In front?”
Picking up on the detective’s negative reaction, Felix changed his story. “No, I meant I was behind her. She hit me like you showed me the second time.”
“That means she used her right elbow, like this,” Brock said, demonstrating, “and caught you on the right side of your face?”
“Yes. That’s right.”
Brock frowned and made a note on his pad, which at first worried Felix. But then the detective smiled and seemed to relax. His voice was nicer when he asked, “Did you say something to her when you grabbed her from behind?”
Felix was happy that the detective seemed pleased. But he wasn’t sure what was expected of him next. Then he remembered what he’d been asked to say in the other room. “I said, ‘Don’t scream, sooka, or I’ll cut your fucking head off. Now you and I are going to get busy.’”
Brock furrowed his brow but then shrugged. “Just like in the other room.”
“Yes.”
“What does ‘sooka’ mean? Is it Spanish? Or are you saying ‘sucker’?”
Felix had no idea what it meant, but it wasn’t Spanish. “Sucker.”
“And is that something you like to say, like when you attacked the other woman?”
Felix frowned. “What other woman?”
Brock shrugged. “You know, Dolores Atkins, the woman you killed a couple of weeks ago?”
Felix blinked. How had the conversation turned from a woman he attacked this morning to one he had killed weeks ago? “I didn’t kill a woman.”
“Sure you did, Felix,” Detective McCullough said, “and you ‘got busy’ with her.”
The detectives traded off like a pair of tag-team wrestlers. “And then you took some of her things, like her wallet and money,” Brock said. “Maybe that diamond ring we found in your wallet.”
“You know,” McCullough added, “we’ll find out if you took that ring from her.”
“I didn’t! I bought it from Al,” Felix said, first to Brock and then turning to McCullough.
“Felix, Felix,” Brock said. “There is no Al, is there? I don’t know where you got that ring, but I’m going to find out. This has got to be weighing on you, making you feel bad. All that blood. The smell. The screams, even though you had her mouth taped. Did you tell Dolores you were going to cut her fucking head off if she screamed?”
&n
bsp; “I didn’t say that,” Felix replied, tears springing back into his eyes.
“What did you say then?” McCullough asked.
“I didn’t say anything!”
“You killed her and raped her without saying anything?”
“Yes! I mean no,” Felix said, and buried his face in his hands. “I didn’t kill anybody.”
Detective Brock suddenly stood up so quickly that he knocked his chair over backward with a loud crash. He towered above the cowering young suspect and pointed his big finger. “Felix, I thought we were done with the lying,” he said. “You just admitted that you attacked and tried to rape a young woman this morning. You killed and raped Dolores Atkins, didn’t you?”
For a moment Felix was sure that the detective was going to hit him. He just wanted the detective to back away and quit yelling. “Okay, I killed her,” he whimpered. “I killed Dolores.”
Brock leaned forward with his knuckles on the table. “Thank you, Felix,” he said. “I’m sure that felt good to get that off your chest, too. So tell me, how did you kill her?”
“What?”
“How did you kill Dolores Atkins?” Brock asked as he picked up his chair and sat down again. “Did you use your hands? A gun? Some other sort of weapon?”
Felix hesitated. He thought it might be a trick question, the sort his dad would try to catch him in to justify a beating. But the only thing that made sense was the same answer as it had been for the other woman. “A knife? Was it a knife?”
Brock tapped his notepad with his pencil. “You have to tell me, Felix. I can’t play games with you.”
“Then yes, I killed her with a knife.”
“Was it the same knife you used in the attack on the other woman this morning?”
Felix relaxed. This was much easier. He nodded. “Yes, the same one.”
“Where’s the knife, Felix? Did you hide it somewhere?”
Suddenly Felix had an idea. The walls of the interview room were closing in on him. If he could just get out of the precinct house, he’d be able to think more clearly. “I can take you there. I can show you.”
Brock looked at his partner and stood up. “Then what are we waiting for?” he said.
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