by C. M. Newman
CHAPTER EIGHT: FOOD FOR THOUGHT
Erica Whittaker’s body was stocky to match the headshot Vince and Angela had in their case files. For someone who would never make it over the hill, her greying hair was as thin as a woman twice her age, her skin spotted, creased around her eyes and mouth.
“I’m Special Agent Glasser, and this is Special Agent Hawkins,” Vince said as they took their seats and he set up a recorder.
The woman’s face hardly moved. “Pleasure to meet you.”
“As you know, we’re here to ask you some questions,” Vince continued.
“Ask away.” A faint, smug grin told Vince and Angela that this wasn’t one of the death row inmates ready to share secrets, ready to come clean and seek absolution. This would be a game to her, and the answers wouldn’t come easily if at all.
“Did you know any of the men you killed before you killed them?” Angela asked when Vince didn’t jump in right away. From the corner of her eye, she could see the steady filling and emptying of his chest, his unwavering gaze at Whittaker. She didn’t know why she felt the need to babysit him emotionally, as he’d given her no reason so far to doubt his abilities. Looking after him had just become second nature to her over the years.
“Why’s everyone so concerned with whether I knew the men I killed?” Whittaker asked, peeved already.
“Prosecution was concerned with that to solidify their case against you before you pled guilty,” Vince answered. “We, on the other hand, are interested because we want to know why you did it.”
“What good’s that gonna do you?”
For a woman whose voice and demeanor suggested heavily that she felt she had the upper hand, Angela found the inmate annoyingly naïve. She didn’t seem to be leading them along when she asked it; she seemed truly ignorant. “It helps us catch other criminals. To catch a criminal, you have to know how her mind works,” Angela said, straightening her back, not that the two inches she had on Whittaker could overshadow the seventy pounds the convicted killer had on her.
“That’s catchy. Got that on a bumper sticker or somethin’? Not that I’ll ever drive again.”
Without looking, Angela knew that Vince wasn’t reacting outwardly to Whittaker’s resistance. “You did agree to be questioned.” Angela spoke stolidly.
“I agreed to be questioned, but we didn’t agree ahead of time on what the questions were gonna be,” Whittaker said triumphantly, leaning back in her metal chair. If her hands hadn’t been manacled, she probably would have crossed her arms.
“In two days, no matter whether you help us, you will be executed by the state of Louisiana. You’ll be gone. Forever,” Vince said quietly. Even Angela could hardly hear him. “What kind of legacy do you want to leave behind? Do you feel remorse for your actions? If so, then the best thing for you to do would be to answer our questions. You can’t bring back the men you killed, but you can help us prevent more people from dying at the hands of killers.” Vince had been going for gentle and reasonable; the last line hadn’t done him any favors.
“What if I don’t feel bad ‘bout what I did?”
“Then don’t you want to let everyone know how you did what you did?” Angela baited her. “How you got away with it long enough to do it three times? Before we came in, I was telling Vince—Agent Glasser, I mean—that I thought that was pretty impressive. Don’t you think?” she said casually, turning to the side.
“Absolutely,” Vince agreed. “It’ll be in the books even if we never figure out why you did it, that’s for sure. Good for you.”
Whittaker chuckled rather falsely. “I didn’t say I’m glad I did it. I just don’t feel bad.”
“Then what do you feel?” Vince asked.
“I don’t feel a thing, Agent. Not a thing.”
“How did you feel when you killed your first victim, Mr. Flannery?” Angela inquired.
“Who?”
“Even the most indifferent killer would remember a name mentioned dozens of times in court. I don’t believe that you’d forget, even after twelve years,” Vince said, unimpressed with Whittaker’s games. “Answer Agent Hawkins’ question, please.”
“I don’t have to.”
Vince’s muscular back tensed underneath his suit jacket.
“You don’t have to do any of this,” Angela confirmed, “but you did agree to speak with us.”
“Yes, ma’am, I did.”
“Then what is it you wanted to talk about, if it isn’t why you killed those men?” Vince asked.
“What I wanna talk about is why you’re here,” Whittaker said.
Vince and Angela exchanged cautious glances. “We’re here to talk to you,” he said.
“I wanna know why, though. Why do you need to analyze someone when they kill a few people? You really think everyone who murders someone does it for a reason?”
“Yes,” Vince said with much more confidence now. “We do.”
“You don’t think it’s possible that some people kill for no reason?”
“No, we don’t think it’s possible. People kill for all sorts of reasons. Anger, revenge, mental instability. People who kill multiple times fall under fewer categories,” Angela said. “And you have a clean mental bill of health, so this was a conscious decision.”
As Vince grew more and more convinced that this trip had been a waste, he zoned out. He wasn’t tired, wasn’t sore, wasn’t nauseous. He was homesick. He felt as if he could get up right now and walk away from his work. He didn’t just want to hear Charlie’s voice or see him smile in a video—he wanted to hold him close and not let go until his own body gave up every ounce of strength.
Angela sensed Vince’s loss of focus. “Even if you think you killed those men for no real reason, there was one,” she said. “At least one. The more you tell us about if and how you knew those men, what you were thinking when you killed them, how you felt afterward, the more we can prevent crimes like this from happening in the future. Even if you’re not sorry for the lives you took, that doesn’t mean you want more people dead. If that were the case, you would have taken a gun into a public place, not go to such great lengths to kill only three men, one at a time.”
“Like I said,” Whittaker sighed, shrugging her shoulders loosely, “I really don’t care. What’s with you?” she asked Vince, leaning forward and shooting a sidelong glance at Angela first, then staring at Vince, whose eyes were aimed downward, his lips pinched between his teeth. He didn’t remain that way for long.
“It doesn’t bother you?” he asked. “That you know you’ll be dead soon, in two days, and you have no choice?”
“Course it bothers me. But I had a choice. Even if I woulda gotten away with it, I wouldn’t’ve lasted a week outsida prison. It don’t matter if you’re guilty or not. If people think you’re guilty, you are, and you’re as good as gone. I lived much longer here than I would’ve out there.”
“If it bothers you that you’re about to die, then you did this for a reason. It had to have mattered,” Angela insisted. “What about your sister?”
“What about her?”
“Where is she right now?” Angela said.
Whittaker shrugged. “How in the blazes would I know that? She don’t write. She don’t call. She don’t visit.”
“You seemed to be getting along at the time of the trial,” Vince said. “What changed?”
Whittaker started to look truly rattled for the first time. “If you’re interested in her, why don’t you go talk to her?”
Angela saw Vince shifting his jaw. “She won’t cooperate with the FBI, and by law she doesn’t have to,” she said. “Unless we had reason to believe she had something to do with these murders.”
“I killed those men.”
“No one’s saying you didn’t,” Vince said. He had Whittaker’s rapt attention now. “But obviously you two are at odds. If you gave us a reason to question her, we could look into it for you. Maybe get her to come visit you one last time.”
Up until Vince’s last s
entence, Whittaker had looked close to breaking. She’d licked her lips, let her eyes dart around the room. But at the mention of her sister visiting, she locked right up again. Vince silently cursed himself.
“I’m done talkin’.”
“She doesn’t have to come visit you,” Angela said. “Agent Glasser’s just being…well…a man. He doesn’t understand the intricacies of interpersonal relationships. All he cares about is whether his tie is straight and his shoes are shined. He’s clueless.”
Vince hoped Angela could save this. “Hawkins, come on. Way to throw me under the bus,” he muttered.
Angela knew full well that Vince would rather her give his personal history than to lie to someone to get them to talk. “It’s true. His wife left him years ago and he still hasn’t been with another woman since then. I was forced to go on this trip with him because I drew the short straw. Wanna lose those?” she asked, pointing to Whittaker’s manacles.
The woman just shrugged. “Least he’s a looker,” she said. “Bet I know why your wife left. You probably couldn’t keep it in your pants, huh?”
“What have you left behind?” Vince asked. He’d talked to enough cocky death row inmates to know they had lost their chance here.
“This again?”
Angela wanted to signal to Vince that he was careening out of control—at least compared to how calm he normally was unless angered—but she knew as well as he did that this interview was as good as over. Vince’s questions still had a purpose. Not related to the Bureau in any way, but to him and his emotional health. If he needed to get a little something out of his system, Angela decided that using an uncaring murderer two days away from death as his punching bag wasn’t a crime punishable by anything but a bit of a frown.
“Everyone leaves behind a legacy,” Vince replied, holding firm. “What’s yours, save for the fact that you ended the lives of three men who can only be perceived as innocent according to your insistence that you killed them for no reason?”
Whittaker seemed to know that complete silence would aggravate Vince far more effectively than even a wisecrack, so she just smiled and said nothing. Vince stared her down with increasing intensity, but he would never lay a finger on her, so Angela let him do what he wanted before he called the end of the interview. But he didn’t persist for long. After a staring contest that lasted for only a few minutes, he stood. He offered no closing salutation or thanks for Whittaker’s time. More calmly than Angela expected, he gathered his materials and went for the buzzer.
