J. Bertrand - Pattern of Wounds

“Yes.”

“She told you that?”

“Yes, she told me. He would go to the house and try to come in, but she wouldn’t let him. She told him to go away. Go away or she’d call the police.”

“You’re sure about this? You’d testify in court?”

A pause. “Yes, I will. So help me God, I will.”

I get up and go to the door, signaling the lieutenant.

“Detective,” she says. “It’s not right this happening to her. My girl wanted one thing in life, and that was to be happy. She at least deserved that.”

SUNDAY, DECEMBER 6 — 11:09 A.M.

Jason Young watches me from across the table, the familiar hunted look creeping into his eyes as I unpack one stack of papers after another: my notes from the scene, the preliminaries from the ME, transcripts of the statements Dr. Hill made last night to Aguilar and Mrs. Walker just completed with me, the photos from the scene, facedown on the table. And a lot of unrelated paperwork to pad it all out. I’m sending a message through this bit of theater. We have everything. We know everything. Tell me a lie and I’ll see through it because the facts are spelled out right here.

I square up a fresh legal pad in front of me, pen poised. “Now. Mr. Young. Why don’t we start with some basics? Where you live, where you work, that kind of thing.”

He glances from me to Bascombe, who sits to my left a few feet back, arms crossed. The wheels are turning. He’s trying to work out how much we really know. All I’m after for now is to get him talking, though. I need a baseline read on the man, to see what he’s like when he tells the truth. That way it will be easier to spot the deception later on.

“Don’t you already know that stuff?” he asks.

“These are just preliminaries we have to get out of the way.”

He sits back in his chair. “What was the question again?”

“Let’s start with your address.”

He gives me the street address of the apartment where Aguilar and I first spotted him. I write it down like it’s new information.

“And where do you work?”

“I’m an assistant manager at the Luggage Outlet on Richmond.”

“Okay.” I make another note. “And that’s your only employer?”

His eyes narrow. “No.”

I’ve caught him by surprise with the question. He scans the stacks of paper in front of me, probably wondering what else I have in there. Good. I want him to wonder.

“You have three jobs, isn’t that right?”

He nods slowly. “But only the Luggage Outlet is full time. I work nights and some weekends for Blunt Ministries, packing orders and duplicating DVDs, and there’s a friend of mine with a landscaping business who hires me on big jobs maybe once, twice a month.”

“Doing all that,” Bascombe says, “you must not have a lot of free time, Jason.”

“Not really.”

“So what’s your typical day look like? Take yesterday for instance. Walk us through that.”

“Yesterday wasn’t typical.”

“Just for instance,” I say. “Did you go into the Luggage Outlet at all?”

He shakes his head. “On Saturdays I go into the Blunt warehouse around ten-that’s off of Twenty-sixth Street-and I’m there pretty much all day, until maybe six or seven, depending on the volume of orders from the week. People order DVDs and over the weekend I do the duplicating and packaging; then the reverend will take them to the post office Monday morning.”

“The reverend?”

“Reverend Blunt. You know. . Curtis Blunt? He’s on the local radio.”

“Is that his church you were going to this morning?” I ask.

“He doesn’t really have a church. It’s more like a ministry. He has his show, and he makes videos of his teaching.”

“And he was with you yesterday?”

He shakes his head. “Not the whole day. He came by in the morning, but mostly I work alone. I get more done that way. The reverend’s really talkative when he’s there, so it’s hard to keep going.”

“What about lunch?” I ask. “You took a break, right? Where’d you go?”

“I’m not working three jobs so I can go out for lunch, man. I brought my lunch with me. That’s what I do.”

“All right, then. Why are you working three jobs?”

He shrugs. “Stupidity.”

Bascombe chuckles. “You wanna elaborate on that for us?”

“I’m working three jobs because, until about a year ago, I was spending money I didn’t have on a lifestyle I didn’t need. I had a mortgage and two car notes and about forty grand in credit card debt, which I was rolling from one card to the other. It kept growing and growing and I was barely making forty a year before taxes. So I said enough is enough.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I cut up the cards, sold the house, got rid of the cars, bought a junky used truck and started working sixty hours a week or more to put a dent in the debt. I’m getting out from under all that.”

“And what about your wife?” I ask. “You are married. I notice you’re wearing a ring.”

He lifts his hand and stares at the ring, like he’s only just noticed it.

“Yeah,” he says. “I am.”

“What did she think about all this?”

Young starts shaking his head in slow motion, a hard smile on his lips. “That’s what all this is about, isn’t it? You’ve got me here because of Simone.”

I give nothing away. “That’s her name? Simone Young.”

He snorts. “She doesn’t call herself that anymore, but yeah. Simone Young. And all this”-he waves his arm over my stacked papers-“it’s for nothing, because whatever story she told you isn’t true, okay? It’s not even her fault, though. It’s Candace, isn’t it? I saw her out there when the other detective brought in the coffee. Listen, that woman is a bad influence on Simone, and if you separate the two of them and just ask Simone what happened, she’ll eventually tell you the truth. But not with her mother in the room.”

“The truth about what?” I ask.

“Come on. I’m not stupid, man. I see what all this is. But you know what? It’s he said/she said, because nobody else was there.”

“What’s he said/she said?”

“You know what.”

Bascombe chuckles again, acting like he’s impressed with the performance. “You gotta spell it out for us, though. For the record.”

“What you brought me here for,” Young says. “I didn’t do it. I mean, that’s not what it was.”

“What’s not?” I say, raising my voice just a bit.

“Rape,” he says. “Okay? It wasn’t rape. I didn’t rape my wife.”

“All right. So tell us what did happen. Give us your side.”

“It’s not gonna make any difference.”

“Telling the truth makes a difference,” I say. “It always does.”

I risk a glance at the lieutenant, who’s on the edge of his chair. He raises an eyebrow ever so slightly and I answer with an imperceptible nod. This is going great. Better than expected. We’ve got him talking, and even though he’s being careful to speak of Simone in the present tense, the more he says, the tighter we lock him into a version of events.

And once he’s committed, every time we poke a hole in the story, he’ll be forced to change it, forced to improvise on the spot. The worst case scenario is that we can go to trial with clear evidence of deception. The best case scenario is that we run him back and forth through the inconsistencies so many times that he sees it’s hopeless and decides to come clean. We’re going for the best case scenario, needless to say.

“Seriously, Jason,” I say. “This is your opportunity to set things straight. We’re here to listen, and like you said, it’s her story versus yours. Only we don’t have your story.”