Joel Goldman - Chasing The Dead

“Smart,” Rossi said. “The kind of thing that no one is going to check.”

“They will from now on,” Kalena said. “Jared was lucky. When Woodrell jumped him, Jared threw an elbow that knocked Woodrell to the floor. Otherwise, it would have been worse than the proverbial flesh wound.”

“But why?” Alex said. “Why try to kill Jared?”

Kalena sighed. “That’s the next crazy part of this. The corrections officers subdued Woodrell, put him in a single cell, and called the police and my office. Standard procedure when something like this happens.”

“Dispatch called me because Jared Bell is my case,” Rossi said.

“And I got here first. He’s waived his right to counsel but he won’t answer my questions.”

“Why not?” Alex asked.

“Because he says he’ll only talk to you.”

“Why me?”

“That’s what we’re going to find out.”

Kalena led them to a room on the second floor. A corrections officer was stationed outside the room and another was inside. Woodrell was seated at a table, legs and wrists shackled, his wrists cuffed to a steel hoop bolted to the table. He’d transformed from the dapper gentleman she’d met at the courthouse to an unshaven, disheveled, jumpsuit-clad inmate, though he was just as calm.

There were two chairs on the opposite side of the table. Kalena and Alex each took a seat. Rossi stood in the corner.

Alex thought for a moment, deciding where to start. An effective interrogation depended on either fear or trust. Woodrell had no reason to fear her, and his insistence on talking to her suggested he trusted her. Though they’d spoken only briefly the day before, she must have made a favorable impression, so that was where she’d begin.

“So, Mathew. Yesterday you told me that you wouldn’t need a criminal defense lawyer, but it looks like you do.”

“No,” he said, his voice quiet and sure, “I don’t.”

“How can you say that? You committed an armed robbery yesterday and today you assaulted someone with a deadly weapon.”

“I’m guilty of both, which makes a lawyer unnecessary, don’t you think?”

Alex shook her head. “It makes it even more important that you have a lawyer. Since the person you assaulted is my client, I can’t represent you. If you can’t afford a lawyer, the court will appoint one for you.”

“Yes, yes, Ms. Stone. I know all about my rights. Ms. Greene read them to me and we had a nice discussion about them, after which I signed a waiver.”

“Fair enough, then. Ms. Greene said you wouldn’t answer her questions but that you would answer mine. Why is that?”

“Because there are things you need to know.”

“Such as?”

“Your client is a murderer.”

“My client has been charged with murder. He hasn’t been convicted.”

“I’m not talking about that woman in the creek.”

Alex cocked her head at him. “Then what murder are you talking about?”

“My daughter. Jared Bell raped and murdered my daughter.”

Alex fell back in her chair, eyes wide and blinking, stunned like she’d been sucker punched. She looked at Kalena and Rossi, both of them slack-jawed, both of them taken by surprise as well.

She took a deep breath, studying Woodrell for some sign of artifice. His shoulders were soft and rounded, not bunched up around his ears, his face was slack, and his breathing was smooth. His hands were still, cupped around the hook in the table. His body was at ease except for his watery, pinched eyes. She thought about Jared and the name he shouted in his sleep, her stomach clenching at the realization that Woodrell might be telling the truth.

“Was her name Ali?”

Woodrell leaned his head to one side, nodding, the corners of his mouth quivering. “So he told you.”

“He didn’t tell me anything. One of the corrections officers told me that he wakes up during the night calling that name.”

Woodrell sniffed, his eyes reddening. “Ali was her nickname. Her full name was McAllister Woodrell.” He ducked his chin, chuckling. “I know. What a name, but McAllister was my wife’s maiden name. She insisted on naming our daughter McAllister because it reminded her of one of her favorite authors, Flannery O’Connor. Flannery is an old Irish clan and McAllister is Scottish, so my wife said if using the family name was good enough for Flannery, it was good enough for our daughter. Except it was a mouthful and everyone ended up calling her Ali.”

It was impossible for Alex not to smile at the story, told with a father’s sweetness. In spite of what he’d done, she sensed that Woodrell was a good man driven to extremes by a terrible loss, something she understood. He had a story to tell and he’d begun with the ending, though Alex sensed he had more to say.

“Tell me about your daughter.”

Woodrell sighed, smiling softly. “She was a good girl. Full of spunk. Like her mother. A tomboy, but a looker, hair black as a raven and a grin filled with more mischief than a sailor on leave. And she was strong and graceful, you know, like a gymnast or a dancer. And headstrong,” he said, chuckling again. “Like when she decided to join the army. Her mother raised hell about that, but you couldn’t tell Ali anything once she got something in her head.”

“Is that where Ali and Jared met, in the army?”

He nodded. “Yes. I don’t know exactly when or how. All I know is that they were on the same base in Afghanistan. She e-mailed us that a soldier was harassing her, ‘coming on to her’ was the way she put it. She wasn’t interested, but he was real pushy. She didn’t go into a lot of details, but we got the picture.”

“Did you ever find out who that was?”

Woodrell clenched his jaw. “Not till after. The army told me it was Jared Bell.”

“The army told you that it was Jared?”

“They didn’t have to. I could read between the lines.”

“Was Jared prosecuted?”

He tightened his grip on the hoop in the table, his knuckles whitening. “How could they when he was the only witness and they believed the story he told?”

“What story was that?”

Woodrell’s face twisted, his voice rising, his cheeks shuddering. “He said they were off the base and were kidnapped by the Taliban, that they made him watch while they raped Ali and then blew her brains out. And would have killed him too if they hadn’t been scared off by incoming fire from an Apache helicopter. By the time more troops got there, it was just Jared and my dead baby girl.”

“Was there an autopsy?”

He shook his head, puckering as if to spit, thinking better of it. “They put her in a box and sent her home. All we knew then was that she was killed in combat. I had to fight the army to get the rest of the story. By then it was too late to prove Jared raped her because we had her cremated.”

“What makes you think Jared lied about what happened?”

“His story never made any sense to me. What were they doing off base when they were supposedly kidnapped? When the helicopter showed up, why didn’t the Taliban put a bullet in Jared? And what about Ali’s e-mails? And why did the army stonewall me every time I asked questions? I’ll tell you why! They’re covering up for one of their own. That’s why!”

Woodrell banged his cuffed fists on the table, hanging his head and crying. Alex reached across the table, covering his hands with hers. They stayed like that for a moment, until he gently shook her hands away, straightening and sniffling as tears rolled down his cheeks.

Alex looked at Kalena. “Do you have a tissue?”

Kalena was riveted on Woodrell, Alex’s question bringing her back. “Oh, yeah. Sorry,” she said, digging a tissue from her purse and handing it to Alex.