Todd Strasser - Blood on my hands

JNo, I think I’ve told you everything.

BAt any time during this interview did you feel coerced or forced to say something you believed was not true?

JNo. I told you everything I wanted to tell you. You didn’t make me say anything I didn’t want to say. I’m just… really sorry about what happened.

BMs. Sanchez, at any time during this interview did you observe Miss Jenkins being coerced or forced to say anything it appeared she did not believe was true?

NUNo. It appeared to me that she gave all the information willingly.

BIt is now 4:12 on September seventeenth. This concludes our interview with Miss Dakota Jenkins.

IN THE DAYS that followed Slade’s arrest, the news reported that the police had found traces of Katherine’s blood on the floor mat in Slade’s pickup. They’d also determined that the downward angle of the stab wounds on her body meant that Katherine’s killer was likely to be taller than she was and right-handed. And probably not a short lefty, like me. Finally, they’d found evidence, Slade’s DNA, under Katherine’s fingernails.

Dakota had convinced Slade to hide near the dugout with latex gloves and a stocking over his head. Before the kegger, Dakota went to Katherine’s house, pretending she wanted to make up after their most recent fight. While she was there, she took one of the kitchen knives. At the kegger she met Slade by the dugout and gave him the knife. Later she told Katherine she wanted to speak to her in private about everything that had happened between them and suggested that Katherine go to the dugout and wait for her.

Katherine went to the dugout, where Slade was hiding and drinking. He heard her coming and stepped out in his disguise with the knife. But Katherine recognized him. Assuming that he was only trying to scare her, and that this was his revenge for her getting me to break up with him, she laughed and taunted him, saying that if he was stupid enough to do something like this, then she was glad she’d gotten me to break up with him, because he really didn’t deserve me.

Until that moment, Slade had believed Dakota’s lie-that I’d broken up with him because of another guy. But now he learned that it was Katherine who’d engineered the breakup. And he lost it. There was no other way to explain it. When he thought of all the pain she had randomly caused him, all the hope she had so easily and callously destroyed, he just plain freaked out.

There was a slight struggle, just enough for Katherine to get some traces of his skin under her nails. Then he stabbed her.

He ran across the ball field to his truck and left. Then he stopped and called Dakota to tell her what had happened and say that he was going to turn himself in to the police. But Dakota’s initial reaction was that she was almost as much to blame for the murder as he was, and she convinced him not to do it. She promised him she would take care of it.

She had connections.

Dakota took care of it by sending me to the dugout to look for Katherine, then following with a crowd of kids. She took the photo of me beside Katherine’s body, then posted it on the Internet.

So why were the police looking for me even though they suspected that a tall righty had committed the murder? Because they had the bloody murder weapon with my fingerprints. Because they had the photo of me beside Katherine’s body with the knife in my hand. Because I ran away from the murder scene. And because it was just possible, though unlikely, that I was ambidextrous and had knocked Katherine to the ground before stabbing her with the knife in my right hand.

Finally, there was the possibility that the killer and I had acted together. That we’d planned it, and that even though someone else had been the one who’d stabbed her, I’d been an accomplice in the crime.

October

THE HUGE REDBRICK Fishkill Correctional Facility sits on a hill surrounded by green lawns and double rows of tall chain-link fencing laced with razor wire. To enter you go through a metal detector and then several sets of thick doors, some made of reinforced steel and shatterproof glass, others made from heavy steel bars.

Inside, you are in a world of sharp right angles and hard flat walls. There is no softness in prison. No comfort. Sounds echo and amplify. The click of footsteps on hard concrete, the clack of locks opening and closing, the clank of barred doors banging shut.

Inside is only the smell of body odor. There is no sweetness or perfume.

Inside, now, are my brother and Slade.

As I walk down the hall to the visiting room, I find it almost impossible to believe that this has happened. Until Sebastian attacked my father, no one in our family had ever been sent to prison. No one we knew had ever spent time in jail. We were just everyday people with everyday jobs and everyday interests. Living in an everyday town.

Here the visiting room is a series of heavy reinforced windows with partitions between them. You sit on a stool that is bolted into the floor. You pick up a phone. You look through the thick glass at the person on the other side.

For the last two years, I’ve come here once a week to visit Sebastian on the other side of that glass. I’ve grown used to that. Today, for the first time, it’s Slade I’m here to see. Mr. Lamont couldn’t afford his bail, so Slade will have to stay here until his trial.

When I see him through the window, my insides churn and I can’t help bursting into tears. Slade’s face is drawn and his jaw is covered with stubble. He presses his fingers into the corners of his eyes, as if to stem his own tears. We talk about what it’s like inside. He tells me he’s seen Sebastian in the cafeteria, but they haven’t yet had a chance to speak. We talk about what’s going on in Soundview. But the more we talk, the more I’m aware of what we’re not talking about. Finally I have to bring her up.

“Dakota’s parents sent her away to a private boarding school in Europe,” I tell him. She’s been charged with a felony-reckless endangerment-but unlike Slade’s dad, her parents were able to afford the bail that guarantees she’ll return for her trial.

When I tell Slade about Dakota’s going away, he nods and stares down at the counter on his side of the window.

“Slade?”

He looks up, his eyes sad, his face etched with regret.

“That story you told me, about how Dakota hit on one of the workers doing construction in her kitchen?”

He nods. “It was me.”

“And you didn’t tell me because she was supposed to be my friend? Or at least we were in the same crowd?”

Again he nods. “It was back when you were still happy about being with them.”

“And then, when you came back from Guard training…” There’s no reason to state the obvious-that Dakota was waiting to tell him that I was seeing someone else, but that she was there for him, and that her mother could help him get a deferment so he wouldn’t be deployed. Slade stares down at the counter again and I can only blame myself. I’d broken his heart and he’d come home feeling hopeless and in agony, and there was Dakota, sending him naked photos of herself, offering her version of comfort.

“You stopped doing your knee exercises when you found out your unit was going to be deployed?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “I stopped way before that. Like, from the moment I told Dad I’d go into the Guard. First I was hoping I’d fail the entrance physical. I mean, if I did, Dad couldn’t blame me, right? But the doctors okayed me. Then I hoped the knee would blow out during training. I could feel it getting weaker, but it didn’t give. And then, when they told us we were being deployed, I really freaked.”