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?”
“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.
