CHAPTER 7
Small boy, stick arms, heart-shaped face. Expectant brown eyes widened as I entered his cell. The pinched, wounded features of a Dickensian orphan.
I introduced myself.
He said, “Pleased to meet you.” It rolled out easy, like a rehearsed line, but if there was sarcasm I wasn’t catching it.
I sat down and he said, “That chair’s not real comfortable.”
“Not much choice around here,” I said.
“You kin sit on the bed and I kin sit there.”
“Thanks, Troy, but I’m fine.”
“Okay.” He straightened his posture, rested a hand on each knee.
I took out my notepad. Looked at his hands. Narrow, white, long-fingered hands, grimy around the cuticles but the nails had been clipped neatly. Delicate hands. It wouldn’t take much strength to strangle a baby, but still…
“Troy, I’m a psychologist.”
“To talk to me about my feelings.”
“Someone told you that.”
“Miz Weider.”
Sydney Weider was his primary P.D. She’d been more persistent than Lauritz Montez about meeting me before I began my evaluation, had gotten aggressive when I refused. Laskin had termed her “a pit bull. Mark my word, she’s already making notes for the appellate attorneys.”
“What did Ms. Weider tell you about me?”
“You’re gonna ask questions and I should cooperate.” He smiled, as if demonstrating.
I said, “Is there anything you want to talk about?”
“I guess,” he said.
“What’s that?”
“I should talk about her.”
“Her?”
“The baby.”
“Everyone calls her a baby,” I said, “but she was more like a toddler, right?”
The term was new to him. “I guess.”
“Kristal was two years old, Troy. She walked and talked a little.”
“I didn’t hear her talk.”
“Ever see her before?”
“No way.”
I said, “Why’d you decide to take her?”
“She followed us.”
“Where?”
“Out.”
“Out of the mall.”
“Yeah.” The camera had caught Kristal dangling, kicking her legs. The police had assumed it was a struggle, but both defense briefs suggested that all three kids had been horsing around.
As if that mattered.
I said, “Why’d Kristal follow you?”
Shrug.
“Can you think of any reason at all, Troy?”
“Probably she thought we were cool.”
“Why would she think that?”
“ ’Cause she was little and we’re big.”
“Big is cool.”
“Yup.”
“Okay,” I said. “Kristal followed you and then what happened?”
“We went to the park and smoked and had some beer.”
“All of you.”
“Yup.”
“Where’d you get the beer?”
His eyes half closed. Suddenly wary. “We had it.”
“You had it with you at the mall?”
“From before.”
“Where’d you keep it?”
“At the park.”
“Where at the park?”
Hesitation. “Behind a tree.”
“Hidden.”
“Yup.”
“So you drank and smoked. All three of you.”
“Yup.”
“Kristal drank and smoked.”
“She tried to. She wasn’t no good at it.”
“Kristal had trouble drinking and smoking,” I said.
“It made her cough.”
“So what’d you do?”
“Kept trying.”
“To make Kristal smoke?”
“To help her.”
“How’d that go?”
“Not so good.”
“What happened?”
“She coughed some more.”
“Anything else?”
“She threw up.”
“Where?”
“On my shirt.” Now the eyes were slits.
“You didn’t like that,” I said.
“It smelled shit- smelled bad.”
“Kind of gross.”
“Yup.”
“What’d you do about that?”
“About what?”
“Being barfed on.”
“Pushed her away.”
“Where’d you push Kristal?”
He placed his hands on his chest.
“Where did she land?” I said.
“On the floor.”
“The floor of the park.”
“The grass.”
“She land hard?”
