“But it won’t be admissible in court without a warrant!” she protested. “And any leads we derive from it are fruit of the poisonous tree, inadmissible also. Although only against Sarah van der Vere. And only if she ends up being a defendant.”
“There, you see?” Dan said. “Not a problem. Sarah might be a porn star, but I’d bet good money she’s not Benson’s killer. So I vote we watch the tape.”
“Sign me up for that duty!” Randall joked. “My wife don’t let me watch blue movies at home.”
RANDALL HAD CALLED AHEAD, SO THE STAFF at Otisville was expecting them. A heavyset young woman from the Liaison Office, with a bleached blond buzz cut, met them at the X-ray machine. Her name tag read LEONA BURKETT, but she didn’t bother to introduce herself.
“Check your cell phones and your weapons,” Leona ordered, snapping her chewing gum. She gave them receipts for what they checked and peel-off name tags to stick on their clothes, then led them through a bewildering series of grimy corridors and elevators, metal doors clanging shut behind them. The ill-fitting polyester pants of her uniform emphasized her wide rear end as she sashayed ahead, the keys on her belt jangling.
“Wait here,” she barked, unlocking a gray metal door and motioning them into a small interview room. “Prisoner’ll be up soon.” She turned the key from the outside when she left, locking them in.
Claustrophobic and windowless except for a tiny pane of bulletproof glass set face high in the door, the room contained little beyond a battered steel desk holding a red telephone and three dilapidated swivel chairs. It was air-conditioned to an arctic chill and lit by a flickering fluorescent light.
“Not enough chairs,” Melanie noted.
“That’s okay, you sit.” With elaborate courtesy, Randall pulled over a chair. “I owe you one for taking the backseat on the ride up.”
“Don’t count on me being so cooperative going back,” she joked.
Randall’s snappy rejoinder was cut short by the sound of another key in the lock.
The door opened, and two burly, pasty-faced guards entered, with Delvis Diaz between them. Diaz was shackled hand and foot, but he walked with attitude. Everything from the set of his square jaw to his narrowed eyes to his erect posture said Fuck you to anyone who cared to listen. Short, stocky, and powerfully built, he still wore his lank black hair in the style of gangbangers of a decade earlier, long and gathered into a ponytail on top, shaved underneath. Clad in a standard-issue bright orange prison jumpsuit, he sported around his thick neck the milky green plastic rosary beads allowed inmates, designed to snap apart if you tried to garrote your bunkmate.
One of the guards unlocked Diaz’s cuffs, placed a hand on his shoulder, and pushed him down into a chair, fastening his right handcuff to the chair’s metal arm.
“Looks like it’s your lucky day, Delvis,” the other guard said wolfishly, looking Melanie up and down.
“Watch your tone, pal,” Dan warned.
The guard shrugged, as if to say What’s your problem? but said nothing.
“Pick up that phone when you’re done. It rings through to us,” the other guard said. They left, locking the door behind them.
“The vermin that work in these places,” Dan muttered, shaking his head.
Diaz looked at his visitors belligerently. “Who the fuck are you?”
In answer, Dan and Randall flashed their badges. Melanie sat down across the narrow desk from Diaz and extracted her credentials from her briefcase, passing them to him. He took them with his free left hand, glanced at them dismissively, and shoved them back at her.
“Say what you got to say, because you interferin’ with my exercise period,” he said irritably.
“We thought maybe you might want to help yourself out,” Melanie said evenly, leaning forward in her chair slightly to make better eye contact.
“Yeah, like what? Giving up those assholes gettin’ blow jobs from the inmates in the women’s unit?” His gesture toward the door implicated the guards who had just left. “You don’t need me for that. Everybody in this place knows.”
“We came to talk to you about the murder of the man who prosecuted you, Jed Benson.” Melanie looked him in the eye. He stared back, defiant yet calm, sizing her up and tipping back slightly in his chair. “I take it from your expression you’re not surprised to hear that Mr. Benson was killed?”
“What goes around comes around.” He smiled nastily.
Melanie exchanged glances with Dan and Randall. This guy obviously hated Benson with a passion. Perhaps she should take Rommie Ramirez’s retaliation theory more seriously. At least she should treat Diaz as a viable suspect. She reached into her briefcase and took out a form and a pen, sliding both across the desk.
“These are your rights. If you’re unable to read, Agent O’Reilly can read them to you. Initial after each paragraph to show you understand, and sign at the bottom.”
“I can read. And I know my rights.”
Diaz made no move to take the form and instead began rocking his chair back and forth slightly. With his long experience of the legal system, he surely knew that she needed his signature waiving his rights. Without it, any confession he made could be thrown out in court. But Diaz continued to rock his chair as if bored to distraction, saying nothing. Melanie decided to get more aggressive.
“I’m not gonna lie to you, Delvis. You’re a suspect in Jed Benson’s murder. Some people think you ordered the hit.” He laughed derisively. She waited calmly for him to stop laughing, then continued in the same tone. “We’re working the case, and I promise you we’re gonna find the killer. And I don’t mean just the shooter, but everybody who was involved, including the guy who gave the order. We took time from our busy schedules to come up here and listen to your side of the story. You should view it as an opportunity.”
“Knock yourself out,” he said, laughing again, rocking the chair more exuberantly. “Pin it on me. I don’t give a fuck. I’m already doing three lifes.”
“Times have changed, Delvis. Back when you were convicted of killing the Flatlands Boys, the federal death penalty was almost never applied. But it is now. It would be pretty easy to convince a jury to impose it on someone who got three lifes and still kept killing.”
The chair stopped rocking, its front legs touching down. He sat up straight and looked at Melanie uneasily.
“Now that I’ve got your attention, what do you have to tell us?”
“I didn’t do it.”
“Let’s start again. I wasn’t expecting a full confession up front. Obviously you didn’t do it with your own hands, since you’ve been locked up for over eight years. We understand that. We’re looking for the guys on the outside, the ones who pulled the trigger. You could help yourself by giving them up and telling us where to find them.”
“I told you, I’m innocent. I don’t have no outside accomplices, because I didn’t do the crime. Think about it. It’s mad late in the game! I hated Benson, sure, and I’m glad he’s dead. The prick fuckin’ set me up. But if I was gonna hit him, why do it now? I’d of done it years ago!”
Dan and Melanie looked at each other. Diaz had just confirmed an idea they’d kicked around before. Retaliation usually comes when the shock of conviction is still raw. Not years later, when most inmates have resigned themselves to doing their time. That was the biggest problem with the retaliation theory. Apparently, though, Randall felt differently. He wasn’t buying a word Diaz said.
“I suppose you’re gonna tell us you didn’t kill the Flatlands Boys either,” Randall taunted, cracking his knuckles. Melanie threw him a warning look. Antagonizing Diaz at this point in the interview seemed counterproductive to her.
“Matter of fact, that’s right. I knew ’em, they worked for me, but I didn’t never body ’em.”