Dead Boyfriends (28 page)

Merodie smiled again. “I'd appreciate that,” she said. “So, what's new?”

“You tell us,” G. K. said. “What's all this about you being isolated from your fellow inmates?”

“Not all of them,” Merodie said. “Just one.”

“Which one?” I asked.

“Linda.” She said the word as if it were a sexually transmitted disease. “What happened was, I'm having breakfast. They serve breakfast here at 7:00
A.M.
whether you're hungry or not, and who eats at 7:00
A.M.
? Usually, I eat breakfast at, I don't know, noon. But the screws, they don't care. Eat or don't eat, it doesn't matter to them. Only no raiding the refrigerator later. So I'm like sitting there, trying to choke down this, this—I don't know what it was—oatmeal, I guess, and this woman sits next to me that I've never seen before, and the first words out of her mouth are, ‘Those bastards don't care about us,' which is what I'm saying, okay? So I start talking to her. Linda was her name. Turns out she was my new roommate, which kinda surprised me cuz it's not like the jail is overcrowded. There are twenty-two cells in the housing unit—that's what they call it, a housing unit—but four of the eighteen
cells that have one bed, they're empty, and so are three of the four cells that have two beds. So why do I have a roommate, cellmate, whatever? Only Linda, she seemed all right. She was polite and considerate, a good listener, so I'm like, ‘Okay.' ”

“What did you tell her?” There was genuine alarm in G. K.'s voice.

“Nothing,” said Merodie. “I said—Linda wanted to know about Eli, and I told her what a swell guy he was and that I loved him to death.” G. K. and I both cringed at the word. “She wanted to know if we ever fought. She said she and her old man fought all the time. I'm like, ‘That wasn't the story with me and Eli.' I said we would yell at each other sometimes, but we never hit and we never stayed mad for long. You just couldn't stay mad at Eli, no way. Only Linda, she wouldn't leave it alone. She kept saying, ‘You never clobbered him?' She said she heard that I clobbered him. She said she heard that I clobbered him over the head with a bat. I'm like, ‘That isn't true,' but she kept pushing me and pushing me and so finally I pushed her.”

“Pushed her?” I said.

“We were in the common area. That's this place where we can sit at these tables and chairs that are anchored to the floor so you can't move them. And Linda just wouldn't stop talking about Eli, about how he must have been a jerk or something for me to hit him with a bat even though I kept saying I didn't hit him with a bat, so I pushed her over a chair—and a table—maybe I slapped her a couple times, too. And the guards, the detention deputies, they're leaning on this railing on the second floor above us. They see us, and all of a sudden they're hitting alarm buttons and spraying Mace at me. Next thing I know, they're dragging me off to segregation or isolation or whatever they call it.”

“Merodie,” said G. K.

“Yeah?”

“When they let you back into population . . .”

“Yeah?”

“Don't talk to Linda again. Don't even say hello to her.”

“Why not?”

“She's either an undercover cop,” I said, “or more likely a police informant who's trying to generate evidence to use against you.”

Merodie looked like a child who had just discovered how hot dogs are made. “Can they do that?” she asked.

We assured her that they could and often did.

“That sucks,” she said.

We agreed.

“Merodie,” I said. “We've been speaking to Priscilla St. Ana—”

She was off her chair and across the room in an instant. Her fists were clenched, and I was sure that she was going to hit me.

“I told you to stay away from her,” she said.

“Remember when I told you I was your friend?”

“Yeah, so what?”

“So shut up and sit down.” I was pointing at the chair. “I mean it.”

“McKenzie . . .” G. K. said.

I kept pointing at the chair. “I'm in a real bad mood,” I said.

“Your cold is better,” Merodie said. “Did you use the Vicks like I said?”

I nearly began to laugh. If they were going to strap her in the electric chair, Merodie would be warning her executioner not to stand too close.

When she was seated, I asked, “Why didn't your tell us about your daughter?”

“Look at me, McKenzie. What do you see? You don't have to say it, I'll say it. You see a pathetic drunk. If I didn't know it before, I know it now what with writing my history on a chalkboard all week. Silk, she shouldn't have to suffer cuz of that. That's why I gave her to Cilia, so she wouldn't have to suffer. She's got a good life with Cilia. My life has been just one thing after another, and some of it ain't my fault but most of it is, and my daughter, she ain't gonna suffer cuz of that. So you, you just shut up now about Silk. I'm the boss, I'm the client.” She glanced
from me to G. K. and back again. “You have to do what I say, and I say you don't talk about Silk and you don't talk about Cilia. I don't want no one pointing at them and saying things. I'd rather—I'd rather go away than let that happen.”

“Go to prison,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Merodie,” said G. K. “I think we have an opportunity to make sure that doesn't happen.”

“Oh yeah?”

G. K. brought her hands together in a way that made it seem like she was appealing to the deity and said, “There's something I want to say, but I don't want you to interrupt until I'm finished. Okay?”

Merodie nodded.

“Now bear with me,” G. K. added. “It gets a little complicated.”

Merodie nodded again.

“It would be extremely valuable to us if we could furnish the county attorney with a
second
suspect in Eli's death. Now, we wouldn't need to prove this second suspect actually committed the crime—”

“The crime is hitting Jefferson on the head with the bat,” Merodie said.

“Yes, exactly. But, please, don't—”

“I won't.”

“Interrupt.” G. K. said. “A second suspect would interject
reasonable doubt
into the case to the point where the county attorney might consider
dropping it
altogether.”

“Do you really think—”

“Merodie, please,” G. K. said, exasperated.

“Sorry.”

“The question is,
who
would that second suspect be? Now, in your initial statement to the police, the one you gave when they first brought you to Mercy Hospital, you said, well, wait a moment. . .”

G. K. unsnapped the locks on her briefcase, opened it, and withdrew a copy of the Supplementary Investigation Report filed by the deputy
who had taken Merodie to Mercy Hospital. I was looking at the door to the interview room, wishing I were on the other side of it. I always knew that defense attorneys would do almost anything to get their clients off, including coaching them into what might or might not be a lie, but watching it happen—it made me feel like a co-conspirator, and I didn't like the feeling.

Finally, G. K. found the passage she was seeking and quoted from it. “You said, ‘Some guy with blond hair came into the residence and got into a fight with him,' meaning Jefferson.”

Merodie nodded.

“ ‘I asked Davies'—that's the deputy speaking now—'I asked Davies who that might be and she told me that she felt it could have been a former boyfriend. I asked for the name of the boyfriend but Davies claimed she could not remember.' Now, here's the thing, Merodie. If you
could
remember who that former boyfriend was . . .”

“I'm not sure.”

G. K. leaned forward in her chair.

“I was wondering if the former boyfriend might have been
Richard Scott Nye,
who has
blond hair.
Now, he had good reason to come to your house. He had just been released from jail on a drug conviction, and he believes
you
informed on him.”

“I did inform on him,” Merodie insisted.

“Yes. So Nye could have come to your house that day . . .”

“Yes.”

“To get revenge . . .”

“Yes.”

“And got into a fight with Jefferson.”

“Yes.”

“The question is:
Do you remember
Nye coming to your house and getting into a fight with Jefferson? In your statement you said that a man with blond hair who could have been
a former boyfriend got
into a fight
with Jefferson. Do you
remember
now that the man was Richard Nye? Because if you do,
we might be able to get you out of here.”

G. K. said that last part very slowly and very carefully, then sat back in her chair and waited while Merodie worked it over in her head.

It took Merodie forty-seven seconds by my watch before she said, “It wasn't Richard.”

G. K.'s mouth hung open, but nothing came out. She closed it again, licked her lips, and said, “Let me explain this again.” She did, too. Slowly. Carefully. Yet in the end, Merodie's answer was the same.

“It wasn't Richard.”

“But it could have been him,” G. K. blurted.

Merodie leaned across the table, her elbows supporting her weight. Her voice was like the first frost of autumn.

She said, “You wouldn't want me to testify to something that wasn't true, would you, Ms. Bonalay? Isn't that, whaddaya call it, suborning perjury?”

In that moment I searched Merodie's face and found something there that I hadn't noticed before—raw intelligence. Merodie Davies had a plan. I just didn't know what it was.

Dark and menacing storm clouds were gathering at the horizon by the time we left Merodie, but they were far too distant to worry about. We were walking toward our cars on East Main Street.

“I don't know what to do,” G. K. said.

“Merodie isn't leaving us many options,” I said.

“I could use a drink. McKenzie, would you have dinner with me?”

The question was so abrupt that I stopped walking.

“I'm sober, clear-headed, and feeling no pain,” G. K. said. “At least not much.”

“I don't think that would be a good idea.”

A look of disappointment flashed across her face. I liked the look. A woman disappointed because I was turning her down for a date—you bet I liked the look. I wished for a moment that Nina Truhler had seen it.

“Is it because we're working together? Because I could fire you.”

“It's not that. It's . . .”

It's Nina, dammit. Say it!

“Gen, the day we met, just hours before we met, I broke up with a woman—or I should say, she broke up with me. She was, she is—The thing is, I cared for this woman very much and I still do. The ego in me thought that the hole she left in my heart could easily be filled, but it just isn't true. You could drive a truck through the hole, it's that big. You're very smart and very tough and very considerate and very beautiful, but in the end—I'd love to spend time with you, it would be time well worth spending, but in the end . . .”

“In the end I'd be the rebound girl,” G. K. said.

“Something like that.”

“And if the other girl called, you'd go running to her.”

“It's not very fair to you.”

“At least you're being honest. Most guys wouldn't. Most guys would take advantage.”

“Don't think I haven't considered it.”

“I want to thank you anyway.”

“For what?”

“For all those ‘verys' you recited before. Especially the very smart and very tough. I don't always get credit for that.”

“I'm sorry, Gen.”

“Don't be. But you know, McKenzie, if that hole you're talking about ever shrinks to a manageable size—you know where I live.”

“Yes, I do.”

 

I didn't feel like returning to an empty house, so after I left G. K., I grabbed some fast food—which wasn't particularly fast and didn't taste much like food—and drove over to the Coffee Grounds coffeehouse in Falcon Heights and bought myself a double café mocha. Real Book Jazz was onstage, and Stacy, the pretty college girl who was fronting the
group, gave me a little wave as I claimed a small table in the back. She did this partly, I'm sure, because I was a fine figure of a man—just ask G. K.—but mostly because I have been known to stuff a fifty into the tip jar. I waved back.

Real Book Jazz wasn't a group so much as it was an idea. Once a week a ragtag collection of amateur musicians would gather at the coffeehouse to play for tips and the love of music. Nearly anyone who had mastered the “real book,” that near mythical compilation of standards that all jazz musicians are expected to know, was invited to sit in. As a result, the musicians changed from week to week and sometimes even from set to set. On this night a Lutheran pastor, a social worker, a part-time studio musician, a high school music teacher, and a bus driver had joined Stacy, a biochemistry major who was on summer break. They were riffing on “Scotch and Soda,” the old Kingston Trio tune, and really had it going. The xylophone player in particular was outstanding, and I thought,
Nina should hear this guy.

It was Nina who had discovered Coffee Grounds, who had first brought me to listen to Real Book, although I strongly suspect that she preferred the chocolate-covered coffee beans they sold to the music. Nina had a much more discerning ear than I had, and she prized consistency. Real Book Jazz, for all its virtues, was far from consistent. Yet sometimes they played the most extraordinary music—if only for a few moments—leaving behind a feeling of pure joy. In that regard the experience wasn't so much different from watching a journeyman ballplayer going yard in the late innings with the game on the line. It put a jump in your step and filled your heart with the sense that all things were possible.