The Mayor of Lexington Avenue (5 page)

After a few minutes she walked up to the window. “Please, Miss, could you please call back there and let them know I’m here? I really don’t want anyone talking to my son outside of my presence.” The receptionist gave her a look but picked up the phone and delivered the message to someone on the other end of the line.

“And can you please write down that I arrived here at 3:16?” Elena didn’t know why she did that.
It might be important later on,
she told herself.

Inside the station, Wes Brume was about to start questioning Rudy. He led him to the interrogation “facility,” an eight-by-ten-foot bare room with olive walls and a concrete floor. The furniture consisted of a nondescript metal table in the middle surrounded by four metal chairs. There was no two-way mirror for other cops to observe the festivities, but there was a tape recorder on the table and a video recorder had been permanently installed to record a suspect’s every facial expression during an interview. The Grunt did as he’d been told and left both devices off. He motioned Rudy to sit in one chair and he sat directly across from him with a new yellow pad and pen in front of him. He handed Rudy a document spelling out his Miranda rights and told him to sign it. “Just a formality,” he assured him. Rudy pretended to read through it but barely did so, then signed his name at the bottom.

Wes had played this interview over in his mind several times before he’d picked Rudy up. He decided to start by handing Rudy the rope and seeing if he could fit it around his own neck. He leaned over and spoke softly, almost in a whisper.

“Do you know why you’re here, Rudy?”

“No, sir.”

“I want to ask you some questions about the Lucy Ochoa murder. Did you know Lucy?” Rudy hesitated for a moment. He knew he couldn’t lie.

“Yes, sir.”

“Tell me everything you know about her murder.” Rudy was relieved the question wasn’t directed towards him personally. This was a question he could answer without hesitation. As he began to speak, the Grunt started writing on his yellow pad. Rudy looked at the ceiling as he tried to recall everything he had read in the newspaper.

“I know the murder occurred between 10 p.m. and 2 a.m. on the night of January 16th.” His eyes were almost closed as he strained to remember. “I know her body was found in the bedroom and she was naked. I know her throat had been cut with a knife. I know she was lying on the bed.” Rudy hesitated; his eyes were completely closed now as he searched his brain for any other facts he might have read. Wes waited patiently. He noted in his pad that Rudy had closed his eyes when he spoke, “as if he was recalling a past event in his mind.”

“That’s it,” Rudy concluded with a smile of satisfaction. “That’s all I know.”

“That’s good. Very good.” Wes had picked up on the play, realizing his was the role of the satisfied schoolteacher. Manipulation was the name of the game. No open-minded reasonable observer of this conversation would ever have suspected Rudy of being the murderer. The Grunt didn’t fall into that category, however. His mind was already made up. What he was doing now was window dressing—filling in the necessary blanks to feed a hungry jury.

“Now, Rudy,” Wes continued, “I have to ask you some personal questions about that night. It’s important for me to know everybody who was in the vicinity of the murder so I can eliminate them as suspects. You understand, don’t you?” Rudy nodded his head. He was starting to feel comfortable with Officer Brume. “Some of the neighbors indicated that you were on Mercer Street a little after eleven o’clock on the night of the murder, is that true?”

“Yessir.” Rudy was a little afraid, even embarrassed about the admission, but he was glad too. Glad to get it off his chest, especially in a nice conversation like this.

Elena had been sitting in the waiting room for twenty minutes. She had grown more and more impatient, and now was starting to suspect that something really wasn’t right. She walked up to the window again.

“I’ve been waiting twenty minutes. I want to know where my son is,” she said in a firm but steady voice.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” the woman replied. “I’ll call back there again.” Elena stayed at the window, watching as the woman called. After a moment she hung up and said, “Someone’s coming out to talk to you.” Elena stayed where she was. If someone didn’t walk through that door immediately, she was going to do something—she didn’t know what. All she knew was that the time for being polite was over. Almost immediately, a man walked through the door from the inner sanctum. He was dressed in black pants, a short-sleeve white shirt and a plain black tie, open at the collar. Elena guessed he was in his mid-thirties. He was as nondescript as his attire, neither short nor tall, fat nor skinny, handsome nor ugly—the perfect face in the crowd.

“Ma’am, I’m Del Shorter.” He stuck his hand out, which Elena stiffly accepted. Del motioned to the waiting room chairs. Elena noticed that he had closed the door to the inner sanctum behind him. She reluctantly sat down. “Ma’am,” Del began, “my partner, Detective Brume, is talking to your son as we speak. We’re investigating the Lucy Ochoa murder and your son may be able to help us. He works at the convenience store nearby. He may know the girl, know who she was coming in the store with. Maybe even saw her that night. These are things we need to know. We need descriptions. We’re showing him photographs. He could be a big help to us.”

It was a lie but a plausible lie, something that played into Elena’s own thoughts about the matter. Still, she wasn’t ready to sit calmly and wait. Rudy was too vulnerable.

“I accept what you’re saying but I’d like to see Rudy. I’d like to be there when you’re questioning him.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but that’s against department procedure.” Del knew he was treading on thin ice so he supplemented his response. “Technically, since this is an investigative stop, we’ve advised Rudy of his rights, so I’ll advise you as well. He does have the right to remain silent, he does have the right to an attorney —” Elena interrupted him.

“Mr. Shorter, you don’t understand. Rudy’s a little slow. If someone asks him a question, he’s going to answer it whether you advise him of his rights or not. I’m his mother, and I don’t want him answering questions.”

“I’m sorry, ma’am. He’s an adult and he must make those decisions himself. But you can hire an attorney for him and if his attorney advises us that we cannot talk to him, we’ll certainly stop.” Elena finally got it This was a stonewall. And why would they be stonewalling her if her son was not a suspect? She glared at Del Shorter.

“You’re not going to let me see him?”

“No, ma’am.”

“And you’re going to continue to talk to him?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Elena turned to leave. She had to get a lawyer over there immediately.
But who do I know?
And then she had a thought. “Is there a public phone here?” she asked the receptionist.

“Yes, ma’am, right outside the front doors.”

In the other room, Wes’s chat with Rudy was moving along quite well.

“Rudy, were you in Lucy Ochoa’s house that night?”

“Yessir.”

“What time?”

“I’m not sure but I close the store at eleven and I walked right over.” Rudy knew the next question would be about what he did at Lucy’s house and when he left. This was nothing like he imagined. He felt comfortable, relieved. He would tell Wes what happened and then he would go home. Unfortunately, his new best buddy, Wesley Brume, did not ask the logical next question.

“You killed her, didn’t you, Rudy.” It wasn’t a question: It was a demand.

Something kick-started in Rudy’s brain when he heard the question, like he was on a treadmill walking slowly and all of a sudden somebody hit a button and everything went into warp speed.

“No, no, no, I didn’t,” Rudy replied in a fractured voice that continued racing along. “She invited me in. We had a couple of beers. I started to get sick—tried to get out of the house but I fell over the coffee table. Broke the glass, cut my hand. Then she kicked me out.”

The Grunt kept the pace moving.

“You wanted her, didn’t you? You went over there to screw her, didn’t you?”

“No, no, no, it wasn’t like that. I mean in a way, yes, but I was hoping she wanted me.”

“And when she didn’t, you got angry. You took her in the bedroom. You slit her throat. You laid her on that bed and you watched her die.”

“No, no, no!” Rudy started to cry, the tears flowing down his cheeks. “I couldn’t do that, not to Lucy, not to anybody.” He was crying hard now. The Grunt decided to cut it back a bit. He handed Rudy his handkerchief. Rudy took it and wiped his tears.

Del came in at that moment and whispered something in the Grunt’s ear. Wes seemed a little perturbed.

“I’ll be done by the time she gets someone,” he told his partner. He turned his attention back to Rudy as Del walked out.

“Sorry, Rudy, but I had to do that. I had to test you.” Rudy nodded as if he understood, but he didn’t. Wes waited a few more moments to make sure Rudy had calmed down before he went at him again.

“What did you go over there for, Rudy?”

“Lucy invited me over.”

“At eleven at night?”

“She told me to come over when I got off no matter what time it was.”

“You weren’t going over there to make small talk—did you think you were gonna get you some?” It was an accusation already made but this time Wes smiled as he asked it, as if they were old high school buddies conspiring over a little sex. Rudy again took the bait.

“Yeah, I did.” He had a sheepish, embarrassed smile on his face but he was relaxing again.

“What was she wearing at her house?”

“A little white nighty.”

“See-through?” Wes had his smile on again.

“Pretty much,” Rudy smiled back. He was one of the boys, finally.

Wes took a few moments to write the conversation down. He put a star next to the “little white nighty.” He remembered seeing it at the side of Lucy Ochoa’s bed the night of the murder.

“Were you mad at her, Rudy, when she turned you down?”

“No. I was out of the house before I knew what was going on.”

“Were you frustrated that you didn’t get laid?”

“A little.”

“But not angry?”

“No, sir.”

“What would make you angry—angry enough to kill somebody?”

“Nothing. I don’t think.”

“What if somebody killed your mother?”

Rudy stiffened. “Yes, that would make me angry enough to kill somebody.”

“What if somebody raped your mother?”

“Yes.” Rudy was getting angry just thinking about it.

“Let’s say you were married to Lucy and somebody raped Lucy, your wife.”

“Yeah, I could kill them.” Rudy thought of some of the guys at school who had taunted him. Sometimes, he felt that he could have killed them too. Suddenly it dawned on him that he could kill someone. That’s when the Grunt started building up to his sliest hypothetical.

“Rudy, is it possible that Lucy said or did something to you that night that made you so angry you could have killed her and you just don’t remember?”

“I already told you, I didn’t kill her.” Wes could hear the anger now.

“I know you didn’t kill her but is it possible that she could have said something to you that night that made you so angry you could have killed her?”

Rudy could feel the pressure—it was causing his chest to burn.

“I don’t know what you’re asking me, Mr. Brume. Woulda, coulda, shoulda—I didn’t get angry at Lucy that night.” Rudy was shouting now.

“I know you didn’t, Rudy. And you didn’t kill Lucy either. I know that. But you could get angry enough to kill somebody who killed or raped your mother and you could get angry enough to kill somebody who killed Lucy if she was your wife. What I want to know is, could Lucy or anyone say something that would make you so angry you could kill them?”

Rudy immediately returned in his mind to his classmates taunting him. He closed his eyes thinking back, picturing them. He stayed there for more than a minute.

“I guess so,” he said without opening his eyes. His voice was again calm.

“So Lucy theoretically could have said something that night that could have made you so angry you could have killed her?”

“I guess so.” The eyes were still closed. He was tired now, confused. He just wanted to go home.

“Do you forget things sometimes when you’re angry?”

“I guess so.” The eyes were still closed. Rudy had a headache now. He wanted it to stop.

“If theoretically you got angry at Lucy that night and did something, you might not remember it?”

“I don’t know, I guess so. I don’t even know what you’re talking about anymore.”

The Grunt took a moment to write in his pad. “She might have made him angry enough to kill her. He could have killed her. He doesn’t remember.” It was time to wrap it up.

“All right, Rudy, you can go now. Someone’s going to come in and take some blood from you. It will only take a second. Do you need a ride home?”

“No, I’ll walk.” He needed the fresh air.

Rudy was glad it was over. He had no idea his nightmare was just about to begin.

The Grunt stepped towards the door but then turned back. “One more question, Rudy. Do you own any knives?”

“Sure.”

“How about a serrated knife—do you own a serrated knife?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You know, the kind with the little grooves along the blade.”

“I might have one. One of the guests in the hotel gave me an old tackle box once and it had a few knives in it I think one of them had that kind of blade.” The one question had become several.

“Where do you keep that tackle box?”

“In my room, under my bed. Why?”

“No reason.” Wes walked out of the room.

Six

Austin Reaves was a rakish old coot. He was a transplanted Yankee whose parents had moved to Fort Lauderdale many years ago when he was only sixteen, but forty years later he was still considered a Yankee in Bass Creek. Those who knew him well called him something far worse—a carpetbagger. He was an attorney specializing in wills and trusts, hardly a lucrative practice in Cobb County, but the work was fairly easy, it paid the bills, and it left Austin free to pursue his true vocations—fishing and drinking good booze. He was a big, wide man with thick reddish brown hair that didn’t have a hint of gray. No worries, he would reply when people would remark about the robust color of his hair. The rest of him fit well with his age.