Steeled for Murder (27 page)

He sat back in his chair. “Been using drugs?”

With that one, I could be completely honest. “No, sir.”

“Or dealing any?”

“No, sir.” I shifted uneasily. Returning to possible drug use. I supposed it was a fairly standard area of suspicion for parole officers. Probably Aaron’s big mouth had spread rumors that had appeared on the police radar.

“You know I can order a piss test any time I think it’s a good idea?” Mr. Ramirez shuffled some papers on his desk. He pulled out a multipart form.

“Yes, sir.”

“Any objections to giving a sample?”

“Only the amount it would cost.” They were expensive. “I don’t have a lot of extra money by the time I pay my bills and buy food and stuff.”

Mr. Ramirez’s eyebrows shot up on his fleshy forehead. “What do you mean by ‘stuff?’”

Now I’d done it. “You know, shaving cream and deodorant and laundry detergent. Stuff.”

He didn’t look convinced. “How about a test on your hair? Doesn’t look to me like you’ve had a haircut since you’ve been released. Should cover the entire time since you hit the street. And the last few months of incarceration.”

True.

“Well?”

“I got no problem with the test, except for if I have to pay for it.” I reached up, plucked a strand of hair from the top of my head, and offered it to him.

Mr. Ramirez shook his head. “Not now. Maybe later.”

I leaned over to toss the hair into the trash can. I wondered if he would fish it out when I was gone and send it for testing.

Shouldn’t be a problem.

Someone knocked at the door.

“Come in,” Mr. Ramirez called.

The door opened. The familiar scent of mint and aftershave wafted through the door. Montgomery followed it, looking grim.

“I just talked to Detective Montgomery.” Mr. Ramirez leaned back in his chair again. At least if he fell over and cracked his head now, Montgomery would be a witness. “About the murder investigation and other things. He has a few questions.”

I just bet he did.

Montgomery squeezed by the chair I was sitting in and leaned his trim rear against the desk. “Hello, Jesse.” Jesse, not Damon. His voice was misleadingly friendly. His grim expression contradicted his soft tone.

“Good morning, sir.”

“I think it’s afternoon already, Jesse.” He shot his wrist out of a starched cuff and checked a large gold watch. “Definitely afternoon.”

“Good afternoon, sir.”

“Accuracy is important, Jesse.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I wouldn’t want to think you were less than accurate when you answered my questions, now, would I?”

“No, sir.”

“There’s more than a few things I’d really like to know.” Montgomery stood up, but there was no room in the office for him to get behind me to pace. “But right now, I’ll settle for this one. Where did you get those twenties that you used to pay the monitoring fee last week?”

I’m not sure what I’d expected him to ask, but it wasn’t that. “I guess the bank,” I said, “When I cashed my last paycheck.”

“Not the bank.” Montgomery’s eyes bored into my face. “All the banks were on the lookout for them. Think about it.”

My stomach knotted up. Were they counterfeit? I’d distributed them. Would anyone believe I didn’t realize it? Probably not. And even if I didn’t catch criminal charges for them, they’d be confiscated. Being out forty bucks would be a real problem for me.

I tried to think back. I didn’t spend money that often; I didn’t have much to spend. Certainly not where I might get twenties back in change. When I’d cashed my last check, I’d set aside enough to pay the monitoring fee. Folded the twenties and put them in the back section of my wallet so I wouldn’t accidently spend them. Like I could really forget.

But I hadn’t taken those bills out when I’d paid the fee. I had enough in the front section of my wallet. If they weren’t from the bank, had I gotten them in change somewhere?

Of course not. Carl Miller gave them to me. They had to have come from Tiffany’s purse. But I couldn’t very well say that.

“Maybe from a guy at work,” I said lamely, thinking madly. “I keep all of my money in my wallet; somebody wanted to change a fifty.”

“If you changed a fifty for someone, you’d have the fifty and he’d have the twenties. And a ten.”

Good point. I felt sweat form on my forehead. “Other way around. Somebody wanted a fifty for two twenties and a ten.”

“And why would somebody want to do that?” Montgomery’s icy gaze took in my discomfort. He knew very well I was lying.

I willed myself to not fidget. “Something about putting it in a Christmas card. A fifty lay flatter than two twenties and a ten.”

“Strange.” Montgomery leaned against the desk again. “What’s this guy’s name?”

“I don’t know the names of a lot of the guys at work.” That, at least, was true.

“It’s not that big a shift; I’d think you’d know everybody. Or at least their names.”

“Well, I don’t.” My hands were sweaty; the scar itched like crazy. I had to resist the urge to rub it.

“But you could point him out if I asked, couldn’t you?” Montgomery examined his manicure.

If I picked out someone at random, I’d just make trouble for them. And of course they’d deny the whole thing. I shrugged. “Maybe.”

“I find it hard to believe that someone at work, someone whose name you don’t know and who you might not be able to point out among the very limited members of your shift, approached you and asked you to give him a fifty for two twenties and a ten.”

Put like that, it sounded really stupid. “He just asked in general,” I offered.

Montgomery raised his well-shaped eyebrows. “I would believe that you didn’t know what you had there. If you’d known, you wouldn’t have been stupid enough to hand them in to the parole office for your monitoring fee.”

Right about that. If I’d noticed anything strange about them, I certainly would not have used them to pay the monitoring fee. “Are they counterfeit?” I asked.

Montgomery laughed. “No, Damon. They are not counterfeit.”

Then what? I noticed he’d gone back to calling me Damon instead of Jesse. He was past pretending to be friendly. “I didn’t see anything different about them,” I said. My palms were really sweating now. The scar itched.

“I’m not surprised.”

I tried to remember them. Crisp new bills. I didn’t think they had any unusual markings on them. Bait money of some sort? Photocopied and the serial numbers recorded? Given to an informant to buy drugs? Didn’t they usually arrest people right there and then, while they could trace the exchange of money for drugs? Maybe something had gone wrong with the buy.

That thought chilled me.

So the twenties had made their way to Mitch. Made a certain amount of sense. Tiffany had gotten them from Mitch. Again, made sense. And I’d ended up with them. Great.

Montgomery stood up. “Don’t think I’m going to get much more out of him,” he said to Mr. Ramirez. “He knows more than he’s saying. But we’re not going to hear about it.”

Mr. Ramirez reached for his phone. “Want me to get someone in here and have him locked up? That might change his mind about telling you what he knows.”

“No.” Montgomery brushed imaginary lint off his pants leg. “That would just cost him his job. And then the state’d have to support him again. I think we’ll learn a lot more by keeping an eye on him than by locking him up again.”

I tried to keep my face expressionless.

“Whatever you say.” Mr. Ramirez took his hand off the receiver.

Montgomery slipped past me and opened the door. I felt his gaze on my face. “Sooner or later, I’ll figure this out, Damon. Don’t you forget that. And if I find out you did kill Mitch, I’ll make sure you never get parole again.”

I didn’t bother to answer. Or look toward him.

He left.

“Interesting,” Mr. Ramirez said. “You got anything else to tell me?” He leaned back in his chair.

Don’t flip out now,
I thought. “No, sir.”

Mr. Ramirez sat up straighter. I wiped my sweaty palms on my pants.

“You sure?”

“Yes, sir.” Getting much too complicated. Much easier if I could just stick to the truth. That, of course, was why lengthy repeated interrogations worked so well.

Mr. Ramirez shrugged. “Got your monitoring fee for this week?” he asked.

“Yes, sir.” I pulled out my wallet and got out the bills I’d folded and tucked away before I’d gotten Tiffany’s twenties. I knew these ones came straight from the bank.

Mr. Ramirez took the bills and studied them.

“What was the problem with the other twenties, sir?” I asked. “Detective Montgomery said they weren’t counterfeit.”

“That’s right. They weren’t.” Mr. Ramirez was holding one of the twenties I’d just given him up to the light. Looking for the line in it, I guess, to make sure it wasn’t counterfeit. “You’re not stupid. I imagine you can figure out why the police might be interested in who has certain bills.”

“Because they were used for a drug buy?” I speculated. “And the cops didn’t make an arrest at the time. Either something went wrong, or they were trying to follow where the money went?”

He looked at me. “And where did the money end up?”

Would I ever learn to keep my mouth shut? “In my wallet.”

“Yes. In the wallet of a paroled murderer. Interesting. Maybe we should be testing you for drugs.”

“I don’t have a record of drug use,” I said. The cost of the urinalysis would be a real blow to my finances.

“I’m aware of that. And that is, in and of itself, also interesting. If I recall correctly, the person you killed was a drug dealer. And you were carrying a whole shitload of drugs, mostly heroin and rock cocaine, when you were arrested. How did you manage to get out of that without a conviction for possession with intent? Or a ‘record of drug abuse?’”

I lowered my eyes. No point in saying anything about not having killed anyone. That conviction was a done deal. “Plea bargain,” I said.

“You know the courts come down harder on people who deal to make money than on people who deal to support their own habit?” He crossed his legs at the ankles. He was wearing bright red socks with green Christmas trees on them. “About that drug test…” He opened his desk drawer. I had no doubt he had urine sample kits in there.

“Yes, sir.” Hadn’t we been through this? Of course he could order a drug test. He could order just about anything that he thought up and there wasn’t much I could do about it. Except cooperate and probably pay for it. If he was going to order it, I wished he’d just go ahead and do it, not keep harping on it.

Mr. Ramirez let the silence settle around us. Then he said, “What’s your new schedule look like?”

“Eight a.m. to four p.m.,” I said.

He frowned. “And exactly how do you expect to come in for your appointments here?”

“It’s just for a week or two, sir,” I pointed out. “For training. Then I ought to be back on the midnight to eight. If I have to, I’ll take time off to come in for an appointment.” Quality Steel Fabrications might not like it, but it was the best I could do.

“I guess we can see how it works out.” Mr. Ramirez reached for his calendar. “What kind of training was that again?”

“Forklift.”

Mr. Ramirez flipped the pages on his calendar. “It’s a little after one now,” he said. “You’ll be able to get home and check in by four thirty this afternoon?”

“Yes, sir.” Over three hours from now. Of course I could get home by then.

“Then you’ll be working eight to four. Seven a.m. give you enough time to get to work?”

“Yes, sir.”

“How about a seven p.m. check in every day? Or would you rather check in at five most days and have a nine p.m. check in once a week? Give you more time for the Laundromat and such.”

“Seven every day is fine, sir.” Actually, it would give me a lot more time than the old schedule. I wondered if he realized it. He must. Maybe it was at Montgomery’s request. I’m sure they were familiar with the expression “Give him enough rope to hang himself.”

“Same thing weekends.”

“Thank you, sir.” Lots more time. Or more rope.

“We’ll see when you get back on midnights. If you get back on midnights. Call me as soon as you’re switched back, or at the end of next week. Whichever is sooner. You can skip the appointment next week. Got it?”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’ll hand this in.” His pudgy hand held up the two twenties I’d given him. “That’s this week. Don’t forget you’ll owe for next week, even if you don’t have an appointment. You’ll have to hand in eighty dollars the next week.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hope I’m not going to find these serial numbers on any lists.” He looked at me over his glasses.

“I hope not, sir.”

He got to his feet. The chair sighed in relief. He opened the door and held it for me to leave. I slipped out. He followed me to the waiting room, which was beginning to fill up again.