That’s How I Roll: A Novel (9 page)

Pure logic doesn’t leave room for feelings. To a doctor, “heart” is an organ that pumps blood. If he isn’t going to be guaranteed payment for doing some medical procedure—around here, you spell that “Medicaid”—he’s not doing it.

A cliché never takes hold unless it had some traction to start with. Like the hillbillies with bad teeth you see in horror movies—Medicaid doesn’t pay for dental work. And meth isn’t exactly a cavity fighter, either.

When this reporter—Victor Trey was his name—broke the story, it was like the shingles rash breaking out on the government’s own skin. They took so much heat that Congress ran in and changed the Medicaid law faster than they’d take a bribe. When I read that, I knew Mr. Trey was the man for what I had in mind.

I wrote him a letter—he didn’t come across as a man who had a secretary to open his mail for him, especially a handwritten letter with a jail for a return address.

nd I was right. Mr. Trey came all the way from California to talk to me. He tried to tell me about journalism ethics, protecting sources, stuff like that. I told him none of that meant anything to me—I’d asked him to come and visit with me because I had to find a reporter with a national audience who was also a reporter I could trust.

“What could I possibly give you but my word?” he asked me.

“A man’s no better than his word,” I told him. “I have to make a big bet. The biggest bet a man can make. I asked you to come here so I could make that decision.”

He looked at me for a long time. Then he said, “You’ve done this before.”

“Done what before?”

“Read people. Looked for dishonesty tells. Took the measure of another person by more than just his words.”

I just nodded. He was the man I wanted, all right. I told him my plan.

gave Mr. Trey the whole story. And it was a story—the exact same one I was going to tell on TV, in court, and anyplace else where I got asked.

Our agreement was that he’d run the story in what he called the “bulldog edition” of his newspaper. The show would air from nine to eleven at night—the bulldog would go out at midnight, in print and on the Web.

I guaranteed Mr. Trey he’d be the only print reporter I’d ever talk to. And he guaranteed me that no editor was going to touch what he wrote. So, if the TV people played it loose with their editing, they’d look like fools. And liars.

Mr. Trey and I shook on that. There isn’t any more that could have been done, although he offered to put everything in writing.

“What would I do with a contract between men like us?” I told him. “For me, my word is a contract. Otherwise, I couldn’t have done a lot of things I’m going to tell you about. I’m taking your word the same as mine was taken.”

he next day, I told the TV people I’d let them bring their cameras in. They could ask me any questions they wanted, except for what I told them in advance was off-limits. I’d made sure they put that in the contract we all signed. Taking
their
word would put them in a class where they didn’t belong.

I already knew I wouldn’t have to answer the questions that frightened me to even think about—it would never occur to people like them to ask such questions. And the contract said they couldn’t “go beyond the scope” of my crimes. No backstory, no digging into my life. I was a little concerned they’d balk at that part, but it didn’t seem to bother them one bit.

“It’s actually a better story this way,” one of the TV big shots said to some of the others. He was talking about me like I wasn’t in the room, but I wasn’t insulted. The more invisible I could be, the more they’d say in front of me.

“Our audience is going to hear the story of a hired killer,” the big shot said. “A detailed account of every murder. It’s going to chill people’s blood. You want to know why? Because we’re not showing them some filthy, slobbering psycho; Esau looks like a college professor. That’s the best part. Esau killed a lot of people because he got paid to do it. There’s nothing more to the story. How scary is
that
?

“Serial killers, by now they’re … they’re almost boring. But what we’ve got is something truly unique—a pure predator. Not someone who kills because he’s sick; someone who kills to feed his family. Every crime he talks about, the facts are right there for
anyone to check. And the bodies are always going to be right where he says they are.

“See the beauty of it? If the competition wants to speculate on how Esau came to be what he is, that’s fine with us. In fact, it’s
better
than fine. Every time they interview some expert, every time they ‘investigate’ Esau’s real motivation, they’re promoting
our
product. I’ll bet we sell more DVDs of this show than of all the rest we ever did, combined. It’s going to be in criminology classes. Libraries. Cited in textbooks.

“You can’t buy that kind of credibility. It’s not only going to enhance our network image, win us all kinds of awards—it could turn out to have the longest legs ever.”

You could see it on their faces. Even smell it coming off them like a thick, rolling fog of musk. To the other people in that room, what that big shot was saying was more important than oxygen.

With that in hand, I went on to Step Ten.

f everybody keeps up their end of the deal, I’ll die alone. Alone and silent, the way I’m supposed to.

To the newspapers, I’ll be the worst murderer in the whole history of this state.

I guess they should say that. I will have saved Tory-boy by telling the truth. A kind of truth, anyway. The kind of truth the Law feeds on. Once I learned how deep the Feds had their people planted in so many places, I had only one choice if I wanted to keep Tory-boy safe past my time.

The way I explained it was: I’d give all the politicians the truth-plus, if they’d agree to let it also be the truth-minus.

At first, there were some little disputes about who was going to have to kill me. I balanced it out for them: I told the Feds I could get the State to agree to push the buttons to send the poison through the IVs into what was left of my body.

I just came right on out with it: I’d clean up any unsolved murders
on the State’s books. If they’d allow me to come home to die, I’d use the mouth of one devil to make a lot of heroes.

And if the Feds had any other undercovers close by who’d met with death, I’d take those on myself, too.

What politician would turn down an offer like that?

And what lawman ever got to tell a politician what to do?

kept my bargain. I confessed to every unsolved killing on the State books. Every killing I
could
have done, that is. Nobody was going to believe I raped a woman or kidnapped a child, or beat a man to death with a tire iron. The real truth is, I didn’t want my name associated with such things, so I was deeply grateful when the Law agreed—they didn’t want any taint on the big piece of paper they were going to roll out for the whole world to see.

When you took those kind of crimes out of the mix, you left a bunch of contract kills. The Law actually knew who did some of those—or ordered them, anyway—but they couldn’t hope to prove it. And it turned out that the Feds had people planted all over the place. So, when I confessed to those crimes, I made everybody happy.

I had to walk that last bit of the line with great care. Confessing to a crime you didn’t commit is tricky, because you don’t know the little details—things only the killer would know.

Like that little red ribbon tied to a branch of the white-oak tree where a hunter had waited for hours before he put a 30.06 round through the head of a man named Luther Semple.

The Law
had
to know who shot him. Luther Semple had raped a little girl, but she couldn’t identify him. She wasn’t even the first little girl he had taken that way: throwing a feedbag over her head from behind before he went to work.

The cops were in a bad position. Everyone in that little town probably thought they knew who had fired the shot, and the little
girl’s father never denied it—just told the cops he wanted a lawyer and wouldn’t speak to them at all.

The local prosecutor wouldn’t touch the case. If he had, people would have looked at him as if he was the defense attorney for the rapist.

Still, nobody likes an unsolved murder. I don’t mean “nobody” the way you’d talk about actual people; I mean “nobody” the same as the statistics the government keeps on everything. So, when I admitted that I’d killed that man, everybody was pleased. Me knowing about that piece of red ribbon, that was the clincher—even skeptical folks would have to admit that only the actual killer could have known that; it had never been made public.

But it wasn’t all as easy as I’m making it sound. The way it worked was that the Feds would take all my confessions, then they’d call in the Law from whatever area the different crimes had happened in.

When those cops showed up, they’d be smart enough to get certain details out of me, so I could tell a straight story … but that’s as far as they went. I damn near ended up telling them they were being stupid. Knowing a few facts just wouldn’t be enough. The story had to ring true. How was a man in a wheelchair supposed to get into the deep woods? And why would I give a damn about somebody’s little girl getting raped when I didn’t even know them?