“So he began with a veiled threat.”
“Yes, but after I complied, he turned casual and chatty. He asked how I’d been. Did I miss my old job and all my cronies in the sheriff’s office? Then, as though in passing, he asked me about my children. What grades were they in, did they like sports, music, what? That made my blood run cold. I knew he was leading up to something.
“Then he asked if I’d heard that you’d been fired. I told him no. How would I have heard? I hadn’t had contact with you in years. He said that was good, because you had threatened retribution against Tom Barker and that any friend of yours was an enemy of Barker’s and, by extension, of the entire PD. He advised me to play it smart and not to talk to you. An or else was implied. Then he left. Not long after that, you called. I was still shaking.”
“Did he say what not to talk to me about? Was it Billy Oliver?”
She began to cry. In the background, her husband could be heard speaking softly, lending encouragement.
John kept his voice soft. He didn’t want her to feel pressured. “Isabel, did you know that Billy was dyslexic?”
“Dyslexic? No.”
“I learned that today from Carla Mellin. The odds that Billy wrote that confession are practically nil.”
“He couldn’t have written it if he’d been Shakespeare,” she said. “He didn’t have anything to write with.”
“That came up when we were investigating his suicide,” John said. “How the hell did Billy get access to pencil and paper? The only explanation offered was that he’d sneaked them past all of you guards.”
“John, he didn’t. I and all the other deputies in the rotation were being scrupulous. Billy was so distraught over his missing friend, and being accused of taking her, we were afraid he would harm himself. Anytime he was returned to his cell after being out, we made sure he wasn’t bringing anything in.”
“Why wasn’t he on suicide watch?”
“We suggested it, then requested it, but it was never implemented.”
“Christ,” John said under his breath. Beth was shaking her head in disbelief.
“But it started before that,” Isabel said.
“What started?” John asked.
“The irregularities.”
“Give me a ‘for instance.’”
“The camera that monitored several cells, including Billy’s, wasn’t working. I reported it. A day went by. Nobody came to check it. I reported it again and suggested that Billy be moved to another cell until it was repaired.
“One of the building maintenance men finally appeared. He looked at it, did some tinkering, told me that it needed a part, which he couldn’t get until the next day. That was the night Billy hanged himself.”
“Talk me through what happened that night, Isabel. Take your time.”
Again he heard her husband speaking softly, but urging her. She said, “After his evening meal, Billy was taken out to be interrogated.”
“By the ogre?”
“He said he was fetching him for Tom Barker. Billy was gone for hours. When he was returned, he wasn’t even crying. His eyes were vacant. It was like his soul had been sucked out of him.” She paused for several seconds. “I escorted him to his cell and locked him in. Shortly after, I went to check on him. That’s when I found him. You know the rest. You were there almost immediately.”
“That poor kid didn’t stand a chance against Barker and the ogre. They did a real number on him.”
“The interrogation sessions were recorded, weren’t they?” Isabel asked.
“Yes, and I’ve seen them,” John said. “In all of them, it’s obvious that the ogre bullied the kid, terrified him until he finally broke and gave them answers he knew they wanted.”
“Just to make it stop,” she said.
“Yes.” John picked up from where he’d left off. “After days of talking to Carla, Gracie Oliver, and Billy himself, Mitch Haskell and I were almost certain he was incapable of pulling off an abduction that flawless. When we told Barker that, he called us softies and turned Billy over to the ogre.”
He paused, then asked softly, “Isabel, when he was returned from that final interrogation, did you pat him down before returning him to his cell?”
“That’s the one time I didn’t. He was so pathetic.” With that, the dam burst. She began weeping in wracking sobs that were difficult to listen to. Beth looked anguished. John let Isabel cry uninterrupted and, even after the weeping subsided, gave her time to compose herself.
Finally, she said in a frail voice, “I didn’t pat him down because I felt sorry for him and didn’t want to contribute to his humiliation.”
“I understand,” John said. “His soul had been sucked out of him, Isabel. He couldn’t even read the suicide note that was planted on him. I think we all know who did it.”
With repugnance, she said, “The ogre.”
“Who coincidentally was the one who found the note on Billy after I’d cut him down.”
“I don’t remember that. I was hysterical.”
“The ogre got to that cell in record time. Almost knocked the attorney down in his rush.”
“Like he had been standing by, expecting a crisis.”
“Yes, just like that.” John felt like shit for resurrecting the turmoil she had been through. “Forgive me, Isabel.”
“For what?”