A Fountain Filled With Blood

“Careful with that,” Lyle warned. “You leave a spill on Harlene’s desk and she’ll eat you for lunch.” Their senior dispatcher was taking two days off after working on the Fourth.

Russ scooped McKinley’s paperwork off the desk. “I’m going to talk to him.”

“Chief, he’s asked for his lawyer.”

“I’m not going to question him. I’m going to talk to him.” He grinned at Lyle’s expression. “Don’t worry. I won’t violate his rights any. I just want to give him an idea of what he’s facing.”

The Millers Kill police station had been built in the days when suspects were booked at the desk and interrogated—without much thought at all to constitutional rights—in the holding cells below. Now the old cell block held an evidence locker and munitions lockup, and suspects in custody were questioned in a spacious, if windowless, room that had been carved out of two interior offices. Russ buzzed himself in and nodded to Noble Entwhistle, who was propping up the wall while keeping an eye on Elliott McKinley.

McKinley was seated at a rectangular steel table. His hands had been uncuffed, but his ankles were in restraints attached to his chair. The table and its six chairs were bolted to the floor. McKinley looked up from a close examination of his knuckles. “Can I get a smoke?” he said.

“Maybe later,” Russ said, throwing the paperwork down and easing himself into one of the chairs. His knees were beginning to ache, a deep, throbbing pain that would only intensify as the day wore on.

“I heard there’s no smoking at the county jail no more.”

“That’s right. It’s a smoke-free zone. The county doesn’t want anybody contracting lung cancer on its watch.”

“Oh, man.” McKinley’s hands twitched. His face was lined and leathery, the prematurely old face of someone who had been hitting the booze and the cigarettes since he was a boy. Despite his full-tilt attempt to avoid capture, he didn’t look defiant. Merely resigned to another turn in what was probably a lifelong string of bad luck.

“So I hear you’ve asked for Geoff Burns,” Russ said. “How’d you get his name?”

“Friend of mine. Burns repped him for a drunk-driving charge. Got him off, and he took a payment plan from my buddy, too, ’cause he didn’t have all of his fee up front.” McKinley knit his brows. “How come you want to know?”

“I was just wondering. I know Geoff. He and his wife have what you might call a general practice. You know, divorces, sue somebody for a dog bite, an occasional DUI. I would have thought you’d want more of a criminal specialist. Facing a murder charge.” He didn’t feel at this point he had to let McKinley in on the fact that the state usually supplied a capital defender when prosecutors went for the death penalty.

McKinley’s face drained of all color. “What?” he squeaked. He looked wildly toward Noble, who was still stolidly planted against the wall. “They didn’t say nothing about murder! They said assault!”

Russ glanced down at the sheets of paper in front of him. “Oh, yeah, that, too. Two assaults. One of those’ll probably be a felony assault, since it was committed while you were robbing the video store.”

“We did not!”

Yes. Russ felt an electric pulse surge through his body. He forced his hands and face to remain relaxed, his eyes on the paper in front of him. “Resisting arrest, assaulting an officer of the law, breaking and entering—that would be the mill. There’s a warrant out on you for failure to report to your parole officer. You’ve also got three unpaid speeding tickets, you owe back child support to DHS in the amount of fifteen thousand dollars”—he titch-titched at this—“and we’re charging you with capital murder in the death of Bill Ingraham.” He looked up at McKinley, his voice calm and matter-of-fact. “And if you’ve been working under the table to avoid that child support, you may be in trouble with the IRS.”

McKinley tried to stand up but could only manage to list drunkenly across the table because of the leg restraints. “I didn’t have nothing to do with no murder! I never laid a hand on Bill Ingraham!”

Russ leaned back in his chair. “I really can’t discuss it with you, Elliott. Seeing as how you’ve got a call in to your lawyer.” He took off his glasses and polished them on the front of his shirt. “Geoffrey Burns. I think he did a breaking and entering once. That guy who was stealing drugs from the local pharmacies. You remember that case, Officer Entwhistle?”

“Fuck the lawyer!” McKinley’s color had come back now. His face was blotched with red and purple. “I didn’t kill Bill Ingraham! I never went near him!”

Russ glanced up at him. “Well, that’s what I had figured originally. ’Cause when we picked you up in the Chhouk case, we only wanted you for a witness. To tell the truth, I never figured you for the kind of guy who would do the deed himself. Just that you had some rowdy friends.”

“That’s right! That’s exactly right!”