He popped the cassette tape out of the recorder and walked around the corner to the interview room and tapped on the door. When I opened it a crack, he wagged the cassette in the air and winked.
Tee Bobby sat at the in
terview table, leaning forward on his forearms, his hands balling and unballing, a twitch at the corner of one eye. He peeled a candy bar we had bought him from the machine by the courthouse entrance and began eating it, his eyes busy with thoughts that he did not share. “You want another cup of coffee?” Helen asked.
“I got to use the bat’room,” he said.
“You just went,” she said.
“I ain’t feeling too good. You said I was s’pposed to identify somebody.”
“Be patient, Tee Bobby. Come on, I’ll walk you down to the rest room,” Helen said.
While they were gone, I went to my mailbox, picked up the cassette tape that Kevin Dartez had placed there, and walked down to my office, where Mack Bertrand, from the crime lab, waited for me.
Dartez’s interview with Styles was not a long one. We listened to it in a few minutes, and it was easy to isolate the material that I thought would be most helpful to Helen and me.
“Can you excerpt those few lines and get them on another tape without too much trouble?” I said.
“No problem,” he said, his pipe inverted in his teeth.
“I’ll go back to the interview room. When you’ve got it, just bang on the door, okay?”
“Call me up later in the day and tell me how all this came out,” he said.
“Sure,” I said.
“Whenever I run into Amanda Boudreau’s parents I feel guilty. Our twins are going to graduate next year. Every day of our lives is a pleasure. The Boudreaus did all the things good parents are supposed to do, but their daughter is dead and they’ll probably wake up miserable every morning for the rest of their lives. Just because some bastard wanted to get his rocks off.”
“Thanks for your help, Mack. I’ll call you later,” I said.
I went into the rest room and washed my hands and face and blew out my breath in the mirror. I could feel the adrenaline pumping in my veins now, in the same way a hunter feels it when a large animal, one with a heart and nerve endings and mental processes not unlike his own, suddenly comes into focus inside a telescopic sight.
I dried my hands and face with a paper towel and went back to the interview room. Tee Bobby was drinking coffee from a paper cup, the soles of his shoes tapping nervously on the floor.
“You going to make it?” I asked.
“Make it? What you mean ‘make it’?”
I pulled up a chair across from him. “Remember back there in the cruiser, you told me you didn’t ‘shoot’ anyone?” I said.
“Yeah, that’s what I said.”
“You used the word ‘shoot,’” I said.
“Yeah, I said I ain’t shot nobody. Is that hard to understand?”
“You didn’t say you didn’t ‘kill’ anybody.”
“This is bullshit, man. I want to go back home,” he said.
“Why do you avoid using the word ‘kill,’ Tee Bobby?” I asked.
“I ain’t playing no word games wit’ you.” His eyes fluttered toward the ceiling, where he examined an air duct as though it were of great complexity.
“You want another candy bar?” I said.
“I want to go. I ain’t sure this is a good idea no more.”