Private #1 Suspect (Private 2)

t a tap-tap-tap, but I felt cold all over. I thought how a kick at my head could sever my spine, what’s called an “internal decapitation.”

I wouldn’t come back from that.

Tandy was speaking to me, apologizing about the chair falling over.

“Let’s cut the bull,” I said from where I lay on the floor. “I’m not making a statement. There’s a set bail for murder on the felony bail schedule. When Caine gets here, we’re going to pay the million bucks, and then I’m leaving.”

Tandy stooped so he could look me in the eyes.

“There’s no set bail for murder with special circumstances,” he said.

“What are you talking about? What special circumstances?”

“Colleen was pregnant when you killed her, Jack. That’s special circumstances. Murder times two.”

CHAPTER 56

I COULD BARELY absorb what Tandy had told me.

Colleen couldn’t have been pregnant. She wasn’t showing. Besides, she would have told me. Right?

Ziegler picked up the chair. Then he and Tandy hauled me back into it.

“You’re lying,” I said. “Colleen wasn’t pregnant.”

“How do you know that?” said Ziegler. “You get the autopsy report? We did. It’ll be a while before we get the DNA, but it doesn’t matter who the daddy is. She could have been pregnant by anyone. It’s still murder of her kid.”

Tandy patted my shoulder.

I turned my head to look at him.

“Jack, are you with us? I haven’t been running the video recorder, but I’m going to turn it on now. You should tell us the truth while there’s still time.”

Tandy ducked out and sure enough, the video camera in the corner of the ceiling focused with a whirr. A little red light blinked.

Tandy came back into the room with a yellow pad and a Bic.

“Ready, Jack? Because this is it. Once we say bye-bye, no one can help you. Not even Fescoe.”

He had just slapped the pad and pen down on the table when Eric Caine, my friend, a Harvard Law grad, and the head of Private’s legal department, stormed into the interrogation room.

Caine was a big man, prematurely gray, and like me, he played college football. Normally, Caine was a man of measured responses, dry humor, and self-control.

But now he was raging. And that made me feel good.

He shouted at me, “Did you say anything, Jack?”

“Nope. The detectives have done all the talking.”

Caine walked over to me, turned my head from side to side. “You’re bleeding.”

He said to Tandy and Ziegler, “Beating a prisoner is illegal. Not only is a lawsuit coming straight at you, but that beating automatically throws out anything he said.”

“He said he’s innocent,” Ziegler scoffed.

“Big barking dog,” Tandy said to Ziegler, eyeing Caine. “Woof woof.”

“I want my client checked out by a doctor,” Caine said. “I mean now.”