Chasing The Dead

Chapter Thirty-Three

“How’s the neck?”

They were back in the same closet-sized room, the air sour from the day’s earlier meetings. It was warm enough that she took off her jacket. She wished she’d chosen short sleeves with her khaki pants instead of a sweater.

The more violent her client’s offense, the more claustrophobic the room felt. But Jared was too mellow to trigger that vibe, as he fingered the bandage on his neck.

“Okay, I guess. First time I’ve ever been stabbed.”

Alex’s hand went to her neck, a sympathetic reaction, her fingers tugging at her flesh.

“Tell me what happened.”

He furrowed his brow. “Didn’t nobody tell you?”

“I’d rather hear it from you.”

“This old dude, he come up from behind and jumped me for no reason. I threw him off of me and the guards hauled him away. That’s all I know.”

“Did you find out who he was?”

“Somebody said his name was Wood or Woody, something like that.”

“His name was Mathew Woodrell. Does that name mean anything to you?”

Jared’s eyes fluttered for an instant as he made a fist and pressed it hard against his mouth.

“I knew a Woodrell in the army, but it wasn’t him,” he said, his fist muffling his answer.

“No. It wasn’t him. It was his daughter, McCallister.”

He ground his fist against his teeth, his face flushing; then he pulled his fist away, his knuckles gouged and red.

“Yeah, I knew her,” he said, his voice thickening.

Alex knew she was on fragile ground. She kept her tone soft and easy.

“Everyone called her Ali.”

He nodded.

“One of the COs told me that sometimes you wake up during the night calling her name. Why is that?”

He pressed his fingers against his eyes, dragging his hands across his cheeks. He ducked his chin and turned his head from side to side, moving his lips like he was having an argument with himself about what to say. Then he sniffed, wiped his moist eyes with the backs of his hands, and shook his head again, finally squaring up and looking straight at Alex.

“’Cause I killed her. That’s why her father jumped me, isn’t it?”

Alex sucked in a breath. She knew how hard it was to admit to such a thing.

“That’s what he says. Tell me what happened, Jared.”

He raised his head to the ceiling, one hand covering his eyes, breathing deeply before coming back to her, his face pinched.

“I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

“I’m sure you didn’t. Things sometimes get out of hand.”

“Ali was so pretty and so kind. All I wanted was to be around her, even if she never give me the time of day.”

“How did that make you feel?” Alex asked.

He sighed. “Like I was nothing, like I didn’t deserve her, but I knew I did. I was as good as she was. I kept telling her if she’d just give me a chance, we could be real good together.”

“And what did she say about that?”

He clenched his eyes, ticktocking his head back and forth.

“She said, ‘Not in my lifetime, soldier.’ That’s what she called me, soldier, even though I wore a name tag like every other grunt.”

“Did that make you angry?”

“A little bit, I suppose, but I couldn’t stay mad at her, not the way I felt about her. I just told myself, Jared, you stick with it, give her a reason, and she’ll come around.”

“How did Ali feel about all the attention you paid her?”

He shrugged, eyes down. “I dunno.”

“Did she complain to her superiors that you were harassing her?”

He pressed his palms against his thighs, straightening his back.

“I wasn’t harassing her. I just wanted to, you know, talk to her, be friends. That was all.”

“You must have been angry, then. Is that why you killed her?”

“I was scared, but I wasn’t angry,” Jared said.

“What were you scared of?”

“Getting caught.”

“For killing Ali?”

He shook his head. “No. I was scared of us getting caught by the Taliban.”

Alex squinted at him, trying to make sense of what Jared was saying. “I’m not following you.”

He wiped his face with his sleeve and took a breath. “All that time I was trying to get her to like me and getting nowhere; then one day out of the blue, we get assigned to the same detail and we’re riding in a jeep together, in the middle of a three-vehicle convoy, trucks carrying supplies in front and behind. Anyway, we’re in this little convoy and the truck in front of us hits an IED, gets blown all to hell. Then the truck behind us takes fire and it runs off the road. Next thing I know, we’re surrounded and they dragged me and Ali out of the jeep. I coulda swore they got rid of the others just to capture us.”

“Why would they do that? Why not kill you guys too?”

“Oh, they were going to kill us all right, but not till after they were done with Ali.”

Alex nodded. “Then what happened?”

“Well, I was right, ’cause one of them towelheads put a gun on me while the others held Ali down and. .” He choked on the words, unable to get them out.

“Raped her.”

He bobbed his head up and down, his voice breaking. “Then they hauled her up to her knees and that was the first and only time she called me by my name. ‘Jared,’ she said, ‘help me.’ But all I did was stand there and watch one of those fucking haji shoot her in the head. They’d have shot me next except an Apache helicopter found us and opened up on them. I hit the dirt and they run off.” He dropped his head, crying. “God, I wish they’d killed me too.”

Alex swallowed the lump in her throat.

“But you didn’t kill her; the Taliban did.”

He lifted his head, red-eyed. “It’s the same thing, ’cause I should have saved her and I didn’t. That’s what you do for someone you love, and I didn’t even try.”

Listening to Jared’s story, seeing how his guilt and pain contorted him, Alex realized why he’d confessed to killing Joanie Sutherland. She was a stand-in for Ali. That’s why, the first time they talked, Jared had told her that his arrest was a long time coming. Joanie was a stand-in for the relationship he’d wished he had with Ali. Whatever had happened between them, as far as Jared was concerned, he hadn’t raped Joanie Sutherland. He’d made love to Ali Woodrell. That was why he hadn’t confessed to raping Joanie, though Alex had no way of knowing whether that was how Joanie saw it. At least Alex understood Jared better, even if she was still uncertain of his innocence.

“Did you kill Joanie Sutherland?”

He stopped rubbing his palms against his thighs, sitting still, looking straight at her. “No, ma’am, but after what I done, I deserve to be in prison or executed, whatever they decide. It don’t matter to me.”

“Well, it matters to me, and trust me, it will matter more to you when you stop feeling guilty for Ali’s death. I see how painful it was for you to tell me about Ali, but what happened to both of you is very important for your defense, so I’ve got to ask you a few more questions, if that’s all right with you.”

He cleared his throat. “Okay.”

“How did you get to know Joanie?”

“She was a hooker that worked Independence Avenue. I seen her there a few times.”

“Were you attracted to her?”

He blushed, turning and looking away. “Yeah, I guess so.”

“What was it about her that attracted you?”

He couldn’t face Alex. “I dunno. Everything, I guess.”

“Ali must have had long dark hair, kind of an oval face, and a good figure.”

Jared swirled around, hands on the table. “How did you know that?”

“Because Joanie did. Were you drawn to Joanie because she reminded you of Ali?”

Jared clenched his jaw. “Ali wasn’t a whore!”

“And I’m not saying she was. But Joanie was a whore who happened to look like Ali. When you talked to Joanie, I bet she didn’t make you feel like nothing.”

Jared hesitated, his eyes glazing over as if he had gone somewhere else, and Alex was uncertain whether he was still with her or back in Afghanistan with Ali. She rapped her pen on the table.

“Jared? Are you with me?”

He blinked, focusing, his voice soft. “Yeah.”

“Did Joanie make you feel like nothing?”

“No, she didn’t.”

“She was probably the one who asked if you wanted to have sex.”

He nodded.

“But you didn’t have any cash, did you?”

He shook his head.

“But you had all that jewelry you’d picked up along the way, and every woman, even a whore, maybe especially a whore, likes jewelry.”

“They do. Even the ones that got enough of it.”

“So you offered to pay Joanie with jewelry. But that meant she had to come to your tent.”

“She didn’t mind. I told where I was camped out and she laughed, said she used to play down there all the time when she was little. Knew right where it was. Said it was practically on her way home and that she’d meet me there.”

“What time was it when she got to your tent?”

“I’m not real sure since I don’t have a watch, but it had been dark for a couple of hours.”

“That’s pretty early in the evening for a working girl to get off the street. How much jewelry were you going to give her?”

He chuckled. “It wasn’t like that. I mean, yeah, I was going to give her something. I was even going to let her take her pick. She said she was meeting someone later on and wanted to go home and clean up first and she wanted a nice piece of jewelry to wear when she went back out.”

Alex leaned in hard against the table, trying not to get too excited. “Did she say who she was going to meet?”

Jared shook his head. “No, and I didn’t ask. I didn’t want to hear about her being with someone else even though I knew that’s what she did.”

“So you had sex with her in your tent.”

He blushed again, dropping his gaze to the floor. “Yeah.”

“And afterward, did she pick out a piece of jewelry?”

He nodded.

“What did she choose?”

“The gold cross I took off her when I found her in the creek.”

“Why did you take the cross?”

“’Cause I wanted it for Ali.”

“Then why did you let Joanie take it in the first place?”

He raised his hands chest high, waving them back and forth, his eyes fluttering. “I dunno.” He took a deep breath, shaking his head. “I dunno. I guess maybe ’cause, like you said before, she reminded me of Ali.”

Alex studied him, looking for something that would expose him as a liar, rapist, and murderer, but it wasn’t there. He believed what he was telling her regardless of whether it was true. Mathew Woodrell had been just as certain.

“And was that the last time you saw Joanie alive?”

He raised his head, looking squarely at Alex, not blinking. “Yes, ma’am.”