Confessions of a Murder Suspect

39

New York is one of only two states where the law treats sixteen-year-olds as adults, not juveniles.

This was very bad news for Harry and me.

Caputo and Hayes personally drove us to the Manhattan Department of Correction, aka Central Booking.

“You’re not going to separate us, are you?” Harry croaked. He was so spent from all his crying that he looked like a zombie, ghastly white.

“Take a guess, kid,” Caputo replied.

I clutched Harry’s hand for one last moment and said, “Don’t worry. Philippe will take care of us. I’ll see you soon.”

And then I took a deep breath and readied myself for what was next. This should be interesting, I told myself. A study in our law-enforcement system, criminology at work.

I was booked, given a baggy jumpsuit, and led down several steep flights of stairs, each step drawing me deeper into the hot, humid depths beneath the street. The walls of the prison were made of ancient-looking stone inset with iron gates. There were no windows. The whole place stank and was as dank as a dungeon.

It was a dungeon, actually, known throughout the city as “The Tombs.”

I was jostled roughly into a small room, where Officer Frye, a blocky woman from Criminal Justice, waited to interview me.

“It’s my job to determine if you’re eligible for bail,” she said with absolutely no inflection. “You can be held for up to three days until your arraignment.”

I could be here for three days.

And then what would happen to me?

I answered her questions about my age and my circumstances, and told her that I had never been arrested before. I couldn’t read Officer Frye’s mind, but when she was satisfied, she went to the gate and called for the guards. Did she actually think I was dangerous?

Maybe I was. Maybe I am. To put your foot through a TV screen, a voice inside my head pointed out, you need superhuman strength—and deep, primal anger.

And if I wasn’t on drugs anymore—drugs that I suspected might have been taming my emotions—who knew what kind of anger I was capable of?

Two prison guards marched me from the interview room and down another flight of stairs, toward a large holding cell filled with drunks and jeering hookers. And then there was me—a sixteen-year-old under suspicion of matricide, patricide, and obstruction of governmental administration.

My brief feeling of superhuman power shrunk with every step I took. This was a dangerous place, and there was nowhere to hide. I crouched in a corner of the cell, covering my face with my hands.